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Elon Musk wants to give everyone on Twitter full and final rights to free speech and the ‘blue tick’, which is now only the headband of a privileged few, the majority of who were of the Jack Dorsey bent of mind. Dorsey and his successor Parag Agarwal may not have any role in Twitter post 2022, and their idea of censorship will be out the window, like it should have been years ago.

When US Defence Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III declared that Washington wanted to see Russia so “weakened" that it would no longer be able to invade a neighbouring state, he lifted the veil on US goals in Ukraine. He also held out the prospect of a long-term US-Russian contest for power and influence.

Through months of melodrama in Pakistan, many experts expected that the army may intervene again in the name of saving the people from an “incompetent and self-serving” political class. Some experts believe that Pakistan army will avoid taking responsibility for a troubled economy and the evolving complexities of geopolitics. In reality, the army is facing the real prospect of losing its control as well as sheen. It has cleverly used political and non-political actors to shift the focus to the failures of Imran Khan government and has set the stage for months of wrangling between the government and an ex-PM on the loose.

Elon Musk’s financial muscle is being felt all over the world. After buying Twitter for $44 billion in cash a few days back, Musk is now joking that Coca-Cola is next on his shopping list. In a list of 2668 billionaires worldwide, India has 166 of them. But few Indian billionaires make news for such audacious business deals as Musk has just illustrated by acquiring Twitter. At a lightning pace, his offer for Twitter which he said was his best and finally landed the most influential social media platform in his lap. Besides, everything about Tesla's CEO is as enigmatic as awe-inspiring his businesses are.

So much has been written on the Sri Lankan economic crisis that the facts are by now quite well-known the massive build up of external debt; the huge Value Added Tax concessions that pushed up the fiscal deficit and made the government borrow abroad even to spend domestically; the decline in foreign exchange earnings because of the pandemic that particularly hit tourist inflows; the downward pressure on the exchange rate which made many Sri Lankan workers choose the unofficial route to send their earnings home rather than the official route; the precipitous decline in foreign exchange reserves; the directive of the government to cut down on the use of chemical fertilizers to save foreign exchange that actually hit foodgrain output; and so on.

The number of natural disasters is projected to reach 560 a year globally by 2030, i.e., over three in two days. The scale and intensity of the disasters are sharply increasing, and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has blamed it on faulty risks perception leading to such decisions that exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities. Since Asia, especially South Asia will be the worst sufferer, India has much to be worried about because it is the fourth top country in the world with highest levels of the INFORM Natural Hazard Risk Index with a score of 7.7 with around 32 per cent population living under the national poverty line.

Ever since the ban on poppy cultivation by the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, resentment among poppy farmers who have been staunch supporters of the Taliban during their armed battle with the US-backed regimes in Kabul is on the rise.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday asked Sri Lanka to tighten its monetary policy, increase taxes, and adopt flexible exchange rates. "The requirement for fund lending will be progress toward debt sustainability," said Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf, acting director of the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department. “Monetary policy has to be tightened to keep inflation in check,” she added, speaking at an online news conference.

The ‘freeze’ ordered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a response to the outbreak of Covid pandemic had gone terribly wrong in terms of its timing. Millions of lives and livelihoods were lost as everything ground to a halt, a mistake for which the nation continues to pay a heavy price. Now it seems to be the turn of the Chinese to share the ‘honour’. Despite their best technology, innovation and spirit of inquiry, the Chinese apparently failed to learn from whatever happened on the other side of their border.

Pakistan's ex PM Imran Khan subverted the Constitution and tried to dissolve the national assembly after he lost its vote of no confidence but was forced to leave office by a unanimous Supreme Court ruling and a breakdown in trust with the Pakistan Army's high command. Yet after 3 years of colossal incompetence and idiotic governance during which PTI managed to gut Pakistan's economy, diplomatic relations with Washington, Riyad and Beijing, his most devastating legacy is his act of fixing diesel prices 30% lower than global crude benchmarks would warrant, an act that cost $5 billion in foreign exchange reserve losses for the State Bank and destroyed Pakistan's IMF program.