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Truecaller has announced plans to set up headquarters in Nairobi,Kenya and has appointed Zakaria Hersi as Director of Partnerships for Africa. In his position, Zakaria will be spearheading Truecaller’s expansion in the region and forging partnerships with various eco-system players. The Truecaller app allows people to see who is calling and filter out spam calls and SMSes and has more than 50 million users in Africa. The company also revealed that it has more than 6 million users in Kenya alone, where the user base has grown over 35 percent over the past year. The Truecaller app is identifying more than half a billion calls monthly, blocking and filtering out more than 4.4 million, including 14 million spam SMSes, 50 percent of these SMSes being reported as spam. “Over the years, Kenya has consistently been a top market for us, with some of our highest usage globally, which is why it made sense for us to set up headquarters in Nairobi. With this positive momentum of growth, we...

At least 10 demonstrators have been injured in clashes with Ukrainian police and another 100 detained in the capital Kiev after authorities began dismantling a makeshift "tent city" protesting against corruption. The tent city was set up in October by supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia who has become an opposition politician in Ukraine. Saakashvili, a critic of corruption in Ukraine, was deported to Poland in February. He said he was "kidnapped" by Ukrainian authorities and removed from the country against his will. Andriy Kryshchneko, police chief of police, said at the camp on Saturday that "two court decisions" allowed authorities to search and dismantle the camp. Police said that explosives and other weapons were found at the scene

The strike launched by non-academic university staff  based  on several demands is being continued for the 5th  consecutive day. Chairman of the University Trade Union Joint Committee, Edward Malwattage, said that they have decided to resort to trade union action as authorities have repeatedly failed to respond to their demands. Meanwhile, the State University examinations scheduled to be held during the weekend have been postponed until further notice due to the strike action by non-academic staff, University Grants Commission said.

A REALITY star is accused of making a sex tape with a wealthy businessman and trying to blackmail him with it. Serbian TV personality Anabela Scekic, 39, has been held for blackmail after allegedly filming a sex session with a 34-year-old named only as N.N. Scekic, also nicknamed Tigrica (tigress), was arrested along with 23-year-old Tijana S. and 41-year-old Radovan L. The two women were accused of demanding €20,000 (£17,770) from the Belgrade businessman as Radovan L. allegedly masterminded the operation. A police source said they threatened to post the videos online if he didn’t hand over the money. They added: “N.N. accepted their request but said he would give them the money in four instalments.

The Sri Lankan authorities should urgently investigate deadly violence against Muslims by Buddhist hardliners, Human Rights Watch said Friday. The violence, which began June 15 after a rally led by the Buddhist Bodhu Bala Sena (BBS), left several dead, 80 injured, and numerous homes and businesses destroyed in Aluthgama town and surrounding areas. Senior government officials as well as President Mahinda Rajapaksa have denounced the violence and promised compensation to the victims. But the government needs to seriously investigate who is responsible for the attacks on Muslim communities, Human Rights Watch said. Police have detained at least 40 people. “Sri Lankan authorities need to do more than arrest those carrying out the anti-Muslim violence. They need to investigate and identify any instigators,” said the US-based group.

The federal court in Virginia where the Justice Department has decided to charge Edward Snowden with leaking secrets about U.S. surveillance programs has a long track record of hearing cases related not only to national security cases but also to cyber crime. The United States filed a criminal complaint including charges under a U.S. espionage law against Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The charges are the government's first step in an effort to arrest and extradite Snowden from Hong Kong, where he is in hiding, to try him in the United States. Snowden has acknowledged leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs to the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper. On Saturday, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said Snowden had divulged information to the newspaper showing how computers in Hong Kong and China had been targeted. On Friday, the Guardian ...

JK Shin, President and Head of IT and Mobile Communications for Samsung Electronics,  presents the new Samsung Galaxy S 4 during the Samsung Unpacked event at Radio City Music Hall, Thursday,  March 14, 2013 in New York.  (AP Photo) Samsung’s first iPhone-beating smartphone will be replaced with a model that tracks your eyes and fingertips, lets you control it with the wave of a hand, reports on your exercise, and uses eight computing brains for a speed boost. The South Korean company revealed its highly anticipated Galaxy S IV in one of the world’s biggest phone launches this morning in New York, broadcasting its unveiling to Times Square and hundreds gathered at Radio City Music Hall. More than 300,000 people tuned in to watch the live stream on YouTube. The handset, which looks similar to the Galaxy S III it replaces, also features a larger and significantly crisper 5-inch screen, a slimmer body and a larger battery, and sources say it will be available in Austral...

Pictured here Dr. Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, is among the doctors who studied the girl’s blood. Using the most sensitive tests available, they found tiny amounts of HIV “particles” but no virus capable of replicating, the research team reported. For the first time, doctors are reporting that a child born with HIV and put on an unusually aggressive treatment regimen has been functionally cured of the infection. Now 2 years old, the Mississippi girl has only trace amounts of HIV in her bloodstream and has been able to keep the virus that causes AIDS in check without the help of medication, doctors said Sunday at a medical conference in Atlanta. If researchers demonstrate that the same treatment can work in other children, it could drastically alter the lives of the estimated 1,000 babies born with HIV every day, most of them in Africa, doctors said. “If there is a trial that shows this can happen again, then this will be very impo...

Not many will doubt that one of the most sought after keyword on Internet is “sex”. And Sri Lankans, it seems, are the most search savvy when it comes to Googling that term. This is according to Google Trends, a public web facility that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. Second-placed India is not far behind in search for the term, and so isn’t (surprise, surprise) #3 Papua New Guinea and #4 Ethiopia even as Pakistan completes the Top 5 nations that Googled for ‘sex’ in 2012. According to Google Trends, search for the term peaked in Sri Lanka during the week April 15-21, 2012, even as the partial data for the current week (December 23-29, 2012) shows it as second-highest week during which the term was Goggled in 2012. In India, people most Googled for the term during the week November 11-17, 2012 while the week October 21-27, 2012, wasn’t far behind. ...

Sri Lanka’s first Communications Satellite SupremeSAT – 1 was launched today (November 27) on board China’s Long March 3B/E Launch Vehicle from the Xi-chang Satellite Launch Centre.  SupremeSAT – 1 was launched successfully at 15:43hrs (Sri Lankan time) from the Space Center in China, Vijith Peiris Group CEO of SupremeSAT said. “This is a proud moment for us as citizens of Sri Lanka,” he told Ada Derana. Sri Lanka becomes the 45th country to own a Communication Satellite and becomes the third South Asian country to have launched a satellite after India and Pakistan. The Satellite will be positioned above Sri Lanka in the Geo-Stationary orbit at 87.5 degree east approximately 36000 km above the surface of the earth. Built by Thales Alenia Space of France, SupremeSAT – I will operational for commercial purposes and has a design life of 15 years. Its design is based on SB 4000 series satellite bus which comes under the medium class telecommunications satellite category with its lau...

Fresh from a decisive re-election win, President Barack Obama returns from the campaign trail on Wednesday with little time to savor victory, facing urgent economic and fiscal challenges and a still-divided Congress capable of blocking his every move. Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney on Tuesday night after a grueling presidential race and used his acceptance speech in front of a huge cheering crowd in Chicago to strike a conciliatory note toward his political opponents. But in the cold light of the election's morning-after, it was clear that even though voters have given their stamp of approval for a second Obama term, he could have a hard time translating that into a mandate to push forward with his agenda. Americans chose to stick with a divided government in Washington by leaving the U.S. Congress as it has been since the midterm elections of 2010. Obama's fellow Democrats retain control of the Senate and Republicans keep the majority in the House...

An apparent stampede at a public Halloween party in Madrid early on Thursday left three girls dead and two others in critical condition, emergency services in the Spanish capital said. It was not immediately known what caused the crush of people at the party, which featured electronic music and was held at the Madrid Arena in the west of the city. "Two of the girls died there and one died later in hospital," a spokesman said. "There was a human crush at the only exit they had because the others were sealed off," a partygoer identified as Sandra told Cadena Ser radio. The incident recalled a mass panic at the German music festival Love Parade that killed 19 people in July 2010.

Will Major Vikas Kumar of the Indian Army be able to marry his Sri Lankan girlfriend Arnila Ranamali Gunaratne who is pursuing her M.Phil. in Bangalore? A Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Vkramajit Sen and Justice B.V. Nagarathna, of the High Court will soon decide on the order of the Indian Army, which had rejected the 34-year-old’s request to cast away his uniform so that he can marry a foreign national. As Army rules don’t permit personnel to marry those who loath to give up their foreign citizenship, Major Kumar, an officer with Corps of Signals, decided to resign post as Ms. Gunaratne (29) was unwilling to give up her Sri Lankan nationality. However, the Army did not accept his resignation saying he had not completed the mandatory period service, there is a shortage of officers in the Corps of Signals and he is under investigation for unauthorised contract with a foreign national and failing to report it to the authorities. A single judge bench had set...

Militants from Sri Lanka’s war are posing as asylum seekers on boats headed for Australia - and could be financed by former Tamil Tiger combatants already here, The Australian reported. Six former combatants were arrested leaving Sri Lanka this year, with another six people smugglers also collared. Five of the six were arrested since June in a crackdown by Sri Lankan authorities. The arrests come after 14 asylum pirates stole a fishing boat, cutting one crewman’s throat before throwing at least two into the sea. They were flown directly to Sri Lanka on Saturday after being intercepted by Australian authorities off the Cocos Islands, The Australian reported yesterday(29). Superintendent Prashantha Jayakody confirmed three crew members were still missing, presumed dead. The pirates were being questioned in police custody, he added, and would face a long list of charges when they appeared in court. Sri Lankan High Commissioner Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe said t...

Microsoft Corp put its Surface tablet center stage at its Windows 8 launch event, hoping the sleek new device will spark a fightback against Apple Inc and Google Inc in the exploding mobile computing market. With interest in traditional computers waning, the world's largest software company is attempting to reinvent the Windows PC in a new format and directly challenge Apple's all-conquering iPad. "One person called it historic, unique," said Steven Sinofsky, head of Microsoft's Windows unit and the driving force behind Windows 8, who opened the launch event in New York in front about 1,000 media and PC industry partners. "It's twice the amount of storage as a competing tablet for the same price," Sinofsky said, comparing the entry level 32 GB Surface with the cheapest 16 GB model of Apple's latest full-sized iPad, which both cost $499. Sinofsky and his team showed off a range of devices running Windows 8 from PC makers such as Lenov...

Muslims in Sri Lanka will celebrate the Haj festival on October 27 Saturday, the Colombo Grand Mosque announced today. The decision was taken despite Eid al-Adha falling on October 26 as the moon was not seen today.

Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs when it comes to leading Apple Inc. As the debut of the new iPhone 5 just proved, that may not be a bad thing. The taller, thinner and lighter phone prompted a rush on Wall Street to raise price targets for Apple stock, but the optimism was not because of a big technological advance or design breakthrough; the "wow" factor that was the trademark of the late Apple co-founder Jobs was decidedly absent. Rather, it was the speed of the global launch that astounded, validating the new CEO's much-touted wizardry at the essential but unglamorous task of managing a supply chain. "We are positively surprised regarding the pace of the rollout, since we had expected a bigger impact from component constraints," Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes said. By next Friday, the iPhone 5 will be in 31 countries, and will be in 100 by the end of the calendar year. That would be 30 more than the rollout of the predecessor phone, the 4S, over a similar...

China's banks are coming after the country's steel traders, hauling executives into court to chase down loans that some traders said they didn't initially need and can't now repay. The heavy push to recover the loans is another sign of strain on China's financial system at a time when the country's leaders are contemplating another round of stimulus to boost the economy, and when banks are worried about bad debts piling up. The battle between the banks and steel traders also exposes flaws in the 4 trillion ($629 billion) stimulus round in 2008, and offers a warning to those calling for pumping more money into the system. At that time, Chinese banks threw money at the steel trade - a crucial cog in supplying the country's massive construction and infrastructure growth. But those steel loans, after offering a quick fix, became excessive, poorly managed, or a combination of the two. Government officials insisted more money was needed to prop up the i...

Maldives new President Mohamed Waheed is to visit Sri Lanka on a two-day tour from Thursday, a spokesman said on Monday. Maldives’ government spokesman Masood Imad told Xinhua that Waheed is to call on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa during his visit. “In addition President Waheed is also to sign two bilateral ties with Sri Lanka,” Masood told Xinhua. Sri Lanka and Maldives has close historical, economical, social and cultural ties for a long time. In July the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) and Sir John Kotalawala Defence University to provide MNDF personnel military training and an opportunity to enroll for its degree courses. The MoU was signed during a visit by Maldives Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim, to whom the Sri Lankan president had assured assistance to the Maldivian army. The two South Asian countries had also discussed the conduct of joint operations to patrol the Economic Zones between th...

Muslims in Sri Lanka will celebrate Ramadan festival tomorrow as the new moon has been sighted, the Colombo Grand Mosque said a short while ago.