- A South African corruption inquiry investigating allegations of graft during Jacob Zuma’s time in power, has referred the former president and incumbent mineral resources minister Gwede Mantashe for criminal investigation. The inquiry made the recommendation after a three-year investigation into Zuma’s administration, with the latest report focused on allegations of corruption and fraud regarding a privately-owned company, Bosasa. “The evidence revealed that corruption was Bosasa’s way of doing business,” the inquiry alleged. Zuma is accused by the inquiry of having passed the company confidential information about criminal investigations into Bosasa, helping to hinder criminal prosecutions in return for bribes.
- Joe Biden had his latest episode of geographic gaffes while delivering his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He appeared to call Ukrainian people “Iranian”.
- Without adding new communication satellites to the OneWeb constellation, the system will not work, Russia’s state-owned space corporation Roscosmos said on Wednesday. Earlier on Wednesday, Roscosmos urged OneWeb to provide a guarantee of non-use of its satellites for military purposes and to remove the British government from the company’s shareholders before the evening of March 4 or the launch of the Soyuz-2.1b rocket with new OneWeb satellites will be halted.
- Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson revealed on Wednesday that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has informed it that it has breached a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) over an investigation into its alleged activities in Iraq. The statement was issued after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published an article stating that a leaked report allegedly revealed Ericsson’s “secret dealings” with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). “Ericsson sought permission from the terrorist group known as the Islamic State to work in an ISIS-controlled city, and paid to smuggle equipment into ISIS areas on a route known as the ‘Speedway’,” the ICIJ claims the leaked report revealed. It alleges the firm “made tens of millions of dollars in suspicious payments over nearly a decade to sustain its business in Iraq.”
- The EU has banned the sale, supply and export of euro-denominated banknotes to Russia, according to a statement made by the European Union on Wednesday. “It shall be prohibited to sell, supply, transfer or export euro-denominated banknotes to Russia or to any natural or legal person, entity or body in Russia, including the government and the Central Bank of Russia, or for use in Russia,” read the statement published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
- DHL is the latest international logistic giant to stop deliveries to Russia and Belarus, the company confirmed on Wednesday. FedEx and UPS announced suspensions of service earlier this week. “Our inbound services to Russia and Belarus have been suspended, which is why we are also not accepting shipments to those countries until further notice,” Germany’s DHL has said, in an alert published on its website. Another statement says that DHL’s offices and operations in Ukraine have also been closed until further notice.
- US power companies are urging the Biden administration not to sanction uranium imports from Russia, which they see as crucial for maintaining domestic electricity prices at a manageable level, Reuters reported, citing sources in the industry. The US National Energy Institute, a trade group of US nuclear power generation companies, including two of the largest US utilities, Duke Energy Corp and Exelon Corp, is reportedly lobbying the White House. Uranium is essential for electricity production at nuclear power plants. It is used as a fuel inside the reactors to boil the water generating the steam that sets the turbines in motion. Nearly half of the uranium powering US nuclear plants comes from Russia and its neighbors Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused US and NATO countries of destabilizing Eastern Europe and launching a campaign of lies and disinformation regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Maduro made his comments on Tuesday in a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin readout of their conversation. Putin said Russia aims to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine’s government, reiterating a key point made when he announced the military operation last week. Moscow also seeks to ensure that Kiev won’t join NATO or obtain nuclear weapons.
- Led by retired navy admiral and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen, alongside several other American defense officials, the US delegation arrived on the island on Tuesday to show Washington’s “continued robust support for Taiwan,” an unnamed US official told Reuters. Asked about the visit to Taiwan – which Beijing considers part of its own territory – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin argued that any backing for the island is directly at odds with bilateral deals with Washington, in which the US has agreed to respect the ‘One-China’ policy that recognizes Taiwan as an inalienable part of Chinese territory.
- Last year, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hit out at US President Joe Biden for not inviting him to the clean car summit at the White House attended by his rivals General Motors (GM) and Ford. He took a dig at him, saying that the current administration was “maybe a little biased”. Musk, the CEO of the world’s largest electric vehicle maker in the US, commented on his Twitter post, “Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles and is investing more than double GM + Ford combined. [fyi to person controlling this twitter]”.
- On Monday, Twitter added new labels to tweets by Russian journalists as well as a warning against posts linked to Russian media outlets. After European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday called for Russian news outlets Sputnik and RT to be banned from the EU for spreading “toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe,” Google and Facebook quickly moved to block the outlets from their platforms, including on Instagram and YouTube. “[W]e will ban in the EU the Kremlin’s media machine. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union,” von der Leyen said.
News Burst 3 March 2022
Rose Rambles... 