Hello, and welcome to the Week Ahead from the Financial Times
in London.
Here are some of the big stories we'll be watching this week.
The US and South Korea meets to discuss North Korea.
Colombians go to the polls for a new president.
UK bellwether retailer and Spencer
faces uncertain results.
French President Emmanuel Macron has
talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir
Putin on Iran and Ukraine.
And Ireland votes on whether to lift a ban on abortion.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in
heads to Washington on Tuesday, where
he'll meet with US President Donald Trump.
The top of the agenda will be North Korea,
which last week sparked a flurry of concern when it raised
the possibility of cancelling a potentially historic summit
with the US on June the 12th where Mr Trump is due to meet
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.
Mr Moon's visit is aimed at sharing tips and strategies
ahead of the highly anticipated summit
and to keep talks on track, as his spokesperson made clear
recently.
Colombians are likely to buck the global populist trend
in presidential elections this week
and vote for a centre-right candidate
from the establishment.
Ivan Duque, 41, a protege of former President Alvaro Uribe,
comfortably leads polls with 34% of the vote.
That lead is probably not enough for the youthful senator
to win outright in the first round vote,
but it's certainly enough to propel Mr Duque into the June
17th runoff.
There, his rival will most likely
be Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla and mayor of Bogota,
currently polling at 23%.
The often bitter electoral race has
been polarised by President Juan Manuel Santos'S
controversial peace deal with the Farc,
a Marxist guerrilla group, and the implosion of neighbouring
socialist Venezuela.
Sales of dresses in underwear used
to be what concerned investors in Marks and Spencer,
one of the UK's most famous retailers.
To that, they can now add food.
Retail correspondent Jonathan Eley
has more on what to expect from their results this week.
Marks and Spencer is perhaps the retailer
that's closest to the heart of British people,
so its fortunes matter enormously
in the national consciousness.
One thing we're looking out for is food sales.
They have traditionally been a driver of growth
at the store over the last few years.
At the interim results in November,
there was a slowdown in food.
They're not opening as many new food stores,
so it'll be interesting to see if that trend is
better or worse since then.
Another thing to watch, the mood music
between the chief executive Steve Rowe
who is a lifelong Marks and Spencer employee,
came from the shop floor, and Archie Norman,
the chairman who joined last September.
He's external, big reputation, veteran of many turnrounds,
very widely admired, but he's very hands on, very forthright,
very opinionated.
The two seem to be getting on so far.
They made a big show of unity at the interims in November.
But since then, there have been quite a few management
departures from Marks and Spencer,
so it will be interesting to see if their relations are still
holding firm.
French President Emmanuel Macron travels
to St Petersburg's International Economic Forum
this week for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir
Putin.
The encounter comes after US President Donald Trump's
decision to pull out from the Iran nuclear agreement,
and also following air strikes by the US, France,
and the UK against the Russian-supported Syrian regime
of Bashar al-Assad.
However, the EU is now more focused
on salvaging the Iranian nuclear deal,
notably with the help of Russia.
The 40-year-old French leader has sort of become
the favourite middle man between Mr Trump and Mr Putin.
And Irish voters go to the polls this Friday
in a referendum to repeal the country's constitutional ban
on abortion.
The abortion question is one of the most contentious
in the politics of a once strongly Catholic country that
voted in 2015 to legalise gay marriage,
but surveys suggest the campaign to remove the ban on abortion
has a large but narrowing lead.
And that's what the weak head looks like from the Financial
Times in London.
Goodbye.