Reuters Daily Briefing

"Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran."

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Daily Briefing

By Edson Caldas

Today, all eyes are on the Middle East. A Hamas leader was assassinated in Iran, drawing fears of wider escalation in a region already shaken by Israel's war in Gaza. Elsewhere, we cover the latest on protests in Venezuela and the search for survivors of landslides in India. Plus, a special report on how OnlyFans' porn juggernaut is fueled by a deception.

Today's Top News

Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press conference in Tehran in March. Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via REUTERS

Middle East

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader killed in Iran, was the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group's international diplomacy. But despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the group. This is what we know so far about his assassination. Michael Georgy discusses on the Reuters World News podcast how Iran could retaliate after the killing of Haniyeh, and how that, combined with the death of a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut, further raises regional tensions.

US election

Vice President Kamala Harris will hold her first rally with her new vice presidential nominee on Tuesday Aug. 6 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, launching a four day battleground tour that includes Michigan and Arizona. Here is the latest on her search for a VP.  Donald Trump speaks at the country's largest annual gathering of Black journalists later today, an effort to bolster the Republican presidential candidate's standing that has divided the group's members.

In other news

Protesters took to the streets across Venezuela, demanding that President Nicolas Maduro acknowledge he lost Sunday's election to the opposition, as a major international observer concluded the vote was undemocratic. Soldiers and rescuers are working through slush and rocks under steady rain, looking for survivors and searching for bodies in the hills of India's Kerala state, a day after 166 people were killed in monsoon landslides. Ukraine's air force said it repelled one of Russia's largest long-range drone attacks of the war overnight, shooting down all 89 drones launched at Kyiv. We look at how disinformation and propaganda have been supercharged in the battle for Ukraine.

Paris Olympics 2024

This tally tracks the top five countries as medals are awarded. Updates every 30 minutes. Olympics news: Simone Biles leads the US gymnastics team to a gold medal, France's Cassandre Beaugrand delivers a textbook run to claim an emotional win in the women's triathlon, and Andy Murray makes another great escape to keep his career alive. Plus, we have a photo gallery with the celebrities spotted at the Games. Find today's schedule here.  More Olympics news

Business & Markets

The Bank of Japan raised interest rates in a mostly unexpected move and unveiled a detailed plan to slow its massive bond buying, taking another step towards phasing out a decade of huge stimulus. Here is how investors reacted to the decision. The Federal Reserve is expected to leave rates unchanged at the end of a two-day policy meeting, but also indicate that a reduction in borrowing costs could come as soon as September. Citigroup repeatedly breached a Fed rule that limits intercompany transactions, leading to errors in its internal liquidity reporting, according to a Citi document from December seen by Reuters. HSBC announced a $3 billion buyback and upgraded its income outlook, as it showed progress in its strategy to future-proof its business from global interest rate cuts. Europe's largest bank is due to welcome a new CEO in September. The Biden administration plans to unveil a new rule next month that will expand US powers to stop exports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment from some foreign countries to Chinese chipmakers, two sources said. But shipments from allies - including Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea - will be excluded, limiting the impact of the rule. Microsoft said it would spend more money this fiscal year to build out AI infrastructure even as growth slowed in its cloud business, another sign the payoff from hefty investments in the technology may take longer than Wall Street had hoped.

Special Report: OnlyFans' porn juggernaut fueled by a deception

Patrick Kunz poured out his heart to an OnlyFans porn star then realized he was talking to strangers. REUTERS/Michaela Stache Many top porn stars on OnlyFans hire ‘chatters’ to impersonate them online and entice subscribers into splurging on explicit content. These impostors aren’t formally affiliated with OnlyFans but have brought it riches – and new legal threats. Some subscribers say the deception amounts to fraud. One shares his story of betrayal. Read our special report

And Finally...

NASA images unlock complex history of two near-Earth asteroids. ASI/NASA/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo In the moments before NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a landmark planetary defense test in 2022, it took high-resolution images of this small celestial object and its larger companion Didymos. These images have enabled scientists to unravel the complicated history of these two rocky bodies located in the vicinity of Earth. Read more

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