Good morning!

The month of February. Winter Olympics. Two wars. Yet different outcomes. In one case, world sport moved swiftly to sanction Russia. Four years later, the same organisations are taking a far more cautious approach to the US-Israel attacks on Iran. What could be the reason? It’s simple: power and money, writes Mihir Vasavda. US networks and sponsors pour in billions of dollars into the International Olympic Committee coffers, keeping the ecosystem rolling. This year’s World Cup is projected to generate approximately $10.9 billion in revenue. Simon Chadwick, Professor of Afro-Eurasian Sport, shared: “Such is their lack of expertise in this field that many of them are prone to making inconsistent, even ill-informed, decisions.” “It doesn’t help that elite sport’s global hegemony is still essentially ‘Western’; this is where wider power rests and the basis upon which sport governing bodies typically make decisions.”

With that, let’s move on to the top five stories from today’s edition:

🚨 Big Story

The West Asia conflict Saturday entered a volatile fifteenth day, with Tehran reaching out to Delhi to take lead, as the chair of BRICS, in condemning the US and Israeli strikes against Iran over the last two weeks. The fact that all three countries – Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE – are in the BRICS has made diplomatic navigation difficult for India. This has put Delhi in a diplomatic pickle, given that it has strategically stayed away from taking sides in the ongoing conflict. Underlining the “importance of the role and position of BRICS” as a forum for developing multilateral cooperation, Iran’s Foreign Minister said he considered it necessary for this institution to play a “constructive role” at the “current juncture to support the stability and security of the region and the world”.

Signalling headway in Delhi’s efforts to persuade Tehran to let India-bound fuel ships transit the Strait of Hormuz, Mohammad Fathali, Iran’s Ambassador to India, said “we will try our best to remove the problems” and “I think you can expect good news in the near future”. According to government sources, there have been “multiple conversations at multiple levels” and “layers of conversation” between India and Iran over the past 24 hours. And, the negotiations are “delicately poised” since the lives of so many Indians are at stake. It’s “work in progress” and the intent is to get as many Indians out of the blocked waterway – there are around 800 Indian seafarers on 28 ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, sources added.

Victory for whom? Russia might emerge as the winner in the US-Israel versus Iran war. As Iran effectively chokes off the Strait of Hormuz in its escalating response to the US-Israel attacks, Russia is making a windfall on the back of the increased demand for crude oil as well as its spiralling prices. According to a Financial Times report, Moscow is estimated to have earned around $150 million a day in extra oil revenue since the effective closure of the transit passage for a fifth of the world’s energy supplies. This comes as US President Donald Trump extends a 30-day waiver to refiners in India and other countries to buy Russian crude. We explain the significance of this move and what it means for India.

⚡ Only in Express

As the central government’s March 2026 deadline to end the Maoist insurgency nears and security operations intensify in Chhattisgarh, for mallakhamb trainees, the conflict is far more personal. Youngsters training in mallakhamb, a traditional gymnastic sport, were invited to perform at America’s Got Talent, two years after lifting the winner’s trophy in the 2023 Indian edition of the talent show. The invitation marked a milestone not only for the group but for Abujhmad, or Maad, an area at the heart of the Maoist conflict. From being an exhibition sport at global events, to countering setbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the trainees at Abujhmad Mallakhamb and Sports Academy are hard at work, with dreams to perform the sport “someday” at the Olympics. Here’s their story.

💡 Express Explained

The Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) are dumping Indian shares amid the war in West Asia and volatile crude oil prices. This is dragging down the Indian rupee, which hit a new all-time low of 92.48 per dollar on Friday. So far this month, FPIs have net sold Indian shares worth $5.73 billion. This is the most that foreign investors have pulled out from Indian markets in 14 months, even though less than half the month is over. My colleague Siddharth Upasani explains: “At a time of global market volatility, investors tend to cut down on the risks they are exposed to and withdraw from emerging markets, such as India. Staying invested in a foreign asset where the currency is weakening can hurt returns for foreign investors in terms of their own currency, such as the US dollar.”

✍️ Express Opinion

With the government releasing a new series of GDP numbers to address the shortcomings in the methodology for estimating them, Arvind Subramanian, Abhishek Anand, and Joshua Felman share that the assessment will “depend on the quality and plausibility of the new numbers.” Citing their new paper, the columnists write: “In recent years, there have been frequent invocations of puzzles. If growth is strong, why is private investment so weak? Why is net FDI declining? Why are capacity utilisation, wage growth, employment growth so tepid? More recently, why was there pressure on the rupee if real growth was so much greater than anywhere in the world? Each puzzle elicits its own complex and different explanation. But in the spirit of Occam’s Razor, there is one simple, albeit partial, explanation for all of them: Growth has been less strong than it appears!”

🎥 Web Series Review

Wondering what to watch this weekend? We’ve got you covered! Aspirants 3 is back, with the three friends picking up where they’d left off in the previous season.While the first two seasons felt familiar – tough, spirit-quenching stuff, yo-yo-ing through hope and despair – this time around the central conflict comes down to the Hindi vs English divide, which rapidly loses fizz as it goes along, writes Shubhra Gupta in her review. “Jatin Goswami, playing a fellow civil servant but buried under old resentments, raises the banner of uplifting Hindi-speaking sections of his district, and of Hindi in general: in and of itself, it’s a worthwhile conversation, but there’s only so much that it can be juiced for.”

That’s it for today! Have a lovely weekend!

Until next time,
Ariba