News 16:00

BULLETIN 13 August 4 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# Parliament refuses to probe minister Gayton McKenzie over alleged racial slurs 
# Russia calls today’s European diplomatic consultations on Ukraine insignificant
# And Cricket Australia’s CEO believes in better quality and not more Tests

# Parliament’s Ethics Committee will not investigate Sport, Arts and Culture minister Gayton McKenzie over tweets containing the K-word, saying they pre-date his time as Member of Parliament. The African Transformation Movement lodged the complaint, but Parliament ruled it fell outside the Code of Conduct. The Human Rights Commission is still considering a separate complaint filed by ActionSA. McKenzie has denied being racist, calling the allegations a political campaign, but admitted past tweets were insensitive and expressed regret.

# President Cyril Ramaphosa has hailed the African Union–AIP Water Investment Summit in Cape Town as a pivotal moment for Africa and the global movement for safe water access. Ramaphosa says the event aims to mobilise 535-billion-rand annually by 2030 to close Africa’s water investment gap. He also emphasised that the summit will facilitate investment matchmaking, and elevate water issues on major global platforms:

# Mahindra South Africa has opened a new vehicle assembly facility at the Dube TradePort special economic zone in KwaZulu-Natal. The facility can assemble more than one-thousand Pik Up single- and double-cab models per month, with capacity to increase as demand grows. It has also been designed to accommodate new models Mahindra plans to launch in the country in the coming years. eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba says the facility is a significant investment in the province:

Moving abroad:

# Russia branded as insignificant today’s European diplomatic consultations with Ukraine ahead of Friday’s planned summit between US president Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexey Fadeev says Moscow considers the consultations to be politically and practically unimportant. He says Europeans verbally support Washington and Moscow’s diplomatic efforts around Ukraine, while the European Union is sabotaging them. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders plan to hold urgent online talks with Trump later today.

# Cricket: The CEO of Cricket Australia believes Tests need better quality and not more matches to stay alive. Todd Greenberg marked the 100-day countdown to the start of the Ashes series against England. He says a slimmer Test calendar would be beneficial to smaller nations because the longest format could ruin their finances. Greenberg says the Ashes is enormous and profitable because of the huge interest it creates, describing it as the biggest sports event in Australia this year.  

# And the financial indicators: The dollar trades at 17-rand-51-cents and the euro at 20-rand-52-cents. One British pound costs 23-rand-76-cents and Bitcoin trades at 120-thousand-538-dollars. Gold sells at three-thousand-356-dollars-71-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 65-dollars-80-cents a barrel.

Stay tuned for more news………….