Makes you grateful we only have Rica
Chinese phone users will have their faces scanned when they sign up to new contracts, in a major growth of the surveillance state. The rules came into effect on Sunday and require users to submit face scans alongside identity card information, ensuring their devices are linked to their identities. Officials said it would "safeguard the legitimate rights and interest of citizens in cyberspace". However, there are fears it is the next step in the Chinese Communist Party’s construction of the world’s most draconian surveillance regime. – © Telegraph Media Group Limited (2019)
No new park? Over your dead bodies
Chinese police clashed with protesters in a southern province near Hong Kong over the weekend, in a rare case of public dissent that saw hundreds demonstrate against the building of a crematorium. Video footage circulated on Twitter, purportedly of the protests, showed police firing tear gas and chasing people in the town of Wenlou, Guangdong province. Rows of police vehicles had been tipped onto their sides. Some citizens, including one elderly person, were seen lying unconscious on the ground, while others were surrounding police vehicles and shouting: "Protest!" Major protests are rare in China, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party has little tolerance for dissent. Residents had reportedly been told a new park was being built, before they discovered the land was actually earmarked for the crematorium. – © Telegraph Media Group Limited (2019)
Madiba gives birth to white rhino
A rare southern white rhino was born at a zoo in Belgium, boosting efforts to save the endangered species, the park said on Monday. "An adorable little male was born in the early morning of Monday ... Madiba, the mother, and her baby are doing well," Pairi Daiza zoo said. There are roughly 18,000 southern white rhinos in the wild but the subspecies is being exterminated by poachers at a rate of one every eight hours. Another species of rhino, the world's second-largest land mammal, the northern white, is in even more danger with only two left in existence. The remaining northern white pair are both female, so they will die out unless their genes can be preserved or recovered and an artificial breeding programme begins. – AFP
Blossoms created the biggest buzz
Japan rugby team's slogan "One Team", the "#KuToo" campaign against a de-facto requirement to wear heels at work, and the new imperial era name "Reiwa" were chosen on Monday as the most memorable 2019 buzzwords. "One Team" was declared the top buzzword of the year after the Brave Blossoms captured Japan's imagination by reaching the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals for the first time. #KuToo is from the Japanese words "kutsu" (shoes) and "kutsuu" (pain). "Reiwa" (beautiful harmony in Japanese) is the name of the era that defines the new emperor's reign. - AFP
Museum chief gets nude awakening
The director of Kyrgyzstan's state art museum resigned on Monday after a feminist art exhibition that included female nudity riled conservatives in the majority Muslim country. Mira Djangaracheva said she had tended her resignation following threats to her and other staff after the museum put on an exhibition themed on women's economic freedom that prompted calls for her sacking. On Monday, the impoverished republic's culture ministry criticised the exhibit for using the "language of provocation" and disorienting visitors. – AFP
Auschwitz Christmas baubles are here - truly
A Polish museum has slammed US e-commerce giant Amazon for selling Christmas ornaments with images of the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, calling them inappropriate. The museum at the site of the former camp in southern Poland tweeted screenshots of the items showing train tracks and barracks and requested that Amazon remove them from its site. The museum added later that Amazon appeared to have removed the items, but posted a follow-up saying it had discovered others. Those include a "disturbing" mouse pad and a ceramic Christmas ornament with a freight car used for deporting Jews for extermination. – AFP
Tuesday, December 3 2019
THE BIG ISSUES
LEADING THE AGENDA
EFF threatens to occupy farm of killer white sangoma
Party says 800 supporters are mobilising after Fritz Joubert beat his sangoma trainer to death
Cricket SA take note: going to war with scribes is a very bad idea
Instead, they should focus on their maladministration and chronic inability to make critical decisions
That was a laughably weak spin attack by Cricket SA
FREE TO READ | Its hissy fit about journalists’ criticisms may be comical, but it’s also worrying
SMART NEWS
IN ONE TAKE
Relax? With hair products stronger than Harpic?!
FREE TO READ | The strong alkalis used in SA relaxers are at greater concentration than in household cleaning products
Bigots and racists beware: hate speech laws are going nowhere
ConCourt is still to have its final say on the legislation – and it’s likely to decide that much of it must stay
SA’s sexual predator soldiers in government’s crosshairs
Threat by UN sees defence minister announce task team to investigate scourge of rape by country’s troops
Wild Coast locals hit land jackpot but infighting thwarts payout
Hailed as an unprecedented empowerment project, with ecotourism projects thrown in, the deal is in tatters
At-risk girls surf the wave to better lives
NGO pulls girls from the grip of poverty in Durban, helping them use surfing to leave life on the street behind
SNAPSHOT
Image: Reuters/Toby Melville
Six things about SA you need to know
Teacher ‘engaged in sexual misconduct’ with pupils
SA data prices ‘too high and anti-poor’
Cape advocate gunned down in hail of bullets
AfriForum pulls private case against alleged rapist
Mentally challenged patient killed in ward
Whites can join BLF, but T&C apply
THE VISUAL SIDE
Advocate Vernon Jantjies, 54, died in a hail of bullets at Lentegeur in Mitchells Plain as he stepped out of a shop on Sunday. Jantjies’s friend, advocate Gilbert Jose, said on Monday the legal profession in Cape Town appeared to be under siege, with three other criminal lawyers having been gunned down since 2016.
CROSSWORDS
GIVE YOUR BRAIN SOME EXERCISE
Today’s cryptic crossword
It's time to put your brain to work
Today’s quick crossword
How fast can you get it done?
WORLD
THE NEWS YOU DON'T NORMALLY GET TO HEAR
SNAPSHOT
Image: Reuters/Pavel Mikheyev
6 things you need to know about the world
Makes you grateful we only have Rica
No new park? Over your dead bodies
Madiba gives birth to white rhino
Blossoms created the biggest buzz
Museum chief gets nude awakening
Auschwitz Christmas baubles are here - truly
THE BUSINESS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
It may not feel like it, but now is the right time to be building
FREE TO READ | Unexciting projects have exciting consequences (and cures) for economic imbalances such as unemployment
Mantashe is doing a good job on paper of killing SA mining
Complexities of mining and environmental regulations means junior mining is as good as dead in the water
Big pension funds start asking hard climate change questions
Easy for boards to fob off environmentalists, but tone changes when large shareholders start making a noise
LIFESTYLE
CULTURE COMES ALIVE
Just for the record: Mary’s Boy Chi....skkkkkkkkrttt!!!
FREE TO READ | A fortnightly review of music on vinyl
Four good reasons to book yourself off for the holidays
Good ideas for your downtime reading this season
Choose your point of view or just go with the flower
Raél Jero Salley explores the tension between permanence and evanescence in new MoMo show
SPORT
FINISH LINE ESSENTIALS
SPORTS DAY: Roger Federer is finally, properly in ...
Your roundup of the sporting news of the day
Blasts from the past: Hash bats SA to 2012 Oz ...
Today in SA sports history: December 3