TECHNO LA LA

Buoyed by the initial response to Android One smartphones, chip maker MediaTek today said it expects as many as two million handsets to be sold this year in India, the world’s second largest market for mobile phones.The Taiwan-headquartered company has partnered with US-based tech giant Google on Android One, an initiative to provide a family of high-quality, yet affordable Android devices for consumers in emerging markets like India.Yesterday, Google launched three devices in partnership with Micromax, Karbonn and Spice under the Android One initiative. India is the first country to have the Android One handets, priced at Rs 6,399 onwards.

Cities can be dangerous places if you don't have the right directions.  Smart , the company behind the original smart car, has devised a clever way to help pedestrians wait for the walk signal and keep the streets safer — a dancing traffic light. By projecting real movements from people nearby, the dancing traffic light entertains people at the intersection until it's a safe time to cross the street. The company built the signal at an intersection in Lisbon, Portugal, earlier this summer. (There are no evident plans to implement the lights elsewhere yet.)

Another day, more Windows 9 leaks, this time of the new virtual desktops and Notification Center. I've got the videos, and you'll want to see them. The German site WinFuture posted two videos over the weekend, one showing how virtual desktops work, and one showing how the Notification Center works. As you can see in the videos below, they're nice additions to Windows 9, although not as nearly useful as the new Start menu. ( You can see video of the Start menu here. ) I've used plenty of virtual desktop applications on multiple operating systems, including Windows, the Mac, and Linux. The Windows 9 one looks to be one of the simplest to use, although I'm basing this solely on the video, so it could be more difficult than it seems.

KABUL: A police official in Kabul said that a suicide car bomber has targeted a foreign convoy just a couple hundred yards (meters) from the US embassy. According to reports, at least one person has died in the blast.  Faird Afzalai, the chief of criminal investigations for Kabul's police, said on Tuesday that the bomber targeted a foreign convoy, but he did not immediately have information about what kind of convoy or the number of casualties. The blast happened on a busy road that runs from the US embassy to the airport. A white plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky after a blast rattled windows in nearby neighborhoods. The attack comes as the country's two presidential contenders continue negotiations to form some sort of national unity government. 

BERLIN: The US National Security Agency and British intelligence services are able to secretly access data from telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom and several other German operators, according to Der Spiegel weekly. An NSA programme called "Treasure Map" gives the US agency and Britain's electronic eavesdropping GCHQ near real-time information about the operators' networks, right through to end users on computers, smartphones or tablets, Der Spiegel said in a report to appear in its Sunday edition.

Cycling uniforms should  feel  like a second skin, not  look  like it.Unfortunately, for the Colombian women's cycling team, that was the case at Friday's  Instituto Distrital de Reacreación y Deporte  in Italy. The team's six cyclists donned uniforms featuring a wide, flesh-toned panel that extended from mid torso to the upper thighs. In other words, they looked exposed.While those flesh-toned panels aren't transparent, the coloring is enough to warrant a double take. Needless to say, detractors had an expressive reaction to the unusual new uniforms.

BANGKOK — Two British tourists were found battered to death Monday on a beach on a scenic island in southern Thailand that is one of the country's most popular diving destinations.Police described the two as a 23-year-old woman from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and a 24-year-old man from Jersey, Channel Islands. Their nearly naked bodies were discovered on Koh Tao, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand. A bloodied hoe was found near the bodies and is believed to have been used as the murder weapon, police Col. Prachum Ruangthong said. "The man was chopped in the back and on the sid

SYDNEY — Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has claimed for the first time that even the New Zealand government is spying on its citizens. In an article published on The Intercept Monday, Snowden claimed the country's government was directly involved in surveillance via deep-sea cable to monitor personal communication. Snowden said the project, titled "Speargun" and implemented in 2012 or early 2013 by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand, used equipment to access data from the Southern Cross cable.