CL The first Hong Kong astronaut reached orbit today, and the city's response was something between pride and quiet wonder. For a place that tends to absorb news quickly and move on, this one lingered. There is something in watching someone from here go up that reminds the city it still has a future worth imagining.-- CL

MB Tehran and Taiwan share the front page today, which tells you something about the arithmetic of great-power attention: resolving one crisis does not reduce the total, it redistributes it. A hundred Chinese warships encircled Taiwan on the day Washington announced an Iran deal. Hong Kong's astronaut milestone covered the quieter story about replacing Western technology across government systems.-- MB