The United Nations human rights office issued a report Wednesday saying Palestinian detainees taken by Israeli authorities since the Oct. 7 attacks have faced waterboarding, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and other torture and mistreatment.

The report on detention says Israel’s prison service held more than 9,400 “security detainees” as of the end of June, and some have been held in secret without access to lawyers or respect for their legal rights.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an airstrike in the Iranian capital, Iran and the militant group said early Wednesday, blaming Israel for a shock assassination that risks escalating the regional conflict on multiple fronts.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group's Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The strike came just after Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran's new president in Tehran, Iran said.

Israel carried out a rare strike Tuesday on Beirut's southern suburbs that killed at least four civilians -- two children and two women -- and wounded around 74 others, raising the stakes in the escalating tensions with Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted and killed Hezbollah's "most senior" military commander, Fouad Shukur, accusing him of being behind the deaths of 12 children and teens in a weekend rocket strike on a Druze village in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, as well as the deaths of numerous Israeli civilians hit in other strikes.

By Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College

A missile strike that killed 12 children playing soccer in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on July 27, 2024, has prompted international concern that the Middle East conflict could expand into the disputed territory.

Fears of an escalation in the simmering conflict between Hezbollah and Israel have prompted some airlines to cancel flights to Lebanon, but business appeared to be proceeding as usual Tuesday at the Beirut airport, where many travelers greeted the warnings with a shrug.

Hadi Sharqawi, 24, a Lebanese student in Italy, arrived Tuesday after two days of flight cancellations, to spend a month and a half with his family as he normally does in the summer. He is from the town of Kharayeb, which is in southern Lebanon although relatively far from the border where clashes have been ongoing for 10 months.

A storm of outrage about the Paris Olympics' opening ceremony took a legal turn Tuesday, with a DJ who performed at the show saying her lawyer is filing complaints over a torrent of threats and other abuse that the LGBTQ+ icon has suffered online in the ceremony's wake.

Barbara Butch's lawyer said in a letter posted to the DJ's Instagram that Butch "has been threatened with death, torture and rape, and has also been the target of numerous anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist and grossophobic insults." Butch's agent confirmed to The Associated Press that the Instagram account is the DJ's.

The head of Ukraine's Olympic delegation touted the limited numbers of Russian athletes at the Paris Olympics — who must compete as neutrals — as war between the two countries grinds on for a third year.

Vadym Guttsait told The Associated Press in an interview that Ukraine began the effort to reduce the number of Russian and Belarusian athletes after the Kremlin's forces invaded Ukraine in 2022 and have kept pressing it nearly until the start of the Games in Paris. Belarus is a key ally of Moscow's.

China's powerful Politburo has endorsed the ruling Communist Party's long-term strategy for growing the economy by encouraging more consumer spending and weeding out unproductive companies to promote "survival of the fittest."

A statement issued after the meeting of the 24 highest leaders of the party warned that coming months would be tough, perhaps alluding to mounting global uncertainties ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

Europe's economy saw modest growth in the April-June quarter even as the U.S. outperformed expectations, highlighting a persistent transatlantic growth gap. Germany, the leading European economy, remained in the dumps while hesitant consumers saved more rather than spending on new houses or cars.

Gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, rose 0.3% in the second quarter in the 20 countries that use the euro currency, according to official figures released Tuesday by European Union statistics agency Eurostat. Germany slid back into contraction, recording a 0.1% fall in output.

Egyptian fencer Nada Hafez has revealed that she fought at the Paris Olympics while seven months pregnant.

Hafez posted on Instagram that she was "carrying a little Olympian one" hours after she had reached the round of 16 in women's saber Monday.