News 15:00

BULLETIN 17 February 3 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# The DA slams National Treasury for blocking funds to fill critical hospital vacancies in Gauteng
# Samwu slams Tshwane for spending 44-million-rand on lawyers while workers struggle
# And motorsport: Lando Norris wouldn’t underestimate the 40-year-old Lewis Hamilton this season

# The DA in Gauteng has condemned National Treasury’s refusal to fund 291-million-rand for one-thousand-180 critical hospital vacancies. The Gauteng Health Department’s recruitment plan, which includes key positions like heads of departments and professional nurses, was denied due to projected over-expenditure. Key hospitals like Chris Hani Baragwanath and Kalafong are severely affected. The DA’s Jack Bloom has blamed Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko and head of department Lesiba Malotana for the crisis:

# Municipal union Samwu says the City of Tshwane has wasted 44-million-rand on a single law firm over three-years while refusing to grant workers their overdue salary increases. The union calls this a betrayal of public trust and demands an independent investigation. Samwu’s regional secretary, Donald Monakhisi, calls for an end to outsourcing in disciplinary matters and immediate implementation of workers’ salary increases:

# Iran has condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to finish the job against the Islamic republic. Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei says threatening others is both a gross violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Yesterday Netanyahu told a news conference with visiting US secretary of State Marco Rubio that Israel would finish the job against Iran with the support of the United States, its top ally. Netanyahu also said Israel had dealt a mighty blow to Iran’s terror axis during the past 16 months.

# Motorsport: McLaren’s British Formula One driver, Lando Norris, has warned the field not to underestimate seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. His 40-year-old compatriot is racing for Ferrari from this season after a very successful 12 year-stint at Mercedes, but had mixed results last year. Norris is one of the favourites to clinch the drivers’ championship this year after finishing second behind Red Bull’s Dutch driver, Max Verstappen, in 2024. Norris expects Hamilton to be very motivated.  

# The financial indicators: The dollar trades at 18-rand-43-cents and the euro at 19-rand-33-cents. One British pound costs 23-rand-23-cents and Bitcoin trades at 96-thousand-245-dollars. Gold sells at two-thousand-898-dollars-7-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 74-dollars-56-cents a barrel.

# And finally: Chinese technology giant Tencent says it had started trialling its own artificial intelligence reasoning model after integrating DeepSeek into some of its products. It said that the move would make responses more human. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek made global headlines last month when it unveiled its R1 chatbot that can seemingly match American competitors but at a fraction of the cost. Since then, a series of major Chinese companies have said they will integrate DeepSeek’s technology into their products.

Stay tuned for more news………….