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Daily Dispatch | Friday | March 31st 2017

South Africa: A Gordhan knot Just after midnight, Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, announced that he was shuffling 20 posts in his cabinet, and that the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, would be replaced. Within hours the rand slumped, falling almost 7% against the dollar for the week. A credit downgrade is likely. Yet Mr Zuma’s dislike of Mr Gordhan was so great that he sacked him anyway, consequences be damned, writes our South Africa correspondent

Reusable rockets: What comes down... The Falcon 9 rocket launched yesterday by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocketry company, had already been into space once. It went off without a hitch. Successfully relaunching a used rocket is another impressive achievement for the firm, which hopes to cut the cost of spaceflight by an order of magnitude. SpaceX has delivered on all its promises so far. Mr Musk has earned the right to be taken seriously, writes our science correspondent

Park Geun-hye: From Blue House to jailhouse This morning South Korea’s impeached ex-president was arrested. The judge who approved her pre-trial detention said that, were she allowed to leave, she might destroy evidence. Ms Park’s alleged crimes include bribery, coercion and abuse of power. Prosecutors may now detain her for up to 20 days before formally indicting her. If convicted, she could face up to 45 years in prison, writes our Seoul bureau chief

Israel and Palestine: Settle down now The Israeli government announced yesterday that it would build a settlement 25km north of Jerusalem, the first new one in more than two decades. But Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, also told his cabinet that any further building would take place only within the boundaries of the current settlements. This is to accommodate the wishes of Donald Trump, who wants to try to push through an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal

~6pm London