News 13:00

BULLETIN 19 July 1 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# A massive global IT outage disrupts TV channels, airports, and banks
# Tax Justice SA says the Western Cape is ground-zero for illicit tobacco trade
# And Cape Town draws the curtain on the World Rugby Under-20 Championship

# A massive global outage has disrupted television channels, airports, and banks, causing Windows computers to shut down. Downdetector reported spikes in problems with Microsoft applications, banking websites, and airline apps. Cybersecurity experts suspect Crowdstrike antivirus software as the cause and calls it the largest IT outage in history. The issue involves a blue screen error with servers and devices getting stuck in boot loops. South Africa is also affected, while Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, and the UK are likely to be the most impacted countries.

# The EFF says the South African Reserve Bank’s blunt approach to monetary policy is extremely conservative and biased toward the financial sector. The bank’s monetary policy committee has kept the repo rate unchanged at 8.25-percent. It has remained unchanged for more than a year now. The EFF says government’s failure to put in place practical, believable, and effective economic measures, has resulted in disastrous levels of unemployment, poverty and crime.

Meanwhile, union federation Saftu says the continued high interest rates hinder economic growth and impact consumers. Spokesperson Trevor Shaku says the current economic landscape is characterised by job losses, wage disparities, and high interest rates, and the working class has borne the brunt of these financial challenges:

# The Western Cape has become the epicentre of South Africa’s rampant illicit tobacco trade, with three out of every four stores in the province selling tax-evading cigarettes. This is according to research by the global leader in market research Ipsos. Tax Justice SA founder, Yusuf Abramjee, says more than half of the illicit purchases in the research are linked to companies currently challenging the law that mandates the South African Revenue Service to install CCTV in their factories:

# The World Rugby Under 20 Championship, supported by the City of Cape Town, concludes at the Cape Town Stadium and Athlone Stadium today. The tournament has featured 24 games over the last three weeks. The Junior Springboks will get the action rolling in a seventh-place playoff against Wales at 2pm. Mayoral committee member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, says the championship game between France and England will kick off at 7pm:

# And the financial indicators: The dollar trades at 18-rand-32-cents and the euro at 19-rand-94-cents. One British pound costs 23-rand-66-cents and Bitcoin trades at 63-thousand-875-dollars-13-cents. Gold sells at two-thousand-415-dollars-63-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 85-dollars-9-cents a barrel.

Stay tuned for more news………….