President Trump is actively considering a significant U.S. bombing campaign targeting Iranian energy and oil infrastructure, possibly as soon as this weekend, after Iran broke a short-lived ceasefire with fresh strikes on U.S. forces in Jordan and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary of State Rubio told Fox News that Iran is now "confronting a different kind of president — someone who actually takes action." Only 19 vessels transited Hormuz on Thursday, down from a July peak of 63, signaling severe disruption to global oil flows.
Emily Moreno — daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and ex-wife of Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) — filed for a new court restraining order after alleging Miller grabbed her attorney and hurled a slur at his own fiancee outside a courthouse. Earlier filings allege Miller threw scalding hot water on Moreno in 2024 when she told him she was leaving; Miller denies all allegations, and mutual restraining orders from prior proceedings were already in place.
Second-quarter GDP came in at 1.5%, slower than earlier quarters but supported by strong business investment and consumer spending even with Iran-linked oil price pressure. PCE inflation eased to 2.7%, down from 2.8% last year as tariff effects continue to fade, and worker wages are still outpacing inflation. A July jobs report due shortly will be the next major test of whether rising energy costs have cooled hiring.
A major diplomatic development emerged Friday evening as Trump brokered a Hamas disarmament agreement as part of broader ceasefire negotiations, while Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning its own military offensive against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The moves come as the broader Middle East conflict continues to pull in regional actors, with Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan all absorbing Iranian drone and missile strikes in recent weeks.
A mass border breach at Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta left 67 dead — from drownings and a violent stampede — after an estimated 60,000 migrants surged across the breakwater barrier from Morocco in a 24-hour period. Spain is now pushing the majority back and announced a new 500-meter sea containment fence, while suspicions grow that the incident was orchestrated, echoing Morocco's 2021 border pressure campaign.
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture in southern Japan on July 28, killing at least 34 people and forcing roughly 300,000 to evacuate. A shopping mall collapsed and dashcam footage showed explosions and structural failures across the region; aftershock warnings remain in effect as rescue crews continue searching the rubble.
A fast-moving wildfire south of Rethymno on the Greek island of Crete killed two firefighters — believed trapped when dense smoke destroyed their visibility — and forced 8,000 residents and tourists to evacuate overnight. A third firefighter died battling a separate blaze in the Peloponnese, and aircraft remain grounded due to violent winds that prevent water drops.
Katalyst Space Technologies' LINK spacecraft — a 30-million-dollar robotic vehicle launched to grab NASA's 500-million-dollar Swift gamma-ray observatory and tow it to a safe orbit before reentry — hit serious trouble during commissioning when two of three attitude-control reaction wheels failed, sending the craft into an unexpected spin. The rendezvous window has slipped to late August at the earliest; Swift, launched in 2004, detects roughly 100 gamma-ray bursts per year and cannot raise its own decaying orbit.
The FDA has approved bemotrizinol — a broad-spectrum UV filter long available in Europe and Asia — for use in American sunscreens, ending a regulatory gap that left U.S. products behind the rest of the developed world for over twenty years. The ingredient provides superior long-lasting protection against both UVA and UVB radiation, including UVA wavelengths linked to skin aging that most U.S. sunscreen formulas have historically underprotected against.
Archaeologists excavating the Roman-era site of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt discovered a papyrus fragment from Homer's Catalogue of Ships — one of the most celebrated passages in the Iliad — deliberately placed inside a mummy's abdomen as part of the embalming ritual. It marks the first-ever confirmed case of a Greek literary text being intentionally used in mummification; prior papyri found in that position were always magical or ritual texts, not epic poetry.
