SOUTH AFRICAN RAND FIRMS AS TRADERS WAIT FOR POWELL SPEECH.

The South African rand strengthened in early trade on Friday, as traders awaited a speech by U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that may give hints about the future interest rate path of the world’s biggest economy.

Powell is due to speak later on Friday at an annual meeting of global central bakers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and markets are looking out for clues on whether U.S. interest rate cuts will start in September.

The nature of these speeches is normally that not too much will be revealed, but nevertheless, the market will go over the speech with a fine tooth comb.

This is according to Currency Strategist at TreasuryONE, Andre Cilliers, who said should any new information be forthcoming, expect the market to be volatile around the speech.

Like other risk-sensitive currencies, the rand often takes cues from global drivers such as U.S. monetary policy in the absence of major local factors.

MOZAMBIQUE UNVEILS PLAN FOR EARLY WARNING SYSTEM FOR EXTREME WEATHER.

Mozambique is playing a trailblazing role in a flagship global initiative to ensure that everyone is protected by early warnings of life-threatening weather-related hazards which are becoming more extreme because of climate change.

At a ministerial-level ceremony in the capital Maputo, Mozambique, President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi launched an ambitious national roadmap to achieve Early Warnings for All by a target of the end of 2027 and also announced a significant new investment to improve basic weather and climate observations which underpin early warnings.

Nyusi, who is an African Union Champion on Disaster Risk Management said Mozambique is a country that lives under permanent threat of disasters, especially those caused by extreme natural phenomena, with floods, cyclones and droughts being the most frequent.

According to him, when these adverse events occur, they leave a trail of destruction characterised by human loss and material and environmental damage or serious implications for society and our economy.

Situated on the southeast African coast, Mozambique is regularly battered by tropical cyclones that sweep across the Indian Ocean and by related coastal and inland flooding.

Over 60% of the population resides in low-lying coastal areas, heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, increasing the risk to infrastructure and livelihoods.

The impacts of climate change have intensified these challenges, leading to significant losses and damages.

SOMALIA’S BOMB DISPOSAL EXPERTS FACE DOWN FEAR TO SAVE LIVES.

Wearing a bulky protective suit and helmet, Mohamed Ahmed inches towards the truck where explosives wired to a mobile phone have been planted in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

Fortunately for Ahmed, a police officer, this is a training exercise and the device is a dummy.

Bombings using this technique, or suicide attacks with vehicles, are a common occurrence in Somalia, where insurgents linked to al Qaeda have been fighting the government since 2007.

In one of the most recent attacks, fighters from the al Shabaab militant group used a car bomb to blow up a restaurant in the capital where soccer fans were watching the final of the Euro 2024 tournament on television, killing five people.

“We fear and feel like we are risking our lives,” said Ahmed, a member of the police’s Explosive Ordnance Unit. “But we work carefully together and consider that we’re saving the lives of our citizens.”

After three decades of civil war in Somalia, Ahmed’s unit also has to deal with the estimated one million mines and other unexploded ordnance that have killed or injured more than 1,700 people across the country, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

The bomb squad’s dog trainer Hussain Ahmed said he sometimes faces stigma over his work because dogs are considered unclean in Islam.

UKRAINE’S NEW JUDGES AIM TO BUILD RULE OF LAW

Ukraine’s newly minted judges have waited years to be hired and know they must create trust in the courts for the country’s European aspirations to be realised.

“Morally, you need always to be thinking about the fact that you are a judge,” said Olha Vdovychenko, 37, a native of eastern Ukraine who began working in the capital long after qualifying for the job she always wanted.

Vdovychenko’s recent appointment alongside nearly 250 other judges is aimed at helping Ukraine firmly establish the rule of law and finally dismantle a Soviet legacy of corruption and impunity.

In Zaporizhzhia, near the front line in the southeast, district appointee Ievgen Zavgorodnii, 44, is a former anti-corruption investigator who joined the bench after fighting for Ukraine in Russia’s 2022 invasion.

He served in the defence of Kyiv and on the eastern front, climbed the ranks to a battalion chief of staff in the 72nd Mechanised Brigade and misses his comrades-in-arms.

The transition has been challenging, he says, but he welcomes the new vocation he first applied for in 2017.

“My task right now is to professionally, impartially and independently administer justice,” he said.

Their appointments – long stalled by political tussles even before the war – follow an overhaul of judicial governance sought by the European Union, which Kyiv aims to join to cement its shift from Moscow’s orbit.

RUSSIA ACCUSES UKRAINE OF TRYING TO ATTACK KURSK NUCLEAR POWER PLANT WITH DRONE.

Russia accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to attack the Kursk nuclear power station overnight in what it called an act of “nuclear terrorism”, days before the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog is due to visit the site.

The Ukrainian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegation, the second that Moscow has made in two days.

The nuclear plant is located in the Kursk region of western Russia, where fierce fighting has raged since Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion on Aug. 6.

Russian state news agency TASS quoted an unnamed source as saying the drone was shot down near a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.

Reuters could not independently confirm details of the alleged incident.

TASS quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying it was an “act of nuclear terrorism” that required an immediate response from the U.N. watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

INDIAN PRIME MINISTER ARRIVES IN KYIV FOR TALKS WITH UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT.

India’s Narendra Modi arrived in wartime Kyiv on Friday to hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the first trip by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since Kyiv gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The visit comes at a volatile juncture in the war in Ukraine, with Ukrainian forces still in Russia’s western Kursk region following their incursion on Aug. 6 and Russian troops grinding out slow but steady advances in Ukraine’s east.

The visit, which follows a trip by Modi to Moscow in July, is important for Western-backed Kyiv, which has been trying to nurture diplomatic relations in the Global South in its efforts to secure a fair settlement to end the war.

Reached Kyiv earlier this morning. The Indian community accorded a very warm welcome, Modi wrote on X.

The Ukrainian railways company showed footage of him stepping off a train carriage and being received by Ukrainian officials.

In the run-up to the trip he said he was looking forward to sharing “perspectives on peaceful resolution of the ongoing Ukraine conflict”.

Modi’s visit to Moscow last month coincided with a heavy Russian missile strike on Ukraine that hit a children’s hospital.

The attack prompted Modi to use emotive language to deliver an implicit rebuke to Putin at their summit.

SOUTH KOREA HOTEL FIRE KILLS SEVEN, INJURES TWELVE.

A fire at a hotel in South Korea has killed seven people and injured 12 others, fire authorities said on Friday.

The fire began on the eighth floor of the nine-story hotel in Bucheon, just west of the capital Seoul at around 7:40 p.m. (1040 GMT) on Thursday, before being put out in about two hours, according to the interior ministry.

Seven people died, mostly guests, and 12 were sent to hospitals for treatment, including three in critical condition, said Lee Sang-don, an official at the Bucheon fire station.

Among those killed were a couple who jumped out the windows onto an air mattress installed in front of the building, Lee said.

“It was unfolded normally but appeared to have flipped over when they jumped down,” he told a televised briefing.

Authorities were looking into the exact cause of the incident, adding there were no sprinklers inside, which was not mandatory when the building was completed in 2003, Lee added.

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min ordered all-out rescue efforts by mobilising all available resources, the ministry said.

Some 70 vehicles and 160 firefighters were dispatched to the scene, Yonhap news agency said, citing provincial fire authorities.