India and Pakistan have seemingly pulled back from the brink again. But so much was new about the nuclear-armed enemies’ chaotic four-day clash, and so many of the underlying accelerants remain volatile, that there’s little to suggest that the truce represents any return to old patterns of restraint.

A new generation of military technology fueled a dizzying aerial escalation. Waves of airstrikes and antiaircraft volleys with modern weapons set the stage. Soon they were joined by weaponized drones en masse for the first time along the old Line of Control in Kashmir — hundreds of them in the sky, probing each nation’s defenses and striking without risk to any pilot.

Then the missiles and drones were streaking past the border areas and deep into India’s and Pakistan’s territories, directly hitting air and defense bases, prompting dire threats and the highest level of military alert.

Only then did international diplomacy — a crucial factor in past pullbacks between India and Pakistan — seem to engage in earnest, at what felt like the last minute before catastrophe. In a new global chapter defined by perilous conflicts, distracted leaders and a retreating sense of international responsibility to keep peace, the safety net had never seemed thinner.

“Going back historically, many of the India-Pakistan conflicts have been stopped because of external intervention,” said Srinath Raghavan, a military historian and strategic analyst.

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King Charles III was busy last week marking the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany and preparing to fly to Canada to open its parliament later this month. But his public schedule was eclipsed yet again by a highly-publicized eruption from his estranged younger son, Prince Harry.

It has become a familiar pattern for the 76-year-old monarch. Two years after his coronation, his reign is shaping up as both eventful and oddly unchanging in its core narrative — that of a beleaguered father managing a messy brood.

Harry’s emotional plea to be reconciled with his family — made in a recent interview with the BBC, in which he mused about how long his cancer-stricken father had left to live — resurfaced bitter ruptures within the royal family, which has yet to find its footing in the still-fledgling Carolean era.

“There is an overhang in the way we see Charles’ reign,” said Ed Owens, a historian who writes about the British monarchy. “It hasn’t really gotten going, nor are we sure how long it will last.”

To be sure, the king has done a lot. Despite undergoing weekly treatments for cancer diagnosed last year, he traveled to France, Australia, Poland and Italy. He found time to curate a playlist for Apple Music (Kylie Minogue and Bob Marley feature), played host at state banquets and posed for portraits.

But Harry’s comments, which came after a legal defeat over his security arrangements in Britain, dragged attention back to the rift that opened in 2020 when he and his wife, Meghan, withdrew from royal life and moved to California.

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In the eyes of many of his fellow Greenlanders, Jorgen Boassen is a traitor.

A few weeks ago at a dive bar in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, someone slugged him in the face, sending him to the hospital. But whatever the consequences of his convictions, he insists he isn’t scared.

“The United States has my back,” he said.

Mr. Boassen, 51, a former bricklayer, is a fervid supporter of President Trump. He campaigned for him in the United States and helped coordinate Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to Greenland this year. On his coffee table at home, three pristine MAGA hats occupy a place of honor.

While his championing of the American president — who has vowed to take over Greenland “one way or the other” — has made Mr. Boassen unpopular at home, it has also turned him into an unlikely political player in the Arctic, a region of growing importance in a warming world eager for its untapped resources.

As he lounged on a couch in his apartment on the edge of Nuuk, wearing a pink T-shirt emblazoned with Mr. Trump’s face, his phone buzzed with a stream of texts from journalists and filmmakers who wanted to talk and investors who hoped he was their ticket to riches in Greenland.

In the debate about the future of the world’s largest island, a semiautonomous overseas territory of Denmark, Mr. Boassen has made it his mission to bring Greenland and the United States closer together.

Still, Mr. Boassen noted he “doesn’t always agree” with the American president.

While Mr. Trump wants to claim the island for the United States, Mr. Boassen is pushing instead for a tight security alliance between an independent Greenland and Washington. That has made him one of the most visible Greenlanders agitating to break with Denmark.

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Hendrik Dierendonck, a second-generation butcher who has become, as he describes it, “world famous in Belgium” for his curated local beef, thinks Europe’s way of raising cattle results in varied and delicious cuts that European consumers prize.

“They want hormone-free, grass-fed,” Mr. Dierendonck explained recently as he cut steaks at a bloody chopping block in his Michelin-starred restaurant, which backs onto the butchery his father started in the 1970s. “They want to know where it came from.”

Strict European Union food regulations, including a ban on hormones, govern Mr. Dierendonck’s work. And those rules could turn into a trade-war sticking point. The Trump administration argues that American meat, produced without similar regulations, is better — and wants Europe to buy more of it, and other American farm products.

“They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful,” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said in a televised interview last month. “And theirs is weak.”

Questions of beauty and strength aside, the administration is right about one thing: European policymakers are not keen on allowing more hormone-raised American steaks and burgers into the European Union.

Iran and the United States on Sunday in Muscat, Oman, began a fourth round of talks on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, hoping to make progress on a key goal for both President Trump and Iran’s leadership.

Both countries have said they want to resolve the decades-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities through diplomacy, with Tehran exchanging limits on its nuclear program for the lifting of some U.S. sanctions. But the two sides remain far apart on several critical issues.

The talks are being held by Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, through Omani mediators. Mr. Witkoff has spoken uncompromisingly about Washington’s position in recent days, saying that the Trump administration aims to completely dismantle Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But, in remarks published by Iranian state media on Sunday, Mr. Araghchi said that Iran would not accept such conditions. While it was “completely achievable” for Iran to commit to not pursuing nuclear weapons, he said, its peaceful nuclear activities were “not even negotiable or tradable.”

The latest round of negotiations comes as Mr. Trump prepares to travel to the Middle East this week. He has threatened military action against Iran if the talks fail.

The interim government of Bangladesh on Saturday announced that it would ban all activities of the Awami League, the political party of the country’s ousted leader Sheikh Hasina, under the country’s antiterrorism act until several legal cases against the party and its leaders have concluded.

The government, led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, also amended a law to ensure that an entire party can be tried for certain crimes, not just individual members.

Last summer, Ms. Hasina’s authoritarian government was toppled by a student protest movement. She fled to India, but the Awami League maintained a presence in Bangladesh.

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The two candidates who will fight it out to win election as South Korea’s next president overcame great odds to get where they are. Lee Jae-myung was a teenage sweatshop worker whose family survived on rotten fruits. Kim Moon-soo was imprisoned and tortured for anti-government ​​activism. Both survived weeks of political and legal turbulence that threatened to upend their presidential bid.

Now, as the official campaign for the June 3 poll kicks off on Monday, Mr. Lee and Mr. Kim have emerged as two main contenders. They represent opposite sides of a political divide that is unlikely to be bridged, even though both have promised to pursue national unity if elected.

The election follows the removal last month of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached for his short-lived attempt to place South Korea under martial law. As such, the campaign is being fought less over policies and more as a referendum on Mr. Yoon and his right-wing People Power Party.

The party has not cut ties with Mr. Yoon, who is facing trial on insurrection charges. Instead, it has ​veered further to the right by choosing Mr. Kim, Mr. Yoon’s former ​labor minister, as its presidential candidate. When Mr. Yoon’s cabinet members were asked during a parliamentary session in December to apologize for the imposition of martial law, Mr. Kim was the only one who refused to stand and bow.

His main rival Mr. Lee​, 60, has led in pre-election surveys. After winning ​his Democratic Party’s presidential nomination with an unprecedented 89.77 percent of the votes, he said: “I am ordered to end the old era of insurrection and regression and open a new era of hope.”

Both Mr. Lee​ and Mr. Kim​, 73, had to clear last-minute hurdles to run for president, adding to the uncertainty that has pervaded South Korean politics in recent months.​

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As night fell, we could see in the distance hills dotted with glowing white specks — homes tucked into the slopes of the Pakistani side of Kashmir. The town behind us, on the Indian side, was also shimmering.

My friend was hopeful. “Lights are a good sign,” he said. “Means nothing will go wrong tonight.”

But as we settled into dinner, an announcement rang out from a nearby mosque: “Citizens, especially in border areas, are advised to remain indoors.”

As if in concert, the lights on both sides of the border flickered out, and darkness blanketed the valley. The announcement had sounded mundane, but Kashmiris knew what it meant.

The shelling was about to begin.

I have spent much of my career covering unrest across Kashmir. At the end of a reporting trip at the Line of Control, I looked forward to staying with my old friend Irshad Khwaja and his family in Garkote, a village on the Indian-administered side.

The day before, early Wednesday, tensions between India and Pakistan had flared up into a military clash that would play out as two confrontations being fought in parallel.

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