Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran after attending the inauguration of the country's new president, Iran and the militant group said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination but suspicion quickly fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group's Oct. 7 attack. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered "crushing blows" to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon hours before the Tehran strike.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against a "dangerous escalation" of hostilities in the region. Hamas's armed wing said the death of Haniyeh, who was widely viewed as the group's overall leader, would "take the battle to new dimensions" and have major repercussions. Haniyeh, who played an important role in negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza, was killed in the same building where Haniyeh had stayed during previous visits to Iran.

Multiple landslides in southern India killed 194 people and left more than 180 people missing, after torrential rains triggered torrents of mud and water that swept through tea estates and villages. The rescue work was challenging in a forested, hilly area while more rain fell on Thursday, said PM Manoj, a spokesman for Kerala state's top elected official. Nearly 40 bodies were found downstream after being swept some 30km down the Chaliyar River from the area in Wayanad district where the main landslides occurred.

Torrents of mud and water swept through tea estates and villages in hilly areas in the district early Tuesday(July 30). They flattened houses and destroyed bridges, and rescuers had to pull out people stuck under mud and debris. As well as the dead and missing, 186 people were injured. Most of the victims were tea estate workers, local media reported. More than 5500 people have been rescued, Vijayan said, with more than 1000 rescue personnel, helicopters and heavy equipment involved.

The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free. The trade unfolded despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Negotiators in backchannel talks at one point explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February ultimately stitched together a 24-person deal that required significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and secured freedom for a cluster of journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others. US President Joe Biden trumpeted the exchange, by far the largest in a series of swaps with Russia, as a diplomatic feat while welcoming families of the returning Americans to the White House.

The US government recognized Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González as the winner of the South American country's presidential election, discrediting the results announced by electoral authorities who declared President Nicolás Maduro the victor. The National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of Sunday's highly anticipated election, but González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed. They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.

"Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela's July 28 presidential election," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. The announcement from the US government came amid diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro to release vote tallies from the election and increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and México.