While the U.S. has been focused on Gaza and Ukraine, other long-simmering global threats are getting hotter, Axios' Dave Lawler writes.

• The last 72 hours have seen menacing Chinese patrols near Taiwan, an exchange of fire between Iran and Pakistan, and further escalation between the U.S. military and Houthi rebels.
• Then there's North Korea, which has been largely outside Washington's focus — but where the risks appear to be growing.

🇰🇵 North Korea this week formally abandoned the goal of "peaceful reunification" with the South.

• 🇨🇳 China conducted joint air and sea patrols around Taiwan on Wednesday — the first significant military activity in the Taiwan Strait since Taiwanese voters elected Democratic Progress Party presidential candidate William Lai. Beijing has condemned him as a "separatist through and through."
• 🇵🇰 Pakistan conducted airstrikes inside Iran on Thursday in response to strikes inside Pakistan by Iran. Both sides said the rare cross-border attacks targeted militants.
• 🇾🇪 The U.S. conducted a fifth round of strikes on weapons and other assets belonging to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen on Thursday.
• 🇱🇧 Fears continue to grow that the war in Gaza will spread to Lebanon. Hezbollah militants there have far greater capabilities than Hamas.

What's next: NATO is mobilizing some 90,000 troops for its biggest military exercise since the Cold War. (Keep reading)

• Go deeper ... Nick Kristof: "North Korea is acting in highly unusual ways, leading some veteran analysts to fear it is preparing a surprise attack on South Korea and perhaps on Japan and Guam as well." (Gift link — no paywall)

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Speaker Mike Johnson is getting a daily dose of the modern hell of running House Republicans.

• Why it matters: His own leadership team — plus eight chairs — voted against his plan to keep the government funded and running. Oh, that was the easy part of his battle for a bigger deal to fund the border, Ukraine and the government for a much longer period.

What's happening: Johnson, a newbie to leadership, is getting pummeled by the same forces — and often the same lawmakers — who toppled Kevin McCarthy before him.

• They want to tank a deal linking funding Ukraine with new, tougher immigration measures unless it includes a more fulsome lockdown of the southern border.

Go deeper: House Republican hardliners plot revenge on Mike Johnson, by Axios' Andrew Solender and Juliegrace Brufke.

Nikki Haley's confident debate performances have boosted her run for president, but she and her team have been cautious on the campaign trail in the days before the make-or-break New Hampshire primary.

• Why it matters: The former South Carolina governor is betting that a risk-averse, disciplined approach — along with millions of dollars in ads — will save her candidacy in New Hampshire after a disappointing third-place finish in Iowa's caucuses, Axios' Alex Thompson and Sophia Cai report.

What's happening: Trump has responded to Haley's polling rise with a barrage of attacks. Haley has answered selectively — focusing mostly on his age, and saying that "rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him."

• At her campaign's town halls in New Hampshire, she hasn't been taking public questions from voters — similar to her approach just before Iowa's caucuses. Haley's campaign noted she stays long after her speeches "taking photos with each voter and answering all their questions."

Haley, trying to frame the primary as a tw0-person contest, declined to participate in two scheduled New Hampshire debates unless Trump joined her and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

• She knocked both Trump and President Biden last night during a CNN town hall in Henniker, N.H.: "Do we really want to have two 80-year-olds running for president when we have a country in disarray and a world on fire?"

Between the lines: Trump has had a much lighter campaign schedule than Haley in New Hampshire, as he did in Iowa.

• He left the state this week to attend his defamation trial in New York and his mother-in-law's funeral.

Haley has been careful in responding to Trump as she draws contrasts on style and some policies — particularly chiding him over the national debt — while trying not to engage with his increasingly vicious and race-baiting attacks.

• Asked about Trump's promotion of a baseless theory that Haley was ineligible to be president despite being born in the U.S., Haley told CNN Thursday that she would "continue to focus on the things that people want to talk about, and not get into the name-calling."
• Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas told Axios: "Nikki Haley has spoken to more New Hampshire voters this week than Donald Trump has all year ... That's one of the reasons she has gone from 3% in the polls to within striking distance of Trump."

🐊 DeSantis — who spent most of his resources in Iowa, only to finish 30 points behind Trump — has been trying to revive his candidacy with an eye toward the Feb. 24 GOP primary in South Carolina.

• DeSantis has been jabbing Haley for declining to debate him — and has made a point of publicly taking voters' questions at his New Hampshire town halls.

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Roe v. Wade is history. But Monday's 50th anniversary of the 1973 decision is providing a potent rallying point for both sides in the abortion wars, Axios' Victoria Knight reports.

• Democrats will kick off a new ad blitz focused on reproductive rights. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will spotlight the issue with campaign appearances.
• House Republicans passed two abortion-related bills — one expanding resources for college students who carry a pregnancy to term, and another benefiting organizations that try to persuade women not to get an abortion.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company has started training Llama 3, the next generation of its primary generative AI model.

• He reaffirmed the company's commitment to releasing its AI models via open source — when possible — and said the company is once again shaking up its AI org chart, Axios' Ina Fried reports.

Why it matters: Zuckerberg says the moves are designed to help the company build artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems that will give its products more human-like capabilities in coming years.

• "We've come to this view that, in order to build the products that we want to build, we need to build for general intelligence," Zuckerberg told The Verge. "I think that's important to convey, because a lot of the best researchers want to work on the more ambitious problems."

Aiming to underscore the company's investment in AI, Zuckerberg said it expects to end the year with more than 340,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Including other chips, the company projects it will have the equivalent of nearly 600,000 H100s.

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Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan writes that since political newcomer Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the "distance between the elites and the non-elite has widened, the estrangement deepened."

• Why it matters: "I think the unprotected at this point do not only feel ignored and betrayed, they feel invaded ... by the ideology with no name," Noonan argues.

2020 touched off a "sense among regular people that some new ideology that doesn't even have a name had entered their lives on all levels, in their intimate family and work space," Noonan continues:

The pandemic, with its protocols and regulations and vaccine mandates; the strange things taught in the schools, which were suddenly brought into your home by Zoom; the obsessions with gender and race, the redefinitions of the founding and meaning of America.

The bottom line: This is the "first national election since the full impact of 2020 and its epochal changes sank in."

Axios Chicago's Carrie Shepherd snapped this pic yesterday as the Democratic National Committee showed off a preview of this summer's convention at the United Center.

• The walkthrough was mainly for media. The DNC expects over 15,000 members of the news media for the Aug. 19-22 convention.

🪧 What we're watching: DNC officials say they'll be prepared for protests and are working with Mayor Brandon Johnson's office and Chicago police to designate an official "protest zone."

Keep reading.

Green Day performed in the 47-50 Street-Rockefeller Center subway station yesterday as part of an appearance on Jimmy Fallon's "The Tonight Show."

• Watch a video.