South Africa Financial News

Oil companies are paying influencers to promote fossil fuels among the youth. A report by news agency AFP noted that young celebrities who are best known for posting content about video games, dogs, and holidays are unexpectedly making plugs for gas stations, fuel rewards and club cards.

storm Hilary slammed into it from the south. Unprecedented amounts of rain pelted downtown Los Angeles and flooded the state’s arid valleys. Without missing a beat, forecasts then shifted from drenching to baking, as a heat dome fastened itself over much of the southern United States all the way up to the Great Lakes.

emerging-market assets eased on Tuesday as China continued to drip-feed its stimulus measures. The month-end optimism echoed in everything from a tech-stock rally in Hong Kong to firmer iron ore prices in Singapore and a stronger South African rand. Beyond the China-themed assets however, markets were muted with currencies trading within a range and stocks paring gains.

Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax all plan to bring boosters to the market this fall. Pfizer expects to win Food and Drug Administration approval in August, with vaccinations starting in September. Novavax said it expects to get clearance and ship doses in September, and Moderna said it is waiting for approval.

BRICS summit in Johannesburg in South Africa. After the meet, news report said that both leaders had directed defence administration to reach a solution on the Line of Actual Control dispute between China's People's Liberation Army, and Indian Army. On a day China's new ‘standard map’ came to limelight, satellite images have revealed that Beijing has ramped up construction of reinforced personnel bunkers and underground facilities in Aksai Chin, according to a Hindustan Times report.

Arunachal Pradesh which China claims as South Tibet and Aksai Chin occupied by it in the 1962 war as part of its territory. Taiwan and the disputed South China Sea are also included within the Chinese territory in the new map. Later in the day the External affairs ministry of India said that it strongly opposed the move by China.

BRICS grouping will see it controlling 46 per cent of the world's population and 30 per cent of its economic output, according to a research paper. At the latest BRICS summit in Johannesburg last week, the present members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — decided to add Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as new members of the grouping. The new members will become part of BRICS effective January 1, 2024. The acronym BRICS was originally coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs economists led by Jim O'Neill.

Aksai Chin occupied by it in the 1962 war as part of its territory. The map also incorporates China's claims over the nine-dash line thus laying claim to a large part of the South China Sea. The map was released by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources during the celebration of Surveying and Mapping Publicity Day and the National Mapping Awareness Publicity Week on Monday in Deqing county, Zhejiang province, as per China Daily newspaper.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia will be unable to attend the G20 Summit in New Delhi, the Kremlin announced last week. This came after Russia’s longtime leader also skipped the BRICS Summit in South Africa. Putin will also skip the East Asia Summit in Jakarta, which will see Prime Minister Narendra Modi participate.

BRICS countries to reach an understanding with China on the issue of cross-border terrorism, said the State Bank of India (SBI) in a new research report. The report stated that there is a need for India and China to increase cooperation on issues like river water (Brahmaputra) data sharing, entry of Indian pharmaceutical companies into China, etc.

Bloomberg News that the leaders “will launch a kind of manifesto calling attention to the need to improve labor relations," that would touch on work environments and pay. Scheduled for September 19, the meeting will follow the addresses of both presidents to the General Assembly.

BRICS countries, which was held in South Africa, received unprecedented international attention. Some commentators even invoked the Bandung conference of 1955, where leaders of India, China, Indonesia, Egypt and Yugoslavia launched the non-aligned movement (NAM). It seemed as though another generation of leaders, this time from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, were building an alternative to the US-dominated global order.

Putin held a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday. The two leaders reviewed progress on a number of issues of bilateral cooperation and exchanged views on regional and global issues of mutual concern, including space cooperation and an upcoming summit of the G20, the PMO said in a statement released on the same. President Putin also conveyed his inability to attend the G20 Summit in New Delhi on September 9–10, 2023, and informed that Russia would be represented by the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, the PMO further said. The two leaders took part in a summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies in South Africa last week, Modi in person and Putin by video link. Last week on Saturday, the Press Secretary to the Russian President Dmitry Peskov had informed the Russian media that President Vladimir Putin will not participate in the G20 leaders’ summit to be held in New Delhi. These developments are in line with other recent international summits held after the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in February 2022, where Putin has remained absent. The International Criminal Court (ICC) had earlier in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin and another Russian official.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was away for the 15th Summit visited the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network Mission Control Complex on Saturday and highlighted that ISRO's scientists had successfully expanded the 'Make in India' initiative to reach the lunar landscape. “Today, I am feeling a different level of happiness… such occasions are very rare… this time, I was so restless… I was in South Africa but my mind was with you," PM Modi said.

ICC 2023 ODI World Cup, set to take place in India this October-November. In an encouraging news for BCCI and ICC, tickets for non-India matches, released on the official ticketing platform BookMyShow at 8 pm on August 25, are selling like hotcakes.

Chennai airport. As per a TOI report, the man, identified as Solomon Martin Luther, had just deboarded the flight from Mumbai and was walking along the aerobridge when he suddenly collapsed.

Ajit Pawar visited Pimpri-Chinchwad city for time the since assuming office. His maiden visit after becoming Deputy CM saw a man hanging from a crane to garland the minister.

the future of BRICS-Plus. The Johannesburg summit of BRICS leaders, which ended on 23 August 2023, agreed to induct six new members: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia. Along with the existing five members—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the expanded grouping of 11 members now presents an interesting alchemy of geo-political and geo-economic interests.

Add to their woes, BookMyShow, the official ticketing platform for the 2023 Men's ODI World Cup, had crashed initially when the tickets were put up for sale at 8 pm after the previous timing of 6 pm. Sanika Sawant, a Mumbai-based cricket fan, was trying to buy tickets for the England-South Africa match on October 21 in Wankhede Stadium, but didn't succeed. «I logged in around 7:45 pm as the sale of tickets was to start from 8 pm. But till 8:30 pm, it was showing „coming soon“.

Tent Pegging World Cup held in South Africa. Tent Pegging is a cavalry sport wherein the rider is supposed to pick a wooden block, placed on the ground, with a spear.India, who secured a podium finish on Saturday, had finished at the sixth and the seventh spots in the last two editions of the Tent Pegging World Cup. The most recent edition — fourth — was originally slated to be held in 2022, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Tent Pegging Federation comprises 29 countries, which earn World Cup qualification while being divided in groups of four teams each. During its general assembly in Oman, a draw was conducted for each national federation to pick a group.

Narendra Modi received a rousing welcome from BJP workers and the public as he landed in Bengaluru on Saturday to congratulate the scientists who worked on Chandrayaan-3. He addressed the crowd after he landed at HAL airport, saying «Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan, Jai Anusandhan (hail soldier, hail farmer, hail science, hail research)», before heading to meet the scientists at ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) office. «I was not in the country (at the time of the launch) but I decided the first thing I would do after getting back would be to visit our scientists,» he said. The PM flew in early in the morning from Greece after attending the 15th Brics summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Local artists waiting for him at the HAL airport played the dhol and danced, waving the Tricolour. The BJP had asked its workers to wave the national flag instead of the party flag as they were celebrating ISRO's achievement, not the party's. The crowd was packed around HAL airport, with adults, old and children all equally excited to catch a glimpse of the PM as he came to felicitate the scientists of their home state.