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Can you believe it? The first week of the 2018 FIFA World Cup is already over. The ol' onion bag has ballooned numerous times, and many a goalkeeper wish they had coated their gloves in glue. But the most searched for World Cup star is not a goalkeeper, nor does he have "Cristiano" or "Lionel" on the back of his shirt. Instead, according to Twitter Data, Brazil's Neymar has "captured the most attention" on the social network during the first week. In second place, Cristiano Ronaldo (thanks to his hattrick against Spain) and Lionel Messi (thanks to his duffed penalty against Iceland)...

Superhero movies are all the rage in 2018, but the flick topping this week's SA box office doesn't have any Chris Pratt, Ryan Reynolds or Avengers stars in it. Instead, they're all adorable pixels from Pixar, voiced by the likes of Holly Hunter and Craig T. Nelson. In its debut week, The Incredibles 2 has wrestled top spot away from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, who itself dislodged third place Deadpool 2 two weeks back. Critics' reception of the Pixar sequel some 14 years in the making is positive too, with a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes at present (still 3% shy from the...

Big news in South Africa's online retail space: two of South Africa's clothing and lifestyle juggernauts, Spree and Superbalist, are merging into a single entity. The news was announced late Monday, and will see the two companies -- both part of the Naspers group -- mesh operations and eventually brand identity. "There is currently no integration between Spree and Superbalist, both part of the Naspers group, with each business running its own sourcing and buying, technical, marketing, warehousing and logistics functions while primarily targeting a similar, if not the same customer segment and demographic in South Africa," the companies wrote in...

At the end of April, the water situation in Cape Town was dire. Dams were nearly empty. In fact, the Department of Water and Sanitation was building a coffer dam -- a smaller dam -- within the Theewaterskloof to extract the last 10% of its water. This week, in the middle of June, the numbers are telling a much different story. Dam levels are now at 38.1%, an increase of more than 27% over its lowest levels recorded on 23 April, and a 6.3% increase over last week. That's an additional 56.5-billion litres of water added to Cape Town's surface...

Cash-in-transit heists are no longer a Gauteng phenomenon judging by a dramatic morning on Cape Town's Flats. On Monday around 9pm along the city's busy Jakes Gerwel Drive a cash transit vehicle was attacked. Details are scant at this point, but the aftermath of the heist was clear: the vehicle's flank was torn apart, while cash bills were strewn across the rain-sodden road. Upon hearing the commotion, some onlookers got out their phones and recorded the incident. Clips then made their way onto Twitter and Facebook. Popular group @TrafficWC reposted one of these videos on Facebook which has garnered some 2600 views at...

While loadshedding has caused many South Africans to miss World Cup games this year, Australian fans aren't having it much better. Australia's World Cup coverage is reportedly so bad that the country's prime minister himself logged a complaint with the exclusive broadcaster's CEO on Monday. Judging by chatter on Twitter, telecoms firm Optus has been facing streaming issues including timeouts, long buffer times, and dead connections since the tournament began last week. And fans took to Twitter to voice their annoyance. This is the third day in a row! We are sick of the apologies and guarantees, you need to give the...

Four years ago, the World Cup was disrupted by loadshedding as Eskom struggled to maintain juice in its electricity grid. Last night, as the 2018 World Cup kicked off in Russia, loadshedding once again reared its ugly head. The electricity utility was forced to implement loadshedding after its workers downed tools Thursday. By Thursday evening, some areas -- namely the large metropolitan areas of Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg -- were forced to switch off the power to some suburbs. 🔊🔊🔊#Loadshedding Alert : Block 6 Chatsworth and Shallcross are currently without power until 20:00 tonight. Newlands, Verulam and Umhlodti will be switched...

If you were expecting Will Smith to open the 2018 World Cup in Russia this evening, don't worry, we were too. Instead a British pop singer from the 1990s named Robbie Williams appeared like a legendary Pokemon to sing some of his hits from yesteryear. It was a tad odd, considering that "Rock DJ", one of four tracks he performed from the beginning of this millennium, is now old enough to legally order an alcoholic beverage in South Africa. His other tracks aren't any younger. To make matters even worse, he kind of flipped off most of planet Earth in a subtle-but-not-so-subtle...

Brace yourselves, because the 2018 FIFA World Cup is now firmly upon us, and social media. And it's set to remain this way for the next four weeks. To celebrate, why not get to know 10 of the world's most famous ball kickers up close and personal by stalking them on Twitter? If this sounds good to you, grab a pen, find your Twitter login details, and get ready to hit that follow button. Cristiano Ronaldo Formerly of Manchester United, the Real Madrid and Portugal striker will probably be one of the tournament's top scorers come the end of the group stage. But...

France, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and most recently Germany, have won the coveted FIFA World Cup trophy. They were all pretty great footballing teams, but what about their presence on social media? Before the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia kicks off later today, we take a look at how the 32 countries rank in terms of social media fans and followers across Instagram and Twitter. Let's begin with the latter. Twitter's likely the social network where chatter surrounding key moments on the pitch will develop organically, but the current frontrunner hasn't yet won a World Cup. Mexico is the most followed team as of...

Just a few days ago, the world witnessed pure bravery when a Malian national scaled four storeys to save a child dangling from a balcony. But even this feat has just been outdone... by a raccoon. Internet fame doesn't last long, especially when a fluffy, determined trash panda decides to scale one of St Paul, Minnesota's tallest buildings. Under the hashtag #Mprraccoon, users across the internet united to watch this furry little fella do the near impossible. And by impossible, we mean becoming even bigger news than Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's landmark Singapore summit. ...

Uber Lite is now a thing, but it's not a new offering from the ride-hailing service. Instead, it's a new app, keeping up with tech companies' recent trend of developing low bandwidth, low footprint apps for emerging markets. "Uber Lite is a simple version of the rider app that saves space, works on any network, and on any Android phone," said Shirish Andhare, the company's head of product for emerging markets, in an announcement. Uber Lite weighs in at around 5MB, notably slimmer than the 40.4MB required to install the traditional Android app. Visually, it sheds the default initial map overlay on...

There's some more good news this week for thirsty Cape Town. As of 11 June 2018, the city's total dam storage levels stood at 31.8%, marking an increase of 2% over the previous week. Overall dam levels have seen a 10.9% increase since 7 May. At the same point in 2017, the city had just 20.9% stored within its six largest dams. In 2016, that figure stood at 29.6%. So currently, Cape Town has a larger amount of water stored than it did at the same point in June 2016. Individual dams continue their positive trend, albeit see smaller gains this...

Say goodbye to Marvel's dominance of SA's box office charts in 2018, and usher in our new dinosaur overlords. Displacing Deadpool 2 from this past weekend's top spot (8 - 10 June) is the Chris Pratt-starring Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Although receiving a lukewarm response from critics, at least according to its prequel, the film has since made more than US$151-million globally. Ryan Reynolds is still fending off Breaking In from second spot, with Sherlock Gnomes climbing one spot to fourth place. Avengers: Infinity War is still the SA box office's biggest grosser, albeit in fifth. It has since made more than...

You just can't keep US President Donald Trump out of the meme world for too long. Well, at least him and German chancellor Angela Merkel. On Friday, Merkel's social media team published the image to Instagram, where it received more than 65 000 likes and 4700 comments. From there, it found its way onto Twitter, where users highlighted the indifferent expressions of the world leaders. The scene itself is straight out of a baroque painting. Angela Merkel's office has released this photo taken today at the G7, which tells you a lot about how things went. pic.twitter.com/IXX6K3ayys — David Mack (@davidmackau) June 9,...