Moldova’s government has collapsed and its pro-EU prime minister has stepped down after 18 months of political and economic turbulence. Europe’s poorest country was struggling with “multiple crises”, outgoing PM Natalia Gavrilita said on Friday. With the war raging in neighbouring Ukraine, Moldova has been facing inflation, high energy prices, a refugee influx and Russian [...

By Shamindra Ferdinando Eric Walsh presented his credentials to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, on Feb. 02, at the President’s House in Kandy. Wickremesinghe was flanked by Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, PC, and Presidential Secretary Saman Ekanayake. Canada, with the concurrence of Sri Lanka, appointed Walsh as High Commissioner of Canada to Colombo. Walsh, who had served […]

ECONOMYNEXT –Sri Lanka is seeing strong prospects of tourists from India driving the sector in 2023, a top industry official said as the country tries to emerge from its worst ever currency crisis. “I think India is going to be our biggest contributor and there’s a lot of activity happening between India and Sri Lanka […]

USD 3 mn Japanese grant attached to ongoing project By Shamindra Ferdinando An agreement on the much advertised cash assistance, provided exclusively to paddy farmers by the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government, was finalised several weeks before then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa stepped down on July 14, 2022 amidst violent protests. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has provided the […]

China’s lurch from extreme zero-Covid to extreme herd immunity is a watershed moment in the global ideological struggle of our age, an unanswerable illustration of why autocratic regimes are less successful in the end than messy liberal democracies. Leadership cults and totalitarian media control can at times enable breathtakingly destructive policies, and it is hard […]

The UN has freshly prioritized the ushering of international peace as one of its foremost tasks in the days ahead and sensible sections the world over are likely to back it overwhelmingly in this historic undertaking. There is no doubt that those quarters that are sensitive to the constantly rising human costs of war and […]

By Dr Laksiri Fernando One mistake we normally make in analysing the situation or crisis in Sri Lanka is to do it in isolation. Sri Lanka is unfortunately only a part of a world system. Although this situation is valid to almost all other countries, smaller or weaker a country, larger are the effects of […]

Pakistan is making efforts to find a new energy alliance to ensure an uninterrupted energy supply to households and industries, Geo-Politik reported. Pakistan is trying to diversify its energy sources for tackling the energy crisis. A delegation of Pakistani ministers, including the Minister of State (Petroleum Division) Musadik Masood Malik travelled to Kazakhstan from November […]

Having lost out to China considerably in its efforts to expand its influence in the global South and the ASEAN region, the West is giving every indication of making-up for lost time. While the US is in a stepped-up drive to cultivate the African continent, the EU is intensifying efforts to strengthen its economic ties […]

Brussels hosts the leaders of Southeast Asian countries in the face of the Ukraine war and challenges from China.The EU has promised billions of dollars of investment in Southeast Asia, as leaders looked to bolster ties at a summit in the face of the Ukraine war and challenges from China.The European Union hosted its first […]

Some countries, such as Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and Oman, offered concessions including constitutional changes, to stall protests. Ukraine’s famed ‘Maidan Protest,’ in 2013-14 led to the overthrow of pro-Russian dictator, Yanukovych. by HARSHA KAKAR The Arab Spring in 2010-11 challenged and overthrew authoritarian governments in the Middle East and North Africa. They commenced in Tunisia […...

Months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is becoming increasingly clear that the latter’s traumas would not end any time soon. Nor is the invader registering any notable gains from its fatal decision to annex Ukraine by armed means and might. However, it’s abundantly clear that the destabilizing economic consequences for the world from the […]

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has reiterated the UK’s commitment to a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India as part of the country’s wider focus on enhancing ties with the Indo-Pacific region. Delivering a talk Monday night at the Lord Mayor of London’s Banquet — his first major foreign policy speech since taking charge at […]