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Obama ‘selfie’ at Mandela memorial causes Twitter firestorm

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By Steven Raeburn, N/A

December 10, 2013 | 4 min read

US President Barack Obama may have thought being stuck in traffic and delayed to the Nelson Mandela memorial in Cape Town was the low point of his day. However, an apparent ‘selfie’ taken with UK PM David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has created a social media storm.And judging from the look on Michelle Obama’s face, it may have caused a domestic rift, too.Last month Obama revealed that the secret service do not permit him to use a smartphone, although he does have use of a security boosted Blackberry. It is thought that the selfie was taken by Thorning-Schmidt on her phone.Reaction on social media has been almost universally negative, with the picture making many front newspaper pages across the eastern hemisphere.Earlier in the day, Obama’s unprecedented traffic snarl up was documented by Cape Town commuters, who snapped and tweeted the President’s slow progress through the gridlock.

A defining image of the Mandela memorial

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