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SAILING AROUNDthe northern point of Dadan island, the extent of the geopolitical challenge facing Taiwan becomes glaringly clear: to starboard a small military outpost guards Taiwan’s Kinmen islands and their 140,000-odd residents; to port a pair of curved skyscrapers tower over the Chinese city of Xiamen, whose 5m people stretch all round the bay.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “From grey zone to red zone”

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ON MAY 6THRafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), travelled to Tehran and met Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister. Less than two weeks later, on May 19th, Mr Amirabdollahian was dead,killed in a helicopter crashthat also took the life of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, among others.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “How to avert a nuclear catastrophe”

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An entire generationof tenants is tearing its hair out. Acrossthe rich world—from America to New Zealand—millions spend more than a third of their disposable income on rent. The squeeze extends from social democracies that prize strong tenancy rights to Anglophone countries that prefer homeownership—and it is mostly getting worse. The good news for anxious renters is that they are gaining a louder voice as their numbers swell. The bad news is that campaigners and politicians mostly focus on the wrong kinds of solutions to their woes.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “How to survive the big squeeze”

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THE ISLANDof Guam, a tiny American territory that lies more than 6,000km west of Hawaii, has long known that it would take a battering in any Sino-American war. The island’s expanding airfields and ports serve as springboards for American ships, subs and bombers. In the opening hours of a conflict, these would be subject to wave after wave of Chinese missiles. But an advance party of attackers seems to have lurked quietly within Guam’s infrastructure for years. In mid-2021 a Chinese hacking group—later dubbed Volt Typhoon—burrowed deep inside the island’s communication systems. The intrusions had no obvious utility for espionage. They were intended, as America’s government would later conclude, for “disruptive or destructive cyber-attacks against…critical infrastructure in the event of a major crisis or conflict”. Sabotage, in short.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Ghosts in the machines”

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OVER THEpast two decades the number of people studying in countries other than their own has tripled, to more than 6m. International students from China have caused most of that increase. Youngsters flocked to universities in English-speaking countries to expand both their minds and their opportunities. In return they brought valuable brainpower and large piles of foreign cash. Governments have sometimes viewed this bounty as a reason to put less of their own money into higher education. Institutions in Australia, Britain and Canada have grown increasingly reliant on foreign flows to subsidise research and to cover the costs of educating local scholars.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The new kids in class”

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In Japan itstarts with the pulsating song of cicadas; in Alaska, with salmon swimming upstream. However it begins, summer in the northern hemisphere—where more than 85% of the world’s population live—soon involvesdangerous levels of heat. This year is no exception—indeed, it carries the trend further. In Saudi Arabia more than 1,300 pilgrims died during thehajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, as temperatures exceeded 50°C. India’s capital, Delhi, endured 40 days above 40°C between May and June. And in Mexico scores of howler monkeys have been falling dead from the trees with heatstroke.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “When the sun beats down”

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Editor’s note(July 8th): After this article was published Sir Keir Starmer was elected as prime minister in Britain, and Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally failed to become the largest party in France’s National Assembly.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Hardly a celebration”

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NOT LONGago a part of the British government askedRANDEurope, a think-tank in Cambridge, England, to conduct some research on undersea critical infrastructure. The think-tank studied publicly available maps of internet and electricity cables. It interviewed experts. It held focus groups. Halfway through the process Ruth Harris, the leader of the project, realised that she had inadvertently unearthed many sensitive details that could be exploited by Russia or other adversaries. When she approached the unnamed government department, they were shocked. The reaction, she recalls, was: “Oh my god. This is secret.” When they learned that Ms Harris’s team was drawn from all over Europe, they demanded that it be overhauled, she says: “This needs to beUKeyes only.”

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The ties that bind”

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GLOOM WILLaccompany the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions next month. Debates rage as to whether this batch of treaties, which govern how wars may be fought, and later protocols, which ban genocide, torture and more, remain fit for purpose. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned of “increasing elasticity” in how countries apply the laws of war, which the conventions underpin.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “No more the laws of war?”

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THE OLYMPICflame will illuminate the City of Light from July 26th, when the world’s greatest sporting spectacle gets under way in Paris. Although France still lacks a government after a snap national parliamentary vote in recent weeks, its capital will host the 33rd Olympiad in style. Dressage events will take place in the magnificent grounds of Versailles; volleyballs will whizz over nets by the Eiffel Tower. Organisers hope to show the best of France to visiting sports fans, business executives and foreign politicians. One of the thousands of volunteers involved describes “an infectious positive energy”.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Changing the games”

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Sweden is banning OnlyFans content as the lines around sex work blur

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Donald Trump prefers deals to regime change