Arrest warrant for Mohamed Nasheed; Family flee to Sri Lanka

February 9, 2012

A criminal court in the Maldives has issued an arrest order for former president Mohamed Nasheed and his former defence minister, officials from his party told AFP today.

“The court has given the order to arrest Nasheed and the (former) defence minister,” said Adam Gafoor, a senior figure in Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party.

A second party source confirmed the news, but new Maldives police chief Abdulla Riyas said he had no knowledge of the order. “I am not aware of it,” he said.

Nasheed resigned on Tuesday amid protests over his rule. He says he was forced to resign by security forces. It is unclear what the charges against the former president might be.

The wife and daughters of former Maldives’ president Mohamed Nasheed have fled to Colombo as violence worsens, a presidential spokesman in Sri Lanka and a family member told AFP on Thursday.

“His wife and two children arrived Read the rest of this entry »


Maldives ex-president Mohamed Nasheed was forced to resign “at gunpoint”

February 8, 2012

He said the move was planned with the knowledge of vice president Mohammed Waheed Hassan who has replaced him.

Mr Nasheed resigned after some security officials joined opposition protests over the removal of a top judge.

Mr Hassan denies a coup took place or that there was a pre-arranged plan for him to stage a takeover.

Hundreds of Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) supporters, led by Mr Nasheed, have marched through the streets of Male in protest at his ousting.

The BBC’s Andrew North, in Male, says there were angry scuffles with a few police, but for the most part the security forces were conspicuous by their absence.

Our correspondent says the streets are otherwise calm and life appears to be quickly returning to normal after clashes and protests earlier in the week.

Mr Nasheed’s whereabouts over the past 24 hours Read the rest of this entry »


Facebook forces users to switch to Timeline

January 25, 2012

Facebook will start requiring people to switch to a new profile format known as Timeline, making photos, links and personal musings from the past much easier to find.

Timeline is essentially a scrapbook of your whole life on Facebook, compared with a snapshot of you today found on Facebook’s traditional profile page. Once activated, Timeline replaces the current profile.

Although some people have already voluntarily switched to Timeline, Facebook hadn’t made that mandatory. Beginning Tuesday, Facebook is telling some users that they have seven days to clean up their profiles before Timeline gets automatically activated. Facebook is rolling out the requirement to others over the next few weeks.

At some point, even those who haven’t logged on to Facebook in a while will be automatically switched.

Timeline doesn’t expose anything that wasn’t available for sharing in the past. Many of those older posts had always been available. People could get to them by continually hitting “Older Posts,” although most wouldn’t have bothered. Timeline allows people to jump to the older material more quickly.

Timeline also doesn’t necessarily reflect the fact that your circle of friends has likely expanded in recent years. A party photo you posted in 2008 to a small group of friends would be more visible to relatives, bosses and others you may have added as friends since then.

You’ll have a week to curate the Timeline by moving stuff around, hiding photos or featuring them more prominently on your page.

Some things to consider:  Read the rest of this entry »


Breach of Contract? Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant

January 24, 2012

In Stuttgart, Germany, a court judge must decide on a case of honorable intentions in a situation where a man hired his neighbor to get his wife pregnant.

It seems that Demetrius Soupolos, 29, and his former beauty queen wife, Traute, wanted a child badly, but Demetrius was told by a doctor that he was sterile.

So, Soupolos, after calming his wife’s protests, hired his neighbor, Frank Maus, 34, to impregnate her. Since Maus was already married and the father of two children, plus looked very much like Soupolos to boot, the plan seemed good.

Soupolos paid Maus $2,500 for the job and for three evenings a week for the next six months, Maus tried desperately, a total of 72 different times, to impregnate Traute.

When his own wife objected, he explained, “I don’t like this any more than you. I’m simply doing it for the money. Try and understand.”

When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did.

The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children.

Now Soupolos is suing Maus for breach of contract in an effort to get his money back, but Maus refuses to give it up because he said he did not guarantee conception, but only that he would give an honest effort.


MegaUpload file sharing site shut down by USA

January 24, 2012

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it has conducted a major action to shut down MegaUpload, a popular file-sharing site widely used for free downloads of movies and television shows.

After receiving indictments from a grand jury in Virginia for racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and other charges on Jan. 5, federal authorities on Thursday arrested four people and executed more than 20 search warrants in the U.S. and eight foreign countries, seizing 18 domain names and an estimated $50 million in assets, including servers run in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

MegaUpload is a “digital locker” that allows users to store files that can then be streamed or downloaded by others. Its subsidiary site MegaVideo became very popular for the unauthorized downloads of movies and TV shows. Users whose uploaded content proved particularly popular were paid for their participation.

In a joint statement, the Justice Department and FBI called the action “among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States.”

According to the indictment, the operators of MegaUpload earned more than $175 million in illegal profits and caused an estimated $500 million in harm to copyright holders.

The site is advertised as having more than 50 million daily visitors, according to federal authorities.

Four of MegaUpload’s operators have been arrested in New Zealand, while three more remain at large. The seven each face a maximum of 55 years in prison.


Dialog takes over Suntel

December 14, 2011

Dialog Axiata is believed to have finalized a deal to buy over 100 percent of fixed line-CDMA operator Suntel Private Limited.

Despite the failed attempts made by the company to acquire Suntel in the past, owing to price related and regulatory issues, Dialog is believed to have been able to resolve the issues this time.

“More than price issues, this time there was a delay on the part of the regulator giving approval to the deal. But everything has now been sorted out and the due approval has been granted and Dialog is expected to make an official statement shortly,” the source said.

Since the end of the CDMA boom several years back, Suntel had been up for sale. Over seven suitors both local and foreign vied to acquire the company that has a decent corporate clientele.

Among the interested parties, there were names like Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Tata Communications (TCL), John Keells Holdings, Malaysia Telecom, Sri Lanka Telecom and Vallibel One PLC.

Suntel is owned by a consortium led by Sweden’s Overseas Telecom AB and includes Metrocorp Ltd., Telecom Venture Group Ltd., International Finance Corporation, NDB Bank, C. Tech Investments Ltd., and Kelmarsh Investments Ltd.

Suntel began operations in late 1996 in Sri Lanka and soon after emerged as the third largest with an estimated customer base of half a million by 2008. However thereafter its customers, migrated to other operators due to the mobile phase that started in the Sri Lanka’s telecommunication scene, and the firm’s current base is estimated at 350,000. from dailymirror


Was Albert Einstein wrong? subatomic particles faster than light

November 21, 2011

A fiercely contested experiment that appears to show the accepted speed limit of the Universe can be broken has yielded the same results in a re-run, European physicists said.

But counterparts in the United States said the experiment still did not resolve doubts and the Europeans themselves acknowledged this was not the end of the story.

On September 23, the European team issued a massive challenge to fundamental physics by saying they had measured particles called neutrinos which travelled around six kilometres (3.75 miles) per second faster than the velocity of light, determined by Einstein to be the highest speed possible.

The neutrinos had been measured along a 732-kilometre (454-mile) trajectory between the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and a laboratory in Italy.

The scientists at CERN and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy scrutinised the results of the so-called OPERA experiment for nearly six months before cautiously making the announcement. In October, responding to criticism that they had been tricked by a statistical quirk, the team decided they would carry out a second series of experiments.

This time, the scientists altered the structure of the proton beam, a factor that critics said could have affected the outome. The modification helped the team identify individual particles when they were fired out and when they arrived at their destination.

The new tests “confirm so far the previous results,” the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said in a press release. “A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny,” the INFN’s president, Fernando Ferroni, said. mine in Minnesota.


Fonseka found guilty; sentenced to 3 years in prison

November 18, 2011

Sarath Fonseka was found guilty and sentenced to 3 years in prison after the verdict of the case regarding the ‘White Flag’ statement was given today (November 18) by the Colombo High Court.

The case was heard for over a year by a three-judge bench of the Colombo High Court consisting of Deepali Wijeysundera, W.M.T.B. Warawewa and A.Z. Razeen.

Fonseka was indicted by the Colombo High Court on the basis of a statement he had allegedly made to The Sunday Leader newspaper where he had allegedly claimed that LTTE members who had surrendered with white flags, were gunned down.


Kim Kardashian files for divorce

November 1, 2011

Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce from her husband of 72 days, professional basketball player Kris Humphries, according to court documents from L.A. Superior Court.

“After careful consideration, I have decided to end my marriage,” Kardashian, 31, says in a statement. “I hope everyone understands this was not an easy decision. I had hoped this marriage was forever but sometimes things don’t work out as planned. We remain friends and wish each other the best.”

And yes, you read that tally correctly. The marriage that was so highly celebrated and promoted by the E! network – which devoted not one, but two episodes of ”Keeping Up with the Kardashians” to the fairy tale nuptials – appears to now be no more.

And despite gushing how much her late father, attorney Robert Kardashian, would have “loved Kris,” Kimmy K. opted to end her marriage on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.

Kim Kardashian’s Wedding Photos  Read the rest of this entry »


Petrol, Diesel and Kerosene prices go up

October 29, 2011

Breaking News updates on DZONE FB Fan Page

Price of petrol has been increased by Rs. 12 per litre, diesel by Rs. 8 and kerosene by Rs. 10 with effect from midnight today, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation announced.


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