Point One

 When it rains, it pours. Hostilities persisted last week in the war between the United States and Israel on one hand and Iran on the other, despite a shift of deadline by US President Donald Trump for a threatened Armageddon. Bluster ruled the turf on both sides, and you never really know how close to an endpoint the war is. Meanwhile, the international community roiled in the cost of living crisis the war has foisted on global economy. Israel reported late in the week that it had killed a senior Iranian military figure in targeted air strike. Admiral Alireza Tangsiri was commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy and reportedly was the engine room of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command, confirming the killing in a post on X, advised Iranians serving in the IRGC navy to “abandon their post and return home to avoid further risk of unnecessary injury or death.” Washington boasted that Iran had neither a navy left at this point nor a navy l...

 Some things don’t go as projected. When United States President Donald Trump led his country to tag-team with Israel in attacking Iran a couple of weeks ago, he thought it would be an easy pie like Venezuela: go in, smash things up, expropriate some loot and exit tidily. Then, live ever after relishing the booty from the conquest. The US military strike in Venezuela on 3rd January, codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve, resulted in the capture of strongman Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife Cilia Flores, to face drug-related charges in American courts. For icing, Washington commandeered Venezuela’s vast oil wealth after influencing the installation of someone it found acceptable as Maduro’s replacement. The operation by which Maduro was captured lasted under an hour and it recorded no casualty on US side. But that was Venezuela. Iran is an entirely different pie that Trump took on in a military joint venture with Israel that was codenamed Operation Epic Fury. Nearly four weeks on,...

United Kingdom’s royal family got roiled in a scandal lately and it opened up for justice to take its course. The younger brother of King Charles and reportedly the favourite son of the late Queen Elizabeth, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, got arrested and “released under investigation” by the British police in connection with his ties to American sex offender, the late Jeffrey Epstein. His royal blood did not count to keep him out of the reach of justice, making him the first member of the British royal family to be taken into police custody in modern times. Association with Epstein became a taboo, having been accused of building a network of hundreds of girls and young women for sexual exploitation. Many of the victims were made to travel around with him and stay at his private island in the Caribbean. Epstein was initially sentenced to 18-month imprisonment in 2008 after pleading guilty to state charges – one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from...