Yes, We can Change

Facebook is now the second most popular web destination behind Google according to data collected by online research firm UKOM/Nielsen and released earlier today. The social networking website revealed last week that it had reached more than 750 million users and it clocked 26.8 million visits last month from UK members with a growing proportion coming from so-called silver surfers with their numbers almost doubling since 2009. What's even more surprising is that UKOM/Nielen calculates the overall website visitors; Facebook has only one major online property while Microsoft and Google has dozens, from Gmail, Google Maps, Bing, Windows Live, MSN, Windows etc. Google is still far ahead of Facebook or Microsoft with a whopping 33.87m UK visitors for the month of May alone, around half of the country's population. The UKOM/Nielsen data also showed that Linkedin is gradually catching on Twitter with the business networking website clocking nearl...

The main opposition UNP today alleged that fuel prices are to be increased once again in the coming weeks. Party Spokesman and Member of Parliament Gayantha Karunathilaka told a news conference today that the decision to allow Lanka India Oil Company (LIOC) and the repeated statements made by the subject Minister Susil Premajayantha that the CPC is running at a loss are clear indications of a price hike in the future.

Kumaran Pathmanathan, the self-proclaimed successor of slain LTTE chief V Prabakaran, has said that he knows where the large haul of cash of the group is being kept and with whom following Tigers' defeat in 2009. "I know who is having the large sums of money belonging to the LTTE. I know this will be a difficult job but I will try to find that money in order to help Tamil people," he was quoted as saying by the BBC. Pathmanathan, better known as KP, announced himself the LTTE chief immediately after Prabakaran was killed by the Sri Lankan forces on May 19, 2009. Three months later KP was arrested by Sri Lankan agents in Malaysia and brought to Colombo. Since then he has been living under government detention. He has expressed his desire to cooperate in rehabilitation and reconstruction of war-hit areas in the north and east regions of the country. Under government escort, KP had visited the former battle regions heading his North Eastern Rehabilitation a...

The United Arab Emirates- based Galadari family of business magnates, has entered into an agreement with the government of Dubai to sell 29 percent of its shareholdings in Colombo’s Galadari Hotel for a value of Rs 2.08 billion. The company has a total issued capital of 180 million shares and with the 29 percent stake to be sold to the Dubai government amounting to 52.2 million shares, which will be at Rs 40 each, the value of the transaction would be Rs 2.08 billion. Top international market sources from Dubai said the first tranche of this transaction was expected to take place in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) within a short period of time. As a result of this proposed transfer of Galadari Hotel shares by the Galadari family the top shareholdings will be shared between Galadari family, government of Dubai and the Employees Provident Fund of Sri Lanka (EPF). The Dubai government is expected to purchase these shares under a company named Unicorn. Transaction is expected to be carrie...

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The US Supreme Court has denied an appeal by Microsoft against a $290m verdict for infringing a small Canadian company's patent. The company, i4i, sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a text manipulation tool used in Microsoft's Word application. The technology gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way of using a document's contents. Lower courts had said Microsoft wilfully breached the patent. They ordered the world's biggest software maker to pay up, and to stop selling versions of Word containing the infringing technology. 'Clear and convincing' Microsoft claimed a judge used the wrong standard in instructing the jury that decided on the award, and said the judgement should be overturned. It pushed for a lower standard of proof of infringement to be used instead, arguing that the level of proof usually required to overturn a patent in the US was too high. ...

At least 14 people have been killed in raging flood waters that have swept through south-western Guizhou province. Scores of people are missing, and tens of thousands have left their homes ahead of more flooding. Roads, bridges and hundreds of homes and cars have been destroyed in the onslaught. The floods toll, reported by the state news agency Xinhua, comes after months of crop-destroying drought in the centre and north of the country. The provincial civil affairs office in Guizhou said that floods have hit 11 cities and counties since 3 June. At least 270,000 people have been affected, 45,000 evacuated and 3,000 stranded, said Xinhua. Before the deluge Some areas along the Yangtze River have suffered their worst drought in half a century. Even with the rain - and more is forecast in the coming days - officials have warned that the crop shortages and dislocation caused by drought will remain severe. Large s...

The World Health Organization's cancer research agency says mobile phones are "possibly carcinogenic". A review of evidence suggests an increased risk of a malignant type of brain cancer cannot be ruled out. However, any link is not certain - they concluded that it was "not clearly established that it does cause cancer in humans". A cancer charity said the evidence was too weak to draw strong conclusions from. A group of 31 experts has been meeting in Lyon, France, to review human evidence coming from epidemiological studies. They said they looked at all relevant human studies of people using mobile phones and exposure to electromagnetic fields in their workplace. The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) can give mobile phones one of five scientific labels: carcinogenic, probably carcinogenic, possibly carcinogenic, not classifiable or not carcinogenic. It concluded that mobiles should be rated as "possibly carcinogenic" because...