News 17:00

BULLETIN 27 October 5 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# Deputy president Paul Mashatile urges South Africans to honour OR Tambo through active citizenship
# Minister Lamola calls for stronger continental migration policies at the diaspora conference
# And soccer,Chinese brands drop Mbappe after a remark about Mao Zedong

# Deputy president Paul Mashatile has called on South Africans to honour the legacy of struggle stalwart Oliver Reginald Tambo through active citizenship, responsible voting and community service. Speaking at a wreath-laying ceremony at Tamboville Cemetery in Ekurhuleni, Mashatile said building a better South Africa was a shared responsibility between government and citizens. He urged the public to fight corruption, strengthen democracy and participate peacefully in elections:

# International Relations and Cooperation minister Ronald Lamola has called for stronger cooperation on migration policies across Africa. Addressing the Africa and African Diaspora Conference in Ekurhuleni, Lamola says migration cannot be managed by South Africa alone. The minister has urged the African Union to revive and implement resolutions from the 2015 Johannesburg migration conference. He says irregular migration must be addressed lawfully, while condemning xenophobic violence against foreign nationals:

# The Human Sciences Research Council is calling on all voters to participate in the countrywide Election Satisfaction Survey. The survey will be conducted by interviewers stationed at selected voting stations across the country on behalf of the Electoral Commission on the day of the local government elections next Wednesday. HSRC’s spokesperson Alfred Thutloa says the survey aims to assess voters’ experiences and satisfaction with the electoral process, while also evaluating the operational efficiency of the IEC:

# Microsoft is offering voluntary retrenchment to about 60-thousand employees, more than a quarter of its global workforce, to contain costs while investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Eligible staff in the United States, Canada, Britain and India include workers in Xbox, Windows, Copilot, finance and human resources. Marketing, commercial business and security teams are excluded. Microsoft has 223-thousand employees worldwide and expects to spend about 2.9-trillion-rand on capital investments this year, largely to expand its AI infrastructure. The company previously offered voluntary buyouts to some US staff.

# Soccer: French soccer star Kylian Mbappe has lost sponsorship deals with at least three Chinese brands after a video circulated online in which he apparently referred to former Chinese leader Mao Zedong as “a Chinese dictator”. Discussing an internet meme showing his face superimposed on Mao’s image, Mbappe described it as one of the funniest memes of himself he had seen. Beverage maker Dongpeng and dairy companies Mengniu and Milkground have ended their partnerships with the Real Madrid and France forward. The video’s authenticity has not been independently verified.

# And the financial indicators: The dollar trades at 16-rand-65-cents against the rand and the euro at 18-rand-57-cents. One British pound costs 22-rand-20-cents and Bitcoin trades at 80-thousand-243-dollars. Gold sells at four-thousand-and-23-dollars-16-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 115-dollars-33-cents a barrel.

Stay tuned for more news………….