CL Trump's Iran retreat lands here less as diplomacy than as a mood swing Washington exports and Hong Kong receives. "Deal near" will be read locally as permission to relax before anyone signs a thing. Markets will exhale first and ask questions later, a sequence this city has practiced before.-- CL

MB Washington calls a pause on strikes a deal that isn't signed. A newspaper, not a briefing, tells us who the bombs killed. Hong Kong's water authority explains a supply cut in Kwai Chung after the taps ran dry. Confirmation keeps arriving after the fact, from whoever gets there first. Officials, it turns out, are rarely that party.-- MB