News 11:00

BULLETIN 21 January 11 am

Good morning. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# Eskom is focused on delivering one year without load-shedding in March
# Trump withdraws the US from the World Health Organisation
# And tennis: Paula Badosa and Alexander Zverev are through to the Australian Open semifinals

# At midnight, South Africa reached 300 consecutive days without load-shedding, with Eskom attributing this to the implementation of the Generation Recovery Plan. The power utility says this milestone has been characterised by a significant reduction in unplanned outages, an improvement in the energy availability factor of approximately seven-percent, and savings in diesel expenditure of 16.42-billion-rand. Eskom’s spokesperson, Daphne Mokwena, says the focus is on delivering one year without load-shedding at midnight on March 26:

# The DA is calling for the establishment of a centralised intelligence hub to combat illegal mining syndicates and their extortion activities. Following the escape of alleged illegal mining kingpin James Tshoaeli in Stilfontein, North West, the party argues that effective crime intelligence is crucial to dismantling these criminal networks. The DA’s Ian Cameron urges collaboration within law enforcement to fight illegal mining and restore safety to communities affected by these syndicates:

# Only 13 Tshwane councillors voted against the proposed five-percent salary increase and 166 in favour. This will be the first salary hike for councillors since 2018/’19. The increase, backdated to July 2024, is currently awaiting approval from Gauteng’s MEC for Cooperative Governance. Tshwane’s finances are still under severe pressure with Eskom listing it as its fourth biggest debtor, having been 6.7-billion-rand in arrears at the end of November. Councillor Lex Middelberg says he opposed the increase because the metro’s debtor’s book debt is at its highest ever.

# President Donald Trump has signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation, citing the global health agency’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and failure to adopt urgently needed reforms. America is by far the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18-percent of its overall funding. This move will see the US leave the organisation within a year from the official notification. Trump says the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from America, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments, including China.

# Tennis: Former world number two Paula Badosa is through to her first career Grand Slam semifinal after defeating world number three Coco Gauff in the Australian Open quarterfinals. The Spaniard, who had a career-threatening back injury, beat the American, 7-5, 6-4, her first-ever top-ten victory at a major. In the men’s draw, Germany’s Alexander Zverev battled past American Tommy Paul in four sets to make his third semifinal in Melbourne. Badosa says making the semifinals is an amazing personal achievement:

# And the financial indicators: The dollar trades at 18-rand-61-cents and the euro at 19-rand-30-cents. One British pound costs 22-rand-82-cents and Bitcoin trades at 102-thousand-126-dollars. Gold sells at two-thousand-723-dollars-93-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 78-dollars-97-cents a barrel.

Stay tuned for more news………….