The Economist.

Hello and welcome'm Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

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Introducing No Strings Giving.

And what is adorable is not merely frivolous.

Cuteness has recently become a subject of serious academic inquiry.

We visit a new exhibition that's an examination of cuteness and how it's found its way into pretty much every

aspect of culture.

First up though, though.

Retaliation was promised and over the weekend it was delivered.

America has again dropped bombs in Iraq and Syria.

These strikes were the explicit payback for the deaths of three soldiers who were

killed a week before at an American outpost in Jordan after Iranian-backed militias launched a drone attack.

We will respond. We'll do that on our schedule, in our time, and we'll do it in a manner of the

President's choosing as Commander-in-chief.

Just hours after the bodies of those three Americans arrived home,

B-1 bombers flew from America and hit more than 85 targets at seven locations in Western Iraq and Eastern Syria.

And though these are unlikely to be the last retaliatory strikes, America has some serious

needle threading to do in order to get all and only what it wants in the region.

The Pentagon said the airstrikes targeted both Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxy militias, although they don't seem to have

killed any Iranians. The strikes had been telegraphed for days and it's unlikely the

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