GEOFF BENNETT: We start today's other headlines in Central Gaza, where hospital officials and witnesses say an Israeli airstrike killed at least 18 people as they waited for flour.

Survivors were rushed to a nearby hospital as family members searched for their loved ones.

Witnesses say the strike came as a crowd was getting aid from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs.

Speaking in Sri Lanka, the U.N.'s human rights chief said today nearly 600 people have been killed trying to access desperately needed food in Gaza.

VOLKER TURK, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: It's heartbreaking to know that people who need humanitarian assistance almost risk their lives in order to get food.

What we need, again, is a cease-fire, release of hostages and an all-out effort to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

GEOFF BENNETT: There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on today's violence, but in past incidents, it claims troops have fired warning shots at people they described as suspects.

This week's dangerous summer heat is finally easing across much of the Eastern U.S.

Some 72 million Americans from the Ohio Valley to the Deep South and the mid-Atlantic remained under heat alerts today, but that's less than half the number from just a few days ago.

In the Northeast, the cool down has been dramatic.

In places like Boston and New York, temperatures have fallen from the triple digits down to the 60s and 70s in some places.

Meantime, a series of severe storms are hitting the Southeast, leading to scenes like this west of Tampa, Florida, yesterday.

The elderly woman who was inside this home at the time survived the storm.

In France, violent thunderstorms overnight killed at least two people and injured 17 more.

On the streets of Paris, the torrential storms flooded streets and sent residents ducking for cover.

French media is reporting that toppled trees were to blame for the two fatalities, one each in Southwest and Northwest France.

The storm also damaged this 11th century church in Normandy.

Its roof and bell tower crashed down into the nave and the downpours even leaked onto the floors of Parliament, with lawmakers pausing their debate to look up at the water dripping down.

And on Wall Street today, stocks posted solid gains.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 400 points on the day.

The Nasdaq rose nearly 200 points.

The S&P 500 closed just a touch below its all-time high.

And former Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy has died.

As a Democrat from New York's Fourth Congressional District, she was known as the doyen of anti-gun advocates in the House.

McCarthy's activism on the issue began after her husband was shot and killed in a mass shooting back in 1993.

That led to a congressional run in 1996, which she won.

She served in the House for 18 years.

In 2013, McCarthy announced that she was being treated for lung cancer after she retired from Congress soon after.

Carolyn McCarthy was 81 years old.

Still to come on the "News Hour": a CDC panel that was overhauled to include vaccine skeptics reassesses childhood immunizations; Republicans' massive budget legislation faces new hurdles over health care and immigration; and we remember the life of White House press secretary turned journalist Bill Moyers.