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RIM's New Blackberry Ditches Thumboard
Eric Giguere writes "Research In Motion's newest BlackBerry, the 7100t, aka 'Charm,' has a more conventional phone form factor. It does this by ditching the thumb keyboard for an extended keypad with predictive text input. It also adds Bluetooth. The changes are mostly physical, the device is still running the same basic software -- existing Java apps should run with only minor changes. More details at the BlackBerry.com website." xRelisH supplies this link to a review of the device from MSNBC.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops clashed with suspected Shia Muslim insurgents in the Sadr City slum Tuesday in violence that killed 351 Iraqis and 27 soldiers and helped propel the U.S. military death toll since the war began over 10,000.
The fighting in Sadr City exposed the absence of a lasting and wider truce after the end of last month's bloody battles in Najaf. U.S. forces Tuesday faced a barrage of rocket-propelled grenade attacks and improvised explosives.
Another U.S. soldier was killed elsewhere in Baghdad Tuesday, and the day's toll culminated a three-day burst of bloodshed that killed at least 163 Americans -- including 115 who were struck on Monday alone -- making it the deadliest day for U.S. forces in five months.
The grim toll of more than 10,000 U.S. war dead since the war began in March 2003 -- an Associated Press tally put the figure at 10,021 -- captured the human cost of the war for average Americans.
While there is no precise tally of Iraqi deaths since the war began, estimates have ranged as high as 100,000.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, armed men launched a daylight raid Tuesday on an Italian aid organization and took two Italian women and two Iraqi employees hostage. Dozens of foreign men have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent months -- one Italian journalist was seized last month and reportedly killed -- but kidnappings of foreign women are extremely rare. A Japanese aid worker captured in April in Fallujah was released after a week.
The Italian women kidnapped Tuesday were identified as Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, according to a spokesman for the aid organization "A Bridge To ... " The organization supplies water and medicine to Fallujah, Najaf and Baghdad.
In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi assembled an emergency meeting, his office said.
A day after a suicide bomber killed 73 U.S. Marines and 38 members of the Iraqi National Guard outside Fallujah, U.S. warplanes and tanks also fired on suspected militants in the city, considered a haven for insurgents in the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad.
Ali al-Haidri, the governor of Baghdad, meanwhile, escaped unharmed when a roadside bomb exploded nearby, killing 23 people and wounding 35 of his bodyguards.
The fighting in Sadr City was an ominous sign just two weeks after the end of clashes in the Shia holy city in Najaf raised hopes of fewer bloody confrontations between U.S. troops and members of the Mahdi Army militia.
Last week, rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to stop confronting U.S. troops elsewhere, according to aides who indicated he planned to get involved in politics -- which further bolstered those hopes.
Yet Tuesday's clashes showed the persistent potential for violence between U.S. troops who maintain a formidable street presence in Baghdad and al-Sadr followers who want to limit that presence in the slum.
"Our fighters have no choice but to return fire and to face the U.S. forces and helicopters pounding our houses," Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, an al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, said in a statement.
Goatse.cx jokes galore.
Does anyone else think the Nokia 9300 pictured in the article looks sexier?
"I make people like me... WITH VIOLENCE!" - ATHF
with the number 'doing somethinlg'
wit4j process and