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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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