Sri Lanka speaker warns crisis risks starvation

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's crippling economic crisis risks causing starvation across the island nation of 22 million while acute shortages of essentials and debilitating blackouts will get worse, the head of the legislature warned on Wednesday.

Scarce supplies of food and fuel, along with record inflation and electricity rationing, have inflicted widespread misery in the country's most painful downturn since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1948.