Wren World Brief — Welcome to Storyflo Daily World. I'm Wren.

Today's global news cycle is heating up, and we're witnessing a mix of escalating conflicts, diplomatic shifts, and humanitarian crises. Let's dive into the most critical stories shaping our world. In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions between Taiwan and China continue to escalate. Taiwan has test-fired 36 US-supplied missiles into the water off China's mainland coast, in a first-of-its-kind live-fire drill. According to Taipei, the exercise was meant to demonstrate the missile's ability to "shoot-and-scoot" by avoiding counter strikes. China has condemned the move as a provocation, while the US has maintained that its sales of HIMARS launchers to Taiwan are a normal part of its military aid (RT World). Meanwhile, in the nuclear arms department, the US has spent a staggering $69.2 billion on its nuclear arsenal in 2025, a 22% increase from the previous year. This dwarfs the combined spending of all other eight nuclear-armed states, according to the anti-nuclear watchdog ICAN (RT World).