World Briefs october 13, 2011
BlackBerry outages spread to North America
NEW YORK - BlackBerry users across the world were exasperated Wednesday as an outage of email, messaging and Internet services on the phones spread to the U.S. and Canada and stretched into the third day for Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.
It was the biggest outage in years for BlackBerry users, and strained their relationship with an already tarnished brand. It came on the eve of the launch of a mighty competitor - a new iPhone model.
Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the phones, said a crucial link in its European infrastructure failed Monday, and a backup didn't work either. The underlying problem has been fixed, but a backlog of emails and messages has built up that the company has yet to work down.
Latest U.S. drone strike kills 3 in Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - An American missile strike killed a ranking member of the militant Haqqani network Thursday in northwestern Pakistan, increasing pressure on one of the deadliest factions fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
Two other militants were killed in the attack close to the Haqqani stronghold of Dande Darpa Khel village in North Waziristan, the group's main sanctuary along the Afghan border, said the officials, who did not give their names because they were not allowed to speak to the media on the record.
They identified the Haqqani member as Jalil and said he was a "coordinator" for the group. The men were walking down a street when the drone-fired missile hit, the officials said.
Suicide bombers, explosions kill 25 in Baghdad
BAGHDAD - Attacks aimed at Iraqi police, including two in which assailants slammed explosives-packed cars into police stations, killed 25 people Wednesday and maimed dozens in the worst violence in the capital since August.
Less than three months before American troops are to leave Iraq, the blasts were a brutal example of the challenges Iraqi security forces will face as they assume sole responsibility for containing terror groups such as al-Qaida.
- The Associated Press