President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has fled Sri Lanka in a military jet, amid mass protests over the island's economic crisis. The country's air force confirmed the 73-year-old flew to the Maldives with his wife and two security officials.

In central Africa a giant slab of carbon-rich peat land, discovered by a team of British and Congolese scientists, is under threat from oil companies and farming. The carbon must be kept in the ground to avoid accelerating climate change, but some plots...