East Coast Radio Newswatch
ECR Newswatch @ 18H00
On FM, on the station app, and on Open View Channel 606, this is East Coast Radio News Watch. Houghton Police are investigating a case of murder after the body of a former high-jump wall champion was found in Pretoria, West with gunshot wounds. 42-year-old Jacques Freitach had been missing since last month. The Houghton Police' Brenda Muradili says the case has been changed from a missing person's one to murder. No one has been arrested, but the police are following up on leads. A missing person's case was reported on the 24th of June 2024, after the sister, through the missing person, discovered that he was not home in Windbank on the 16th of June 2024. The families of two South African men detained in Equatorial Guinea say they feel a renewed sense of urgency in the fight for their release. They've been charged for drag-related offenses, and this just proves that that is not true. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has published a formal opinion calling for Peter Huxham and Frick port leaders' immediate release. It's calling their detentions illegal and arbitrary. The pair who are engineers have been imprisoned in the Central African country for around 17 months, they had been working on an oil rig in that country for over a decade when they were arrested early last year. They are accused of drug possession, but their families believe the allegations are trumped up. Family spokesperson Sean Murphy says they feel vindicated by the UN development. "We certainly believe it is a step in the right direction. It also allows us the opportunity to maybe try and be a little bit more assertive in terms of our approach and obviously expect government as well to also maybe be a little bit more assertive in trying to free both for computer." Last week, they petitioned the Pan-African Parliament as it held its third ordinary session in Midrunt. The Department of International Relations has declined to comment. A climate and energy expert says there's been a steady rise in temperatures over the winter period in Guazula-Natal in the past decade. In July last year, the UN declared Earth had entered the Global Boiling Era. "On the 16th of July, 2023, it was a hottest day recorded on air. There are trends that we can see across the world, where temperatures are very abnormal and then the extreme weather events are a proof of that, and we have a series of bees happening in the urban region." Siyat Miesa from Greenpeace, Africa says between 2014 and 2023, average monthly temperatures in case that have risen by between 0.8 and 1.6 degrees Celsius. "But it has been increasing over time between before 2014, which is very significant, and this is quite evident when you look at the temperature between 2014 and 2023. You see those variations in increasing temperature specifically in the month of June, but in the real time in January." And South Africa's expected business conditions have surged to a two-year high, the index for manufacturing industry expectations climbed to 68.1 in June, from 57.6 in May. Experts say the increase reflects reduced political uncertainty, post-elections and optimism for improved global and domestic demand. The urban 26 tomorrow, Peter Moritzburg and Richard Spade, 29, for News Watch, I'm Tino