Technology

US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden has asked Russian authorities to prolong his asylum in the country, his lawyer said. Snowden filed a request with the Russian Migration Service, Anatoly Kucherena said, according to the Interfax news agency. The former intelligence analyst received temporary refugee status in Russia after arriving in Moscow in June 2013. His one-year renewable asylum runs out on July 31, Kucherena said. The lawyer did not say for which time period Snowden applied. Russia’s Federal Migration Service refused to comment. Snowden caused a sensation last year by disclosing a massive telecommunications and email surveillance programme run by his former employer, the US National Security Agency (NSA). He was subsequently charged by the United States with espionage and theft of government property, which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Snowden managed to escape from Hong Kong on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow despite the fact that the US had r...

Google announced in a recent blog post that it has added 13 new languages to Gmail, with Afrikaans and isiZulu among them. Gmail was already available in 58 languages, and in bringing that total to 71 Google said its e-mail application now covers 94% of the world’s Internet population. The 13 languages added to Gmail are as follows: Afrikaans, Armenian, Azerbaijani (Azeri), Chinese (Hong Kong), French (Canada), Galician, Georgian, Khmer, Lao, Mongolian, Nepali, Sinhala, and Zulu. “As any native speaker knows, each language has its own nuances, so we worked closely with linguists to make sure the tone and style are just right,” Google said. As an example, Google highlighted how “inbox” is represented differently for Hong Kong and Taiwan Chinese even though both use traditional Chinese characters. “You’ll notice that Gmail’s new Chinese (Hong Kong) language uses 收件箱 for ‘Inbox’ instead of 收件匣, which is a word more common in Taiwan,” Google said. All 13 languages have star...