Because nothing happens in Merrie England without Banksy offering some sort of comment on it, a new piece has been spotted near Poundland showing a child laborer at work sewing Union Jacks. Apparently this has something to do with Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. Take a look! It’ll be a postcard soon.
In the wake of last week’s “Dagbreek mock-exorcism” shenanigans reported in Stellenbosch paper Die Matie, the University is going to tackle the thorny issues around religion in the residences at an open forum tomorrow, according to a poster released on their social media pages. Is the shit about to hit the fan?
News has just emerged that Former News Of The World editor, Rebekah Brooks, and her racehorse trainer husband Charlie Brooks, have been charged with perverting the course of justice in relation to the phone-hacking scandal.
In February this year, Twitter unveiled a service that allows researchers, and anyone who has the money to pay for the service, to unlock the Twitter archives, as it were. They’ve expanded their product range again; and now you can get a weekly email summarising the most relevant tweets and stories distributed by the people on your timeline.
When Queen’s drummer, Roger Taylor, was asked if he’d want a hologram Freddie Mercury a la Tupac – he declined, saying “I don’t want to appear with a hologram of my dear friend.” Which is unfortunately ambiguous wording, because they’ve decided to conjure up a Mercury hologram at tonight’s 10th anniversary We Will Rock You musical.
Various officials are currently meeting with the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) to establish a salvage operation for the stranded trawler on Clifton’s First Beach. A source familiar with the maritime industry believes it’s quite unlikely that the vessel wouldn’t have known what it was doing, and that fog would not have played a role in the grounding.
A vintage 1923 Leica camera went under this hammer this weekend, and shattered the record previously set for a camera. The auction was held at the Galerie Westlicht in Vienna, with the camera being sold to a buyer who has chosen to remain anonymous. But exactly how much did it go for?
Facebook lately been experimenting with a small group of users by offering them the opportunity to promote their own status messages by paying for them. If the “Highlight” feature is more widely adopted, people will soon be able to pay to make sure their cutesy status updates are at the top of everyone’s news feed.
After receiving a tip-off, the Sunday Times on Friday discovered that millions of rands worth of school textbooks had simply been dumped at a warehouse in King William’s Town, in the Eastern Cape.
Hey there, science fiction. Defence contractor, Pegasus Global Holdings is building a replica of Rock Hill, a South Carolina city, in the middle of the New Mexico desert as a testing ground for futuristic infrastructures – self-driving cars, green buildings and next-generation Wi-Fi. It’ll be an uninhabited laboratory – they’re calling it “an amusement park for scientists.”
Well, this is terribly embarrassing: JPMorgan, the largest bank in the US, literally wiped seven per cent off their stock in a few hours with this blunder. The investment bank has blamed “sloppiness and bad judgment” for the enormous error.
Suddenly Obama’s declaration that people of the same sex should be allowed to marry seems a little stale. Argentina has just approved a gender rights bill that will allow all adult citizens to change their legal sex at will — without undergoing surgery or hormone replacement therapy.
The Vatican recently launched an investigation into seven priests from the Legion of Christ for abuse of minors, another two priests are being investigated for other crimes. This marks the first known Vatican action against priests following a similar, high-profile case.
We know; we also thought it was some kind of elaborate joke, or that we’d been mistaken for seeing an extra zero. We hadn’t. And nor is it a joke. The South African Municipal Workers Union is demanding that all vacant positions in the Local Government Sector be filled as a matter of urgency. Which makes sense, because that would benefit a lot of people.
Venture capitalist, Peter Theil’s dream of an artificial island utopia for tech start-ups is inching closer to reality off the coast of San Francisco. Riding a wave of investment capital from Thiel, the project has a name – “Blueseed” – and a website, as well as a lengthy lineup of tech companies that want to get on board.
A short while ago, Jessica Leandra dos Santos and Tshidi Thamana seemed to try to apologise for their recent actions, as well as form some kind of friendship. But Itumeleng Mabeba, a man at the centre of hate speech allegations for sending a very disturbing tweet, has claimed his Twitter account was hacked. His employer is also instituting an internal disciplinary process against him.
SONY Corporation has declared an annual loss of 457 billion yen ($5,7 billion) in 2011, its fourth straight year of hemorrhaging money, and the worst in its 66-year corporate history. In spite of which, the company – which appointed a new president, Kazuo Hirai last month – is predicting return to profit by the end of 2012.
Sassoon came to prominence in the 1960s as he pioneered the “wash and wear” look for women’s hair, basically freeing women from over-stylised, labour-intensive styles that dominated the 1950s. He pioneered an “architectural” approach to hairstyling, using geometric cuts and shapes modeled on the facial structure of the person he was styling. At the time, the approach was revolutionary.
Politicians reacted angrily at the decision to move Lieutenant-General Richard Mdluli out of his crime intelligence position yesterday. A collective feeling amongst opposition parties was that this was simply not good enough, and that Mdluli should be suspended again.
South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation, and state-owned lender, has a plan to sell about 15 billion Rand’s worth of investments it currently holds over the next five years. The initiative is part of its divestment plan, Chief Financial Officer, Gert Gouws said in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, today.
In a slightly surprising move, given the extent to which Google and Facebook have been compliant in handing data over to government enquiry, Twitter filed a motion (PDF) yesterday to block a subpoena that would force the company to turn over the data of one of its users, an arrested Occupy Wall Street protestor.
We had been wondering what might have been stolen from advocate Muzi Sikhakhane’s home in Northcliff, Jozi, last month. Sikhakhane is acting in a matter against controversial police crime intelligence boss, Lieutenant-General Richard Mdluli. Turns out, one of the documents stolen was an affidavit penned by Tokyo Sexwale, which accused Mdluli of abusing state resources.
Fancy embossed invitations to attend a preview of The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film, are being sent around Washington D.C. – ostensibly from “President Robert Mugabe and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Art, and Culture.” Zimbabwe’s art ministry has assured reporters that it hasn’t come from them.
By now, many people within South Africa’s news-following public are familiar with the recent burst of racism that took place on South Africa’s twittersphere involving a model and a “model”. Mistakes were made, but the backlash and long-term effects from a social and mainstream media clamouring may have devastating consequences on the individuals involved. Things begin to go pearshaped when the media is inaccurate with information that disperses frantically when a news story of this nature breaks.
People over at MIT have developed a piece of open-source software that lets you drag files from your phone to your computer or tablet or whatever with a swipe of a finger. It’s simple and clever and looks like the future – and it works. They’re calling it Swÿp. Take a look at the demo after the jump.
One of President Jacob Zuma’s many sons, Edward, is being sued for R1,5 million by Functions for Africa CC. The company says Edward still owes them the shortfall from his lavish wedding that cost R2,5 million at Tala Game Reserve in KwaZulu Natal last year.
Following the death of Beastie Boys band member, Adam “MC” Yauch, one of the co-creators of Chapelle’s Show has released previously unseen footage of the band performing “The New Style,” a song from their debut album, on the show in 2004. The show’s co-creator and host Dave Chappelle performs with them for a bit.
King Mswati III is down another wife, leaving him only 12 to make do with. She is the second to have left in recent months, and cited “physical and emotional abuse” as the reason for her exit.
LG Electronics, the world’s second biggest TV maker, will launch Internet-enabled TV based on Google’s platform in the United States in May. The South Korean firm is after a share of the emerging Internet TV market, a senior LG executive said today.
47 Ethiopian men were rescued on the weekend from being sold into slavery by a human-trafficking syndicate in Limpopo. Snatched for ransom, those whose families can’t pay, have their relatives unwillingly sold into slavery in SA. The United Nations now estimates that there are more than 27 million slaves in the world.