Houthi forces seized Perim Island on Friday, taking control of the narrow landmass that divides the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into its two navigable shipping channels. The seizure came one day after Houthi fighters captured Mokha, a Red Sea port city on Yemen’s western coast. Iranian-allied forces now hold the approaches to both of the Arabian Peninsula’s major oil chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz to the east, which handles roughly 20 percent of the world’s traded oil, and the Bab el-Mandeb to the west, through which approximately 12 percent of global trade passes on its way to or from the Suez Canal. Euronews reported the Perim Island seizure late Friday.
The Bab el-Mandeb translates, roughly, as “Gate of Grief.” It’s about 17 miles wide at its narrowest point (source). That’s where Perim Island sits. Before Friday, the island was held by forces aligned with the Yemeni government. Now it isn’t.
Caroline Rose, a senior director at the Soufan Center, described the shipping implications plainly: vessels that once transited the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and onward to Europe “now have to explore a much more onerous path through Asia, the Cape of Good Hope, the Atlantic, then to Europe.” Euronews carried Rose’s assessment. NPR reported on the Houthi advance on Friday. That rerouting adds roughly two weeks and significant fuel cost to any voyage, and shipping insurers have been adjusting their risk models accordingly.
Brent crude settled at $104.61 a barrel on Friday, down 2.8 percent on the day (source), though still up 8.7 percent on the week. A year ago, Brent spot averaged roughly $68 (source).
In November 1956, Britain and France were forced to halt a military operation aimed at retaking the Suez Canal after Egypt nationalized it that summer. The United States, under Eisenhower, refused to back the intervention and applied financial pressure that produced a British withdrawal by December. The canal reopened under Egyptian control the following spring. What 1956 demonstrated was that the resolution of a chokepoint crisis depends less on who holds the physical ground than on what diplomatic framework the major powers can agree to enforce. That framework, for the Bab el-Mandeb, doesn’t currently exist.
Russian forces launched combined missile and drone attacks on Odesa and Zaporizhzhia overnight, killing two people in Zaporizhzhia, injuring at least 35 in Odesa, and damaging a residential high-rise in Odesa and a private home in Zaporizhzhia. The Kyiv Post has ongoing frontline reporting.
Total estimated Russian combat losses since February 2022 have reached approximately 1.5 million by Ukrainian military estimates (source). President Vladimir Putin said this week that deployment of European troops to Ukraine would constitute direct war with Russia. France and the United Kingdom are in active discussions about what post-ceasefire security guarantees for Ukraine might include. A ceasefire hasn’t arrived. The discussions continue anyway.
The DRC Ebola outbreak reached 6,942 confirmed cases and 3,349 deaths as of Wednesday, according to the World Health Organization. It’s now the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in the recorded history of the disease. The WHO’s official outbreak page carries current figures.
The detail that matters most is the strain. This outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo ebolavirus. The vaccines and most proven treatments developed in the years following the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic, which killed 11,300 people, were built for the Zaire strain. Doctors Without Borders described the countermeasure gap in its response briefing. The WHO representative to the DRC told reporters in July: “We would like to say it is stabilizing, but frankly, we cannot say it yet.” (source) The affected region spans an area roughly the size of France. At least 160 healthcare workers have been infected, and 43 of them have died (source).
The Federal Reserve opens its September meeting on Tuesday. A rate decision comes Wednesday. Market expectations have shifted toward a quarter-point hike, driven by oil above $100 and a producer price index report that came in hotter than expected. Cambridge Currencies previews what to watch.
If you want context on what the Fed is walking into, Bob Whitfield’s piece here last week on Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is worth your time. Whitfield traced how Warsh’s Jackson Hole remarks roughly doubled market odds for a hike, from about one-in-three to roughly two-thirds, while the White House was simultaneously calling for cuts (source). The Federal Reserve and the White House are, formally, independent institutions with distinct mandates. What that independence looks like in practice gets tested Wednesday afternoon.
The story this week that’s getting less attention than it deserves.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed Thursday that August 2026 was the joint-hottest month in the global temperature record. The average surface temperature measured 16.96 degrees Celsius. That ties the previous record set in July 2023, which had itself been described at the time as probably the hottest month in 120,000 years. Copernicus published the confirmation in its monthly climate bulletin on Thursday.
The finding arrived in a week when much else competed for attention. A contested strait. A fifth year of war in Europe. An Ebola outbreak without an effective vaccine. A rate decision that will move global markets. The temperature record doesn’t require any of those things to matter. It matters on its own terms.
Something good to end the week.
The FDA approved Leqembi Iqlik in July, a subcutaneous autoinjector version of lecanemab, the first disease-modifying drug for Alzheimer’s disease. It started reaching patients in late August. This matters because the original lecanemab infusion requires a clinic visit every two weeks. The autoinjector version patients can take at home. The underlying drug, approved in full in 2023, targets the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s. It’s the first in its class to go after the mechanism of the disease rather than just managing symptoms. Dementia affects more than 57 million people worldwide, and Alzheimer’s accounts for 60 to 70 percent of cases (source). The FDA’s approval announcement has the details.
The insurance and distribution questions are real. Not everyone who could benefit will benefit right away. But a disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s is in clinical use, and now patients can take it at home. Tens of millions of people. That’s not a small thing. It’s a reasonable place to end the week.
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Friday.
