1. Traders tell us markets have pretty much priced in raised American interest rate, widely expected to be announced today – but that the rand and the JSE will be jittery anyway, depending on what Jerome Powell has to say. And if what looked such a sure thing does not come to pass after all, then Christmas comes early.
2. (DA-run) Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba now says he may take the (ANC-run) Gauteng province to court over a R180 million cut in housing spending . The rhetoric is already getting pretty nasty .
3. SAA now has an expanded partnership agreement with Emirates , which will see code-sharing on more flights. No sign yet though that Emirates would have the appetite to become an SAA shareholder, in the hypothetical event that its shares were to come up for sale.
4. Sun City is pretty much back to business after this weekend's freak storm that took out 400 of its rooms just before peak season – following some heroic repair efforts. The resort now says it will have 120 rooms under repair for the next few weeks , which will hit revenues hard, but not quite
5. The A2X bourse is due to have a R2 trillion market cap from next week, after Naspers joins what is now starting to look like a wave of secondary listings for the little more than one-year-old exchange.
The 11 biggest Photoshop scandals of 2018
Reporting by Gabbi Shaw
Photoshop is ubiquitous today, whether you're aware of it or not.
While by now it's a given that magazine covers and celebrities do some editing, it has seeped into popular culture in the form of editing apps on phones.
But whether it's a big-name magazine, a famous celebrity, or a regular person fine-tuning their Instagram selfie, sometimes the editing goes a little too far.
We've rounded up some of our favourite Photoshop fails - or alleged fails, because often the perpetrator won't admit to altering images.
See who might be getting a little help from editing software.
In September 2018, a French art school was caught Photoshopping their students to appear more diverse. Ecole Emile Cohl This year, the Émile Cohl art school in Lyon, France, was caught editing their photos to make their student population seem more diverse ahead of a planned opening of a new American branch. Specifically, three students were edited to appear as people of colour, and two black students were inserted into the photo.
A former student posted both images on Twitter in a now-deleted tweet, which proceeded to go viral. The school was forced to issue an apology, with the school's assistant director Emmanuel Perrier telling CNN that an American communication company "decided on its own to darken the skin of some students to add diversity. The communication campaign was made from the US."
Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt were Photoshopped in promotional images for their upcoming movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Sony Pictures Publicity Due to a mistake by Sony, the wrong promotional images for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" were uploaded to their publicity site in August - anyone who opened the photos in Photoshop were able to see their edit history . And that history revealed that the studio had tightened both Pitt and DiCaprio's chins, and nixed a few of 54-year-old Pitt's wrinkles.
Sony claimed full responsibility and claimed that both actors had no knowledge of the edits - the correct images were quickly uploaded. But the snafu proves that not only women in Hollywood are held to unrealistic beauty standards.
Kourtney Kardashian's arm all but disappeared in an ad for Calvin Klein, but the brand claimed it was just bad lighting. Calvin Klein/Willy Vanderperre Kourtney's forearm appears superhumanly thin in this August 2018 ad for Calvin Klein.
However, the brand disputed this in a statement to INSIDER : "As you'll see from the high-res version of the image, there are no issues with Kourtney's arm. However, the light is hitting it, which makes it slightly less defined. Unfortunately, when the image is posted to social media in a lower-resolution format, the shape of her arm loses its definition, creating the effect which social media users have commented on."
This didn't stop the internet from having a field day.
Vanity Fair's 2018 Hollywood issue was rife with editing mistakes, including Reese Witherspoon's third leg, and Oprah Winfrey's extra hand. Vanity Fair; Jacob Shamsian/INSIDER The issue, which was released in January, is supposed to celebrate the entertainment industry's heavyweights, but all anyone could talk about was Witherspoon's third leg. As INSIDER's Jacob Shamsian explained , "There's one leg that goes straight down from her left hip to the ground, another leg that seems to cross over it from her right hip, and another leg, also from her right hip, that seems to fold over the second leg."
The magazine claimed that the third leg was actually the lining of her dress, but people remain unconvinced due to another mistake.
In an outtake from the shoot released on Twitter , Winfrey clearly has three hands: one resting on her hip, one in her lap, and one wrapped around "Wrinkle in Time" co-star Witherspoon.
Both actresses had a sense of humour about the gaffe, with Witherspoon tweeting "Well...I guess everybody knows now...I have 3 legs. I hope you can still accept me for who I am (and I will never apologise for snuggling @Oprah ... if you get the opportunity, I highly recommend it;)." Winfrey responded , "I accept your 3d leg. As I know you accept my 3d hand."
Kim Kardashian posted a photo of herself in a parking lot, but the background looks like it's from an alien planet. Instagram/@kimkardashian In honour of March's March for Our Lives, Kardashian posted a photo of her walking on Instagram , meant to imply she was on her way to march.
Instead of focusing on Kardashian's newfound activism, people couldn't stop staring at the background of her photo - specifically, the curved sidewalk and the weirdly flattened car.
Kardashian, for her part, explained that she had simply reposted the photo from a fan who had added a mirror effect that distorted the background. You can see the full image here .
YouTuber Jake Paul posted a photo to promote an upcoming boxing match, but people noticed that his shoulders appeared to be see-through. Instagram/@jakepaul Paul, one of the infamous Paul brothers, posted this photo in June to drum up hype for a boxing match against fellow YouTuber KSI.
When Paul posted the photo, commenters were quick to notice that his right shoulder (our left) appears to be see-through - the stripes on the wall behind him are visible through his shoulder muscles.
Other photos of Paul shirtless seem to imply that he tends to Photoshop his neck to look more muscly, too.
Naomi Campbell posted an up-close photo of her face on Instagram captioned "bare," but many people thought the pic was edited. Chris Jackson/Getty Images Campbell posted an up-close picture of her face in March , captioned "#Mood #Bare," implying that the photo is unedited and makeup-free. The internet was not convinced .
Most people agreed that the supermodel had significantly thinned her nose, while others claimed she had changed the symmetry of her face or edited out dark circles underneath her eyes.
The caption tagged NARS Cosmetics, and after some investigation, people concluded that the photo is from creator of NARS Cosmetics Francois Nars's self-titled book that came out in 2016.
This family went viral after receiving horribly Photoshopped images from a "professional" photographer they paid. Pam Dave Zaring/Facebook The Zaring family matriarch, Pam, posted a set of photos on Facebook in January taken of her and her family by an allegedly professional photographer. According to Zaring, the photos cost around $250 (about R3,500).
As you can see, the Zaring family's faces barely look human after all the editing and re-touching. They're preternaturally smooth, and their teeth look drawn on.
The photographer did have an excuse, though. "She said the shadows were really bad on the beautiful, clear, sunny day and that her professor never taught her to retouch photos," Zaring wrote on Facebook .
Elizabeth Olsen called out an "Avengers" cover of Empire for making her look unrecognisable. Empire Empire Magazine released six different covers in honour of " Avengers: Infinity War " back in March, including this one with Dave Bautista, Benedict Cumberbatch, Danai Gurira, and Elizabeth Olsen.
Olsen complained about the cover in a now-deleted Instagram post, asking her followers if they could even recognise her overly-contoured, airbrushed face.
