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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 […]
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.
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.
I know this isn’t the worst thing to happen to French civil liberties by a long shot, but still; the interpretation of a law prohibiting ‘commercial advertising’ – which, in effect, will mean that newsreaders may no longer mention Facebook or Twitter, unless the story is about Facebook or Twitter – makes total social media sense. Total.
I can’t help it. I have to write about this. It’s too good not to write about. Insanity is always funny. In this case the insanity comes once more from the king’s jester, Julius. He said yesterday that he didn’t drive white people away from voting for the ANC, because they never voted for the ANC in the first place.
For once, news that seems to be too good to be true, actually is true. The ANC has done a little back-peddle today and called for an extension to the June 24 deadline to complete the drafting of the Protection of Information Bill. Jimmy Manyi must be beside himself at the moment.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy has released a report stating that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed. Like Dame Judi Dench and Sting, the 19-member panel – which includes Sir Richard Branson, Kofi Annan and former leaders of Brazil and Mexico – is urging for the decriminalization of drugs. The USA is not amused.
That’s right, the ANC Youth League; that bastion of the people – that pillar of hope in a senseless world, that celestial body by which we set our lives – is selling access to Malema and friends at the first ever ANCYL Business Networking Lounge™, during the 24th national ANCYL congress.
Google announced on Tuesday that they’d been they target of a phishing scam originating in Jinan, China, aimed at the accounts of Chinese activists and senior officials in the U.S. Victims were sent fake emails with links to a fake Gmail site, which harvested the usernames and passwords of anyone trying to log in.
The illegal drug debate is terribly à la mode right now. More than 30 high profile UK figures and celebrities, including Dame Judi Dench and Sting, are urging Prime Minister David Cameron to decriminalise drugs. Co-incidently, this follows Holland’s decision to ban foreigners from its cannabis-selling coffee shops. It would solve the problem for Brits who can’t get their kicks in Amsterdam anymore.
Cisco have just come out with their annual Visual Networking Index, which is a pretty reliable source of internet traffic reporting. Global traffic will quadruple, by 2015, with Asia’s traffic generation overtaking North America. Which is cool, but less cool than the stuff they say about traffic in South Africa, which is after the jump.
It has been confirmed that the Hawks and the South African Revenue Services have raided the home of the controversial Durban tycoon Sbu Mpisane and his wife Shaun on Wednesday morning. You’ll know the guy that I’m speaking about. The dude who’s wife bought him a Maserati GranCabrio for his 40th recently.
In an exclusive interview with 2oceansvibe, the CEO of South Africa’s 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee, Danny Jordaan has revealed today that the SA World Cup’s financial statements support the tournament’s perceived success. Jordaan confirmed, “In today’s forthcoming AGM, the Operations Report and Financial Report will confirm that the SA World Cup shows a total revenue […]
The Pentagon is due to publically release it’s first formal cyber strategy next month, and the understanding is that it’s going to be classifying some kinds of computer sabotage as acts of war; apparently, a serious enough computer attack could be interpreted as a “use of force” that would warrant physical retaliation.