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The spring meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington has always remained a high point for those involved in the management of financial sector and public finance. For countries in a tight corner, the meeting is a lifeline.

Pakistan’s leading industrialist Mian Mohammed Mansha of the Nishant conglomerate which has $30 billion in assets has said that trade relations between India and Pakistan should resume. “I feel very passionately that we need to get our things sorted out with India. Now whatever the issues that are impeding, let them be there. But once they come to one another’s country, through trade, tourism – religious tourism or normal tourism — I think the doors will start opening,” Mansha was reported as saying by The Indian Express on April 17.

The international financial system governed by western powers no longer offers safety to foreign currency deposits in their chests from other parts of the world. Even foreign private deposits and investments in assets are being frozen. The latest financial sanction imposed on Russia and its oligarchs freezing their accounts may appear to be the severest, but the United States has always been happy to pull financial trigger whenever its strategic interest is challenged by any government in the world. This time, the US, European Union and Japan barred Russia’s central bank from tapping into billions of foreign reserves Moscow had been saving up in their banks. Last year, the US impounded the Afghanistan central bank’s foreign reserves in order to prevent the Taliban from accessing the funds after it seized the power in the country. Earlier, the US froze foreign exchange reserves of Iran, Syria and Venezuela. In fact, US Dollar assets have become very political.

Charges and counter-charges about war crimes and genocide are being used by those on both sides of the war in Ukraine who are intent on minimizing diplomacy and emphasizing warfare.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine spotlights seemingly widening differences between the United States and its closest Middle Eastern allies, sparking eulogies for an era of bygone American regional dominance.

The sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea flotilla MOSKVA is a significant turning point in the Ukraine war and also a lesson for military planners across the world.

Two competing perspectives can be extracted from the ongoing drama in Pakistan. The first is the obvious one, of the continued fragility of democracy and its institutions that leads to periodic crises of the kind that unfolded over the past month. That no prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term in the country is a raging symptom of that fragility.

Russia’s suspension from the United Nations Human Rights Council was long overdue, even without the mass killing of innocent civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. A country that poisons or otherwise does away with its critics at home and abroad and stifles freedom of the press, expression, and association should not qualify for a seat on the Council.

The outcome was never in doubt: Andrés Manuel López Obrador was going to win Mexico’s historic recall election on Sunday, April 10. And he did, with 91.86 percent of the vote — or 15.1 million out of 16.5 million votes cast. The election is important on two counts. In addition to ensuring that AMLO will remain in office until the conclusion of his term in September of 2024, the election also establishes an important precedent that Mexican presidents and governors, once considered untouchable, can be subject to removal from office before their terms are over.

On Tuesday, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Ajith Nivard Cabraal announced that the country would default on international debt payments until it receives a $3 billion bailout package it has asked for from the IMF. Sri Lanka’s external borrowings amount to $51 billion and roughly half of them are market borrowings through international sovereign bonds, one of which is worth $1 billion maturing on July 25. There are some other urgent debt repayments due in the next few months. In all, Sri Lanka needs $7 billion to service its debts this year while it had $1.9 billion of forex reserves at the end of March.