Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to a statement from the group that governs Gaza.

Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed after the building where they were staying was struck, the statement said, adding that Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, on Tuesday.

“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas mourns to our great Palestinian people, to the Arab and Islamic nation, and to all the free people of the world: Brother, leader, martyr, Mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, who was killed in a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran,” Hamas said.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also announced Haniyeh’s killing.

“Early this morning, the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was struck, resulting in his and one of his bodyguards’ martyrdom. The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon,” the IRGC said in a statement.

Separately, Israel said its strike in Beirut yesterday killed Hezbollah’s most senior military commander Fu’ad Shukr, who it blamed for a deadly rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A senior Lebanese government official earlier told CNN that Shukr survived the attack.

The spate of recent strikes has stoked fears of a regional war. According to a senior Israeli official, Israel wanted to send “a very strong message” with Tuesday’s strike in Beirut, but hopes to avoid further escalation.

Israel kills Hezbollah commander, mastermind behind attack on children’s soccer field

The Israel Defence Force (IDF) announced the death of Fuad Shukr, the Hezbollah commander who, it says, was behind a drone strike that killed 12 children and teens over the weekend.

Shukr, who was also known as Hajj Mohsin, joined Hezbollah in 1985 and served as a senior adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah at the time of his death. He was also sought by the US government over his connection to the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which targeted US Marines.

(On October 23, 1983, two truck bombs were detonated at buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, housing American and French service members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, a military peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The attack killed 307 people: 241 US and 58 French military personnel, six civilians, and two attackers).

The IDF confirmed the news in a news release, announcing that its fighter jets “eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist organisation’s most senior military commander [Shukr].” Hezbollah has still not confirmed that Shukr is deceased. But a source close to Hezbollah said that Fuad Shukr survived the Israeli attack.

The Israeli raid in Beirut resulted in the deaths of three Lebanese and 25 others injured, a medical source told Al Jazeera. According to what some witnesses reported, an eight-storey building was hit in the raid, three storeys of which collapsed.

“As the Head of Hezbollah’s Strategic Unit, Fuad was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs,” the release said. “He was responsible for force build-up, planning, and execution of terror attacks against the State of Israel.”

A senior Israeli official told Fox News earlier on Tuesday that Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant was in contact with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin regarding the present situation.

“This was about sending a clear message: We don’t want to see a wider war,” the source said. “Now this is in the hands of Hezbollah. Within 24 hours after the rocket attack in the Golan Heights, this response was being discussed among other options.”

On X, Gallant said that Shukr “has the blood of many Israelis on his hands”. “Tonight, we have shown that the blood of our people has a price, and that there is no place out of reach for our forces to this end,” he added.

Al Jazeera reports Hamas said in a statement that it strongly condemned the attack on Beirut, saying it considered it a “dangerous escalation”. Similarly, the Yemeni Houthis denounced the Israeli raid, calling it a “blatant violation” of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Hezbollah launches dozens of rockets on northern Israel

While in Beirut a strong explosion hit the suburb of Da’aheh, Hezbollah’s stronghold, the Shiite militiamen of the Party of God took responsibility for a new attack on Israeli territory: dozens of Katyusha rockets were launched towards the north of Israel, Arab media reports.

Criticism mounts against Maduro, Venezuela’s electoral council

US President Joe Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday called on Venezuela’s government to release detailed voting data from the presidential election.

Electoral authorities have said President Nicolás Maduro won, but the opposition says their candidate, Edmundo González, secured more than twice as many votes in Sunday’s election.

In a joint statement after a call in which Venezuela’s election was discussed, Biden and Maduro ally Lula said they “agreed on the need for immediate release of full, transparent, and detailed voting data at the polling station level by the Venezuelan electoral authorities”.

Both presidents said the outcome “represents a critical moment for democracy in the hemisphere”.

Criticism of Maduro has mounted since electoral authorities declared him the winner Monday.

Thousands of ardent opposition supporters gathered outside the United Nations’ offices in the capital, Caracas, to mark what they say was an electoral victory by opposition candidate Edmundo González. Maduro’s allies meanwhile appeared on television to accuse opposition leaders of being fascists.

Reports say 749 supporters have been arrested while the president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodriguez, amidst the applause of the assembly, called for the imprisonment of Machado and Gonzalez Urrutia, Nicolas Maduro’s challenger in the elections. “We must not only arrest the drug addicts, who carry out acts of vandalism, we must also do so with their leaders,” said Rodriguez

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, standing atop a truck in Caracas, had earlier called on the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, to release the voting tally sheets produced by every precinct after polls closed, asking, “Why don’t they publish them?”

Machado said the opposition coalition behind González’s candidacy has obtained more than 84 per cent of the tallies and that she is confident he was chosen in Sunday’s election to be Venezuela’s president.

“The only thing we are willing to negotiate is the peaceful transition,” Machado said as the crowd chanted: “We have no fear!”

Machado and González urged their supporters, thousands of whom protested across the country Monday, to remain calm and avoid violence.

Their celebration came hours after the Organisation of American States lambasted the Venezuelan National Electoral Council for not releasing the precinct-level results.

“The worst form of repression, the most vile, is to prevent the people from finding solutions through elections,” the organisation said in a statement. “The obligation of each institution in Venezuela should be to ensure freedom, justice, and transparency in the electoral process.”

The organisation, which has called an urgent meeting of its members to discuss Venezuela’s election, even suggested that a new vote could take place to resolve the widely different results that electoral authorities and the opposition have presented. The do-over, the organisation said, would require robust international observation.

In Washington, the National Security Council said the United States continues to monitor Venezuela following the election, and urged authorities to release “full, transparent, and detailed voting results”.

Trump suffers back-to-back polling blows in Pennsylvania

Another poll of Pennsylvania voters released on Tuesday showed US Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump – after other polls showed a tightening race in the crucial swing state, Newsweek reports.

Democrats quickly coalesced around Harris after Biden ended his campaign, and she has appeared to secure enough delegates to win the nomination ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August. Prior to Biden’s exit, polls showed Harris performing similarly, if not worse, than Biden in swing states. But as her candidacy generated new enthusiasm among Democrats, polls have shown her standing rise in recent days.

A new survey of 600 likely voters in Pennsylvania found Harris leading Trump by four points in the state. Forty-seven per cent of respondents said they are planning to back Harris in November, while 43 per cent said they are voting for Trump. An additional three percent said they are planning to vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The poll was conducted from July 22 to July 28. Pennsylvania is viewed as a must-win for Harris due to the state’s 19 Electoral College votes, making it the largest swing state in the country.

Meanwhile, Harris and Trump are neck and neck in the race for president, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll. The survey, completed Sunday, shows that the vice president is supported by 43 per cent of registered voters, while the former president is at 42 per cent.

Trump hush money sentencing delayed to September

Donald Trump’s sentencing for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star was delayed on Tuesday until September 18 – less than seven weeks before the US presidential election.

Justice Juan Merchan pushed back the sentencing date so he could weigh the former US president’s argument he should have been immune from prosecution under Monday’s landmark Supreme Court ruling that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for official acts.

Australian PM abandons push for nation to become a republic

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has abandoned his push for the nation to become a republic.

The move is a huge boost for the monarchy’s standing Down Under and comes in time for King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit to the country in October. The royal pair will carry out engagements in the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales, before heading to Samoa for a Commonwealth summit.

Crushing the spirit of republicans Australia-wide, Mr Albanese announced he would not be holding a referendum for Australia to become a republic.

Many supporters of the movement had long believed the death of the Queen would be the catalyst for Australia to seriously consider moving away from the monarchy.

But Mr Albanese swore allegiance to King Charles at his coronation in May in the wake of the Queen’s death, and despite being a ‘life-long republican’, insisted he has ‘a great deal of respect’ for the King.

He also assured members of the public both in Australia and abroad a referendum on whether Australia should become a republic is out of the question for the near future.

Charles and Camilla’s tour in October will not extend to New Zealand, as had been planned initially. Buckingham Palace said: ‘The King’s doctors have advised that such an extended programme should be avoided at this time, to prioritise His Majesty’s continued recovery.’

The programmes in Australia and Samoa would be subject to doctors’ advice and could be modified accordingly, the palace said earlier this month.

Sweet Valley High author Francine Pascal dead at 92

Sweet Valley High author Francine Pascal has died at the age of 92 after a battle with cancer, her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal told the New York Times.

The writer found global success with the hit book series about identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, which was formative reading for generations of young girls.

The series, set in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley, debuted in 1983 and consisted of 181 books, also spawning multiple spin-offs, including Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley University.

It ran for 20 years and was translated into 27 languages, selling hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. Pascal wrote the first 12 books in the series and then, after drafting a detailed outline, worked with a team of writers to keep up a rapid publication pace, according to the NYT. A Sweet Valley High TV series ran from 1994 to 1997.

Mbappe sets unique record after buying French club

Kylian Mbappe has reached a new milestone in his career with a significant business move off the pitch. The star signing for Real Madrid has become the majority owner of a professional football club at just 25 years old, acquiring a controlling stake in SM Caen. Mbappe’s acquisition makes him one of the youngest owners of a professional football club in Europe.

According to French publication Le Parisien, Mbappe will invest nearly €20 million to secure the majority of shares in Caen. He will also assume responsibility for part of the club’s debts.

According to some sources via Tribuna, Mbappe’s purchase of Caen is seen as a generous gesture. In 2012, he had a verbal agreement to join Caen, but the club’s relegation and financial constraints prevented the deal from materialising. This setback led Mbappe to join Monaco, where he emerged as one of the most promising French football talents.

Mbappe’s investment in Caen not only marks a significant business achievement but also reflects his longstanding connection and commitment to the club.