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Culture
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Auction Alliance Wins Court Case Against NCC
19 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Yesterday, the Western Cape High court handed down a judgement that ruled that National Consumer Commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, acted outside of her powers when she summoned three Auction Alliance executives, including Rael Levitt, to appear before the National Consumer Commission earlier this year. It’s a notable victory for Auction Alliance, but doesn’t rule out a criminal investigation into possible fraud.
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RIM Manufacturing Partner Pulls The Plug On BlackBerry
19 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 7 Comments
Celestica, the Toronto-based manufacturer that produces hardware for Research In Motion, have announced that they’ll be stopping production of BlackBerry hardware over the next three months, and charging the company $1 billion for unsold BlackBerry inventory. Between the BlackBerry 10 smartphone getting pushed back to late 2012, and new iPhone rumours, this could sort of be RIP RIM.
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Zimbabwe, Congo And Afghanistan All Above SA On Happy Planet Index
18 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
According to the results of the 2012 Happy Planet Index, South Africa is not quite as happy a place as many believe it to be, coming in 142nd out of 151 countries.
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There’s A Karl Marx Credit Card Now
18 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before the word ‘irony’ stopped being able to quite cover it. The German bank Sparkasse Chemnitz have launched a Karl Marx credit card, after the father of Communism won in an online voting poll for new credit card designs. Somewhere a grave is spinning.
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Korean Air Wants Travellers To Embrace The “Primitive Energy” Of African People
18 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
At the beginning of this year, it was announced that Korean Air would be launching the first nonstop flights from Northeast Asia to East Africa: specifically, from Incheon International Airport, South Korea, to Nairobi, Kenya. Derogatory seems a modest way to describe some of the advertising used for the new route.
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Microsoft Expected To Launch Tablet “To Compete With iPad”
18 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Microsoft might be about to launch a tablet device it would hope would compete with the Apple iPad. Its new Windows software, to be launched later this year, is designed to be used on a tablet as well as a desktop PC. It also said: “This will be a major Microsoft announcement – you will not want to miss it.”
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China To Build The World’s Tallest Building In 90 Days
18 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Broad Sustainable Building, a Chinese construction company, is aiming to assemble an 838m-tall building in Changsha, a city in southern China, beating the Burj Khalifa in Dubai by 10 metres. What’s more, they’re looking to build the thing – dubbed SkyCity One – in 90 days because, well, why not.
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A Skype Call In Ethiopia Now Carries A 15 Year Jail Term
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Things have been less than fun with respect to freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the landlocked central African country of Ethiopia in recent years. And they just got worse. Because now a simple 30-second Skype call could land you in jail.
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Facebook Wants Your Phone Number, “For Your Own Safety”
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Within the next few days, every single Facebook user will be met with a request for a verified phone number, which will apparently help users “stay in control” of their accounts. This is partially a response to security breaches at LinkedIn, Last.fm and eHarmony, but it’s also because Facebook wants to know more stuff about you.
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Former T20 Billionaire Allen Stanford Sentenced To 110 Years In Prison
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Former T20 cricket enigma and ex-multi billionaire, Allen Stanford, has been sentenced to 110 years in jail for defrauding investors of $7 billion. Stanford was also ordered to pay back $5,9 billion, which he doesn’t have, because he lost everything.
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Skype To Introduce Advertising To Distract You During Calls
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Skype have just introduced a new ‘feature’ called Conversation Ads, which displays advertisements during audio calls. Which sucks. To nobody’s surprise they’re trying to spin the feature as somehow good for users – apparently the ads “could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users and highlight unique and local brand experiences.”
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RADVERTISING: Coca-Cola’s Awesome New Ad Restores Faith In Humanity [VIDEO]
14 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
Every day, around the world, security cameras silently observe us. Tirelessly they wait and watch, hoping to capture something significant. Usually, the only footage that ever sees the light of day is the kind that implicates someone in a crime or offence, but in reality they capture so much more. Click through for a glimpse of the heart-warming side of surveillance.
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Reveal Day: The New .Com Domain Names Are Coming
14 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Yesterday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that regulates the Internet, released its list of applicants for new .com alternatives. There are obvious ones like .amazon and .hsbc, but less obvious ones like .ninja have also crept in. A few South African companies also got involved.
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George Bush’s Severed Head Was On Game Of Thrones
14 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
So there was this scene towards the end of the first season of Game of Thrones – that popular, high budget, swords/sorcery/nudity show that HBO’s running – where a bunch of heads were lined up on spikes. And director’s commentary from the recently-released Season 1 DVD has revealed that one of the heads belonged to ex-president George Bush.
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Iran’s Oil Exports Plummet 40%
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Western sanctions against Iran’s oil exports have shown that they have fallen by an estimated 40 per cent since the start of the year, according to the International Energy Agency. Separately, the UAE is nearing completion of an oil route that totally avoids Iran. Unlucky, Iran.
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Sweden’s Twitter Experiment Gets A Little Anti-Semitic
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Sweden has been handing its Twitter account to a different citizen every week for the past seven months. Which has been great for the most part, with priests and lesbian truck drivers representing the country – except the latest @sweden handler has been catching some flack for trying to figure out “whats the fuzz with jews.”
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Former Seinfeld Star’s Heartfelt Apology For “Cricket Is Gay” Remarks
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
A few weeks ago Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld, made some unfortunate remarks during an appearance on the Craig Ferguson Show. Many saw his comments, about cricket being a gay sport, as hurtful and offensive, a consequence he had never intended. To set the record straight he offered a sincere, heartfelt apology, click through to read it in full.
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Brutal Clashes Between Russian And Polish Euro 2012 Fans In Warsaw [VIDEO]
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Chaos erupted in Warsaw yesterday when Russian and Polish fans fought running battles in the streets before and after a Euro 2012 soccer match. At least 11 people were injured in the clashes. Eight of those hurt, including a policeman, are Poles, two are Russian, and one is German. The game ended 1-1. See the […]
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Yahoo Forms Content Partnership With CNBC
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Yahoo has been criticised in the past for neglecting its original core business of being a search engine, and it may experience more of that with its latest exapnsion into content publishing. However, it has described its latest partnership with CNBC as a key strategy to becoming a “premium media network.”
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Sir John Major – “Rupert Murdoch Pressured Me Over Europe”
12 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Sir John Major has been giving testimony at the Leveson inquiry into British press ethics today. Some of his testimony appears to directly conflict that of Murdoch’s, who in April claimed: “I have never asked a prime minister for anything.” Major becomes the first ex-Prime Minister to claim Murdoch tried to get him to change government policy.
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Spanish Activists Looking To Sue Former Bank Manager For Financial Crisis
12 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Spanish activists are raising a large private fund to pay for a civil action suit against Rodrigo Rato – the former chairman of Bankia, one of the banks central to the Spanish financial crisis. The fundraiser is following the usual decentralized online-activist structure, with members organizing themselves under the #QuerellaPaRato (“Lawsuit for Rato”) hashtag.
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Zapiro Wins 2012 International Publishers Association Freedom To Publish Prize
12 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Jonathan Shapiro, more commonly known as Zapiro, has been named the 2012 recipient of the International Publishers Association (IPA) award for Freedom to Publish. He’ll receive it for his exemplary courage in upholding the freedom to publish whatever he wants, basically.
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Dinner In The Sky: The Fancy Restaurant Dangling In Mid-Air [VIDEO]
12 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
A new concept restaurant has met with some recent success. Dinner in the Sky has diners, dining table and waitstaff hoisted some 50 meters into the sky with a crane, where they can enjoy a high-altitude gourmet meal. The latest branch just opened up in in Brussels – take a look after the jump.
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Soon Trolls In Britain Will No Longer Have The Safety Of Anonymity
12 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Trolls, a uniquely 21st-century phenomenon, have always enjoyed the privilege of anonymity. Abusive internet users have been allowed to hide behind made-up usernames while they went about trolling whom, when and where they please. That’s about to stop, in Britain at least.
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David Cameron Leaves 8-Year-Old Daughter At Pub
11 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, left his eldest daughter, Nancy, at a pub following a Sunday lunch. It happened after a mix-up with his wife Samantha, Downing Street has admitted. The couple only realised their daughter was missing when they got home.
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EXCLUSIVE: Yesterday’s Nando’s Advert
11 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Yesterday, Nando’s made a decision to hit back at our nation’s broadcasters. They published a summary of their pro-diversity advert in the Sunday papers in response to the SABC, DSTV, M-Net and e.tv banning the advert.
They say: “They’ve made the decision for you. Unlike our broadcasters, we’re giving you the right to choose.”
That’s how we feel too, because nobody should treat you like a child.
Click through to enjoy the ad in all its glory.
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PUMA Bring Me Back
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
PUMA has just launched a new campaign that asks you to recycle your unwanted clothes. It’s known as the “Bring Me Back” programme, and all you need to do is take your unwanted stuff – even non-PUMA stuff – to a PUMA retail location. However, if you’re attached to that special pair of pumps, PUMA encourages you to snap a picture, write an obituary, and share it online.
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Microsoft One-Ups Google In Battle For Cloud Market
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
As the American government continues its internal adoption of cloud computing services, Google and Microsoft have been scrambling for contracts – what with their being lucrative and influential and such. Sucks to be Google, then, because the FAA just awarded $91 million to Microsoft to have their platform transition to the Microsoft Office 360 cloud service.
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R.I.P. Fleetwood Mac Guitarist Bob Welch
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Bob Welch, formerly Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist and succesful soft-rock soloist of the 70’s, was found in his Nashville home yesterday, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 65. Police reports say that Welch’s body was found by his wife in the mid-afternoon, along with a suicide note.
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Captured Refugee Abused, Forcibly Tattooed On His Forehead [VIDEO]
07 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
In a disgusting display of cruelty and abuse, captors tattooed a refugee’s forehead after he tried to flee Syria for Lebanon. Click through for the disturbing video, slightly N5FW.
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