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India is willing to commit up to another $2 billion in financial assistance to Sri Lanka while also supporting the island nation with food and fuel, five sources told Reuters, as New Delhi tries to regain ground lost to China in recent years, The Indian Express reported.

“We are definitely looking to help them out and are willing to offer more swap lines and loans,” said an Indian source aware of various discussions with Sri Lanka.

A senior government source in New Delhi said Sri Lanka’s warning on Tuesday of defaulting on debt payments was a worry, but that “we can still give them up to $2 billion in swaps and support”.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister offered talks on Wednesday with protesters calling for the government to step down over its handing of an economic crisis as the opposition threatened to bring a no-confidence motion against it in parliament, according to The Indian Express.

However, Sri Lankans protesting outside the President’s Office in Colombo on Wednesday rejected Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapksa’s offer for talks and demanded the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and all members of his family from the government.

S&P Global Ratings on Wednesday lowered Sri Lanka’s foreign currency rating to “CC” from “CCC”, citing the economic crisis in the country and rising external funding pressures. “Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process is likely to be complicated and may take months to complete”, the ratings agency said in a statement.

While protests seeking the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is continuing in various parts of the country, the working-class in Sri Lanka is struggling to make both ends meet as the nation continues to battle economic crisis, The Indian Express reported.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin says her country will decide whether to apply to join Nato "within weeks", BBC reported.

She said she saw no reason to delay the decision, at a joint news conference alongside Sweden's prime minister.

Her comments coincided with a report to the Finnish parliament that said membership of the bloc could result in "increased tensions on the border between Finland and Russia". 

Moscow has warned Finland and Sweden against joining Nato in recent weeks. 

Finland and Sweden are militarily non-aligned but Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted increasing public support to become members of the Western defensive alliance. Swedish leader Magdalena Andersson told reporters that the same "very serious analysis" was taking place as in Finland and she saw no point in delaying it.

Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported on Wednesday that Ms Andersson was aiming to apply for membership in time for a Nato summit in late June, according to BBC.

Finland shares a 1,340km (830 miles) border with Russia, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that Moscow would have to "rebalance the situation" with its own measures if the Nato bid went ahead. 

"I won't give any kind of timetable when we will make our decisions, but I think it will happen quite fast," said Ms Marin. She pointed out that Nato membership offered Finland the security guarantee of Article Five, whereby an attack on one member is viewed as an attack on all.

While the two leaders met in Stockholm, Finland's security review was being launched in Helsinki. Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Russia's war had changed the security environment in Europe and forced the review of Finnish defence policy. 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is transforming European security. The Nato military alliance has been given new purpose and now - potentially - could get new members too, BBC reported.

Voters in Finland and Sweden have long cherished their non-aligned status. But now the mood is changing. Sanna Marin's predecessor as prime minister, Alexander Stubb, says the decision is a "foregone conclusion". 

Sweden is also looking afresh at Nato - the country's ruling Social Democrat party is reviewing its historic opposition to joining the alliance. 

But Russian spokesmen have repeatedly said any expansion of Nato would be considered a "provocation" and warned there would be "consequences".

The presidents of four countries on Russia’s doorstep visited Ukraine on Wednesday and underscored their support for the embattled country, where they saw heavily damaged buildings and demanded accountability for what they called war crimes carried out by Russian forces, Associated Press reported.

The visit by the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia was a strong show of solidarity from the countries on NATO’s eastern flank, three of them like Ukraine once part of the Soviet Union. The leaders traveled by train to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, to meet with their counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and visited Borodyanka, one of the nearby towns where evidence of atrocities was found after Russian troops withdrew to focus on the country’s east. 

“The fight for Europe’s future is happening here,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said, calling for tougher sanctions, including against Russia’s oil and gas shipments and all the country’s banks. 

Elsewhere, in one of the most crucial battles of the war, Russia said more than 1,000 Ukrainian troops had surrendered in the besieged southern port of Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces have been holding out in pockets of the city. A Ukrainian official denied the claim, which could not be verified. 

Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly one. But the ground advance slowly stalled and Russia lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee. It also has rattled the world economy, threatened global food supplies and shattered Europe’s post-Cold War balance.

A day after he called Russia’s actions in Ukraine “a genocide,” US President Joe Biden approved $800 million in new military assistance to Ukraine, saying weapons from the West have sustained Ukraine’s fight so far and “we cannot rest now.” The munitions include artillery systems, armored personnel carriers and helicopters, according to the Associated Press.

Appearing alongside Zelenskyy in an ornate room in Kyiv’s historic Mariinskyi Palace on Wednesday, Nauseda, Estonian President Alar Karis, Poland’s Andrzej Duda and Egils Levits of Latvia reiterated their commitment to supporting Ukraine politically and with military aid.

“We know this history. We know what Russian occupation means. We know what Russian terrorism means,” Duda said. He added that both those who committed war crimes and those who gave the orders should be held accountable.

“If someone sends aircraft, if someone sends troops to shell residential districts, kill civilians, murder them, this is not war,” he said. “This is cruelty, this is banditry, this is terrorism.”

In his daily late-night address, Zelenskyy noted that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, visited the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where more than 400 bodies were found, on Wednesday as an ICC investigation gets underway. Evidence of mass killings of civilians was found there after the Russian retreat.

“It is inevitable that the Russian troops will be held responsible. We will drag everyone to a tribunal, and not only for what was done in Bucha,” Zelenskyy said late Wednesday, Associated Press reported.

He also said work was continuing to clear tens of thousands of unexploded shells, mines and trip wires left behind in northern Ukraine by the departing Russians. He urged people returning to homes to be wary of any unfamiliar objects and report them to police.

Also Wednesday, a report commissioned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found “clear patterns of (international humanitarian law) violations by the Russian forces in their conduct of hostilities.” It was written by experts selected by Ukraine and published by the Vienna-based organization, which promotes security and human rights, according to the Associated Press.

The man accused of shooting 10 people on a Brooklyn subway train was arrested Wednesday and charged with a federal terrorism offense after the suspect called police to come get him, law enforcement officials said, Associated Press reported.

Frank R. James, 62, was taken into custody about 30 hours after the violence on a rush-hour train, which left people around the city on edge. 

“My fellow New Yorkers, we got him,” Mayor Eric Adams said.

James was due to appear in court Thursday on a charge that pertains to terrorist or other violent attacks against mass transit systems and carries a sentence of up to life in prison, Brooklyn US Attorney Breon Peace said.

In recent months, James railed in videos on his YouTube channel about racism and violence in the US and about his struggles with mental health care in New York City, and he criticized Adams’ policies on mental health and subway safety. But the motive for the subway attack remains unclear, and there’s no indication James had ties to terror organizations, international or otherwise, Peace said.

James didn’t respond to reporters’ shouted questions as he was led to a police car Wednesday afternoon. He was transferred hours later to federal Bureau of Prisons custody and was being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. A message seeking comment was sent to a lawyer representing him, according to the Associated Press.

Police had urged the public to help find him, releasing his name and photo and even sending a cellphone alert before they got a tip Wednesday.

The tipster was James, calling to say he knew he was wanted and that police could find him at a McDonald’s in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood, two law enforcement officials said. They weren’t authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

James was gone when officers arrived, but he was soon spotted on a busy corner nearby, Chief of Department Kenneth Corey said. 

Passer-by Aleksei Korobow said he saw four police cars zoom past, and when he caught up to them, James was in handcuffs as a crowd of people looked on. 

“There was nowhere left for him to run,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said.

The arrest came as the gunshot victims, and at least a dozen others injured in the attack, tried to recover. 

“I don’t think I could ever ride a train again,” Hourari Benkada, a Manhattan hotel housekeeping manager who was shot in the leg, told CNN from a hospital bed, Associated Press reported.

Gov. Kathy Hochul visited victims as young as 12 in a hospital Tuesday night. One had been heading to class at Borough of Manhattan Community College when he was hit by either a bullet or shrapnel and needed surgery, the governor said. 

Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry said an 18-year-old Guatemalan national, Rudy Alfredo Pérez Vásquez, was hospitalized but “out of danger” Wednesday after being injured in the attack. 

James detonated two smoke grenades and fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm handgun in a subway car packed with commuters, police said. 

When the first smoke bomb went off, a passenger asked what he was doing, according to a witness account to police. 

“Oops,” James said, set off a second, then brandished the gun and opened fire, Chief of Detectives James Essig said.

When the train stopped at a station and terrified riders fled, James apparently hopped another train — the same one many were steered to for safety, police said. He got out at the next station, disappearing into the nation’s most populous city. 

But James left behind numerous clues at the crime scene, including the gun — which he bought in Ohio in 2011 — ammunition magazines, a hatchet, smoke grenades, gasoline, a bank card in his name and the key to a U-Haul van he rented Monday in Philadelphia, according to police and a court complaint, according to the Associated Press.

Tucked in an orange workers’ jacket, which he apparently tossed on a subway platform, was a receipt for a Philadelphia storage unit. Authorities found ammunition, targets and a pistol barrel in the storage locker and learned he’d been there on Monday, the complaint said.

The van was found, unoccupied, near a station where investigators believe James entered the subway system. 

Surveillance cameras captured the van arriving from Philadelphia early Tuesday, and a man wearing what appeared to be the same orange jacket leaving the vehicle near the station.

James was born in New York but had lived recently in Philadelphia and Milwaukee, authorities said. Bruce Allen, a neighbor near a Philadelphia apartment where James stayed for the last couple of weeks, said the man never spoke to him, even when moving in.

James had worked at a variety of manufacturing and other jobs, according to his videos. Police said he’d been arrested 12 times in New York and New Jersey between 1990 and 2007 on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to possession of burglary tools, but he has no felony convictions.

His hours of disjointed, expletive-filled videos range from current events, to his life story, to bigoted remarks about people of various backgrounds. James is Black, according to the Associated Press.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and a team led by Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal held a meeting on Wednesday.

During the meeting held at the Prime Minister Deuba's official residence in Baluwatar, they discussed the implementation of a three-point agreement signed between the government and the Communist Party of Nepal and the local level elections slated for May 13.

Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand, Nepali Congress Vice-President Purna Bahadur Khadka, Attorney General Khamma Bahadur Khati, Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey along with the Prime Minister from the government and General Secretary Chand and spokesperson Khadka Bahadur Bishwokarma from the Communist Party of Nepal were present in the meeting.

On the occasion, the Communist Party of Nepal urged the government to release the party's cadres and withdraw cases against at the earliest.

Prime Minister Deuba said that the government is committed to implement the three-point agreement signed with the Communist Party of Nepal.

Some disagreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Nepal Rastra Bank, the central bank, is not only expected but also desirable. The bank has a high level of autonomy so that it can craft monetary policies and regulations with minimal political meddling. The exercise of this autonomy can often cause friction with the finance ministry, which works with a different set of priorities. Only with the right balance between the functioning of these two entities can the country’s economy hum along. The goal is not to remove the friction but to use it to come up with carefully-weighed monetary and fiscal measures.

 Finance Minister Janardan Sharma, on the other hand, seems to believe that the central bank’s leadership should be beholden to him and seek his guidance every step of the way. He proposed for the removal of Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari—a proposal that Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba promptly endorsed—on the charge that Adhikari refused to heed him on vital matters and leaked sensitive information to the press. Minister Sharma has furnished no good proof to substantiate his claims. Instead, recent media stories suggest his main gripe with Adhikari was that the latter refused to follow through on some of Sharma’s dubious directives.

 This is the first time Nepal’s sitting central bank governor has been removed for insubordination. A horrible precedent has been set at a time the economy is battling strong headwinds and steady hands at the central bank are desperately wanted. Even PM Deuba seems to have acted out of spite: Adhikari had reportedly blocked one of Deuba’s chief financiers from expatriating his money. This kind of reckless governance at such a sensitive time could cause grievous damage to the economy that is already battered by the prolonged pandemic and ever-widening trade deficit.  

 All evidence suggests it is not Adhikari who should be fired but the finance minister who seems to lack even basic understanding of the economy’s functioning or the limits to his powers. PM Deuba has miscalculated. With the public uproar Adhikari’s untimely sacking has caused, he and his party could have to pay for it in the upcoming elections–—and rightly so.

Nepal reported 19 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 3, 349 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 16 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 336 people underwent antigen tests, of which four were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 49 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 520 active cases in the country.