Producer, Rick Leed announced at a press release today the production of a reality show centered on the lives of three of Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren – Dorothy Adjoa Amuah, Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, and Swati Dlamini. Leed is known for his work on the American reality series, Dr. 90210. The three stars are known for being related to somebody important.
American horror maestro, Stephen King has announced he is writing a sequel to his 1977 classic chiller, “The Shining”. You might not remember the book, but you’ll certainly recall the 1980 film of the novel, directed by the late Stanley Kubrick, and starring a demented Jack Nicholson shoving his face through a hotel room door he just hacked apart with an axe. Man had some issues.
Facebook has finally admitted that it has been watching the web pages its 750 million members visit. The huge privacy breach was simply a mistake, it says. Software that automatically downloaded to users’ computers when they logged in to Facebook “inadvertently” sent information to the company, whether you were logged in or not.
Sheima Jastaniah is a Saudi woman who just doesn’t know her place. She actually had the audacity to drive a car the other day! For this cheeky act she was sentenced to 10 lashes on Monday. But King Abdullah showed tremendous generosity yesterday, when he revoked her sentence. I just hope she learned her lesson.
The unmanned spacecraft, Tiangong-1, which translates awesomely to Heavenly Palace, is set to blast off tonight from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu province, marking the start of China’s first rendezvous and docking mission. That guy is set to take off between 13h16 and 13h31 GMT.
The South African and Vietnamese governments have come together and agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding that will seek ways to stop rhino poaching. Ironically, the Vietnamese officials asked that a domestic medical research institute verify that rhino horn had no medicinal properties, and to make this information public.
Two BBC-made documentaries on Florence Nightingale are currently being sold in the UK as teaching aids. A group of academics, however, have called for them to be recalled. They claim these films demean Miss Nightingale by portraying her as “a manipulative, neurotic and sexually repressed woman who inadvertently killed troops during the Crimean War through medical error.”
Wonderful. Leisha Hailey, former The L-Word castmember, was thrown off of a Southwest Airlines flight yesterday for kissing her girlfriend – the flight attendant citing the apparent fact that Southwest is a “family airline.” This is the same airline that booted Kevin Smith for being fat, and Green Day’s Billy Joel Armstrong for wearing baggy pants.
Imagine being cut off from society for so long that you have no idea how to use a computer, the internet or a cell-phone. Such was the case for Randall Lee Church, a 46-year old Texan who was released from prison earlier this year, and subsequently set fire to a house so he could go back to prison, unable to deal with the stress of living in a society 26-years ahead of him.
Last week, news broke that the state of Texas had decided to move away from the practice of offering prisoners condemned to execution any special last meal. Ironically, Brian Price, a former Texas inmate who cooked the final meals for inmates, and author of “Meals to Die For”, had his offer of free meals turned down.
A study from Lawrence Berkely National Library has claimed that when you smoke a blunt, you contribute indirectly to a little under a kilogram of carbon dioxide emissions. The same study suggests that US pot growers are responsible for 1% of national electricity consumption. So I guess it’s not that green after all. (Sorry.)
Well hey, that sounds at least a little familiar. Ivan Lewis, shadow culture secretary is presently proposing a licensing scheme for journalists at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, which would have the power to prohibit people from doing any sort of journalism – which would have to include tweeting, blogging, and uploading pictures of stuff.
So hey, it turns out that on top of everything else, Hitler got slapped with a speeding fine south of Ingolstadt for going twice the speed limit in his Mercedes limousine. This was about two years before becoming Fuhrer, though, so Adolf got his chauffeur to take the heat to keep from spoiling his image.
You do not want to piss Catherine Kieu off if you value your manhood! After an argument with her husband about a friend of his coming over to spend the night, she drugged him, tied him up in their bed and cut off his penis.
Google and Israel’s national museum, the Israel Museum, have come together to place a number of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls online for the first time. The project is the first of many hoping to showcase some of the manuscripts that make up what many consider the most important archaeological find of the 20th century.
On Sunday, 20 000 bullfighting fans packed Barcelona’s La Monumental bullring to watch the last corrida that Catalonia will hold; the event was headlined by Spain’s premier matador, José Tomás. The regional ban on bullfighting, which was approved at the end of last year, goes into effect in January.
As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests enter their ninth day, an increasing number of videos and photos have begun surfacing, showing near-indiscriminate use of tasers, mace and kenneling by the NYPD on demonstrators, who are protesting a financial system that apparently favours the wealthy and powerful over ordinary citizens.
Kenya’s Wangari Maathai has died while undergoing cancer treatment in Nairobi at the age of 71. An activist for conservation, transformation and women’s rights, she was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that an Australian technologist, Nik Cubrilovic, has discovered that Facebook is tracking the websites its users visit even when they have logged out of the social networking site. Reactions have been mixed, but is this something we should be that surprised about?
The occasional airport comes kitted with sleeping lounges, but not everyone can get into those lounges. So, that’s what Sleepbox is for. Sleepbox is a temporary bedroom for the average traveler, that can be rented for periods of time while you’re tired and hanging around at the airport.
It’s Friday, so come get your secondhand vertigo on and watch this Russian adrenaline junkie scale the 133 meter “Stalin’s skyscraper,” near Krasnye Vorota, without any sort of safety gear. The camera’s mounted on the climber’s head, so I guess he had a helmet, but I’m not sure that counts at 133 metres.
Starting today, praying in the streets of Paris is against the law. The French interior minister warned that police will use force if anybody disobeys the new rule to keep the French capital’s public spaces secular. However, people have been defying the law all morning.
As of April this year, it is illegal to wear a face-covering veil or other maskings in public places in France. Things are about to get even more interesting, as Kenza Drider declared her candidacy for the French presidency yesterday. And she did it wearing a burqa. She also showed off a campaign poster of a veiled woman standing in front of a line of police.
It’s always nice when the world catches up with 80’s sci-fi films. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have succeeded in reconstructing people’s visual experiences using MRI and image libraries. Which means that if you click on the link you can see somebody’s brain try to replicate the Pink Panther film trailer.
NASA have meekly announced that their 6.5 tonne Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which shut down in 2005 due to its batteries dying, will come crashing down to earth sometime today, somewhere.
While the world fusses over another American execution, Iran has publicly hanged a 17-year-old boy for stabbing to death their “strongest man”. The boy begged for forgiveness and professed he had done it in self-defence, but not even an 11th-hour plea by Amnesty International for a stay of execution could stop it.
This is just the start. Soon we’ll be giving them the vote. A three-foot-tall robot called the iCub has been nominated to participate in the Olympic Torch Relay for the 2012 London Games, partially to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth, and partially to creep people out with three-foot-tall, fire-wielding robots.
Troy Davis, convicted of the August 19, 1989 of the murder of a police officer, was executed last night in the USA. Authorities had found no murder weapon, no DNA evidence, and no surveillance tapes. But according to the residing judge there “was no substantial doubt cast on the verdict.” In other words, a potentially innocent man died yesterday.
R.E.M. has decided to unplug their instruments for good, concluding a career spanning some 30 years and having achieved record sales that topped the 30 million mark. The band made the announcement via a statement on their website yesterday and dished out praise and thanks to all their loyal fans for the years of support.
Look, it’s nice to know Apple isn’t the only company that knows how to create buzz by accidentally leaking information. Ji Lee, Facebook’s creative director, tweeted about Facebook Music, which is set to launch tomorrow. The post was quickly deleted, but not before the Internet had time to get all excited about it.