Nasa has revealed a stunning discovery: seven earth-sized, possibly habitable exoplanets. Situated in the Aquarius constellation, the discovery has been named as the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, after the TRAPPIST observatory. The discovery gives a very good justification for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to take a closer look when it comes online in 2018.

Make sure today you don’t miss Ranjeni Munusamy’s interview with Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas at 11am today at UCT’s Graduate School of Business. If you can’t make it there, you can watch the live stream on Daily Maverick website, YouTube here and Facebook here.

Mexico’s foreign minister has rejected Donald Trump’s deportation policy, indicating that it won’t take back deported immigrants. Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray stated blunted on Wednesday: “We are not going to accept that because we don’t have to and it is not in the interest of Mexico.” It’s not entirely clear that Mexico actually has to co-operate in Trump’s ongoing immigration crusade.

Not to be wobbled by Mexico, the Trump administration has announced that it has overturned protections for transgender students. These allowed for the students to use whichever public school bathroom that they identified with. The move was a major failure by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who despite her profound inexperience for the job was a staunch pro-LGBT rights supporter. Now forced to sign off on this revocation, her principles appeared outweighed by her desire to hold office.

Weather
BFN: min: 16° max: 26°, rainy
CPT: min: 18° max: 35°, cloudy
DBN: min: 21° max: 26°, rainy
EL: min: 20° max: 28°, cloudy
JHB: min: 13° max: 18°, rainy
KIM: min: 17° max: 28°, rainy
NLP: min: 17° max: 21°, rainy
PMB: min: 14° max: 24°, cloudy
PE: min: 19° max: 28°, sunny
PTA: min: 15° max: 19°, rainy

Financial Data
Oil=$55.91
Gold=$1,232.38
Platinum=$1,000.10
R/$=13.07
R/€=13.77
R/£=16.25
$/€=1.05
JSE All Share=52,088.56
DJIA=20,775.00
FTSE 100=7,302.25