Author: Gugu Lourie

 eNCA senior anchor Andrew Barnes has been taken off air following his perceived mockery of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s pronunciation of certain words on air. By Naledi Shange and Paul Herman, NewsAgency “We have begun disciplinary measures against Andrew Barnes. Andrew has been taken off air with an on air apology being broadcasted this afternoon,” the broadcaster told News24. Barnes made the initial remark while the broadcaster aired extracts from Motshekga’s speech she delivered when announcing the results for the 2015 matric year on Tuesday. After cutting back to Barnes at the end of the snippet, he said: “Maybe someone…

 eNCA senior anchor Andrew Barnes has sparked the fury of many South Africans on social media, after he mocked Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s pronunciation of certain words on air. By Paul Herman, NewsAgency Barnes made the initial remark while the broadcaster aired bits from Motshekga’s speech delivering the results for the 2015 matric year on Tuesday. After cutting back to Barnes at the end of the snippet, he said: “Maybe someone should have a word with the Basic Education minister about how to pronounce the word ‘epitome’.” @eNCA here is the comment that you don’t want to share with everyone…

Africa’s largest mobile phone operator MTN has bought Visafone Communications, Nigeria’s surviving CDMA operator, for an undisclosed amount, according to a media report published on Thursday. By Staff Writer The Leadership newspaper said the deal by MTN to acquire Visafone has been given a nod by the country’s communications industry watchdog, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). The newspaper added that the deal which was sanctioned in late December 2015 allows MTN Nigeria to utilise Visafone’s 800MHz spectrum to launch fourth generation long term evolution (4GLTE) services. According to the Leadership newspaper’s sources MTN will formally issue a statement on the JSE…

The Gauteng sports, arts, culture and recreation department has started an internal disciplinary process against employee Velaphi Khumalo over his racist Facebook comments. By Thulani Gqirana, NewsAgency Acknowledging him as an employee, the department distanced itself from the “barbaric and racist utterances” made by Khumalo. The racist remarks were his personal views and the department did not condone such hateful and disturbing racial slurs, it said in a statement on Wednesday night. “The department of sport, arts, culture and recreation views the hateful post by Velaphi Khumalo in a serious light,” MEC Faith Mazibuko said. “Our key mandate is nation building and…

 Online movie and television series streaming service Netflix has officially gone live in 130 countries including South Africa on Wednesday night. By Gareth van Zyl, NewsAgency Co-founder and chief executive officer of Netflix, Reed Hastings, made the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Amid the announcement, the South African Netflix website was switched on at www.netflix.com/za on Wednesday and advertised a price of $7.99 (R126) per month with a free month’s trial. Other additional countries to get the service included Russia, India and South Korea, according to the announcement from Netflix. China, though, is not on Netflix’s new countries while other…

The German-based car manufacturer has launched the BMW i Vision Future Interaction Concept Car that comes with the BMW i 8 Mirrorless concept at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. By Staff Writer The BMW i 8 Mirrorless concept system replaces the rearview mirrors with three cameras, which covers larger viewing angles and eliminates dangerous “blind spots”. BMW said in a statement that the interior mirror is replaced by a display that shows wide-angle images. The manufacturer added that the system evaluates camera images and provides a situative response to imminent hazards, for example with yellow warning icons.…

A computer science Masters student Tony Beltramelli at the IT University of Copenhagen has demonstrated that software running on a smartwatch could be used to record a user’s passwords and PINs. He managed this by using the smartwatch’s motion sensors and analysing the patterns of data from the sensors when tapping a keypad to enter a PIN. By David Glance Software detecting PIN being entered Although it is assumed by Beltramelli and others that the application doing the spying would be installed without the user knowing, it is quite possible that a seemingly legitimate app installed from the app store…

A Cape Town man has opened a criminal case against a Facebook user who called for blacks to do to white South Africans what “Hitler did to the Jews”. By Thulani Gqirana, NewsAgency For 21-year-old Daniel Amos, Velaphi Khumalo’s post was disturbing and needed to be addressed outside the realm of social media. Amos opened a case of crimen injuria against Khumalo, after he said on Facebook that he hated all whites. He called for them to be “cleansed” out of the country. “I want to cleans this country of all white people. We must act as Hitler did to the…

Television in South Africa turns 40 years old today. The SABC TV service marks its 40th anniversary since the very first nationwide broadcast on 5 January 1976 when Dorianne Berry and Heinrich Marnitz welcomed viewers to the “opening night” of TV in the country. By Thinus Ferreira, NewsAgency The past four decades saw the SABC’s television offering going through various channel permutations with the South African public broadcaster currently providing 5 TV channels in the form of SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and then two channels – SABC News and the archive rerun channel SABC Encore – produced exclusively for MultiChoice’s DStv satellite pay-TV…

Vodacom, South Africa’s largest mobile phone operator, says it expected that all customers that were double debited for their December accounts to have been refunded by today. By Staff Writer Vodacom spokesman Tshepo Ramodibe attributed the incident, which affected about 200 000 accounts, to a technical problem with certain payment files that resulted in a selection of accounts being presented twice for funds collection. “We have reviewed the incident and associated processes to rule out a recurrence,” said Ramodibe. Last week Friday, Vodacom sent an SMS to customers informing them that the company was aware that some accounts had been debited twice owing…