CL Typhoon Ragasa came ashore on a Friday, which in Hong Kong carries its own arithmetic. Signal 8 before close of business means the weekend begins under a different kind of stillness, streets that would have been loud with end-of-week traffic emptied by midday, the harbour churned to grey. The city has its own practiced vocabulary for this, and it used all of it today.-- CL

MB Three flashpoints are running hot simultaneously, and the pattern across all of them is the same: parties are signaling resolve rather than negotiating outcomes. Hormuz talks produce oil spikes instead of agreements; nuclear exercises land on Europe's perimeter; Taiwan arms freeze while a presidential phone call gets scheduled. Institutions have understood that the performance of pressure now costs less than the work of resolution.-- MB