Two warships facing each other with a bright beam between them under dark stormy clouds and lightning

Can a Precarious Ceasefire Still keep the Door Open to Peace? A Risk Management Lens on the US-Iran Negotiations Stalemate

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The ceasefire still holds for now. But the logic of war escalation has not been broken.

A few days ago, the two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran was presented in Washington by Trump with great fanfare as a diplomatic breakthrough, the first step toward de-escalation and perhaps, eventually, peace. The White House narrative was predictable and self-congratulatory: overwhelming pressure had once again created the conditions for diplomacy, proving that force, if applied hard enough, can restore control and deliver a favorable political outcome. The formula was familiar. Strike first, raise the cost for the adversary, and then negotiate from a position of restored dominance.

But the promotional wrapping around the ceasefire was quickly torn away by unfolding events. The Islamabad talks ended without agreement, without visible convergence, and without even a next round being scheduled for now. Then came Donald Trump’s declaration that the US Navy would immediately begin a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. In one move, the meaning of the ceasefire changed fundamentally. A ceasefire with no diplomatic follow-up and a blockade on one of the world’s most sensitive maritime chokepoints is not a peace process. It is not even a stable de-escalation process. It is a more dangerous hybrid condition in which direct strikes are paused while coercive confrontation intensifies through other means. 

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The Iran War Trap: How Strategic Miscalculation is Reshaping the Global Risk Landscape and World Order

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Introduction: When Power Meets its Limits

After more than a month of war against Iran, a revealing paradox has emerged. The United States and Israel, two of the most powerful military actors in the world, have demonstrated their overwhelming force and destructive capacity. Yet neither has achieved a decisive strategic outcome. Iran did not break. Under sustained attack and extraordinary pressure, it remains standing, retaliating, adapting and this resistance is increasingly becoming central to the global geopolitical narrative surrounding the conflict. 

What is unfolding in Iran looks more and more like a case study in strategic risk miscalculation and a lesson about how a war launched as a supposedly controlled demonstration of force to gain leverage can quickly degenerate into self-expanding systemic disruptions with mounting spillovers and global unpredictable risks consequences.

Now the central question is no longer whether Washington and Tel Aviv can keep inflicting damage to Iran. Of course they can. The critical issue is whether this war is still strategically winnable on politically acceptable terms and whether the original justification for war was ever sound in the first place.

Now today’s news reports confirms that the conflict has now moved into a precarious two-week ceasefire phase after Trump stepped back from his latest threats, but the core disputes remain unresolved and the truce itself is fragile. 

That matters because this war is no longer just a war. It is a stress test of strategic judgment, use of coercive power, alliance credibility, and global economic resilience.

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show the link between nutrition and chronic diseases

Confronting the Looming Global Health Crisis: A Flywheel of Chronic Diseases Getting out of Control?

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Introduction: The New Silent Pandemic

For most of human history, the primary threats to human life came from infections, accidents, and wars. Today, the biggest killers are chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and mental illnesses which now account for over 75% of global deaths.

Unlike the wars or pandemics of the past, which used to strike with acute and visible devastation but were often geographically confined, this health crisis has crept in silently, escalating slowly at first, building year after year until it now threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems, economies, and even entire societies worldwide.

What makes this coming crisis so insidious is that it is largely a man-made problem and one that could have been prevented if we had conducted a proper risk diagnostic and taken the right preventive actions from the start. Yet, instead of tackling its root causes, governments and healthcare institutions still today remain locked in a vicious cycle of focusing primarily on the consequences and managing them with treatments that do not solve the underlying problem and hence lead to more treatments feeding an endless cycle going nowhere. 

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The AI REVOLUTION: The Great Human Enhancement or Replacement: Are We Ready?

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept, it is here in our present reality, transforming industries, economies, and societies at an unprecedented pace. The launch of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) by OpenAI in November 2022 was a watershed moment, accelerating AI adoption across sectors such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and other services. AI-powered automation is rapidly reshaping business and operating models, redefining the job markets, and sparking intense global competition among corporations and nations. 

While AI presents immense opportunities for business and operational innovation, productivity and growth, it also poses extraordinary risks and challenges. These include concerns over job displacement, regulatory gaps, ethical dilemmas, privacy erosion, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Companies and governments now face a critical challenge:

How to harness AI’s potential for transformational growth while mitigating its disruptive impact on human societies? This is one of the most defining challenges we face for the future of humanity.

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The ‘Peasant’ Remark: How Not to Negotiate with China – Risk Management Lessons

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In the aftermath of the 2025 U.S. tariff escalation, tensions with China have reached a boiling point not just economically with tit-for-tat responses from the Beijing, but also diplomatically and even more deeply in the cultural space. While President Trump’s sweeping tariffs may have been intended to force a global trade reset by pushing world leaders to renegotiate trade agreements seen as unfair by the US administration, recent comments from Vice President J.D. Vance far from encouraging constructive discussions, have on the contrary, added significant fuel to an already volatile fire.

In a high-profile speech, Vance referred to the Chinese as “peasants from whom the U.S. borrow money to buy the goods the chinese peasants manufacture” adding that “it is not a recipe for economic prosperity”.  The reaction from Beijing was immediate and angry. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned the remark as “ignorant and impolite.”

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Impacts of Trumps Tariffs on the world

Reassessing Trump’s Tariffs from a Risk Management Perspective: A Reckless Gamble or Necessary Disruption?

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In April 2025, President Donald Trump stunned global markets and diplomatic circles by announcing sweeping tariffs ranging from 10% to nearly 100% on imports from virtually all countries. Dubbed “Liberation Day” tariffs by the U.S. administration, the move triggered an immediate and intense backlash. Politicians, media pundits, and economists around the world denounced the action as reckless, economically unsound, and potentially disastrous for the global economy.

But such a one-dimensional, knee-jerk reaction may itself be dangerously shortsighted. From a risk management perspective, it is precisely in moments like this, when established norms are shaken, that we must resist emotional reactions and instead engage in cool-headed analysis. We need to pause, reflect, and ask deeper questions:

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Narrative Walls: The Roadblocks on the Path for Peace in Ukraine

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Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died on both sides. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, scattered across Europe. Entire regions ravaged by war lie in ruins. Ukraine’s economy is effectively on life support, dependent on foreign aid. Russia, too, faces deep losses and isolation. And yet, the war continues with only a barely flickering flame lighting up a tortuous path towards peace.

That flickering light is primarily due to the forceful actions of a new ‘peace broker’ in town, US President Trump, who is now trying to twist the arms of both sides to broker a ceasefire deal and bring the warring parties around the same table. That’s not easy! The challenge is not that peace is impossible in itself. It’s that even the possibility of peace has gradually been buried beneath the rubble of hardened ideologies, pain, losses, raw emotions, and distrust expressed in mutually exclusive narratives. The real tragedy may not just be the terrible loss of lives and territory but also the loss of the ability to see the other side as anything else than mortal enemies and hence to be unable to imagine peace with them as even a remote possibility.

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Voting does not count

A DEMOCRATIC BREAKDOWN IN EUROPE

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A Case Study of the 2024/2025 Romanian Presidential Election 

What happens when the clear frontrunner in a presidential election is prevented from running when the election is abruptly cancelled just days before the second round of the vote?

This isn’t a scene from a political thriller. It’s the reality unfolding in Romania, a member of the European Union (EU). The 2024/25 Romanian presidential election presents a sobering case study that raises questions not only for Romania’s democratic health but also about some broader, troubling trends affecting the state of democracy across the EU.  While European nations continue to promote democratic values abroad, events like these raise serious concerns about the democratic integrity at home. Let’s look into it.

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City Harvest Case part 6: The Smog of the Crossover Financing

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The revelations about the large sums of money (tens of millions of dollars) used liberally to finance Sun Ho’s failed attempt to breakthrough on the U.S. music scene and about her carefree, luxury lifestyle, have shocked many City Harvest Church members, the christians community at large and even the wider public. Reading through online forums, it is clear that many people felt that the amounts spent were extravagant and questioned what this “U.S. pop star adventure” had really got to do with the Christian evangelisation project it proclaimed to be. Continue reading →

Singapore Airlines Approximate Online Communication over the MH17 Tragedy

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After the announcement that Malaysian airline MH17 had been shot down over eastern Ukraine, Singapore Airlines was quick to post on their social media pages (Facebook and Twitter) a public statement addressed to their customers claiming that its flights “are not using the Ukrainian airspace”. Continue reading →