It seems we aren’t the only ones who had some action in parliament yesterday. South Korea’s ruling party has ratified a controversial free trade deal with the United States. But just before they did that an opposition MP set off and threw a teargas device at the speaker, briefly clearing the chamber.
The landslide victory of the opposition conservative Popular Party in Spain is widely viewed as a threat to same-sex marriage in that country. But the gays won’t go down without a fight. Or without a make-out session, for that matter. Watch as a live Al Jazeera news report on the election gets photobombed by two guys furiously sucking face.
Those sneaky Russians! News anchor Tatiana Limanova gave Barack Obama the middle finger during a recent TV bulletin. After mentioning that her president is soon to be taking over the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leadership responsibilities (that were previously held by Obama), she flashes a zap nonchalantly, before continuing her bulletin.
Herman Cain’s appetite for scandal seems bottomless, and just when the controversy-weary Republican Paty imagined the worst was over, Herman goes and serves up another slice.
Yesterday was a big day for European politics, with Poland welcoming their first transsexual woman ever into its parliament. Anna Grodzka was born a man but underwent a sex change. She was also joined by Robert Biedron – the country’s first openly gay man to be elected to office.
Cape Town has adopted a new name for Western Boulevard, choosing to honour late South African parliamentarian and anti-Apartheid activist, Helen Suzman by naming the busy thoroughfare after her.
With more South Africans refusing to be counted, our friends at Stats SA have begun resorting to, well, mildly extreme measures. Their application, which was submitted to the courts, requests permission to enforce the provisions of the Statistics Act. Basically, if you don’t comply they can throw your naughty ass in jail for 6 months or slap you with a R10 000 fine.
It looks like the tides that swept up the Occupy Wall Street protest campaign – ongoing after three weeks – have broken national boundaries; ‘Operation Ubuntu’ has been set up to launch a simultaneous protests on the 15th of October in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Grahamstown, as part of the global Occupy Revolution campaign.
Because it’s important to learn about economic disparity from an early age, Sesame Street will introduce an indigent Muppet named Lily, who will educate Elmo and the rest about the millions of starving families in America during an hour-long special episode. The letter of the day will be H.
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.
Raise your hand if a taxi has ever put your life in danger. At the recent launch of Transport Month in Richard’s Bay, Santaco president Jabulani Mthembu made it clear that he is fully behind Transport Minister S’bu Ndebele’s call for a speed limit reduction. He’s also urging motorists to stop “rushing” on our roads. Rich.
The upstart German Pirate Party took just under 9% of the electoral vote in Sunday’s Berlin elections, winning 15 seats in the 149-seat state parliament. For the most part, they’ve been campaigning on a platform of free Wi-Fi, free public transportation, and a lower voting age. Just like real pirates.
UK teacher, Mohamed Ibrahim, unexpectedly received an email from Somalia asking him to visit his former homeland over the UK summer holidays. When he returned to war-torn Mogadishu, he was unexpectedly appointed the Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the country.
In a recent ruling by Judge Colin Lamont, “Dubula Ibhunu”, also known as “shoot the boer”, has been deemed hate speech. Lamont, who is presiding over Julius Malema’s hate speech trial, also made it clear that the Equality Act was put in place to protect all groups in a country, and in this case, more specifically, minorities. Sorry JuJu. Not.
The Chinese government, in a not-unusual display of authoritarian petulance, has banned the download of over a hundred music titles from popular online music sites in China.
You should know about this. Ali Ferzat, an immensely popular Syrian cartoonist and outspoken critic of President Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on the opposition, has been beaten, burned, and had both of his hands broken by masked gunmen, as a warning to cease his anti-Assad activism.
Screenshots from a Chinese military propaganda video uploaded to YouTube last month reveal a cyberwarfare app designed to make attacks look like they’re coming from any IP address. In the video, the Chinese government can be seen sending attacks from an IP address belonging to the University of Alabama.
Bravo. Anti-riot police used tear gas and water canons (loaded with dyed water) to disperse supporters of the opposition party in the outskirts of Kampala yesterday. The group had gathered to mourn people killed during demonstrations earlier this year.
A 20-year-old man in Essex has been charged with “encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence” because he used Blackberry Messenger to invite people to a public water fight. Whether this means British cops can now wiretap the Blackberry messaging network is unclear, but either way: great job, democracy.
Vodafone shut down their Egyptian network coverage during the revolution, arguably prolonging the event’s bloodshed and indirectly leading to the death of Egyptians who couldn’t summon ambulances when they were needed. This is bad. So it’s nice that AccessNow, a human rights NGO with Vodafone stock, are trying to force a company-wide human rights assessment.
When opening a sex museum in a country where, publicly, sex almost doesn’t exist, you had better make sure that it’s as offensive as possible, since controversy is sure to follow. I’m pretty sure naming it Tochka G, meaning G-spot in Russian, and covering the walls with images of Putin sword-dick-fighting Obama, should do the trick.
A journalist had the audacity to call Floyd Shivambu right out of the blue to ask his opinion on reports that Julius Malema had spent roughly R78 000 on a holiday. Shockingly, Floyd answered his phone. Also, he swore at the journalist. Listen to an audio clip of the conversation inside.
Youth activists in Uganda recently attempted to throw a public birthday party for President Yoweri Museveni. They brought cake, sweets, and mangoes! By doing this, they hoped to focus attention on his disputed age. See, he claims he is 67, but they say he is actually 73. The president took offence and had them and their cake arrested.
After 547 days of being held as hostages in Afghanistan, two French journalists,Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, have been released and are due back in France today. The two were kidnapped on the 30th of December 2009 along with their Afghan translator, fixer and driver in the mountainous Kapisa province northeast of the Afghan capital of Kabul.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.