illegal immigrant college student hopes case helps reform

ATLANTA When Jessica Colotl, an illegal immigrant college student, got arrested for a minor traffic violation at her suburban Atlanta campus, she became an accidental poster child for immigration reform.On Friday, after getting arrested and released from detention for the second time in just over a month, she told reporters at a news conference she hopes her ordeal can help persuade leaders to work for an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws.

“I just hope for the best and I hope that something positive comes out of this because we really need a reform to fix this messed up system,” the 21-year-old told reporters inside a shopping center that caters to metro Atlanta’s growing community of Hispanic immigrants. Colotl, who came close to deportation after the traffic arrest, looked overwhelmed by the crush of reporters shouting questions at her.Colotl is among hundreds of thousands of young people who have been brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents. She was 11 when her parents crossed the border with her from Mexico. Eventually, she graduated from high school in Georgia and entered Kennesaw State University in the fall of 2006. A sorority member who dreams of becoming lawyer, she was set to graduate with a degree in political science this fall.

Her first arrest came on March 30, the day after getting pulled over by university police for a minor traffic violation. She was charged with driving without a license and impeding the flow of traffic.Then, the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office turned her over to officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who sent her to a detention center in Alabama. After lobbying by Kennesaw State officials and her sorority sisters, ICE released Colotl last week. Federal officials deferred action on her case for a year, allowing her to complete her classes.

But Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren obtained a new warrant for her arrest on Wednesday, saying she lied about her address when she was booked into jail following her initial arrest. Making a false statement to law enforcement is a felony under Georgia law.Colotl turned herself in Friday morning and was released on $2,500 bond, according to sheriff’s office records.

Her criminal defense lawyer, Chris Taylor, said Friday that his client’s case is a perfect example of why U.S. immigration law needs reform.”Jessica may not have the documents that show that she’s an American citizen, but she’s an American,” Taylor said. “She’s an American in her heart because she believes in the values of this country.”U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which granted the deferral on her case last week, decided not to detain her again following Friday’s arrest, the agency said in a statement.

Taylor said he believes there is no merit to the sheriff’s charge that Colotl gave an incorrect address. The address she gave is a former address and her auto insurance and car registration still list it, he said. She also gave her current address to immigration officials and the sheriff’s office had access to that information, he said.Warren did not return calls Friday seeking comment and a spokeswoman for his office referred questions to a statement released Thursday. In it, the sheriff said Colotl knew she was in the country illegally and “further complicated her situation with her blatant disregard for Georgia Law by giving false information.”

The deferred action on Colotl’s case does not imply legal status but does authorize her to seek a work permit, ICE said.Colotl’s immigration lawyer, Charles Kuck, said he intends to seek an extension of that deferred status.

If Colotl is convicted on the felony charge of making a false statement, it will be virtually impossible to get a judge to agree to extend the deferral, Kuck said. But he said he is almost positive that the district attorney will dismiss those charges.Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head did not immediately return a call Friday seeking comment.Colotl is evaluating whether to return to Kennesaw State, but said she is certain she will graduate from college.

“I really believe that something positive should come out of this, probably an immigration reform or at least the DREAM Act,” she said.The DREAM Act, or Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors, would apply to illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16, have a high school diploma and have shown high moral character, among other requirements. The bill has been introduced many times in Congress but has yet to make it through.

It’s unclear how many people would qualify under the most recent version of the act, which could be folded into a larger immigration reform bill or pushed on its own.Both Taylor and Kuck are representing Colotl without charge.

Colotl and her lawyers were flanked by about a dozen representatives from civil liberties and immigrant rights groups at Friday’s news conference. They called for ICE to revoke the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office’s participation in a program known as 287(g), which allows local law enforcement agents to help enforce federal immigration laws.

“We are calling for an immediate termination of the 287(g) agreement in Cobb County,” said Azadeh Shahshahani of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, adding that her office has contacted the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, and the U.S. Department of Justice, asking them to look into Cobb County’s use of the program.DHS spokesman Matt Chandler declined to comment and U.S. DOJ did not immediately return a call seeking comment late Friday. (AP)

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger : I'd be Deported under Arizona Immigration Law

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already expressed his opposition to Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, and in a commencement address he gave Monday in Atlanta, he couldn’t help but take a crack at the law.”I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me,” the Republican governor joked in his speech at Emory University.

Arizona’s new law, slated to go into effect in July, requires immigrants to carry documents verifying their immigration status. It also requires police officers to question a person about his or her immigration status after a “lawful stop” if there is “reasonable suspicion” that person may be illegally in the country.

The law has prompted protests nationwide, and a number of local lawmakers in California are moving to cut off their economic ties with Arizona.On NBC’s “Tonight Show” last month, Schwarzenegger called the law “a mess.””I would never do that in California. No way,” he said.The entertainer-turned-politician’s Austrian accent is often parodied, and Schwarzenegger has said in the past it is important for immigrants to learn English.

citizen of the United States Threatens to blow up Delta Air Aircraft with the Bomb

Boston A citizen of the United States (U.S.) on a flight from Paris to Atlanta threatened to blow up a plane he was traveling. He also claimed to have false passports and carrying explosives in his luggage. Effect of act of such passengers, the aircraft diverted to the nearest airport.As reported by NBC, Wednesday (28/04/2010), U.S. federal officials to identify passengers who was named acting Derek Stansberry (26). He is a Florida home contractor who was traveling alone. However, upon investigation, which is owned by Stanberry passport is genuine.

Shortly after the claims will bomb the aircraft, he was immediately drawn to the rear of the plane by a flight attendant for further questioning on the statement.Delta Air Lines plane carrying Stanberry is the Airbus A330 with 235 passengers and eight crew. “The plane eventually landed safely at Bangor International Airport,” said Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott.Arriving at the Bangor Airport, a suitcase belonging Stansberry eventually admitted there were explosives searched. After review, there were no suspicious or dangerous items found.

Michelle Bombshell McGee vs Sandra Bullock's

Sandra Bullock’s husband cheat on her or is a tattoo model trying to drum up some publicity – or both?Michelle “Bombshell” McGee claims she slept with Jesse James for about eleven months, and provides intimate details like his endowment and penchant for not wearing underwear, which has landed the allegations on the cover of In Touch magazine.

When Sandra Bullock thanked her bad-boy husband, Jesse James, as she accepted her best actress Oscar for The Blind Side, she may not have known that while she was away shooting the film, Jesse was carrying on a steamy affair with a tattoo model. While Jesse has had an 11-month affair, including five weeks of sex, with Michelle “Bombshell” McGee, she believed he and Sandra were no longer together.

“I would never have hooked up with him if I thought he was a married man,” Michelle tells In Touch in an exclusive interview. “He gave me the impression they were separated.” For weeks, while Sandra was in Atlanta shooting The Blind Side, Michelle had sex at least once a week with the Monster Garage star.

Far from a one-night stand, his relationship with Michelle was intimate and highly charged. Michelle even says she called Jesse, who didn’t wear underwear or condoms, by a special pet name, Vanilla Gorilla, because he was so “well-endowed.”

While Jesse was in Atlanta with Sandra when she started to film The Blind Side, Michelle sent West Coast Choppers a friend request because she hoped to snag a modeling gig there. She was surprised that it was actually Jesse who wrote back to her and told her to e-mail him at his personal e-mail.

From the start, Jesse wanted to meet Michelle, and it was never about business: “He started saying, ‘Do you want to hang out?'” So a week after he got in touch, Michelle drove two hours from her San Diego home to West Coast Choppers in LA. “I got there around 9 at night,” remembers Michelle, who was starstruck at first. “I was like, ‘Holy s**t. It’s really Jesse James.'” After taking Michelle on a tour of his garage, Jesse brought her into his office and locked the door.

“We ended up on the couch,” she says. “He wanted to watch movies, but I asked him, ‘What’s going on with you and Sandra?'” Jesse was evasive. “He said, ‘She doesn’t live here. She has a house in Austin. She is filming, and I can’t talk about it.’

” Assuming he and Sandra were separated, Michelle continued talking to Jesse, she says, and then, “We had intimate relations.” Michelle says she and Jesse had sex “two or three times,” that night — and began what she believed was a serious relationship, texting each other several times a day, and meeting up for sex at least twice a week for the next five weeks.

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to "JihadJane," her Internet alias

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to “JihadJane,” her Internet alias, was unique in many ways, but a common thread ties the alleged Islamic militant to other recent cases of homegrown terrorism: the Internet.

From charismatic clerics who spout hate online, to thousands of extremist websites, chat rooms and social networking pages that raise money and spread radical propaganda, the Internet has become a crucial front in the ever-shifting war on terrorism.”LaRose showed that you can become a terrorist in the comfort of your own bedroom,” said Bruce Hoffman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University. “You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.”

“The new militancy is driven by the Web,” agreed Fawaz A. Gerges, a terrorism expert at the London School of Economics. “The terror training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being replaced by virtual camps on the Web.”

From their side, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are scrambling to monitor the Internet and penetrate radical websites to track suspects, set up sting operations or unravel plots before they are carried out.

The FBI arrested LaRose in October after she had spent months using e-mail, YouTube, MySpace and electronic message boards to recruit radicals in Europe and South Asia to “wage violent jihad,” according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.That put the strawberry-haired Pennsylvania resident in league with many of the 12 domestic terrorism cases involving Muslims that the FBI disclosed last year, the most in any year since 2001. The Internet was cited as a recruiting or radicalizing tool in nearly every case.

“Basically, Al Qaeda isn’t coming to them,” Gerges said. “They are using the Web to go to Al Qaeda.”

In December, for example, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of seeking to join anti-American militants in Afghanistan.A Taliban recruiter made contact with the group after one of the five, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, posted comments on YouTube praising videos of attacks on U.S. troops, officials said. To avoid detection, they communicated by leaving draft e-mail messages at a shared Yahoo e-mail address.

Hosam Smadi, a Jordanian, was arrested in September and accused of trying to use a weapon of mass destruction after he allegedly tried to blow up a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas. The FBI began surveillance of Smadi after seeing his anti-American postings on an extremist website.And Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, two middle-class kids barely out of high school near Atlanta, secretly took up violent jihad after meeting at a mosque.

“They started spending hours online — chatting with each other, watching terrorist recruitment videos, and meeting like-minded extremists,” the FBI said in a statement after the pair were convicted of terrorism charges in December.

Prosecutors alleged that the pair traveled to Washington and made more than 60 short surveillance videos of the Capitol, the Pentagon and other sensitive facilities, and e-mailed them to an Al Qaeda webmaster and propagandist.

U.S. authorities also closely monitor several fiery Internet imans who use English to preach jihad and, in some cases, to help funnel recruits to Al Qaeda and other radical causes.The best known is Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born imam who is believed to be living in Yemen. U.S. officials say more than 10% of visitors to his website are in the U.S.

Among those who traded e-mails with Awlaki were Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with shooting and killing 13 people in November at Ft. Hood, Texas, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, part of the Muslim American Society, noted that many extremist websites featured fiery images, loud music and fast-moving videos of violence and death.”They use video games and hip-hop to bring young people in, sometimes in very benign ways,” he said. “Then they make this transition by showing all the horrific things” and by then, some would-be recruits are hooked.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said his group had struggled to compete with the instant attention that grisly videos of beheadings, roadside bombs or masked men with weapons draw on the Internet.”They get the backdrop of the Afghani mountains or the battlefields of Somalia,” he said. “We’re speaking from conference centers and quiet halls. Somehow, we have to figure out a way to make our message more newsworthy. We’ve issued YouTube videos, and it barely gets a couple of hundred hits.”

Golden State Warriors vs Atlanta Hawks 108-104 on Sunday night

OAKLAND, Calif. Stephen Curry scored 32 points and made the go-ahead free throw in the final minute after a technical foul on Jamal Crawford to help the Golden State Warriors rally from an 18-point deficit and beat the Atlanta Hawks 108-104 on Sunday night.Playing with only eight healthy players, the Warriors scored 16 straight points in the fourth quarter to erase the big deficit and went on to win their first game against a team, with a winning record since beating Boston on Dec. 28. Golden State had lost 11 of 13, with the only wins being blowouts at home against struggling Sacramento and the Los Angeles Clippers.

After losing their big lead, the Hawks lost their cool in the final minute. Leading by two points, Joe Johnson turned the ball over and Monta Ellis went in for a breakaway layup that tied the game at 104 with 1 minute left.After Al Horford missed a jumper, C.J. Watson lost the rebound out of bounds for Golden State. But Crawford was called for a technical, giving Golden State the lead on Curry’s free throw.

Crawford then missed a 3-pointer from the corner with 15 seconds remaining and Ellis hit two free throws to make it 107-104. Josh Smith missed another 3 with 5 seconds to go and Chris Hunter made one of two free throws for the final margin.Johnson led Atlanta with 31 points, Horford added 26 and Smith had 14 points and 17 rebounds. The Hawks have lost three of four.Ellis finished with 26 points for Golden State, but was on the bench for the bulk of the Warriors comeback early in the fourth quarter.

Golden State cut the 18-point lead down to five on two free throws by Curry midway through the period. Curry followed with a 3-pointer and C.J. Watson’s layup tied the game at 95. Curry capped the 16-0 run with a driving layup to give the Warriors a two-point lead with just over 5 minutes remaining.

Ellis gave the Warriors a 102-101 lead when he made one of two free throws, but Johnson answered with a 28-footer as the shot clock ran down to make it 104-102 with 2:22 to go. Atlanta did not score again.The loss was especially tough on Crawford, who had his differences with Golden State coach Don Nelson last season before being dealt to Atlanta. Crawford scored 17 points, topping the 10,000-point mark in his career, but didn’t come through down the stretch.The game was tight for the first half with neither team taking a lead bigger than five points. Atlanta led 52-51 at halftime before breaking the game open in the third quarter.

Horford scored nine points during a 14-2 run that helped Atlanta take a 74-59 lead just past the midpoint of the quarter. Smith added back-to-back dunks, including an emphatic left-hander on a breakaway following a bad pass by Ellis that made it 86-68 late in the third.

NOTES: Warriors F Corey Maggette missed the game with a strained left hamstring. He went to Los Angeles to have the injury examined. … Golden State F Ronny Turiaf missed the game with flulike symptoms. … Ellis topped the 5,000 career point mark as well. …Hawks G Mike Bibby was 1-for-6 from the field and is 3-for-18 over his last three games.(AP)

"All my dreams are coming true all across the board for some reason," Jay Electronica said via phone from London

“All my dreams are coming true all across the board for some reason,” Jay Electronica said via phone from London. Jay  who’s on the other side of the pond headlining shows — just celebrated his daughter Mars’ first birthday (mom is Erykah Badu) and his hometown team the New Orleans Saints just won the Super Bowl. Plus his career is on the upswing; life is good. Jay’s Just Blaze-produced “Exhibit C” is one of those special hip-hop records that you hear and instantly love. An independent release, it’s garnering heavy rotation on major radio stations like New York’s Hot 97, and in the streets and on the Internet the record has the buzz of a #1 single. Several MCs from Capone-N-Noreaga to Cassidy have freestyled over the track on mixtapes and Diddy, Mos Def, Nas, Q-Tip and Talib Kweli have been publicly co-signing Electronica. The record is definitely his breakthrough.”We did that song in 15 minutes,” Jay boasted. The track came about when Jay and Just Blaze were scheduled to be on Angela Yee’s Sirius Satellite radio show and wanted to make a new record to play on the program.

“We never went on the show,” Jay explained. “We fell asleep in the studio. I forgot the song existed. I didn’t hear it again until I heard it on Tony Touch’s [satellite radio show]. I was mad. Even when he played it on the show, he said, ‘I’m gonna get in trouble for doing that.’ The next day [the song] was all over the Net and people were asking for the CD-quality version. It grew legs on its own. It’s amazing to see. It grew its own legs. To see it walk all the way to mainstream commercial radio is a helluva magic trick. It’s almost like it’s an entity of its own.” Other than Electronica’s distinctive deep tone and conviction in his verse, it’s his inspiring story on the record that pulls the listener in. One of the topics he speaks on is overcoming homelessness. “On the record I was talking about when I was homeless in New York,” he explained. “I’ve been homeless on a few occasions. That was the first time I was homeless in New York. The first time I was homeless was when I went to Atlanta. I was in a homeless shelter, then when I got a job I used to miss the curfew for the shelter. So I ended up sleeping outside in the streets.” Jay moved from his native New Orleans to ATL in hopes of breaking into the music biz in the mid-’90s.

“Music in New Orleans was a local thing or regional at best,” he said. “No Limit had just started gaining ground, being recognized on a national level … actually, No Limit was shortly after that. I was also in a searching period in my life and one of my good friends had gotten killed. I was like, ‘You know what? I’m outta here.’ ” Jay lived in New York briefly in 1999 before moving to Chicago, where he once again found himself literally out on the streets. But eventually the Big Apple would be the place Jay would plant his feet and establish himself musically.

“A lot of people would always say I’m delusional,” he said about his triumph. “I always felt like, ‘I’m gonna do it no matter what.’ There were times when my spirit would be broken a little bit but I still would be pushing forward. I had little jobs in between, but I was still pushing forward. Any time I got told no or ‘You’re getting too old,’ the record companies was telling me, ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ I guess stubbornness kept me going. But I always believed this my entire life — that I was destined to do something on a global scale.

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“But I matured in it as I got older,” he explained. “At first it was because I wanted to be like LL. After a while, I started getting mission-orientated once I took that mindset on I felt like, ‘I cannot not do it.’ ” The first body of work Jay released that got him recognition in the industry was Act 1: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge). He rapped over music looped from the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” “If ‘Exhibit C’ is Jesus, then Act I: Eternal Sunshine, (The Pledge) is John the Baptist,” he claimed.

Act II is coming “soon” with more production by Just Blaze. That too will be a free opus, with his official album Act III to follow. Nas makes a cameo on Act II while Jay’s gems “Exhibit A,” “Exhibit C” and “Moleskin” will be included on the latter. Just Blaze, J Dilla, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Mr. Porter and Jay himself will produce. “I never got a moment where I feel I made it, victory, completion,” Jay says of his buzz. “I’ve had moments of excitement. I can’t believe people are responding like this. It’s an overwhelming thing — even though it’s something you planned for, it’s a surprise.”

Scanners force trade-off between privacy, security

the security gate at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO  As Ronak Ray hunted for his flight gate, he prepared for the prospect of a security guard peering through his clothes with a full body scanner. But Ray doesn’t mind: what he gives up in privacy he gets back in security.”I think it’s necessary,” said Ray, a 23-year-old graduate student who was at San Francisco International Airport to fly to India. “Our lives are far more important than how we’re being searched.”Despite controversy surrounding the scans, Ray’s position was typical of several travelers interviewed at various airports Wednesday by The Associated Press.Airports in five other U.S. cities are also using full body scanners at specific checkpoints instead of metal detectors. In addition, the scanners are used at 13 other airports for random checks and so-called secondary screenings of passengers who set off detectors.

But many more air travelers may have to get used to the idea soon. The Transportation Security Administration has ordered 150 more full body scanners to be installed in airports throughout the country in early 2010, agency spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said.Dutch security officials have said they believe such scanners could have detected the explosive materials Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria is accused of trying to ignite aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day.Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has 15 full body scanners, but none were used to scan Abdulmutallab when he boarded. In Europe and the U.S., privacy concerns over the scanners’ ability to see through clothing have kept them from widespread use.

The technology was first used about two years ago to make it easier for airport security to do body searches without making physical contact with passengers.The idea of an electronic strip search did not bother Judy Yeager, 62, of Sarasota, Fla., as she prepared to depart Las Vegas. She stood in the full-body scanner Wednesday afternoon and held her arms up as a security official guided her through the gray closet-sized booth.”If it’s going to protect a whole airplane of people, who gives a flying you-know-what if they see my boob whatever,” Yeager said. “That’s the way I feel, honest to God.”George Hyde, of Birmingham, Ala., who was flying out of Salt Lake City with his wife, Patsy, on Wednesday after visiting their children and grandchildren in Park City, Utah.”I’d rather be safe than be embarrassed,” Hyde said. Neither he nor his wife had been through a body scanner before.”We’re very modest people but we’d be willing to go through that for security.”

Trevino said the TSA has worked with privacy advocates and the scanners’ manufacturers to develop software that blurs the faces and genital areas of passengers being scanned. In all cases, passengers are not required to be scanned by the machine but can opt for a full body pat-down instead.At Salt Lake City International Airport, fewer than 1 percent of passengers subjected to the scanner chose the pat-down since the machine was installed in March, said Dwane Baird, a TSA spokesman in Salt Lake City.On Tuesday, some 1,900 people went through the scanner and just three chose not to, he said.Critics of the scanners said the option to opt out was not enough.”The question is should they be used indiscriminately on little children and grandmothers,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock of California. McClintock co-sponsored a bill approved by the House 310-118 in June prohibiting the use of full body scanners for primary screenings. The bill is pending in the Senate.

He said the devices raised serious concerns regarding constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.”There’s no practical distinction between a full body scan and being pulled into a side room and being ordered to strip your clothing.”To further protect passenger privacy, security officers looking at the images are in a different part of the airport and are not allowed to take any recording devices into the room with them, Trevino said. The images captured by the scanners cannot be stored, transmitted or printed in any way.But the TSA still has some public relations work ahead of it, judging by the reactions of passengers in Albuquerque, N.M., who were worried about what would happen to their images once they were scanned.”Are they going to be recorded or do they just scan them and that’s the end of them? How are these TSA people going to be using them? That’s a real concern for me,” said Courtney Best-Trujillo of Santa Fe, N.M., who was flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The six airports where full body scanners are being used for what TSA calls “primary screenings” are: Albuquerque, N.M.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Miami, Fla.; San Francisco; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Tulsa, Okla.The remainder of the machines are being used for secondary screenings in Atlanta, Ga.; Baltimore/Washington; Denver, Colo.; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Indianapolis, Ind.; Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.; Los Angeles; Phoenix, Ariz.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Ronald Reagan Washington National; and Detroit, Mich.

Though most passengers interviewed by The Associated Press felt security trumped other concerns, Bruna Martina, 48, a physician from the coast of Venezuela, said the scanners still made her feel uncomfortable.”I think there has to be another way to control people, or to scan them, but not like this,” she said as she headed back home after a vacation in Miami with her husband and two sons. She also does not think the scanners will thwart another attack.”They’ll find another way,” Martina said. “There is always somebody cleverer than the rest.”(Ap)

BlackBerry service in less than a week frustrated people

BlackBerry

TORONTO  The second outage of BlackBerry service in less than a week frustrated people who depend on the messaging device and comes at a bad time for its maker, which faces increasing competition in the market it helped pioneer.BlackBerry subscribers often are so reliant on the devices that they peck at their keyboards all day and keep them on their night stands while they sleep. When e-mail and Web service on the devices went out Tuesday night, Twitter and other online forums were peppered with complaints.

BlackBerry service was restored Wednesday morning, and the company behind the service, Canada’s Research in Motion Ltd., blamed a software upgrade for the problem. The glitch, which comes after another outage last Thursday, could damage the company’s reputation.

“One of RIM’s big advantages is that it’s perceived as a reliable device,” said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSam Consulting. “To lose the advantage of reliability would in fact be a very big deal for this company.”

Herbert Sexton, 34, said his BlackBerry service has been spotty all week where he lives near Atlanta. One day no messages come in at all and the next, 130 e-mails flood his inbox. Messages he’s already replied to pop up again. He said the disruption could push him to a different phone.

“I like to have something constant,” he said. “If service keeps going out, you never know what to expect.”

RIM has sold more than 75 million BlackBerrys worldwide since the gadget debuted at the start of this decade and became part of popular culture. It earned the nickname “CrackBerry” among people who became addicted to using it to stay productive or in touch with others while on the go. Frequent users of its compact keyboard have been known to complain of suffering from “BlackBerry Thumb.”

RIM counts more than 36 million subscribers, including 500,000 in the U.S. government. President Barack Obama has been a BlackBerry devotee.

After originally focusing on corporate or government customers, RIM has expanded into the consumer market in recent years with touch-screen models as the BlackBerry Storm. The consumer market, however, can be more fickle. And there RIM faces tough competition from devices such as Apple’s iPhone, Palm’s Pre and the Motorola Droid. RIM’s stock has dropped 23 percent since September.

The iPhone in particular stole much of RIM’s thunder because of its design cachet and the seemingly limitless supply of programs, known as “apps,” that users can download to customize their phones. Yet the iPhone also has not been as reliable as many users would like. AT&T, the sole carrier of the device in the U.S., has been upgrading its network to reduce the dropped connections and long waits people have encountered when trying to run programs.

Although RIM’s service is sold by wireless carriers, RIM manages its messaging network itself. That can improve reliability, but the centralized structure also means that any problems can affect millions of users. BlackBerry service went out at least three times in 2008.

This week’s outage apparently stemmed from a flaw in recently released versions of RIM’s instant messaging software, known as BlackBerry Messenger. On Wednesday, RIM released a new version that resolves the program and encouraged anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since Dec. 14 to upgrade to this latest version.

RIM, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, apologized for any inconvenience experienced by customers.

T.I.( rapper) has been released from a federal prison in Arkansas

T.I.

ATLANTA  rapper T.I. has been released from a federal prison in Arkansas and is headed to a halfway house in Georgia.A lawyer for T.I. said the rapper was released Tuesday morning.T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., last May began serving his sentence of a year and a day for illegal firearms possession and possessing a gun as a convicted felon.Steve Sadow said his client was expected to report to Dismas Charities halfway house in Atlanta on Tuesday night and will be there for up to three months.

Sadow said Harris “did his very best to adjust to his circumstances” in prison and knew he had to pay for his crime. He said Harris was most looking forward to getting back to his family and being as productive as he can be.

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