The US government shutdown continues into its 25th day, but that seemingly hasn't impacted the White House's dinner plans too badly. On Monday, President Donald Trump welcomed the NCAA football champions Clemson Tigers to his lodging, where a banquet of sorts was held. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1085028803762622466 "Great American food," as Trump calls it, was fed to the players to celebrate the team's triumph against Atlanta last week. But the athletes didn't seem too keen on the idea. "I thought this was a joke," mouths one of the players as others heaped Big Macs, pizzas, French fries, and McNuggets onto plates that were far too small. "The...
On Thursday former NFL player Tim Tebow announced his engagement to South Africa's former Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters. Tebow broke the news on Instagram in a series of snaps that have since racked up more than 430 000 likes. But it seems that Nel-Peters is stealing the limelight from Tebow on Google Search. According to the search giant's Trends portal, which monitors and charts patterns in global search habits, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters has received more than 500 000 search queries on Thursday in the US. The number's also likely to climb as the Western hemisphere wakes from its slumber. Surprisingly, Tim Tebow is among the...
The Explore Data Science Academy has announced that it will offer a new programme specifically for high school learners in 2019. The Cape Town-based academy will open the course to students from Grade 10 through to 12. The course will teach "fundamentals of data science and exposes students to Python programming, data visualisation and some basic machine learning algorithms," the academy announced in a release. Beginning on 11 February, the course will be exclusively online, and "involve between five and seven hours of self-study a week," said the academy co-founder Shaun Dippnall. "As an Academy we’re concerned that vital future skills...
This year has gone by in one indistinguishable blur. If you can't quite remember what happened in the past 12 months, enjoy a quick recap of some of Memeburn's biggest stories below. Julius Malema calls Trump a 'pathological liar' US President Donald Trump is known for giving every one important in his life a nickname, but what about those who bestow the honour upon him? Enter EFF Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema. Dros Silverton rape sends SA into shock A six-year-old girl was raped in a Dros branch in Pretoria in September. The news, and resultant videos of the incident on social media, sent shockwaves...
It's pretty fashionable to launch your own political party in South Africa nowadays. The latest public figure to do just that is former SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng. Today, the African Content Movement (ACM) lurched into being just a few days after former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille launched her new party, called GOOD. But de Lille's party received nothing but good puns on Twitter. (That good pun was entirely intentional). Motsoeneng's was met with a bevy of opinion. A swathe of users were defiantly "nope". To think the will be people voting for him 🚶🚶🚶#HlaudiMotsoeneng pic.twitter.com/ALR3JnH1yu— Lerato Mjali (@LeratoMjali) 13 December 2018 https://twitter.com/Penuel_N_Nkosi/status/1073144242636234757 While...
As of 10 December 2018, Cape Town's dams are 69.5% full, declining by 0.9% over the previous week. This may seem like a substantial loss, but digging a bit deeper into the City of Cape Town's latest dam report (pdf), you'll find that it's not all doom and gloom. As Level 3 water restrictions are in place -- since the beginning of December -- the overall daily water consumption of the city remains below 550-million litres per day. The City's current consumption target for agriculture and urban use is 650-million. The knock-on effect is positive. According to the City's dam storage vs....
Update, 9am, Wed 12 Dec: According to Reuters, at least three people have been killed, with 12 people wounded. The 29-year-old suspect was reportedly on a French security watchlist, and remains at large. It's also not clear if he is till sin France. French interior minister Christophe Castaner announced in a press conference that the country's national security threat level has been raised to its highest status. The lockdown on the European Parliament complex has also since been lifted. Original article: The French city of Strasbourg began trending on Twitter Tuesday night after gunshots were fired at a Christmas market. According to a BBC...
US President Donald Trump on Monday posted a tweet that has people flipping through dictionaries and thesauri once again. Continuing his tirade against the Democrats and former FBI director James Comey, Trump tweeted that the former cannot find a "smocking gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia". "That's because there was NO COLLUSION," he added, caps included. “Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,... — Donald...
It might be December, but parts of the Western Cape had a particularly wet week according to rainfall figures released by the South African Weather Service on Friday. From Wednesday through to Friday morning, certain high-lying areas of the Cape received notable precipitation. Between 8am on Thursday and 8am Friday, Kirstenbosch, on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, received 46mm of rainfall. On Wednesday, it received an additional 2mm of rain. Further inland, Wellington, Paarl, Ceres and Langebaan all received more than 10mm between Thursday and Friday morning. 24 hour #rainfall measured at 8:00 this morning. @ReenvalSA pic.twitter.com/cKbz4zKU7u — SA Weather Service (@SAWeatherServic) December...
South Africa is out of recession after the country's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 2.2% in the third quarter of the year. The new numbers were released by Statistics SA on Tuesday morning. The growth comes after two dull, depressing quarters for the South African economy which plunged it into a technical recession. The South African #economy is out of #recession, growing by 2,2% in Q3:2018 compared with Q2:2018 #StatsSA Access all available #GDP documents here until website has been restored: https://t.co/lr2ofjt7rN pic.twitter.com/pldYYaD1lQ — Stats SA (@StatsSA) 4 December 2018 Sectors responsible for growth in Q3 included manufacturing (7.5% growth quarter-over-quarter), agriculture (6.5%),...
More people visited Polokwane in 2017 than Cape Town according to a study conducted by Mastercard. The company's Global Destination Cities Index, published on Tuesday, revealed that Johannesburg was once again the continent's most popular city. 4.05-million visitors stayed in the city for one night or more in 2017, which places it top of the African cities which made the list. "On average, international visitors stayed 10.9 nights and spent US$48 per day in Johannesburg, with shopping accounting for more than 50 percent of their total spend," the report added. Notably, Polokwane -- a city north of Johanensburg and the capital of Limpopo...
Cape Town's annual festive lights gathering is supposed to be a joyous occasion for families, but things turned ugly in the late hours after the event. On Monday around 5am, a bicycle shop in Long Street was trashed and looted. The store, known as Rook Cycles, uploaded a CCTV video to Instagram and Facebook documenting the incident. The 46-second long video shows more than 20 looters jump through the store's broken window, snatching bicycles and bags. At one point, a group of trespassers actually fight over a bicycle in the store. "We’re so optimistic about South Africa. We’ve had opportunities to open elsewhere,...
On Monday, legendary naturalist and the voice of your favourite animal doccies Sir David Attenborough gave a rousing and urgent plea for nations to address climate change. Speaking at the COP24 UN conference in Katowice, Poland, the 92-year-old man represented the "voice of the people" and spoke of future hardships, of the collapse of civilisations, and the extinction of species if climate change is not addressed. "If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon," he told the delegation. The message was buoyed by a montage of people's...
This weekend, the highly anticipated Global Citizen Festival took place at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg. Though fans in their thousands enjoyed performances from both local and international artists such as Black Coffee, Ed Sheeran and Beyoncé, the festival was marred by incidents after the gates were closed. Many attendees were left complaining about the event’s lack of security. Said people took to Twitter to express their concern and recount their experiences of robbery outside the venue at a nearby Sasol garage. Some were also denied Uber rides. Within a few hours, "Uber", "Sasol" and the hashtag #GlobalCitzenFestival began trending. "Can we please...
Prepare for puns, people. Former Cape Town mayor and DA member Patricia de Lille this weekend announced the name of her new political party, set to run against her former employers, the ANC, and EFF in the 2019 elections. Its name is GOOD. No really, that's what it's called. "That name and identity arose from the hopeful and patriotic vision we hold and from the values we have enshrined in our movement’s constitution and our country’s constitution," the young party tweeted on Sunday morning. That name and identity arose from the hopeful and patriotic vision we hold and from the values we have...
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