Breaking News Today – Wednesday 18 June 2025

Business & Tech News 

SpaceX Proposes Free Internet for 5000 School Deal

SpaceX has long held that it will not give away any ownership of its business in or Der to comply with South African Broad Based Economic Empowerment requirements but has offered to provide free high-speed StarLink connectivity to 5000 schools in the country in an alternative offering to gain compliance and be given a licence to operate in the country. These deals, known as Equity `equivalence Investment programmes or EEIP’s in SA have been used previously by various companies in other sectors such as manufacturing and Pharmaceuticals, have been utilised to meet regional compliance.

Ryan Goodnight a senior Starling official said that “Starlink has never sought an exemption from BEEE laws nor have we asked for any special treatment.” “Starling Supports a level playing field for the entire sector”. Starling has maintained 100% ownership of all its operations across 150 countries and have not diluted its ownership for operational reasons according to Goodnight.

South African Banks Looking to Crypto

Frank Leonette, founder and CEO of crypto exchange AfriDAX has said that the major South African Banks are looking to be opening up crypto purchasing product offering shortly, despite them having fiercely opposing crypto adoption in the country previously. Some bankers had gone as far as de-banking crypto exchange businesses and refusing crypto be added to its trading platforms. Possibly the adoption of new crypto friendly regulations in the US that have included the use of crypto as an asset class for companies has started to change the view on the crypto market. Additional there are central banks currently investigating the use of crypto as central currency alternatives.

Japan’s Exports Slump in May

Japan’s exports fell in May for the first time in eight months as major Japanese automakers like Honda and Toyota  were hit by sweeping U.S. tariffs, and the failure of the Asian nation to clinch a trade deal this week will likely pile pressure on its fragile economy.Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said after the Group of Seven summit in Canada on Tuesday that Japan had not yet finalised a comprehensive tariff agreement with the U.S. as some disagreements regarding tariffs persisted between the two nations.

Japan’s core machinery orders—excluding volatile items such as ships and electric power, fell by -9.1% month-over-month to ¥919 billion in April 2025, marking a sharp reversal from March’s 13% surge. This was the weakest reading since April 2020, during the height of the Covid pandemic. The non-manufacturing sector led the decline, with orders plunging by -11.8% to ¥470.8 billion. Manufacturing orders also slipped, down -0.6% to ¥456.6 billion. The steepest drops came from other transport equipment (-38.3%), goods leasing (-31.2%), other non-manufacturing (-29.5%), finance and insurance (-23.9%), and automobiles, parts & accessories (-20.3%). 

Business, Tech & Market News Shorts: 

• Russia is hosting its annual International Economic Forum in St Petersburg this week with representatives from more than 140 countries and territories in attendance.
• Amazon is the latest firm to announce plans to use AI more broadly in its operations with the likelihood that the technology adoption will lead to rapid job losses across the world. Andy Jassy CEO of Amazon CEO has announced to staff that they should embrace artificial intelligence, with a warning that the technology will lead to a smaller corporate workforce in the next few years.
• OpenAI have said the U.S. Department of Defense has granted it a contract valued at up to $200 million to assist the department to identify and build prototype systems that use its frontier models for administrative tasks and more.
• Google DeepMind has written in a report indicating that when playing Pokemon, the Gemini 2.5 Pro AI resorts to panic when its Pokémon are in imminent danger. This can cause the AI’s performance to experience “qualitatively observable degradation in the model’s reasoning capability,” according to the report.
  

Markets by Numbers 

Currencies: 

Currency markets indicate the US Dollar is currently trading against the Euro at 1.15070 and against the Pound at 1.34582. The Yen is currently at 144.94 to the dollar, with the rand currently at R17.93 to the US dollar. 

Commodities:

• Gold futures prices have dropped slightly this morning, and are currently at $3382 per ounce.  

• Copper prices are trending almost 1% higher this morning and are currently at $4.8344 

• Silver futures prices are trading upwards this morning and are currently at $37.186 

• Platinum futures are trending upward this morning, and are currently trading at $1263.10, while Palladium prices are currently at $1058.50

• Brent crude oil prices are currently at $76.29, with WTI trading at $74.77

• Cocoa futures are currently trending upwards and at $9949.50 per ton. 

• Coffee futures prices are currently at $334.94

Crypto Currencies:

• Bitcoin prices are currently at $104973

• Ether prices are currently at $2522.92

• $Trumpcoin is trading at $9.54

(All prices quoted at approximately 08H45 – Central African Time) 

Other Breaking News in Africa Today 

Another Civilian Death by Police in Kenya:

A Kenyan police officer has been arrested over the shooting of an unarmed civilian on Tuesday during protests in the capital Nairobi touched off by the death of a blogger in police custody, a police spokesperson said.Earlier in the day, a video aired on Kenyan broadcaster Citizen Television’s X account showed two policemen repeatedly striking a man on the head before one of them fired at him with a long-barrelled gun as he tried to walk away.