Headlines

Portugal provided São Tomé and Príncipe with €15 million in direct support towards the country’s budget in order to “meet immediate needs,” announced minister of foreign affairs João Gomes Cravinho last Friday, the Portugal Resident reported. The funding was done through the Camões cooperation and language institute. “This amount of €15 million is to meet immediate cash-flow needs.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is noted for reminding fellow Sri Lankans that at the time Ceylon gained independence from Britain in 1948, it was a prosperous country that the British had left, The Daily FT reported. Noting the positive stock of foreign reserves that Sri Lanka had inherited, he had said that during the Second World War, the country had even lent the colonial master. This was true because the bulk of foreign reserves had been invested in the U.K.

Now that the Cirque du Soleil has rebounded from its near-death experience during the pandemic, Duncan Fisher can wax philosophical about the wild roller-coaster ride the Montreal-based circus company went through over the past few years, the Montréal Gazette reported. “It was the worst, then it developed into the best time of my business career,” Fisher said in an interview Wednesday. The vice president of operations and general manager of the touring show division of the Cirque du Soleil paraphrased Charles Dickens, saying it was both the best of times and the worst of times.

On December 21, the Commercial Court of the Zaporizhzhia Region started proceedings on the bankruptcy of the metallurgical plant Azovstal (Mariupol, Donetsk Region), Ukrainian News reported. The court decided to open proceedings on the bankruptcy of the combine at the request of the Zaporizhvohnetryv plant (Zaporizhzhia), which is also part of the Metinvest group.