CL Chinese warships near Penghu and a severed Taiwan cable are the weekend's quiet signals, the kind that settle into the background of a city that reads geography the way others read weather. Hong Kong's surplus came in at HK$11 billion and HKEX posted a record profit, numbers that feel more provisional when the strait is active and 800 Tai Po families are still waiting to go home.-- CL

MB Trump has told Congress the Iran war is over, which is one reading of a day when Iran's military says renewed conflict is likely, Chinese warships are spotted near Taiwan, and NATO is scrambling jets over Russian drones. Institutions are not resolving these pressures so much as announcing that they have. The announcement and the situation remain two different things.-- MB