News 11:00

BULLETIN 13 November 11 am

Good morning. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# The Presidency says Ramaphosa’s visit to Silicon Valley has nothing to do with the SA-US diplomatic fallout
# Microsoft says its global outage is unlikely to be because of a cyberattack
# And rugby: The statistics favour the Springboks in tonight’s clash with France

# The Presidency has clarified president Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to Silicon Valley in California next week has nothing to do with the country’s fallout with the US. He will lead a high-level delegation to gain insights into the global artificial intelligence ecosystem. The visit comes a few weeks after the US announced its intention to exclude South Africa from the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya says Ramaphosa will not make a stop in Washington, but will ensure president Donald Trump is informed of his visit.

# The DA says the South African Bureau of Standards is facing an existential crisis following serious financial and governance problems. SABS presented its 2024/25 annual report to Parliament and reported an operating loss of 70-million-rand, irregular expenditure of 52-million-rand and achieving only 56-percent of its performance targets. The DA’s Toby Chance has raised concerns about irregular spending, weak internal controls and the impact of a ransomware attack that crippled the organisation’s systems: 

# KwaZulu-Natal police have launched a manhunt after a station commander was killed and another police official wounded in a shootout with suspected robbers. They were responding to a business robbery in Greytown in which a shop owner was shot and injured, and employees were assaulted. Police spokesperson Robert Netshiunda says at least ten suspects fled the scene in a Toyota Quantum, and, working with private security, they gave chase and caught up with the suspects on the R33:

Moving abroad:

# Microsoft has ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of a widespread global outage affecting Outlook, Teams, and its artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot. The tech giant blames the disruption on elevated load across its server infrastructure in multiple regions. Outage-tracking site Downdetector reports that users in 74 countries, including South Africa, the US, the UK, Australia, India, and Japan, have been hit by the service failures. Meanwhile, Microsoft has admitted its technical efforts to resolve the problem are not progressing as expected.

# Rugby: The statistics are in South Africa’s favour in tonight’s Nations Championship clash with France in Paris. The Springboks won 61-percent of their 47 Tests, with France last beating the world champions in 2022. The match at the Stade de France kicks off the competition’s fifth round. Tomorrow afternoon, Italy welcomes Argentina to Rome, and Wales and the All Blacks meet in Cardiff. England and Japan will do battle at Twickenham and Ireland will welcome Fiji to Dublin. On Sunday, Scotland and Australia will do battle in Edinburgh.

# And the financial indicators: The dollar trades at 16-rand-75-cents and the euro at 18-rand-54-cents. One British pound costs 22-rand-18-cents and Bitcoin trades at 69-thousand-189-dollars. Gold sells at three-thousand-899-dollars-64-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 98-dollars-50-sents a barrel.

Stay tuned for more news………….