News 13:00

BULLETIN 29 August 1 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# Zuma’s lawyer claims the recusal of Billy Downer is key to fair trial proceedings
# Potato prices surge by 15-percent after black frost devastates Limpopo crops
# And, cricket: England batter Dawid Malan retires from the international game

# Former president Jacob Zuma’s lawyer, Dali Mpofu, says setting a pretrial date in the arms deal corruption case is premature while the application to recuse state prosecutor Billy Downer remains unresolved. The case resumed in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, this morning. It focuses on allegations of a corrupt multi-billion rand deal between the government and French arms trader Thales in the 1990s. Mpofu told the court that proceeding without resolving the recusal bid would undermine Zuma’s right to a fair trial:

# Potatoes SA data indicates that South African potato prices have increased by 15-percent in just a week, following severe black frost damage to crops in Limpopo – a major producing region. The data shows the average price of a ten-kilogram bag rose to over 85-rand, and even to 100-rand in Mbombela in Mpumalanga, and in Cape Town. The report indicates that this spike comes despite a general slowdown in food inflation, highlighting the impact of adverse weather on staple food supplies in the country.

# A new report by Naspers and the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection has revealed that South Africa’s digital platform economy could contribute 91.4-billion-rand to the economy by 2035. Naspers CEO Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa highlighted the transformative potential of digital platforms, predicting a gross domestic product growth from 0.02-percent in 2022 to 1.38-percent by 2035. She says this is a significant economic growth prospect:

# Cricket: England batter Dawid Malan has announced his retirement from the international game after representing the country in 22 Tests, 30 one-day matches and 62 T20s since 2017. The 36-year-old was the world’s best T20 batter in 2020, and the fastest to reach one-thousand runs in international T20s when he accomplished that within 24 matches. Malan was part of England’s squad that won the T20 World Cup in 2022, and he and Jos Buttler are the only England players to score centuries in all three formats.  

# The financial indicators: The dollar trades at 17-rand-70-cents and the euro at 19-rand-63-cents. One British pound costs 23-rand-35-cents and Bitcoin trades at 59-thousand-663-dollars-18-cents. Gold sells at two-thousand-517-dollars-53-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 77-dollars-22-cents a barrel.

# And finally, country music legend Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library book giveaway programme continues to expand. Since the programme started, books have been sent to more than 240-million children in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia. In the US the programme has now expanded statewide in places like Missouri and Kentucky. Parton says she has made it her mission over the past three decades to improve literacy:

Stay tuned for more news………….