With thousands of protesters on the streets of Colombo, soaring food and fuel prices and this week the first-ever suspension of government bond payments, Sri Lanka’s escalating economic crisis has shaken the governing Rajapaksa family’s grip on power. But while demonstrators accuse Gotabaya Rajapaksa of mismanaging the economy, the president’s elder brother, prime minister Mahinda

Count me among the minority of Americans, according to Niels Erich, who believe we should not risk nuclear war to defend Ukraine (“Trump in wartime — that’s a thought to conjure with!”, Letters, April 8). Those who argue that direct attacks on Russia using a no-fly zone, medium range missiles and Nato fighter aircraft pose

Gideon Rachman (“We need to think about a Le Pen victory”, Opinion, April 12) is spot on with his claim that “rather than dismissing Le Pen’s chances, it is time to think seriously about what her possible victory would mean for France and beyond”. Her victory, if she kept her word, would most certainly mean,

The formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board and the publication of their new proposals (Report, April 1) is a welcome step in a landscape of well-intentioned but increasingly uncoordinated, complex and nationalised taxonomies. As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report once again reiterates, the time is indeed “now or never” for action,

The US will extend a public transportation mask mandate for 15 days while the country’s top public health agency monitors a recent rise in coronavirus cases. The federal mandate, which requires travellers on public transport including aeroplanes, trains and buses to wear masks, was set to expire on April 18. “In order to assess the

The governor of Texas is facing growing calls to abandon a vehicle inspection programme that has led to blockades and long queues at Mexico border crossings, threatening billions of dollars in trade at a time when supply chains are already under strain. Mexican truck drivers have blockaded border crossings since Monday in protest against the

The World Trade Organization has cut its goods trade growth forecast for this year by about a third to 3 per cent, warning that the decline in commodity exports caused by the Ukraine war could cause mass hunger in developing countries. The Geneva-based body revised predicted growth in goods trade volumes down from 4.7 per

Two of the most influential proxy advisers have counselled Credit Suisse shareholders to vote against a motion to absolve executives and board members from blame for the multiple scandals afflicting the Swiss lender. On Tuesday, ISS and Glass Lewis both released reports that said they would not recommend discharging the board and top executives from

Fears about the outlook for global economic growth among large institutional investors have risen to their highest level in more than a quarter of a century, as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third month. A net 71 per cent of fund managers in March said they expected the global economy to weaken over the

It is springtime for Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour party is readying for another by-election. It has yet to make a by-election gain in this parliament but this is a fight it has a chance of winning. In Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, Starmer is hoping to kick off the party’s fightback in its former

Before the pandemic, New Yorkers John Newton and Marc Perrotta bought a one-time dental office in the Mexican city of Mérida, about 300km west of Cancún. The city’s laid-back lifestyle fit nicely with their plan to relocate from Brooklyn. “We wanted to leave New York and had thought about Canada and even Germany,” says Newton,

Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia is exiting the Russian market permanently, becoming the latest western company to distance itself from the Kremlin and plan for a future in which sanctions persist. “For us, it has been clear since the beginning of the invasion that it is not going to be possible to continue our presence

Sri Lanka’s finance ministry has suspended payments on its government bonds, breaking what it called its “unblemished record of external debt service since independence in 1948” in a deepening economic and currency crisis. In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said keeping up with repayments had “become impossible”, adding that “although the government has taken

In normal times this would be game over. In the longer term it probably still is. The news that Boris Johnson has been fined for the breaching of lockdown rules he imposed on the nation ought ordinarily to be enough to finish him off. It is a shocking event. The fact that his chancellor, Rishi

Investors keen on the listing of the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority bought up the shares by the bucketful on its first day of trading Tuesday. Dewa, as it is known, had already increased the size of its share offering twice before settling on $6.1bn for 18 per cent of the equity. That made it

In the animal kingdom, fluorescent colours come as a warning – take the electric-bright spots on poison dart frogs signalling their toxic exteriors, or the luminescent glow of the blue-ringed octopus that cautions against its deadly bite. The dazzling hues seen on the spring/summer runways this season are more affable. At Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton’s cerulean wool suit

One thing to start: Joe Biden will announce today he is relaxing restrictions on the sale of higher blends of ethanol in petrol — the White House’s latest bid to push down prices at the pump. Welcome back to another Energy Source. The risk of a record-smashing oil price leap over the summer appears to

If Tsai Ing-wen’s plan works out, her country will start churning out up to 500 new electronics engineering experts annually from next year. On the orders of the Taiwanese president, five universities have set up “semiconductor academies”, each with a quota of producing 100 masters and PhDs a year. For Taiwan’s economy, the prospective experts

The New York State Common Retirement Fund has called on shareholders to back resolutions demanding stricter fossil fuel financing policies at some of the world’s biggest banks, one of the first such moves by a major pension fund. The $280bn fund on Monday called on shareholders to vote in favour of proposals filed at six

“Are you happy with the amount of power that you have in your life?” the curator asks us. Oh God, I think, chugging my coffee, isn’t it a bit early for these kinds of questions? I’m meant to indicate my answer by walking either to an area marked “yes” or another marked “no” on the

Because the word is more often applied to eveningwear, modernist furniture and a certain kind of footballer, we forget that academic theories can also be “elegant”. If one seems to explain a lot with a little, if it has few moving parts but great sweep, it can be so beautiful as to leave readers wishing