Larry Lee

The Sacramento OBSERVER unveils its 2026 class of 30 Under 30 honorees, celebrating young Black visionaries across art, business, advocacy, and community organizing.

The British government has formally rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he described the United Kingdom as an "Islamic republic" and repeated a provocative claim that Britain could become the first such state with nuclear weapons, adding another diplomatic dispute to already strained UK-Israel relations.

Russia's economy returned to growth in the second quarter, but mounting pressure from wartime spending, sanctions and Ukrainian attacks on infrastructure is raising a potentially counterintuitive concern among analysts: President Vladimir Putin could have an incentive to escalate the war rather than wait for Moscow's financial position to deteriorate.

Iranian officials are increasingly concerned that the economic fallout from the war with the United States could trigger renewed domestic unrest, even as Tehran continues to threaten escalation and President Donald Trump signals that Washington intends to intensify financial pressure rather than set a timetable for ending the conflict.

Israel's military has acknowledged for the first time that its troops fired on the vehicle carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab and her relatives in Gaza in January 2024, reversing its earlier assertion that Israeli forces weren't close enough to have carried out the shooting. The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday that the case has been referred to military police for a criminal investigation.

President Donald Trump's administration is shifting its confrontation with Iran toward intensified economic pressure, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggesting the strategy makes a renewed large-scale military conflict less likely even as Tehran warned that further U.S. threats would draw a "devastating" response.

A Russian drone attack devastated a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 130 others - including 23 children, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia could mobilize as many as 300,000 additional troops after its parliamentary elections next month, predicting that Moscow will turn to a new draft after suffering heavy battlefield losses during 2026, according to CNN.

Iran accused the United States of engaging in "systemic bullying" and economic lawlessness, pointing to Washington's renewed trade confrontation with Canada as evidence that U.S. coercive policies extend well beyond Tehran. The criticism from Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei came as President Donald Trump declared that the U.S. Navy had removed all mines from international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, even as Iran and Oman pursued a separate agreement aimed at securing navigation through the strategic waterway.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorized the government to take temporary control of privately owned critical infrastructure when owners fail to adequately protect their facilities, a significant expansion of state authority as Ukraine intensifies attacks on energy, logistics and commercial targets inside Russia.