Russian search giantYandexhas today announcedYandex.Factory, a new investment program aimed at startups in the CIS region of Europe. The scheme will finance startups with seed or early stage funds with sums of up to “Hundreds of thousands of US dollars.” The company says that it is looking to invest in the development of products which it may like to acquire at a later date, but also says “Not everything in this world can be bought....

Russian search giantYandexhas announced today that it has acquired ‘social newspaper’ serviceThe Tweeted Timesas part of a push to integrate more social data into its search results. The Tweeted Times is similar to Paper.li, in that it generates a ‘newspaper’ on the Web containing stories shared by people you follow on Twitter. It doesn’t appear to do anything particularly unique, and its iPad app faces stiff competition from the likes of Flipboard....

Russian search giant Yandex today announced its expansion into Turkey,opening a Turkish version of its search engineand incorporating a range of other services tailored for Turkish users but also opening an office in Istanbul. Yandex has made sure to introduce its core search product but also serves pictures and videos, demonstrating small tweaks that can help users find books and poetry just by entering one line from the text itself. On top of its search features, Yandex’s Turkish portal will also offer email services, news, translation and other services....

Fresh from its expansion into the Turkish market, Russian search giantYandex has announceda new partnership with Korean electronics vendor Samsung, signing a deal that will see the search engine incorporated into Samsung’s Smart TVs and Bada-powered smartphone devices across the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Yandex’s partnership with Samsung will see its TV widget preloaded onto Samsung Smart TVs, serving as the default search engine and the company’s front page set up as the default homepage on devices sold to countries that were formerly Soviet republics....

Encrypted online communication services like Skype, Gmail and Hotmail could be under threat in Russia as the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) sees them as a threat to national security. AFPreports that the organisation is concerned that the foreign-made encryption technology could be used by extremist organisations within Russia and nothing could be done about it as access to them is handled by servers outside the country. Recommendations regarding regulation of mass usage of encryption technology will reportedly be presented to the government at the start of October....