Free ice tea in exchange for a tweet
CAPE TOWN: A Twitter-activated vending machine is dispensing free ice tea in exchange for a Tweet in South Africa in what developers say is the world's first sampling drive via the micro-blogging site. The robot-like machine was set up in a Cape Town mall, where it reacts to a specific hashtag to kick into action and pop out cans of the local BOS Ice Tea brand while displaying the tweeter's username. “It's the only one of its kind and it's the first one that we know of that is Twitter-activated,” said Donald Swanepoel, creative director at marketing agency Cow Africa. The campaign aimed to get people to taste the tea, which is made with local rooibos tea and blended with fruit flavours, while spreading awareness of the brand. “The interest has really been amazing,” Swanepoel told AFP. “Whenever someone tweets it, all their followers read about BOS and obviously the novelty of it being a tweet-activated vending machine meant that a whole lot of media has picked up on the story and that's also gone onto the social media channels,” he added. South Africans are the most enthusiastic tweeters in Africa, producing the most posts on the continent with more than five million tweets in the last three months of 2011, according to a report released in January.
Bulgaria’s church honors arms dealer
SOFIA: Bulgaria's Christian Orthodox Church said Thursday it had decided to start awarding a new honorary title to major benefactors... including an arms dealer. The title “Archon,” which exists in other countries but was hitherto unknown in Bulgaria, was recently awarded to three powerful but controversial businessmen, prompting vehement criticism of the metropolitans who granted the title. In a bid to cool the scandal, the Church said in a statement on its website Thursday that “the honorary title Archon can be granted to Orthodox Christians for special merits to the Bulgarian Christian Church.” This included building new churches and renovating old ones, as well as supporting Church activities. “For donations — the manner of their accumulation should not contravene Christian morals and good manners,” the statement added however. Among the three businessmen already given the honorary title was arms dealer Petar Mandzhukov who reportedly donated 1.0 million leva ($650,000) for a new church. Once entrusted with the title, an archon should serve as an example to others with “humility and modesty,” it said. In a quest for respectability, Bulgaria's newly rich have shown excessive religious zeal since the fall of communism, contributing large sums to renovate crumbling monasteries and build new places of worship.
Yoga fans take over Times Square
NEW YORK: Several thousand New Yorkers calmly invaded Times Square Wednesday, transforming it into an immense outdoor yoga class to salute the arrival of summer. Some 1,500 yoga mats were distributed free for the occasion, and pedestrian spaces in New York's most frenetic crossroads were completely covered. All day, thousands of yogis, beginners and veterans alike, dutifully sweated in the heat, following directions broadcast over loudspeakers. The first of the free short courses began at 7 a.m., and the last was scheduled for 8:30 p.m., to the delight of tourists. And those who wanted to could follow the annual event live, on the Times Square website, http://www.timessquarenyc.org.
— Compiled from agencies
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