THE OSCAR GOES TO: “One Battle after Another” led the Oscars pack with six statues, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor in Sean Penn, who was reported to have gone to Ukraine rather than put on a tuxedo.

  “One Battle” is about an underground anti-fascist movement in the United States. Prescient. Sean Penn plays an army officer who could have been modelled after the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino … or maybe Bovino modelled himself after Penn.

  Second in the running was “Sinners” with four Oscars, including Michael B. Jordan as Best Actor playing twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack.”

  Irish player Jessie Buckley won Best Actress as Shakespeare’s wife in “Hamnet” … she was the best both in the movie and her acceptance speech. Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Aunt Gladys in the horror film “Weapons”.

  For only the seventh time there was a tie in one category, Live Action Short. “Two People Exchanging Saliva” and “The Singers” both won.

  Also on stage last night was CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman for his documentary about the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. 

THE WAR ROOM: Now in the second week of war on Iran interrupting world energy markets,Energy Secretary Chris Wright said yesterday that there are “no guarantees” that oil prices would fall in the coming weeks despite administration claims that it has plans to end the oil shock.

  “There’s no guarantees in wars at all,” Wright said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” He said that after military operations have defanged the Iranian regime “you will see the straits open again in the not-too-distant future.”

  Predictions of a return to normalcy are as rosy as claims of victory over Iran. They’re still fighting and blocking the vital Strait of Hormuz through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes on the way to market. It could be weeks or months after the end of hostilities for trade to return to normal … if hostilities end at all.

  The price of oil was up over $100 a barrel this morning. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US has hit $3.70, up from $2.93 a month ago, according to the AAA motor club. 

  Over the weekend President Trump told NBC News that, “Iran wants to make a deal, and I don’t want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet.”

  Trump said; “We’ve knocked out most of their missiles. We’ve knocked out most of their drones. We knocked out their manufacturing of missiles and drones, largely. Within two days, it’ll be totally decimated.”

  If things are going so well, Trump needs to explain why he has called upon five countries to send their navies for help keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to traffic. So far, China, Britain, France, Japan and South Korea are not jumping to answer the call.

  Trump’s “America First” is America alone on this one. But The Financial Times last night reported that the President told them that failure to help would “be very bad for the future of NATO.”

THE REGIME:

— The chairman of the Federal Communication Commission is threatening the broadcast licenses of the television networks, claiming they are “running hoaxes and news distortions” about the war on Iran.

  FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a social media post that, “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” Over-the-air broadcasters, as opposed to the cables, are still regulated by law and licensed by the government. 

  Carr did not specify what fictions have been broadcast by what he called the “fake news.”

— The Board of the Kennedy Center in Washington is expected to vote today on President Trump’s plan to shut the cultural center for years of renovations.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT: With the business of daytime television fading, NBCUniversal announced the cancellation of its long-running show, “Access Hollywood.” The news came as a shock to the show’s producers and primary host, Mario Lopez, who are supposed to know what’s happening in the business. 

  The company is moving away from producing first-run syndication shows and “Access” ends in September. The show went on the air in 1996 as a competitor to CBS’s “Entertainment Tonight.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Paul Ehrlich, who alarmed the world with his best-seller, “The Population Bomb,” warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine, died on Friday in Palo Alto, California. He was 93.

  Ehrlich predicted food riots and global famines as world population would grow beyond the ability to feed itself. He asserted that the planet began to deteriorate rapidly in the 1950s when, as he said, “the stork passed the plow.” He called on couples to have only one or two children.

  The author admitted over time that his dire predictions were not coming true as rapidly as he had thought, but that food shortages and starvation were still growing with population.

THE SPIN RACK: People who knew Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the man who attacked a synagogue outside Detroit, said he was aggrieved because his two brothers and one brother’s two children had been killed in an Israeli air strike. Israel said that the brother, Ibrahim, had been a commander in the Hezbollah militant group.  

BELOW THE FOLD: The news agency Reuters says they have unmasked the anonymous street artist known as Banksy. They say he is Robin Gunningham, 51, from the English city of Bristol but that he had changed his name to David Jones, a common British name, to avoid identification.

  Reporters traced Banksy in part through his trip to Ukraine and a New York City arrest report.

  Among Banksy’s most famous works are “Girl With Balloon,” a stencil drawing of a young girl letting go of a red, heart-shaped balloon.  The artist’s lawyer told Reuters that his client “does not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct.”

-30-