News 13:00

BULLETIN 9 January 1 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# ActionSA wants the IEC to probe the ANC’s settlement of the Ezulweni Investments debt
# The Green Connection is pleased that Karpowership has lost grid space
# And Rugby: The Welsh and Lions legend J-P-R Williams dies at the age of 74

# ActionSA says it has written to IEC Party Funding chief executive, George Mahlangu, seeking an investigation into the ANC’s settlement of the over 102-million-rand debt with Ezulweni Investments. In December last year, the ANC reached an out-of-court settlement with Ezulweni Investments regarding a controversial 2019 marketing material contract. ActionSA’s national chairperson, Michael Beaumont, says South Africans must know how this debt was settled and whether it was settled in terms of a lawful arrangement:

# The Green Connection says it is pleased that Turkey’s Karpowership has lost its grid space reserved by Eskom because it did not meet the deadline for financial close on 31st December last year. Karpowership were last year granted access to the three ports of Durban, Ngqura and Saldanha Bay for a period of 20 years as part of the solution to the country’s energy crisis. Green Connection’s, Liz McDaid, says Karpowership has been a costly and controversial project:

# The resignation of France’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, is reportedly paving the way for president Emmanuel Macron to announce a cabinet reshuffle ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections later this year. She was the second female prime minister in France’s history and served for less than two years. Despite Borne’s relatively short tenure, she holds the record for being the longest-serving female prime minister, outlasting Édith Cresson’s term from 1991 to ’92.

# Rugby: Welsh and British Lions legend JPR Williams has died at the age of 74. The fullback was one of the stars of the Lions’ all-conquering 1974 tour of South Africa in which they won 21 of their 22 matches and drew the final Test against the Springboks. Williams also played for the Lions in the 1971 tour New Zealand. He represented Wales 55 times until his retirement in 1981, whereafter he returned to his career as a medical doctor.

# And finally: Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified by the naturally reoccurring El Niño climatic event, will by May push temperatures to as much as 1.7 Celsius above the average experienced before industrialisation. This is a warning by former National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist James Hansen. Governments meeting at the United Nations climate talks held in Dubai in December reaffirmed the previous commitment, made in Paris in 2015, to strive to restrain the global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius. Hansen says there needs to be purposeful actions to affect the planet’s energy balance.

Stay tuned for more news………….