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School bombing exposes Obama’s secret war inside Pakistan : HE discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country. Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists. US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year

Bell and Telus’ massive, sudden addition of nationwide HSPA networks to succeed their legacy CDMA towers was an experiment unlike anything the wireless world had ever seen; at no other time had carriers that large jumped from one 3G technology to another, and it was anyone’s guess how well it’d go and what effect it’d have on their bottom line — clean-slate network build-outs aren’t cheap, after all. We’ve got part of that answer now that Bell has reported fourth quarter earnings, and in a nutshell, it seems like this may have a huge gamble that paid off.

Just when you thought the Corby’s title was secure, along comes Samsung’s archrival LG with the KM555e Clubby — a phone whose meaningless, perfectly trademarkable name knows no limits of awesomeness. Apart from built-in support for LG’s Music Club track download service, we’re not sure what makes this thing so “clubby” — it’s just a midrange full-touch dumbphone with a WQVGA display, 3 megapixel cam, and Dolby Mobile tech on board — but seriously, with a name like that, does it matter?

While just recently made official , there have been plenty of Motorola Devour leaks over the years (er, months ) to keep us occupied.

Verizon — like pretty much any North American carrier — has an amazing propensity for offering countless, virtually anonymous flips from LG and Samsung.

The carrier formerly known as DAVE Wireless — one of the big winners in Canada’s AWS auction a year and a half ago — has adopted an official, consumer-friendly name on its way to availability later this year: Mobilicity, which is apparently supposed to evoke “the mobile carrier’s focus on simplicity for city-based customers.” They’ve also announced that the first market to go live will be Toronto in Spring followed by Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa later in the year, closely mirroring the strategy being employed by its nearest rival, WIND , which just launched recently in the same spectrum. Both operators face an uphill battle against the well-entrenched big boys — Rogers, Bell, and Telus — but it’ll be a fun fight to watch, won’t it? Look out, WIND: Mobilicity next fresh carrier to launch in Canada originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:14:00 EST.

At $2.99 for 24 hours or $9.99 a month, the latest version of Verizon’s branded navigation service carriers over the same antiquated business model that seems destined for the scrap heap — but for what it’s worth, VZ Navigator 5.0 is now in full effect with a handful of new and freshened features. Most notable are a speech-to-text search mode for WinMo and BlackBerry versions of the service, crowdsourced traffic information (not unlike Google’s strategy, though with decidedly fewer users on board), and Facebook integration that allows you to post location updates straight to your account. To start, only the BlackBerry Curve 8530 , LG enV Touch , HTC Touch Pro2 , and Samsung Omnia are getting the upgrade, but more devices will move to 5.0 “in the coming weeks.” Droid users, meanwhile, continue enjoying Google Maps Navigation at no charge whatsoever.

What’s a generic name for an android? Yep, “robot” — so it only stands to reason that a name like “The Robot” would befit the most boring, generic Android set imaginable to a T. Indeed, there isn’t a single feature on The Robot that stands out — apart from perhaps the vague Storm knockoff design — thanks primarily to a resistive 2.8-inch QVGA display and a mere dual-band 900 / 1800 3G-free GSM radio (North Americans need not apply)

ISLAMABAD: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Wednesday staged token walk out from the house against the law and order situation in Sindh province and an attack on the party’s office in Hyderabad the other day. Before the members of the MQM left the House as protest, Haider Abbas Rizvi while speaking on point of order, strongly condemned the other day’s attack on MQM’s office in Hyderabad. He further said that it has become a routine matter that people were being kidnapped and gunned down in Sindh province