South Africa has plans to end load-shedding for good. The bad news though, is that it will take a couple of years.
Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe published the country’s Integrated Resource Plan which is South Africa’s plan for stable electricity supply from now till 2024.
The IRP sets out two timeframes: 2023–2030 to stabilise South Africa’s power and end load-shedding, and 2031–2050 to generate enough power for the future.
The plan involves various energy sources like gas, solar, wind, and batteries to eliminate load-shedding.
Eskom will however continue to provide energy to the country, but that may not come to fruition as the struggling electricity-generating company is at risk of shutting down for harmful emissions.

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A U.S. bankruptcy judge has approved cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network's pivot to bitcoin mining, ruling that the company could deviate from a previously approved bankruptcy plan because creditors and customers were no worse off under the new restructuring.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan says the bankruptcy plan approved in November contained enough flexibility to allow Celsius to switch to a backup plan after it hit a roadblock with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Celsius had scaled back broader ambitions to earn fees from validating crypto transactions and start new lines of business after the SEC rejected that plan.
Celsius expects to emerge from bankruptcy in early 2024.

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Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X holdings — the parent company of X (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk — by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares, according to a new disclosure.
Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022. The fund manager made a valuation cut of 65% in October 2023.
CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that the company would turn profitable in 2024.
The biggest challenge for the company is to convince advertisers to spend money on the platform. A lot of prominent advertisers — including Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, and the European Commission —pulled out from the platform after Musk called an antisemitic conspiracy theory the “actual truth”.

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FTX Trading Ltd has revealed a proposal to repay billions of dollars to customers and creditors.
The crypto exchange proposes to liquidate most of its remaining crypto holdings and convert them into cash which will then be distributed to creditors and customers, according to a yet-to-be-determined formula. The proposal is slated for a vote by creditors next year.
The plan will be subject to final approval by US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey.
Nigerian crypto company Nestcoin was affected. Nestcoin consequently had to lay off staff, as most of the money it needed for its operations was trapped in the FTX collapse. FTX owed its 50 largest creditors almost $3.1 billion.

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Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service provider has officially launched in Eswatini.
Starlink already beams across Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and Nigeria.
The service is awaiting regulatory nod In Zimbabwe and Botswana where its application for an operation licence is still being vetted. Starlink’s operation went through swiftly in Eswatini, getting a licence in June after applying in March.
Despite being its biggest potential market, South Africa has banned Starlink due to ownership requirements, with the company baulking at the 30% quota for disadvantaged groups.

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The Central Bank of Lesotho discovered that a cybersecurity incident had affected its system. The apex bank has restored transfers, but it advised customers to expect delays as the processing of payments is done manually.
The attack led to several outages and affected the country’s National Payments System, which facilitates inter-bank transactions.
There are concerns that the current wave of attacks might affect Lesotho’s exchange rate against the rand. Lesotho’s incident is not a standalone incident in southern Africa. The Development Bank of Southern Africa confirmed in June that it was hit by ransomware.

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Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has become the latest tech company to be fined in Italy for breaches of a ban on the advertising of gambling.
Meta has been fined 5.85 million euros in connection with profiles and accounts on Facebook and Instagram, as well as sponsored content which promoted either betting or games with cash prizes.
Communications watchdog AGCOM says earlier this month, announced fines for Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube and Amazon's (AMZN.O) Twitch for breaching the ban. YouTube and Twitch were fined 2.25 million euros and 900,000 euros respectively

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Israel's government agreed to give Intel Corp a $3.2 billion grant for a new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel.
Intel says the expansion plan for its Kiryat Gat site is an important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain, alongside the company’s ongoing and planned manufacturing investments in Europe and the United States.
The chipmaker also committed to buy 60 billion shekels ($16.6 billion) worth of goods and services from Israeli suppliers over the next decade, while the new facility is expected to create several thousand jobs.
Intel operates four development and production sites in Israel, including a manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat, and employs nearly 12,000 people in the country.

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Nigeria’s Central Bank has removed a two-year restriction on cryptocurrency transactions as it introduces stringent customer KYC and anti-money laundering checks. The CBN banned banks from crypto-related transactions in 2021, citing money laundering and terrorism financing concerns.
The regulator has now reversed that ban and taken a positive posture towards digital currency assets, issuing new guidelines to financial institutions for crypto transactions.
Based on the new guidelines released, banks must obtain the bank verification number of all directors and owners of crypto businesses that use their services.
The rules also mandate cryptocurrency companies to secure a license from the country’s capital markets regulator, the Securities Exchange Commission.

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Pornhub’s parent company Aylo Holdings will pay $1.8 million to the U.S. government to resolve a charge of profiting off of sex trafficking.
The company, formerly known as MindGeek, will enter a deferred prosecution agreement, which means that a monitor will be appointed to oversee Aylo and its compliance efforts for three years.
Pornhub and other adult content sites owned by Aylo have come under fire for a history of negligence in moderating third-party uploads of adult content.
This particular probe by the Eastern District of New York’s Attorney’s Office focuses on a network called GirlsDoPorn, which has been posting videos on Pornhub and other Aylo websites since 2009.


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