After a ridiculous amount of time at liberty, George Zimmerman – the guy who shot Trayvon Martin for wearing a hoodie – has been taken into custody and charged with second-degree murder. Due to some oddment of Florida law, a charge of first-degree murder was ruled out. If convicted, Zimmerman faces life in prison.
Last month Jenna Talackova was disqualified from taking part in the Miss Universe beauty pageant because she is transgendered. But the decision was reversed last week, and even better news has just broke: a rule change will allow any transgender women to participate in the beauty pageant from next year onwards.
According to eNews Africa editor, Chris Maroleng, police in Swaziland have detained two journalists working for E-TV. It wasn’t immediately clear why they had been detained, but it was understood that the crew were on their way to report about marches taking place in the country.
A new bill is making its way through congress – CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which is pretty much SOPA in different shoes. It’s another attempt to give copyright enforces carte blanche to spy on internet users and censor online content without just cause. Which is sort of bad.
Back in 1925, Dayton, Tennessee was home to the famous Scopes “monkey trial”, which saw teacher John Scopes violating a state statute by teaching evolution in biology. Almost a century of science, research and cultural development later they’re still dealing with the same problems.
Jet-setting street muralist, ABOVE, recently visited our shores. While he was here he got the opportunity to express his concerns about an issue that lies very close to his heart, blood diamonds. How did he express himself? By defacing the façade of Johannesburg’s largest diamond exporter, with their consent. Click through for pics.
Paintball guns were the weapons of choice for eight Scarborough residents who were among a group of 35 individuals that battled two troops of baboons in and around the sleepy coastal Cape village on Easter Monday. They fought for hours, but the baboons had the last laugh by returning later in the evening.
An unnamed Johannesburg resident was robbed, kidnapped, and stuffed into the back of car on Sunday – but managed to send a text to his girlfriend, Lynn Peters who promptly posted a plea for help on Twitter. Frantic retweeting led to a Twitter-coordinated search by private security companies, who retrieved both the car and Peters’ boyfriend.
Zimbabwean Information Minister, Webster Shamu, has told the AFP that reports that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was battling for his life in a Singapore hospital are “a lot of hogwash”. It must really irritate Bob when people make stuff up about him.
A recent study by South African student magazine, Student Village and the Department of Marketing and Retail Management at UNISA has shed some light on the consumer habits of South Africa’s 850 000 university, technikon- and college-going students. The skinny on South Africa’s student spending, after the jump!
A dramatic shoot-out and escape occurred at the Lansdowne police station in Cape Town’s southern suburbs, early on Sunday morning. Five suspects attempted to make a getaway before one of the men was shot dead, three were rearrested, and the fifth – one of the Cape’s most wanted criminals – got away. Thankfully, Igshaan Dyers, is now back behind bars.
Take it with a pinch of salt, but over the weekend this pretty convincing Lollapalooza internal memo hit the internet. I mean blurry photographs of lineup lists aren’t set in stone, but it looks pretty legit – and includes headline acts by The Black Keys, Black Sabbath, and The Shins. Check out the full thing after the jump.
Microsoft wants you to notice them too – which is why they’ve rolled out a Ford Mustang fitted with Kinect sensors, two Windows 8 tablets, projection screens, and a couple of other neat toys as a proof-of concept to inspire developers to build applications and automotive technologies with Microsoft in mind.
I was all set to hate the Colin-Farrell-starring remake of 1990’s Total Recall (which had Arnold Schwarzenegger portray an amnesiac freedom fighter from Mars) – but it actually looks pretty rad! Flying cars, memory implants, and Jessica Biel are all things that make good movies good. Take a look.
April Fool pranks played by people tend to be either cruel or embarrassing. April Fool pranks played by tech companies, however, are charming and endearing attempts at being funny for one day every year – and this year’s haul of PR stunts is actually pretty good. Check them out after the jump.
So! The British Home Office announced yesterday that new legislation will soon allow the government to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of every single person in the UK. The Home Office then had to clarify that, no, this was not some sort of elaborate April Fools prank.
Canvasses by lauded South African artists such as Irma Stern, William Kentridge, Gerard Sekoto and Francois Krige fetched over R3.5 million at an auction at Bonhams of London last week, highlighting a significant appreciation of interest in work by South African artists. We’ve got the full list of big sellers after the jump!
Greg has done it. He is now earning more than he would have been earning if he hadn’t exposed the rotten core of ethical detachment at Goldman Sachs. There was a bidding war for the rights to publish Greg’s memoir, and a division of the Hachette Book Group, Grand Central, outbid Penguin to get them.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, recently charged for involvement in a prostitution ring, is also being accused of raping a hotel housekeeper – and since he seems to be losing that whole prostitution thing, he’s had his lawyers try to dismiss the case because his former position as head of the International Monetary Fund gives him “absolute immunity.”
Well, this doesn’t look good: Turkcell is suing MTN for $4,2 billion. Turkcell has decided to act on its claims that MTN bribed officials, arranged meetings between Iranian and South African leaders, and promised Iran weapons as well as UN votes, all in exchange for a licence to offer cellphone services in Iran.
Cue mass hysteria, Twitter has officially confirmed what many have suspected for some time, there’s a bug that causes twitter users to randomly unfollow people. It’s doubtful whether society will be able to function normally without their precious social media and in all likelihood this is the first sign of the impending apocalypse.
All Blacks star, and one of the most well known rugby players in the world at the moment, Sonny Bill Williams, wants to make Cape Town his home. His agent, who is currently in Cape Town, said Sonny is ready to discuss a possible contract with the Stormers. He could also climb into the boxing ring here as soon as November.
Alesandro Barbosa is one crazy dude! Currently serving a prison sentence relating to firearms offenses and drug trafficking, this guy also throws the best parties in jail. But prison authorities have been left red-faced after Barbosa loaded some party pics onto Facebook. They contain kegs of Heineken, boom-boxes, a flat-screen TV and prostitutes. Check out some pics after the jump!
An blog post allegedly featuring the residential address of George Zimmerman – the man who killed Trayvon Martin – has gone viral. The post went viral after it was retweeted by Spike Lee to his 250 000 followers. Unfortunately, the address actually belongs to an innocent elderly couple, who now live in fear.
Woolworths South Africa has earned the Almighty’s ire, not to mention that of dozens of their (former) Christian customers on Facebook, by besmirching their delicious, fruity hot cross bun packages with Halaal certifications. If it’s not soft drinks, it’s holy baked goods! Have they no shame?! Full details of this outrage after the jump!
While the public protector, Thuli Madonsela, wouldn’t outwardly say that the current tabulation of the Protection of Information Bill was unconstitutional, she did say MP’s could be spared the embarrassment of having it declared invalid by the courts if they rethought certain aspects of the bill.
Regular readers will be aware that we’ve been ardent fans of Danny MacAskill here at 2oceansVibe for years. We are now however proud to present to you an Australian, Andrew Dickey, who could arguably be as good as Danny. You’ll enjoy his skills.
The City of New York’s Education Department has issued a list of about 50 English words and topics that will no longer appear on standardised tests for fear of offending students’ sensibilities. Unfortunately for them, when you accommodate an entire world of cultures in a single city, students’ sensibilities become a very broad category to cover indeed! Full list of this insanity inside!
The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory has partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to launch what will arguably become the most extensive online archive of Nelson Mandela’s life. The free global access to photos, videos, letters and personal documents about his life and times will continue to expand as people across the world add their memorabilia to the archive.
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has spent the last three years slaving away at a massively insane internet-only, 44-song concept record, called Teargarden By Kaleidyscope. That album now includes an “album within an album” called Oceania, which will be released via traditional record-label channels, with EMI on June 19. Check out the epic title track below.