World funders under pressure

The spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are beginning in Washington - the major global financial institutions are gathering at a time of profound concern about the problem of persistent inflation, and concern about the health of the banking system after a number of failures of regional banks and wobbles in giant finance houses like Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. President Joe Biden arrives in the province on Tuesday to join ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement. He will be meeting business leaders there - and that's significant because business problems with the post-Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland have been a big factor in the current failure to re-establish devolved government. And Jorge Luis Borges was Argentina's most famous writer - his works, including The Book of Sand, The Aleph and Universal History of Infamy, and he was a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. He died in 1986 and his wife Maria Kodama became the fervent guardian of his literary estate. She was very strict over how her husband's work could be used, but she died at the end of March, and didn't leave a will. So now rights to the works of have fallen into limbo...