The World, Briefly: Dispatches From Elsewhere

It is tempting, in a week like this, to believe the world has narrowed to one stretch of water. It hasn't. A quick tour of everything else that is happening while the Gulf holds its breath.

A grim record

The wider context is sobering. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which counts these things for a living, reports that 2025 saw the highest conflict-related death toll in decades — roughly 244,600 people. The current crisis is not a break from the trend so much as the latest entry in it.

Taiwan, watching its own strait

The Gulf is not the only region with a chokepoint and a knot in its stomach. In Asia, a military drill this week saw the US-supplied HIMARS rocket system fired toward the Taiwan Strait for the first time — a reminder that the world has more than one waterway it is nervous about.

Britain on edge

In the United Kingdom, leaders urged calm after a violent stabbing in Belfast, in which a Sudanese man was arrested and accused, set off anti-immigration protests — the latest flare in Europe's long, unresolved argument over migration.

And, lighter

Sweden is banning phones in schools from the autumn, the latest government to decide that childhood and the smartphone need a quieter relationship. And the coming World Cup will welcome a charming roster of first-timers — Uzbekistan, Jordan, Cape Verde, Curacao among them — proof that even a heavy year leaves room for somebody's first time on the biggest stage.