Jova leaves floodwater in its wake

Manzanillo, Mexico (CNN) -- Floodwater left behind when Jova thrashed Mexico's Pacific coast began to recede Wednesday, but cleanup had just begun.

Some residents remained on rooftops in Manzanillo, one of the hardest hit areas. At least 1,400 people were in shelters, police said.

City officials said no deaths or injuries had been reported. A 21-year-old woman and a young girl were killed in a mudslide caused by the storm in the neighboring state of Jalisco, the state-run Notimex news agency said.
In Manzanillo, a small stream turned into a raging river and on several main roads, water was at least a meter deep. Military blockades stopped cars from driving down impassable roads.

"The roads are all flooded. Bridges are about to fall down. Cars can't get through anywhere. People's homes are destroyed," Manzanillo resident Seth Berkowitz said. "What came through here has really been a terrible disaster for everybody."

Jova struck Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane, packing winds of more than 100 miles per hour. It weakened into a tropical storm and then a tropical depression as it moved over western Mexico Wednesday, but heavy rainfall continued.

Floodwaters rushed into many homes in low-lying areas of Manzanillo.
Resident Roberto Robles lost most of his furniture and spent Wednesday dealing with massive amounts of mud inside his home.

"We were really afraid, especially for the children, who still don't understand what a hurricane is," he said.
Javier Velasquez said mud ruined his refrigerator when his kitchen filled with water in the early morning hours.
"Only God knows why something like this happens," he said. "They had warned us, but we thought they were crying wolf."

News by CNN

BlackBerry outage is another black eye for RIM

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Research in Motion is suffering on all fronts. Its sales are flagging, investors are agitating for a management shakeup, the stock is down almost 60% this year, and now its BlackBerry service is down -- again.

The BlackBerry service outage started on Monday in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. By Tuesday it spread to South America. That night, RIM assured customers that the glitch had been identified and was "now being resolved" -- but on Wednesday it got worse as customers in the United States and Canada were hit. The outage appears primarily to affect text messaging and Internet access, not necessarily voice calling.

RIM (RIMM) held a brief teleconference for the press at 3:10 p.m. ET, on which executives said teams were "working around the clock" to fix the issues. Despite a huge data backlog, RIM will not drop any e-mails -- all messages will eventually be delivered, the company pledged.

The reps dodged several questions about make-good efforts for customers.

Late Wednesday, RIM CIO Robin Bienfait posted a "service update" on the company's website saying e-mail systems "are operating" in all regions. Web browsing remained "temporarily unavailable" in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa.

"We are doing everything in our power to restore regular service everywhere and to restore your trust in us," Bienfait wrote. "You've depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we're letting you down."

"The timing couldn't be worse," research firm Trefis wrote in a note to subscribers, citing increased competition from Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android phones and Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone, whose new 4S iteration goes on sale Friday.

The disruptions also give ammunition to disgruntled investors, who want to remove and replace RIM's board. Small activist shareholders including Canada's Jaguar Financial Corp. are pushing the company to sell itself.

Angry customers: Perhaps most damning is the effect on RIM's customer base. BlackBerry had more than 70 million global subscribers as of September 15, but the outage may shove on-the-fence customers over the edge. After all, service disruptions have been at least an annual occurrence for the past several years.

"I have been an analyst for 25 years and have watched RIM wrestle with this same outage problem time after time," Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom and technology analyst based in Atlanta, wrote in a research note.

In 2007, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie attributed a BlackBerry e-mail outage to a "process error" that he promised "won't happen again." February 2008 brought another outage; December 2009 brought two in less than a week. Both U.S. and international users complained of disruptions in March 2010.

"For the first time I am now saying yes... this new outage affects RIM more than in the past," Kagan wrote. "This will not be the final nail in RIM's coffin, but where in the past RIM always came back, this will give customers yet another reason to look at other devices."

Room for competition to swoop in: RIM's rivals are acutely aware of that, and they're "salivating" at this week's events, said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst on mobile devices at IDC.

"This is supposed to be BlackBerry's bread-and-butter, so when secure messaging breaks down for an unspecified period of time, people will certainly vent their frustrations," Llamas said.

It will be tough to mollify those customers quickly, as systemic failures can be complicated to diagnose and fix.

"This is not Antennagate, where it's a device thing and you can get a plastic cover to fix it," Llamas said, referring to Apple's famous problem with its iPhone 4 hardware. "This is a system-wide and growing breakdown."

If service problems continue to plague RIM, it will undercut any positive moves on the device front. Customers won't care how good the hardware is if the phone simply won't work.

"It's a shame, because the BlackBerry 7 devices are strong," Llamas said. "But even with great phones, people will start factoring in these experiences. And they may not be soon to forget."

RIM doesn't have much room for error left. Its last quarter was grim, with sales missing forecasts and RIM's new devices drawing mixed reviews. RIM's co-CEOs assured analysts and investors that the company is in the middle of a turnaround and will show improvement in the current quarter, which ends in November.

Next week they'll have a high-profile platform for their efforts: RIM's annual U.S. developer conference, DevCon Americas, kicks off Tuesday in San Francisco. RIM plans to show off its forthcoming line of smartphones built around QNX, its next-generation operating system, and its "PlayBook 2.0" update for its struggling tablet.

But at this point, PlayBooks and QNX phones may not be enough to win over cranky users, who have stormed Twitter with grumpy #DearBlackberry messages. Next week, they'll have the chance to deliver them in-person to RIM executives.

News by CNN

Top 100 travel destination

Cast your minds back to every holiday / vacation you have ever taken!! Is there a place that stands out from the rest? Is there a destination or specific holiday or vacation attraction that takes its place as your number 1 'Best Travel Destination'. If so, whether it be an awe inspiring historical monument, place of immense excitement, the most beautiful place you have ever experienced or simply a place that just 'did it for you', please participate in this international survey (more details at the bottom of the page) for the 'Best Travel Destination'.

Below is the international survey for the world top 100 'Best Travel Destination''s based on holiday / vacation experiences.

1, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Orlando (USA) 

2, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Sydney (Australia)

3, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Paris (France) 

4, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Venice (Italy)

5, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. London (England)

6, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Manhattan (USA)

7, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Cape Town (South Africa)

8, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Las Vegas (USA) 

9, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Rome (Italy) 

10, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Great Barrier Reef (Australia) 

11, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Maldives (Asia)

12, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. South Island (New Zealand Region)

13, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Hawaii (USA)

14, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Grand Canyon (USA)

15, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Niagara Falls (Canada)

16, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. San Francisco (USA) 

17, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Rio De Janeiro (Brazil)

18, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Los Angeles (USA)

19, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Dubai (UAE) 

20, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) 

21, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Singapore (Asia)

22, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Seychelles (Africa)

23, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Auckland (New Zealand)

24, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Bali (Indonesia)

25, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Durban (South Africa)

26, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Bangkok (Thailand) 

27, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Whitsundays (Australia)

28, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Iceland (Europe)

29, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Costa Del Sol (Spain) 

30, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Cairns (Australia)

31, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Antigua & Barbuda (Caribbean)

32, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Melbourne (Australia)

33, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Mallorca (Spain)

34, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Giza (Egypt) 

35, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Lake District (England)

36, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Barbados (Caribbean) 

37, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Abu Simbel (Egypt) 

38, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Bahamas (Caribbean) 

39, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt)

40, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. New York (USA)

41, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Madrid (Spain)

42, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Zermatt (Switzerland)

43, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Algarve (Portugal) 

44, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) 

45, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Marbella (Spain)

46, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Bora Bora (French Polynesia) 

47, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Chich�n Itz� (Mexico)

48, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Masai Mara (Kenya) 

49, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Florence (Italy) 

50, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Disney World (Florida, USA) 

51, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Puerto Banus (Spain)

52, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Toronto (Canada)

53, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Great Wall (China)

54, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Agra (India)

55, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Edinburgh (Scotland)

56, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Menorca (Spain)

57, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Luxor (Egypt)

58, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Monaco (Europe)

59, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Hong Kong (China)

60, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Banff (Canada)

61, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Sorrento (Italy)

62, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Key West (USA)

63, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Canc�n (Mexico)

64, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Koh Samui (Thailand)

65, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Nice (France)

66, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Machu Picchu (Peru)

67, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Yosemite National Park (USA)

68, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Oahu (USA)

69, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Florida Keys (USA)

70, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Guam (Pacific Islands)

71, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Dublin (Ireland)

72, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Vancouver (Canada)

73, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Cumbria (England)

74, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. La Digue (Seychelles)

75, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Ayers Rock (Australia)

76, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Cayman Islands (Caribbean)

77, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Amritsar (India)

78, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. St Pete Beach (USA)

79, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Ibiza (Spain)

80, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Adelaide (Australia)

81, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Benidorm (Costa Blanca, Spain)

82, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Airlie Beach (Australia)

83, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Prague (Czech Republic)

84, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Aberdare National Park (Kenya)

85, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Cuba (Caribbean)

86, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Paphos (Cyprus)

87, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Valley of the Kings (Egypt)

88, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Galapagos Islands (Ecuador)

89, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Isle of Man (Europe)

90, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Chamonix (France)

91, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Cannes (France)

92, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Courchevel (France)

93, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Berlin (Germany)

94, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Corfu (Greece)

95, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Wroclaw (Poland)

96, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Iguassu Falls (Argentina/Brazil)

97, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Malta (Malta)

98, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Playa Del Carmen (Mexico)

99, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Amsterdam (Netherlands)

100, Visit Travel Guide for this destination. Miami Beach (USA)