News 15:00

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# President Cyril Ramaphosa moves to set aside the Phala Phala panel’s findings
# Rugby: The Blitzboks face Great Britain, Kenya and Australia in Pool A in Valladolid
# And Pope Leo apologises for the Catholic Church’s historic role in slavery

# President Cyril Ramaphosa has filed an application in the Western Cape High Court to review and set aside the independent panel’s report on Phala Phala. He argues in court papers the panel misunderstood its mandate and relied on unproven claims when it found there was evidence he may have broken the Constitution and faced a conflict of interest. The court application comes after the Constitutional Court ruled that the National Assembly acted unlawfully when it rejected the panel’s report.

# Higher Education and Training minister, Buti Manamela, says the department’s budget aims to ensure education leads to employment opportunities. Addressing Parliament, Manamela said too many graduates struggle to transition into work, while employers continue reporting skills shortages. He stressed the need to improve the effectiveness of skills levies as industry and government play a bigger role in identifying workplace needs to ensure training programmes produce employable skills for unemployed youth:

# Solidarity backs applications by Glencore-Merafe and Samancor for a special electricity tariff of 62 cents per kilowatt-hour. The union’s Pieter Jordaan warns thousands of jobs are at risk if relief is not granted, with electricity accounting for up to 60-percent of smelting production costs. He says four-thousand direct jobs and more than 35-thousand others linked to communities and supply chains could be affected if the operations are forced to close:

# Rugby: The Blitzboks will face Great Britain, Kenya and Australia in the group stage of this weekend’s World Championship tournament in Valladolid, Spain. South Africa clinched the title in Hong Kong last month in the first tournament of the three-match series. The final event will take place in Bordeaux, France, early next month, when the overall winner will be crowned. The Blitzboks first face Great Britain at 12.30 Friday afternoon, followed by Kenya just after 5pm, and Australlia at half past one on Saturday afternoon.

# The financial indicators: The dollar trades at 16-rand-33-cents and the euro at 19-rand-1-cents. One British pound costs 22-rand-2-cents and Bitcoin trades at 77-thousand-158-dollars. Gold sells at four-thousand-526-dollars-34-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 95-dollars-71-cents a barrel.

# And finally: Pope Leo issued the clearest apology yet from a pontiff for the Catholic Church’s ‌role in slavery, acknowledging both its delay in condemning the practice and its historic involvement in legitimising it. In a key passage of his first papal letter to bishops and the global public, Leo says the church had taken centuries to fully recognise the ​scourge of slavery as incompatible with human dignity. He adds authorities had, at times, responded to rulers by regulating and legitimising ​forms of subjugation, including the enslavement of non-Christians.

Stay tuned for more news………….