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The 60-Day Ceasefire Ends & The Navy's Crisis Gets Worse

The 60-Day Ceasefire Ends & The Navy's Crisis Gets Worse

Seoul Gets Left Out To Dry & "Buy Now Pay Later" For Your Rent

Marcus Gee-Lim
August 18, 2026

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today, we’re covering a major U.S. policy shift in Korea, the end of the 60-day ceasefire in Iran, pie on the PM’s face, Mexico’s Panama Canal alternative, more mishaps in the Navy, and the companies that want you to take out a loan to pay your rent.

“If it could only be like this always–always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe.” – Evelyn Waugh

A Sea Change For Seoul

via whitehouse.gov

Things are changing on the Korean Peninsula. On Saturday, South Korea’s president floated the idea of holding talks with North Korea aimed at officially ending the war between the neighboring countries. Technically, the Koreas have been at war since June 1950, although open conflict between the two nations ended with an armistice signed on July 27, 1953.

“Let us put down our intentions to threaten each other and begin discussions to end the long-running war as the directly involved parties,” President Lee Jae Myung said during a ceremony celebrating Liberation Day, when the Korean Peninsula was freed from Imperial Japanese rule. The talks, according to Lee, should have the goal of establishing a “multi-layered security system” along the countries’ shared border, while also working out “effective ways to halt the advancement of the North's nuclear capabilities.” North Korea didn’t comment on his peace offering.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s strongest ally also made a surprise move over the weekend. On Sunday, Trump announced that the U.S. would be scaling down its joint military exercises with South Korea. Over the decades since the Korean War, the drills have been used to signal the U.S.’s commitment to defending South Korea from its northern neighbor (and China), so the change marks a significant shift in the U.S.’s diplomatic approach to Asia. In his statement, Trump said that the drills send a “signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he stated has been “unthreatening and respectful” anytime that he’s been president. South Korea offered little comment on the change, just noting that Seoul has “maintained close coordination” with Washington in regards to the joint exercises.

Mr. President’s Misbegotten Memorandum

In June, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a 60-day memorandum of understanding bringing a pause to their war, with the goal of working out a lasting peace deal during that period. Immediately after the memorandum was signed, shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz jumped and gas prices dipped, but eventually conflict broke out again, leaving both sides back at square one. Yesterday, the ceasefire expired with the war still going on and no peace deal in sight.

While the U.S. and Iran remain at loggerheads (though they’re still involved in informal indirect peace talks), Iran and U.S. ally Oman are working on their own deal which would reopen the Strait of Hormuz with both countries charging ships a toll to pass through the waterway. On Monday, though, Trump appeared to nix that deal, telling reporters that Oman hadn’t “behaved very well” by negotiating with Iran. He proceeded by threatening to “bomb the s#!% out of” Oman if the country “gets in the way” of a direct U.S.-Iran deal, though it’s not clear what exactly that means.

Meanwhile, gas prices continue to climb back home. On Monday, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline reached $4.06, marking the highest-ever gas price recorded in August (in California and Hawaii, a gallon cost a whopping $5.50). Despite that fact, Trump told reporters that he’s “not in a hurry” to negotiate an end to the war with Iran. Gas companies are likely fine with that decision, as the 8 largest oil companies in the world gathered a whopping $90 billion in profits between March and June.

Burnham Gets Burnt

“Prime Minister Andy Burnham visits Jewish Care” by 10 Downing via Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Getting publicly catfished by someone pretending to be a coworker is probably not the way you’d want to start your time at a new job. Unfortunately for recently-appointed British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, that’s kind of what happened to him. According to an anonymous member of his staff, Burnham exchanged multiple text messages with someone pretending to be Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles before eventually sniffing out the con and cutting them off.
The source declined to share the contents of the messages or when they were exchanged, but their story was corroborated by multiple outlets and other U.K. officials. The news comes less than a year after the U.S. government reported multiple incidents of someone posing as Wiles reaching out to political officials and business executives. The FBI has warned about a growing number of people using AI to impersonate top government officials over the years, including multiple instances of a fake Marco Rubio reaching out to State Department diplomats.

The Panama Canal But It’s In Mexico And There’s No Canal

Mexico is building a replacement for the Panama Canal – with no water involved. Since 2019, Mexico has invested more than $4 billion into a project called the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), which involves rehabilitating 500+ miles of rail spanning the thinnest part of the country, updating the ports at each end of the railway, and upgrading the infrastructure needed to support trade through the corridor.
The country is looking to push the CIIT as a future alternative to the Panama Canal, which has struggled to remain open as global warming makes drought conditions more common in the area. The historic canal uses water from a nearby lake, which itself is mainly fed by rainfall – when the rain in Panama stops, the canal is eventually forced to close, and wait times have reached a peak of 3 weeks in the past.
Mexico’s CIIT faces none of those climate change-related problems, though it does take a bit longer to get cargo from end-to-end as it has to be unloaded onto rail cars and then lifted onto a new ship (24 hours compared to the Panama Canal’s 10). But according to experts, it will take a lot of effort for the railway to be seen as a legitimate competitor to the Panama Canal – optimistic forecasts from Mexico’s government project that the CIIT will move 1.4 million tons of cargo per year by 2035, while the Panama Canal currently moves 20 million tons annually. But as the government invests more in the project – and global warming gets worse – Mexico could find its waterless canal become a serious trade route.

Additional World News

Another Navy Not-So-Bon Voyage

According to recent reporting by U.S. Naval Institute News, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer spent four days adrift in the South China Sea in late July, raising even more concerns that the Navy isn’t able to handle its current workload. The USS Benfold (a 10,000-ton guided-missile destroyer) apparently suffered “an engineering casualty involving its generators” on July 24, and was stuck floating in the Pacific without electricity until July 28, when it was towed out of the area for repairs.
During that four-day stretch, the boat was unable to move and the crew was left without a working kitchen, toilets, and air conditioning. Meals were brought to the boat by another Navy ship, and I guess the crew did exactly what you’d expect with their excrement. “There were no injuries to the crew, who demonstrated resilience, grit, professionalism and unwavering steadiness in their response,” a Navy commander told U.S. Naval Institute News.

They’re Not Being Honest About The Abe Lincoln, Trump Claims

The Navy’s issues don’t end there. Last week, the media was abuzz with reports about a mental health crisis among crew members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a U.S. aircraft carrier that’s been deployed in the Middle East for more than 250 consecutive days. Multiple crew members have reportedly tried to jump overboard while struggling to handle the extended amount of time at sea, which has been made worse by the ship’s food shortages and plumbing problems.
Unfortunately for them, it seems that the commander-in-chief of the U.S.’s armed forces doesn’t care. On Friday, reporters asked President Trump if he thought the USS Abraham Lincoln had been deployed for too long. “No, not nearly long enough,” he replied. On Monday he snapped at a reporter asking questions about the ship, telling her to “be quiet” and claiming that “the Lincoln has been out there for a period of time – a good period of time – but over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”
Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and former Marine, said that all these issues are cropping up because “this administration did not plan for this war, did not plan how to get out of this war, and did not really understand how this war was going to escalate.” He’s called for a bipartisan group of lawmakers to be brought to the carrier to observe conditions, though it’s not clear that the military is open to the idea.

Additional USA News

Taking Out A Loan On Your Rent

You might have seen them while checking out on an online store – “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) loans have taken off since the Covid-19 pandemic forced people to do their shopping via the internet. The loans, offered by companies like Klarna and Affirm, allow consumers to make larger purchases by placing a small portion of the cost down, paying the rest off in installments – if they make all the payments on time, borrowers don’t need to pay any interest. If they miss an installment, interest rates can jump to 35.99%.
While the loans have been mostly reserved for things like TVs and iPhones, BNPL companies are now offering them to customers struggling to make payments on basic necessities including rent, health insurance, and electric and water bills, possibly exposing even more consumers to debt traps.
Last year, Americans spent more than $160 billion via BNPL loans (almost double the amount they did in 2023), and the industry is projected to keep growing by double digit rates over the next few years. Two problems with that: analysts are increasingly worried that the growing demand for the loans might signal that consumers are struggling to make ends meet, and there’s also a severe lack of data about the growing ecosystem, meaning regulators aren’t able to make informed decisions about the burgeoning sector.

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