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Thailand’s major oil refineries continue to operate smoothly and supply the nation with refined oil despite escalating conflict in the Middle East, according to the Federation of Thai Industries’ Petroleum Refining Industry Club.
The assurance comes as global energy markets brace for prolonged instability following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for oil and gas.
The club noted that imported crude oil accounts for 90% of Thailand’s total oil consumption. Traditionally, nearly 70% of this crude has originated from the Middle East.
However, the ongoing war in Iran has disrupted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, forcing oil companies to diversify their sources.
Rungnapa Janchookiat, chairwoman of the club, said Thailand’s refineries remain resilient in the face of global supply challenges.
Recent procurement strategies have shifted towards West Africa and the US, reducing reliance on Middle Eastern supplies.
The proportion of crude sourced from the Middle East has dropped from nearly 70% under normal circumstances to just 30%, with shipments rerouted through ports outside the Strait of Hormuz, she said.
In addition, refineries have adopted precautionary measures such as accelerating crude procurement, expanding floating storage capacity and temporarily increasing refined oil reserves. These steps have raised oil stock levels above normal, providing a buffer against potential disruptions, Mrs Rungnapa said.
Meanwhile, PTT Plc, Thailand’s national oil and gas conglomerate, is intensifying efforts to secure more liquefied natural gas (LNG) as domestic supplies dwindle.
LNG is a critical fuel for electricity generation, and the company is shifting its procurement strategy to safeguard energy stability.
Before the Middle East conflict, PTT relied heavily on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. That reliance has now been cut to less than half of total LNG imports, reflecting disruptions to global supply routes.
Gas from the Gulf of Thailand, once the backbone of supply at 70%, has fallen to 54%. Myanmar’s contribution has also declined, from 30% to just 11%.
Imported LNG now accounts for 35% of the country’s total supply, underscoring the growing dependence on overseas sources.
In an environment shaped by rapid digitalisation, heightened fraud risk, and increasingly intrusive regulatory scrutiny, Sri Lankan financial institutions are under growing pressure to demonstrate that risks are not merely documented, but genuinely understood and managed.
Against this backdrop, the Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSA) often viewed as a routine compliance exercise, remains as one of the most powerful tools available to boards and senior management when designed and applied with discipline. Aligned with Basel principles and global best practice, RCSA can evolve from a regulatory obligation into a strategic pillar of operational resilience.
The transformation of banking through digital channels, outsourcing arrangements and higher transaction volumes have fundamentally altered the operational risk landscape. Risks today are faster moving, interconnected and more difficult to detect through traditional controls alone. Experience from major global and regional loss events shows a consistent pattern: institutions rarely fail because risks were unknown, but because they were underestimated, poorly challenged, or over reliant on controls that existed on paper. A robust RCSA provides management with a structured mechanism to surface emerging vulnerabilities early and assess whether controls remain effective in practice.
RCSA: Beyond the checklist
At its core, RCSA is a structured self-assessment through which business units identify key operational risks, evaluate control effectiveness, and determine residual risk exposure. Its credibility depends on clear business ownership. International standards, including Basel guidance adopted by local supervisors, are explicit that risk identification and assessment must sit with the first line of defence.
The role of the risk management function is not to complete RCSAs on behalf of the business, but to facilitate the process, challenge assumptions, and calibrate assessments. Where RCSA becomes a risk team driven exercise, its value to senior management diminishes rapidly.
Equally important is clarity between inherent risk and residual risk, and between preventive and detective controls. Many institutions underestimate inherent risk simply because controls exist, creating false comfort. RCSA, when applied honestly, forces management to confront whether controls genuinely operate under stress, and whether the balance between prevention and detection is appropriate for the institution’s risk profile. When done well, RCSA supports better decision-making, informs capital and stress-testing discussions, and enables focused control prioritisation.
Why regulators and boards care
RCSA is firmly embedded in international supervisory frameworks. Under the Basel Committee’s principles for sound operational risk management, RCSA underpins risk identification, risk appetite monitoring and scenario analysis. Its outputs feed directly into capital adequacy assessments, operational risk stress testing and loss data analysis. Weak or overly optimistic RCSA outcomes therefore, undermine not only risk management, but the credibility of broader governance processes reviewed by supervisors.
Professional bodies such as GARP and PRMIA reinforce this perspective, positioning RCSA as a forward looking qualitative tool that complements historical loss data. The COSO Internal Control Framework further links RCSA to control activities and monitoring, reinforcing its role as a bridge between risk identification and effective internal control. For boards, the quality of RCSA has increasingly become a proxy for overall risk management maturity.
Common failures and hard lessons
Despite widespread adoption, recurring weaknesses continue to undermine RCSA effectiveness. These include treating RCSA as an annual compliance exercise, reusing risk registers without reflecting changes in business models, inflating control effectiveness ratings, and failing to link RCSA outcomes to incidents, near misses and corrective actions. Supervisory experience globally shows that weak RCSA frameworks are often a precursor to material operational losses.
Making RCSA a management tool
The true test of RCSA lies in the actions it drives. High quality RCSAs translate into clear action plans, meaningful Key Risk Indicators, focused scenario analysis and concise board-level reporting. Each material risk must have clear ownership, timelines and follow-up. If RCSA does not influence behaviour or resource allocation, it has failed.
Culture and digital reality
Ultimately, RCSA effectiveness depends on risk culture. Honest self-assessment, openness to challenge and the confidence to escalate control weaknesses are essential. These behaviours, supported by clear accountability across the three lines of defence, determine whether RCSA is merely completed or genuinely useful. As banking becomes increasingly digital, RCSA frameworks must also evolve, moving away from static risk registers towards dynamic, event driven assessments that reflect real time changes in risk exposure.
Conclusion
RCSA was never intended to be a scoring exercise. At its best, it is a disciplined management process that helps institutions understand vulnerabilities, prioritise controls and protect customers, shareholders and the financial system. Banks that take RCSA seriously detect issues earlier, reduce losses and build regulatory confidence. For boards and senior management, the challenge is no longer whether RCSA is performed, but whether it is used as a strategic tool for resilience in an increasingly complex operating environment.
The Venezuela government Friday warned of a new oil spill originating from Trinidad and Tobago saying it had been confirmed by satellite imagery.
‘This event surpasses in magnitude, the one that occurred in May and confirms the movement of contaminants into Venezuelan waters, posing risks to marine ecosystems fishing activity and coastal communities,’ the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The government of Trinidad and Tobago has not yet officially responded to the statement but in May, Port of Spain said it had dealt adequately with an oil spill that had been detected at the start of the month, even as Caracas complained to the international community that the spill had caused environmental damage in the Gulf of Paria and along coastal areas of Sucre and Delta Amacuro.
In a statement, the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries (MEEI) said that the oil spill detected in the Main Field on May 1 was stopped on the same day, repaired and returned to service the following day.
In its latest statement, Caracas said the ‘competent Venezuelan state agencies have activated the necessary monitoring and mitigation protocols to protect the affected coasts’.
It said that Venezuela ‘demands that the government of Trinidad and Tobago fully assume its responsibility, adopting immediate measures to prevent further incidents and guaranteeing full transparency regarding th causes, scope and consequences of this spill.
‘Furthermore it reserves the right to take appropriate action before the competent international bodies to determine responsibility, demand any applicable compensation and prevent the recurrence of similar events’.
Caracas said it reaffirms ‘its unwavering commitment to the protection of the environment , life and the defense of its marine species’.
Today is an important day for Europe because of the implementation of the EU Migration Pact, Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Athanasios Plevris said at his doorstep statement at the Informal Ministerial Meeting on the European Pact on Migration and Asylum taking place in Nicosia, in the framework of Cyprus EU Presidency.
Referring to the implementation of the Pact starting today, he noted that a common European migration policy is essentially introduced for the first time. The Greek Minister added that in combination with the regulation on returns that is being finalized during the Cyprus Presidency, as well as the regulation on safe countries, it sends a clear message regarding the treatment of irregular migration that Europe ”is not friendly to anyone who comes illegally”.
Plevris said that the new European approach foresees that those who enter the EU illegally and whose asylum applications are rejected will be returned to their countries of origin through expedited procedures.
He added that Greece and Cyprus face intense migration pressures due to their geographical location. The Minister went on to say that the implementation of a common European policy creates the expectation that the returns of irregular migrants and the protection of the external borders of the EU will be key priorities in the context of managing migration.
A dispute between the Treasury and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) over accountability for the $ 2.5 million cyber theft involving public funds has come under scrutiny at the Committee on Public Finance (CoPF), with Chairman Dr. Harsha de Silva warning that weak systems, outdated technology, and unclear lines of responsibility had created a situation where institutions are now shifting blame onto one another.
The Committee recently examined a report submitted by the Finance Ministry on the loss of $ 2.5 million that had been held by the Treasury for the settlement of Government debt obligations.
Speaking to the media following the meeting, Dr. de Silva said discussions revealed sharply differing positions between the Treasury and the CBSL regarding responsibility for the incident.
‘Two different viewpoints were presented regarding who should be held accountable for this situation,’ he said. ‘One view, in the Treasury report, was that the CBSL must bear significant responsibility for this. However, the CBSL expressed a different opinion on the matter.’
CBSL Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe and Treasury Secretary Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma attended the proceedings, alongside officials from the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team (SLCERT) and other agencies.
According to Dr. de Silva, the CBSL has been provided with a copy of the Treasury report and has undertaken to submit its formal response within a week. The Committee will then review both submissions before preparing a final report to Parliament.
While the question of responsibility remains contested, Dr. de Silva said the proceedings had exposed significant weaknesses in existing procedures governing the handling of Government debt payments and cyber-related incidents.
He said the CBSL had informed the Finance Ministry once suspicions emerged that the incident could involve anti-money laundering concerns, but questions remained regarding subsequent actions taken by officials.
‘The dispute lies in the actual actions taken after that notification. Questions remain over whether they informed their higher-ranking officials or not. And if not, why they failed to do so,’ he said.
Dr. de Silva argued that a properly designed system with clearly defined responsibilities would have prevented the current dispute.
‘If a proper system or clear guidelines had been in place, everyone would have known exactly who held what responsibility. If that were the case, there would be no room to keep shifting the blame back and forth from one side to the other,’ he said.
One of the most concerning revelations to emerge from the discussions was the state of the Treasury’s information technology infrastructure.
According to Dr. de Silva, the fraudulent transactions originated through email communications and investigations revealed that the Finance Ministry had been operating an email server without cybersecurity support for approximately five years.
‘In an era with this level of cybersecurity risk, serious questions arise as to how a primary Government institution could be using an email server that lacked cybersecurity support,’ he said.
The cyber theft has triggered investigations by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Police, and forensic auditors.
Dr. de Silva also highlighted the financial implications of the incident, stating that the loss would ultimately be borne by taxpayers if recovery efforts prove unsuccessful.
‘There is no doubt that $ 2.5 million was stolen from the Treasury,’ he said.
Referring to evidence provided before the Committee, Dr. de Silva said Finance Secretary Dr. Suriyapperuma had confirmed that any funds not recovered would have to be absorbed by the Government and reflected through a future Budget adjustment.
The issue has renewed concerns over cyber resilience across the public sector, internal controls within Government institutions, and the management of public funds, particularly as Sri Lanka increasingly digitises Treasury and debt management operations.
The Committee is expected to revisit the matter after receiving the CBSL’s response, with lawmakers seeking to determine accountability and identify reforms needed to prevent similar incidents in the future.
A meeting between the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, María Ángela Holguín, and the President of the Republic, Nikos Christodoulides, is currently underway at the Presidential Palace.
This is Holguín’s second meeting with President Christodoulides since her arrival in Cyprus last Sunday.
Earlier on Friday afternoon, at 3.00 pm, Holguín also met again with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhrman.
Holguín’s meetings with the two leaders follow the initial talks she held with them separately on Monday.
The Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General is expected to depart the island on Sunday and subsequently travel to Athens and Ankara for further contacts as part of preparations for a 5+1 meeting on Cyprus.
As she stated following her meeting with President Christodoulides on Monday, she is preparing, together with the UN Secretary-General, for a 5+1 meeting, expressing optimism that the ongoing efforts would lead to such a gathering.
Government Spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said earlier this week that the aim was to convene a new informal meeting on Cyprus, most likely during the last week of July or the first week of August.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Repeated rounds of UN-led peace talks have so far failed to yield results due to Turkish intransigence. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana ended inconclusively.
In 2025 the Secretary-General hosted two informal meetings on Cyprus, in March in Geneva and in July in New York, while a tripartite meeting with the Cyprus leaders was also held in late September, at the end of the UN General Assembly High Level Week. An informal meeting in broader format that was expected to take place before the end of 2025, is yet to be announced. María Angela Holguín, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy on Cyprus, is tasked to engage with the parties.
June 12-14 puts Le Mans, Formula 1, the World Cup, the NBA Finals, and the Stanley Cup Final into the same crowded frame, turning a feast of live sports into a test of attention, logistics, and what still gets to feel singular.
In one June weekend in 2026, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Formula 1’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, and the opening wave of World Cup group games all land at once.
In the United States, that pile-up also runs straight into the NBA’s endgame, with the Knicks playing meaningful June basketball on the road in San Antonio, and the Stanley Cup Final still in play. It sounds like a gift for sports fans; in practice, it is global and domestic products crammed into a single stretch of days, fighting over the same screens, plazas, and attention.
The questions practically write themselves. Will a Ford Mustang GT3 win the LMGT3 class at Le Mans? Will Andrea Kimi Antonelli take a sixth grand prix for Mercedes? Will the Knicks finally carry a trophy out of San Antonio? Will the United States win its first World Cup game on home soil in this tournament? Will Carolina lift its first Stanley Cup in twenty years, after its only previous title back in 2006? All five of those answers will be decided in roughly the same window, often within hours of one another.
Le Mans and the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix are not supposed to compete with each other. For decades, each has had its own lane: a 24-hour endurance race in rural France, and a two-hour Formula 1 stop on the edge of Barcelona. In June 2026, they will share the same weekend, just as the World Cup gets underway across North America and the NBA calendar pushes deep into its final rounds. For an American racing fan who has just spent a weekend on the sidewalks of Monaco and come home to New York, the contrast is sharp: one race owning a three-day window on the Riviera, followed by a month at home where no event gets the stage to itself. This time, the 24 hours are not just in France; the whole weekend behaves like an endurance test for anyone trying to follow, or work, all of it.
In Monaco, the subject had been simple. For three days, the only thing that mattered was Formula 1, plus the odd Formula 2 session and Porsche Supercup race that felt like undercards to the main show. The harbor knew its role, the grandstands knew theirs, the city surrendered its streets. The photographers could count on every angle being useful to someone; the fans could count on every conversation circling back to who had the best line through the Swimming Pool, or whether the chicane needed to be rebuilt from scratch. Once you got there, you were in that world until you left.
Back in New York, the world refuses to sort itself out that cleanly. The Knicks, who had spent most of the last two decades as a punchline, are finally deep into June again, this time in an NBA Finals series that swings to San Antonio. The Carolina Hurricanes, whose only Stanley Cup banner has been hanging in Raleigh since 2006, are once again close enough to taste another. Across the continent, World Cup matches drop into U.S. time zones at odd hours, attempting to coexist with baseball matinees, graduation parties, and whatever else summer wants to be. Le Mans, which once occupied a distant, romantic space in American sports consciousness, is now just another thing that has to justify the real estate it takes up on a screen.
For the person whose job it is to point cameras at all of this, there is no way to be everywhere. The weekend’s logistics become a game of triage and compromise. You can fly to Texas and live inside the Knicks’ hotel for 72 hours, or you can stay in New York and piece their story together from feed rooms and remote interviews. You can chase a Cup Final atmosphere in Raleigh or Edmonton, or you can let someone else own that ice while you play traffic cop in a Manhattan control room. You can try to catch Le Mans overnight on a side monitor, knowing that at any given moment some producer may decide that a mid-inning pitching change in Queens matters more to the show.
On paper, this all looks like abundance: more big events, more storylines, more chances to be in the right place when something historic happens. In practice, it starts to feel like erosion. There is no local build-up, no singular civic focus, no moment when a whole city adjusts its weekend around one event the way Monaco does. The Knicks are fighting for attention with a World Cup opener two time zones away. The Cup Final is fighting the background noise of a baseball season that never stops. Le Mans, running overnight in France, is reduced to a highlight package squeezed between an MLS recap and a late-night talk show guest.
What makes Monaco feel special is not just the cars or the harbor or the glamour; it is the fact that everything else agrees to get out of the way. The race takes primacy, and the rest of the world, for a few days, has to come find it on its terms. In the United States in June 2026, nothing gets that treatment. The World Cup does not clear a lane for the NBA. The NBA does not clear a lane for the NHL. Le Mans does not expect the U.S. to rearrange itself for a race that starts in the morning Eastern time and ends at the same time on Sunday. Everything is live, all at once, and every decision about what to watch or where to work is less about passion than about bandwidth.
For the fan who grew up watching Carolina win its first Cup on a school night in 2006, or sneaking looks at Le Mans timing screens in a computer lab, this is both a dream and a loss. On one hand, the games that used to arrive in isolation-as grainy late-night broadcasts or next-day newspaper box scores-are suddenly in your pocket, every second available live. On the other, the rituals that made those nights feel singular are harder to build when nothing is allowed to stand alone. The Hurricanes might win another Cup, but they will do it in a landscape where their parade shares algorithmic space with a group-stage upset in Houston and a viral angle of Andrea Kimi Antonelli threading the final chicane in Barcelona.
By the time that Sunday afternoon comes, the surface will look familiar. Le Mans will be counting down its final hours. Barcelona will crown a winner. The World Cup will move on to its next set of matches. In San Antonio, the Knicks and Spurs will already have played the night before. On ice in another city, the Cup may or may not be lifted that evening, with Carolina still chasing a second title two decades after its first. Somewhere in those same hours, Ford’s Mustang GT3 effort will have either justified the hype in LMGT3 or fallen short, Andrea Kimi Antonelli will have either added a sixth Grand Prix win or stalled on five, the United States will have either made a statement in its first match or stumbled, and Carolina will either still be chasing or finally holding the Cup again. The difference will lie in what did not happen: the trips never taken, the races or games half-watched, and the stories that might have carried a weekend by themselves, but instead had to fight just to be noticed.
SriLankan Airlines said it has entered into strategic partnerships with Saudia (SV) and Flynas (XY), further strengthening air travel links between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. This collaboration significantly expands SriLankan Airlines’ network reach, enabling travellers to access a wider range of destinations through convenient domestic and international connections.
Under this arrangement, Saudia provides access to seven international and thirteen domestic destinations, while Flynas contributes an additional eight international and six domestic destinations, offering passengers greater travel flexibility and improved accessibility across the Kingdom.
Through Saudia’s network, passengers can connect from destinations including Amman, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Cairo, Dubai, Kuwait City and Los Angeles, together with key domestic points such as Jeddah, Abha, Madinah and Tabuk, among others across Saudi Arabia. Flynas further extends the network with international services from Addis Ababa, Karachi, Giza, Tashkent and Sohag, alongside domestic connectivity from cities including Jizan, Najran, Dammam and Jeddah.
Passengers travelling from across Saudi Arabia can now connect seamlessly via Riyadh and Dammam onto SriLankan Airlines’ daily services to Colombo, with onward access to destinations throughout the airline’s international network. SriLankan Airlines currently operates daily flights from both Riyadh and Dammam to Colombo, catering to growing demand for business, leisure and visiting-friends-and-relatives (VFR) travel between the two countries.
Head – Commercial Dimuthu Tennakoon said, ‘This partnership represents an important step in expanding SriLankan Airlines’ presence across Saudi Arabia while strengthening links to key destinations in the Middle East, Africa and North America. Working together with Saudia and Flynas enables us to offer customers smoother connections from multiple regional and international destinations into Sri Lanka and beyond.’
Commenting on the partnership, Saudi Arabia Manager Thusitha Wickramasinghe said: ‘We are delighted to partner with Saudia and Flynas to further strengthen air travel links between Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. This collaboration offers passengers greater convenience, expanded travel options and seamless journeys across our combined networks, while enhancing the overall travel experience through improved network integration.’
SriLankan Airlines connects passengers to 131 destinations across 63 countries through its own services and codeshare partnerships, while operating direct services to 34 destinations worldwide. Its network spans Europe, Australia, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and the Far East. The airline operates an all-Airbus fleet comprising state-of-the-art A330-200/300 and A320/321 aircraft.
Under the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU, the European Union is moving ahead with the opening of the first Cluster of Chapters in the accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, within the framework of two Intergovernmental Conferences to be held on Monday, 15 June. The development follows agreement among the Permanent Representatives of the EU member states, who capitalised on the momentum generated after Hungary lifted its two-year veto last week.
The first Cluster covers the fundamental values and principles underpinning the European Union, from the rule of law and democratic institutions to judicial independence. It represents the most substantive phase of the accession process, forming the backbone of the negotiations.
In a statement, the Cyprus Presidency noted it is “proud to have driven forward this historic moment”, adding: “As Presidency, we worked intensively to reach this outcome. This is a milestone and a recognition of the aspirations, resilience and hard work of the two candidates that have chosen Europe and its values. As we take this important step together, we reaffirm that the European Union is strongest when it stands united, principled and open to those committed to its values.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa described the development as decisive for the future of the EU. In a joint statement, they said: “Today, the European Union took a major step forward. All Member States agreed to open the first accession negotiations cluster with Ukraine and Moldova. At the first Intergovernmental Conference on Monday, we will open the cluster on fundamentals, the backbone of the accession process.”
“This is a recognition of the determination, courage and hard work shown by both countries in advancing reforms, even in the face of immense challenges. And a signal that the EU’s offer of peace, stability and opportunity is unmatchable,” von der Leyen and Costa added. The two EU leaders described enlargement as “a strategic choice”.
“By bringing our nations closer together, we strengthen peace, security and prosperity across our continent. In a world marked by growing uncertainty, a larger European Union is in our common interest. Enlargement remains one of the EU’s greatest success stories and our best investment in our shared future,” they concluded.
The Intergovernmental Conferences, the formal bilateral meetings at which representatives of EU member states and a candidate country conduct accession negotiations, will be held at ministerial level in Luxembourg, where EU Councils traditionally convene during the month of June.