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The steady stream of Trump administration and campaign crimes worsens by the day, with the latest Cambridge Analytica controversy exposing to the world that the Trump campaign hired a company that stole and manipulated data from up to 50 million American Facebook users in an attempt to change the outcome of the 2016 election.

Enthronement of Maryam Nawaz, daughter of deposed Pak premier Nawaz Sharif, as his political heir apparent - as chief of Pakistan Muslim League (Navajo) – has peeled factional wrangling inside the ruling party. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has stated openly that the right to dissent is being suppressed along with the right to have a different opinion. The former interior minister (2013-17) hastened to add that Maryam Nawaz should not be compared to Benazir Bhutto who stepped in when sons of executed PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto were reluctant to take up the baton.

A Facebook ‘friend’ who deactivated from the Social Media platform is back on board. Wonder why when there is a hashtag #DeleteFacebook gone viral with ordinary and extraordinary men and women taking the bus out of ‘Zuck Town’. Asked ‘Why?’ the Facebook ‘friend’ said he didn’t want to miss the action, and that right now all the action was on Facebook, with people moving out in thousands of droves.

The ancient sages advised to plan for tomorrow you ought to know today what your yesterday was. Great claims were bandied around at the 84th Plenary Session of the Indian National Congress at New Delhi last Saturday of coming back to power in next election to the Lok Sabha without reference to why it was reduced to a pitiable performance in 2014. It had won record 413 seats only three decades ago. It was reduced to merely 44 seats in last election. Not only it was reduced to pathetic performance but it has virtually lost power in all states except two. The heavy shrinkage of its geographical and social reach is too obvious for everyone to see.

Finally, it is confirmed that all 39 Indians gone missing, believed abducted by ISIS, in Mosul in Iraq were killed by ISIS and buried in a mass grave there. Told this news, opposition MPs in the Lok Sabha did not let External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj speak and she had to cut short her statement. The Rajya Sabha allowed two minute’s silence but the Lok Sabha refused to even think aloud.

The Chinese girl looked him in the eye and declared, “China Ver Beeg; China Ver Strong.” Stung by her dismissing tone, he retorted: “India Also Ver Beeg; India Also Ver Strong.” That brought a faint smile on her inscrutable face and she exchanged a knowing look with her brother, ex-PLA soldier, lanky with spiky hair, arms wiry bands of muscle. He could either jump into the Yalu – the river which separates China from North Korea – or arm-wrestle ex-PLA bro. He chose to chopstick a slice of dog-meat from the red coals on the Korean grill!

A young Ho Chi Minh serving pastries on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry, a pretty Rosa Luxemburg in a velvet dress, the bold young Stalin expropriating banks in the Caucasus, the earnest law student Ulyanov — what is it that is so beguiling about the early lives of great revolutionaries?

Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has finally drawn the curtain over the four year old story of the disappearance of the 39 Indian workers in Mosul in Iraq. She admitted in Parliament on March 20 that all of them had been killed by the ISIS extremists and their bodies have been identified. This sordid story of the fate of the poor Indian migrant workers is only one part of the continuing plight of the Indian workers in foreign lands, especially in the war torn West Asia.

There were two notable features of the recent All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session in Delhi. One was about Sonia Gandhi demonstrating that she was a more aggressive speaker than her son, although the latter tried to make up any shortfall in this respect in his second speech. The other was the party’s curious nostalgia for the past as was evident from its rejection of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) in preference to paper ballots.

The ‘Hindu’ stood in his balcony and read the banner headline – ‘Lingayat Is Newest Religion’. His lips tightened. Right then his Lingayat neighbour stepped on to his balcony and danced a jig, raised a fist to the sky and popped right back into his apartment. The ‘Hindu’ sneered, ‘What is he so thrilled about? He prays to the same god as me, doesn’t he? What’s the whole hoo-ha about?