Sri Lanka's stock market closed amid unrest

Sri Lanka's Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) declared Tuesday a market holiday as a nationwide curfew was imposed due to the unrest.

The CSE said in a statement that they had been informed that the Real Time Gross Settlement system of the central bank will not be operated on Tuesday. Thus, the Central Depository System of the CSE is unable to complete the fund settlement and the securities settlement falling on Tuesday as per the delivery versus payment settlement mechanism.

"In the circumstances, the CSE has declared Tuesday as a market holiday due to the aforesaid operational reasons," said the CSE. Over 200 people have been reportedly admitted to the Colombo National Hospital following the violent situation that erupted in Colombo on Monday.

Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as prime minister on Monday as violent protests broke out. President Gotabaya

Rajapaksa has condemned the violent acts, saying that violence won't solve current problems.

The South Sudan said Friday it has kicked off plans to nationalize the country's oil industry in the next five years.

Awou Daniel Chuang, Undersecretary in the Ministry of Petroleum told journalists in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, that the ministry has started the process of readying the oil sector to be nationalized and stop dependence on foreign help.

"When we talk about local content, we talk about maximizing the benefits and to maximize the number of people who are working in the oil industry but it does not mean it will be 100 percent, we have already reached 90 percent. For us to reach that level of nationalization, it will not take us less than five years for us to have quality engineers and quality managers, IT can take us about five years," Daniel said.

South Sudan, whose oil fields were destroyed during the civil war, has largely employed foreign engineers to produce and export the country's crude oil to Sudan, where it is processed and sent to the international market.

Daniel said the ministry has constructed a geological data center that will be used for training and technical operations for the institution as part of the nationalization process. He also said the government has purchased three aircrafts to be used for geological mapping of the areas in the country and it has as well constructed a hangar at the airport to facilitate the process.

Daniel, however, noted that the country's production of crude oil reduced by over 20,000 barrels per day over the last three years as a result of flooding in the country. He said the South Sudan government is working with Egypt to build dykes and drenches to address the challenge of flooding.

South Sudan is the most oil-dependent nation in the world, with oil accounting for almost the totality of exports, and around 60 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), according to the World Bank. British energy giant Shell on Thursday logged soaring first-quarter net profit as surging oil prices offset a sizeable charge linked to its Russia exit.

Profit after tax leapt 26 percent to $7.1 billion (6.7 billion euros) from a year earlier, Shell said in a statement.

While the group took a $3.9-billion charge on its exit from Russia after Moscow invaded Ukraine, it saw lower costs elsewhere. Underlying earnings spiked almost threefold to a quarterly record of $9.1 billion, sparking fresh calls in Britain for a windfall tax on energy majors.

UK consumers are enduring a cost-of-living crisis caused by the highest rate of inflation in decades, also as economies reopen from pandemic lockdowns.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who faces a key midterm test in local elections Thursday, has dismissed calls for a windfall levy on oil giants, arguing it would slow their efforts to invest in cleaner energy.

Yet environmental campaigners and opposition politicians are calling for a one-off tax to ease household budgets and curb reliance on fossil fuels.

"A windfall tax on these unexpected record profits of unimaginable sums would be the fastest and fairest way to ease pressure on households feeling the pinch and reduce our dependence on oil and gas, which is the root cause of the cost of living crisis," said Greenpeace UK's Philip Evans.