Author: Mahavir Sumila

The Cabinet of Ministers has green-lighted a proposal seeking to enter into necessary agreements with the World Bank to secure financing under the Sri Lanka Financial Sector Safety Net Strengthening Project. The proposal was tabled by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, Economic Stabilization and National Policies, at the Cabinet meeting held on Tuesday (Dec.05). The project was designed to boost the financial and institutional capacity of the Sri Lanka Deposit Insurance Scheme (SLDIS), which is managed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The financing will help boost reserves of SLDIS which could be used…

Romania’s PM has expressed irritation with Ukraine’s apparent decision to continue using the phrase ‘Moldovan language’ – a term that Bucharest sees as artificial and wants phased out. Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Wednesday said the printing of “Moldovan-language” school manuals in Ukraine would pose a “logistical problem” for Romania, after the two countries had agreed that this phrase would no longer be used in Ukraine. “When the Ukrainian Prime Minister came to visit Bucharest, we discussed the replacement of the Moldovan language, and we established it as a priority in the Romanian agenda,” Ciolacu told a TV political…

Gabriela Bankova is on hunger strike in front of Bulgaria’s Palace of Justice after a court rejected her request to change her ID documents to match her gender identity. Gabriela Bankova, a 32-year-old trans woman, is continuing a hunger strike in front of the Palace of Justice on Sofia after Bulgaria’s judicial аuthorities said she could not change her ID documents according to her gender identity. “The situation illustrates how Bulgaria has essentially turned into an authoritarian state: the court decides who is fit for society on some vague moral grounds, with no regard to whether this is in breach…

After hackers reportedly attacked the company managing the real estate assets of the Greek state, opposition MPs urged the government to come up with a long-promised national cyber-security strategy. Hellenic Public Properties Co, HPPC, the company managing the real estate assets of the Greek state, suffered Distributed Denial-of-Service, DDoS, attacks on November 8, media reported on Wednesday. Opposition MPs accused the conservative government of treating cyber security “supertficially” and demanded a national strategy to deal with the issue. “Cyber security is treated by the Greek government and in particular by the Ministry of Digital Governance superficially in terms of communication…

The start of a transitional period for the European Union’s (EU) carbon border tax (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism – CBAM) on October 1, 2023 also marked the beginning of serious changes in doing business for companies in the Western Balkans and Turkey. The affected companies are exporters of cement, electricity, fertilizers, steel, iron, aluminum, and hydrogen, but also certain products obtained from them, such as screws and various constructions. Exporters will now have to measure how much CO2 is released in the production of the exported goods and report on it to their importers in the EU. Reporting is done quarterly, and…

Valencia, Turin, Madrid (28/11 – 25) Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia retained his MotoGP world title with many records; there are nevertheless signs that the Ducati rider will face sterner competition next season. The Italian rider won the 2023 season-ending MotoGP Grand Prix in Valencia on Sunday to clinch his second world title in a row. The protege of Valentino Rossi becomes the third rider to take back-to-back MotoGP titles since the introduction of the class in 2002. Only Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez previously managed to do that. Bagnaia is the first rider to successfully race and defend #1 in the…

London (08/11 – 50) A U.S. development agency announced on Wednesday that it would lend $553 million to establish a deepwater shipping-container terminal at the Port of Colombo in Sri Lanka, expanding America’s effort to finance infrastructure around strategic parts of Asia. The loan package is tied to Adani Ports, part of a conglomerate closely linked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India that is still wobbling from a short-seller’s attack in January. Adani will help develop the terminal with Sri Lankan partners. The money from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation resembles the kind of big-ticket deals that China’s…

A mass exodus of western OEMs from Russia triggered by sweeping sanctions imposed after that country’s invasion of Ukraine has given a powerful impetus for the automotive industry in Central Asia to expand production capacity. The increase in production will meet domestic demand for vehicles, as well as demand in Russia. Kazakhstan, the largest economy in the region, is on track to boost vehicle production fivefold to 500,000 units by 2026, according to Marat Karabaev, minister for Kazakh Industry and Infrastructure Development. Last year, Kazakhstan assembled more than 100,000 vehicles, the highest figure ever and 20% above that produced in…

Union says draft media law would facilitate government censorship and reverse hard-won media freedoms – but ministry insists it is just a proposal and it is seeking a stakeholders’ concensus. The Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, strongly condemned on Thursday the draft media law, saying that it represented unprecedented state interference in journalistic freedoms and in journalistic self-regulation. The draft law, proposed by the Culture and Media Ministry, was not previously agreed on within the working group of which journalists were members, and was “slipped under the table”, the press conference heard. According to the HND, the draft law aims to…

The counterterrorism expert and author of “Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Massacre: Lessons for the International Community” explains how religious extremism manifested in Sri Lanka’s deadliest terror attack. On April 21, 2019 – Easter Sunday – a coordinated series of bombings ripped through Sri Lanka, targeting churches and luxury hotels. Over 260 people were killed, making it the deadliest terrorist attack ever suffered by Sri Lanka. The attack has continued to resonate in Sri Lankan society and politics, as the public demands to untangle questions of responsibility: Why was the attack not prevented, and what can be done to stop the…