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Politics
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Sao Paolo Judge Approves Brazil’s First Gay Marriage
29 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
After New York, every subsequent gay marriage approval is going to seem less exciting, but this is still a thing. Judge Fernando Henrique Pinto ruled that two men could convert their civil union into a full marriage, a right that’s been lobbeyed for since the Supreme Court recognized same-sex civil unions in May, but stopped short of approving marriage.
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TSA Pat-Down: 95-Year-Old Woman Told To Remove Adult Diaper At Airport
28 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Here, at 2oceansvibe, we are quite familiar with some of the unusual pat-downs that the American Transportation Security Association (TSA) has conducted, but this one is surely the most controversial yet. They actually said they had identified something “wet and firm” and that they needed to remove the diaper to complete their checks.
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The Dutch May Ban Religious Animal Slaughter
28 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Dutch political left sees the ritual slaughter of animals as cruel to animals, whilst the right sees it as foreign and barbaric. They will both pass a law next week that will make the killing of animals without stunning them first illegal. This poses a problem for orthodox Dutch Jews and Muslims who’ve been doing it differently for the last couple of millennia.
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ICC Proposes Banning ‘Runners’ In Cricket
28 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The elimination of runners for injured players, the use of two new balls from each end in one-dayers, and new regulation around when the batting and bowling Powerplays can be taken, are among the key recommendations the ICC Chief Executives’ Committee has made after its meeting in Hong Kong.
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Now There’s A Company Specializing In Finding Your Embarrassing Facebook Photos
27 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Social Intelligence, a company approved a week ago by the Federal Trade Commission, is one that uses deep-search tools to do background checks on other companies’ potential employees. These guys could find your MySpace account, they’re that thorough. And if your deep-search profile doesn’t look good, you don’t get hired.
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Taiwanese Food-Blogger Jailed For A Bad Noodle Review
24 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Wonderful. A Taiwanese court ruled this week that a female food-blogger’s claim that a local restaurant’s beef noodles “were too salty” justified 30 days in detention, and two years of probation. Even better, she has to pay 200,000 Taiwenese dollars (about 50K ZAR) in compensation to the restaurant.
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Greek Dog Protesting Since 2008 [VIDEO]
23 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
We’ve been following the developments of the Greek financial crisis closely here at 2oceansvibe. What’s more is that dogs have been absolutely killing it this year and so we bring you, Loukanikos, who has hated Greece’s austerity measures, corrupt politicians, and the plight of the Greek people since 2008.
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FBI’s Search For Hacking Group Takes Out Random, Unrelated Websites
22 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The cyber-war on cyber-terror now has innocent bystanders, apparently. In a hunt for LulzSec, the hacking group claiming responsibility for the compromise of huge amounts of Sony user accounts and for briefly taking the CIA website offline, the FBI raided DigitalOne’s data – finding nothing, but causing a bunch of unrelated websites to go offline.
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Child Found Wearing Eight Kilogram Suicide Bomb Vest
21 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A nine-year-old girl has been found with an eight kilogram suicide vest strapped to her body in Pakistan’s troubled north-west region. The Pakistani police said they detained the schoolgirl on Monday after learning she was allegedly told to blow up a police checkpoint, which wasn’t far from where they stopped her.
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Former Tunisian President Sentenced To 35-Year Jail Sentence In Absentia
21 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A Tunisian court found former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife guilty of theft and the illegal possession of large quantities of money and jewelry. He sentenced them to 35 years in jail, which is great and all, except Ben Ali and his wife are in Saudi Arabia, making extradition a little unlikely.
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The Hawks Will Investigate New Arms Deal Claims
21 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Ah, the arms deal. It’s like the ANC’s bastard child that won’t go away. The government said it should be dropped, as there wasn’t enough evidence to any investigate further. That was until Saab revealed that they’d paid brides of about 24 million Rand. Now it seems that the Hawks are finally going to take another look at the torrid affair.
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Greece Prepares To Sell Off Airports, Highways, Parts Of The Mediterranean
21 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
You may by now be aware that Greece is in some deep financial trouble at the moment. Pretty much everyone knows a Greek too, so we should spare a moment for all Greeks, as Greece prepares to sell off airports, highways, state-owned companies and prime sections of Mediterranean real estate.
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‘Obedient Wives Club’ Launches New Branch [VIDEO]
20 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A new club that opened in Jakarta, Indonesia, this weekend, is encouraging women to be totally obedient to their husbands and focus on keeping them sexually satisfied. Predictably, the new branch of the 800-member strong organisation has generated a chorus of disapproval from activists and academics alike.
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“Tasteful” Obama Impersonator At Republican Leadership Conference [VIDEO]
20 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Professional Barack Obama impersonator Reggie Brown was invited by the Republican Party to speak at their Leadership Conference in New Orleans over the weekend. Classy birth certificate references and borderline racist jokes ensued, until he was pulled off the stage by a conference official. Come, observe democracy at its high point.
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Gaddafi Government Reportedly In Talks With Rebels; Russian Influenced Chess Game Probably Helped
17 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Muammar Gaddafi’s government are in contact across Europe with members of the Libyan rebel army. Earlier this week the head of the World Chess Federation, a man with direct Kremlin links, took Gaddafi on in a ‘diplomatic’ chess game. Maybe his persuasion has helped.
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Apple Patents Technology That Lets Other People Turn Off Your Camera
17 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
And they’d been doing so well with the ‘not evil’ thing. Apple’s new patent is for software that would sense when people are trying to film concerts or events with their iPhone, then automatically disable the camera. It’d be nice to see a concert without a thousand iPhones blocking the way, but Big Brother much?
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India’s Executions On Hold Because Last Living Hangman Has Broken Arm
15 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
There seems to be no shortage of farmers, businessmen, snake charmers, off-shore call centres and Bollywood movie stars among the world’s second most populous nation of 1.2 billion people. But, they don’t have a single professional hangman left in the whole country who is able to carry out the capital punishment.
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Interviewer’s Dalai Lama Joke Bombs With The Dalai Lama [VIDEO]
15 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Australian TV presenter, Karl Stefanovich found himself interviewing the Dalai Lama, as one does, and decided that the best thing to do would be to try that “the Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop” joke. Take a look and see how well that worked out for him.
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They’re Rolling Out Cheap New Meningitis Meds
15 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Yay, science. A new vaccine for meningitis A – that disease killing thousands of people in the central African “meningitis belt” annually – has been released. Which is good, but even better is the fact that it’s way cheaper and more effective than whatever we were using before.
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Gaddafi Takes On Head Of World Chess Federation In Chess Game [VIDEO]
14 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
As rebel forces march further west toward the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and Germany declares its support for the rebels, Muammar Gaddafi took on Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation in a game of chess on Sunday. What do they have in common? They’ve both been in powerful leadership positions for a long time.
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Belgium Goes A Year Without Official Government
14 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Belgium has gone one year since their last elections on 13 June 2010 without an official government. Coalition negotiations have dragged on and on, and are still happening as we speak. In the meantime, the country has had to make do with a caretaker prime minister.
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Democracy For Realsies: Iceland Is Crowdsourcing Its Constitution
13 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Hot damn but I love the future. Iceland is drawing up a new constitution, in the wake of the country’s commercial banks collapsing. Which is news, but not news-news; the interesting part is how the former vikings are going about the process – they’re crowdsourcing the draft online, with links to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts.
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“Gay Girl In Damascus” Blogger Is A Married Dude From Georgia
13 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
There was a fair amount of coverage about the apparent arrest of “Amina Arraf”, the pseudonym of openly gay Syrian blogger behind ‘Gay Girl In Damascus,’ which did a lot for getting word out about human rights issues in Syria. Except it turns out that Amina was invented by 40-year-old Tom McMaster, from Georgia.
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Australia Plans To Shoot Camels To Generate Carbon Credits
09 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
The Australian government appears to be seriously considering a culling-for-carbon-credits plan to reduce the methane emissions from the estimated 1.2 million wild camels roaming the outback. Earlier today we reported that domestic cats in parts of Sydney have a curfew. Now camels are in trouble for burping and farting too much.
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Norway To Train Foreign Diplomats In Black Metal
09 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In yet another move to convince us that Scandinavian politics makes sense: the government of Norway is inexplicably offering to ‘train’ foreign diplomats in the ways of black metal. As in, the musical genre. Specifically, ‘True Norwegian Black Metal’, which you would know by now if you were a foreign diplomat in Norway.
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Desmond Tutu Rubbishes Information Bill’s Current Form, Unites Country Against It
08 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The campaign against the current tabulated form of the proposed Protection of Information Bill peaked at the end of last week. The ANC finally realised how silly it might look in the long-run and joined the united push for a postponement on its signing. Desmond Tutu is now rallying us all to get behind our freedom too.
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Home Affairs: Just Bring Us Your Dead Parents And We’ll Give You Your ID
08 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Ah the Department of Home Affairs. They might be one of the world’s most bloated, corrupt and incompetent government departments, but at least they have a sense of humour. As 70-year-old pensioner, Paulinah Ragatji found out, when she was told that she would need to be accompanied by her dead parents, in order to receive an ID.
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2oceansVibe Exclusive: Leaked FIA Bahrain Report – Full Transcript
08 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
The FIA has reinstated the Bahrain Grand Prix on the 2011 F1 Grand Prix calendar, despite numerous independent reports of government-sponsored torture and murder of political dissidents in that country, since February 14 of this year. The FIA report, endorsing the re-institution of the event on the F1 calendar, has just been leaked, and has […]
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Fox News FAIL: Photo Of Tina Fey In Sarah Palin Report [PIC]
07 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Wow. How something like this even happens, I’m not even sure. But, it is both hilarious, and an epic fail. During a Fox News report on 2012 American presidential candidates, Fox News displayed a picture of Tina Fey playing Palin on an episode of Saturday Night Live instead of showing an actual picture of Sarah Palin. Awkward.
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Swedish King In Strip Club Scandal
06 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
I shall not for a moment attempt to feign journalistic integrity here. This is the kind of thing the public loves. Allegations that King Carl Gustaf of Sweden has been visiting strip clubs and having affairs has the media baying for blood and the public frothing at the mouth.
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