RIM unveils a new BlackBerry phone! (But it’s only a Curve for T-Mobile running BlackBerry 7)

Research In Motion (RIMM) on Thursday took the wraps off a brand new BlackBerry smartphone — but it’s not the kind of smartphone BlackBerry fans have been waiting more than a year for. Instead, it’s a low-end BlackBerry Curve 9315 that will launch later this month on T-Mobile. The phone features the BlackBerry 7.1 operating system, a 3.2-megapixel camera, microSD memory expansion and a full QWERTY keyboard, and it will launch on January 23rd… just seven days before RIM unveils its first BlackBerry 10 phones. Pre-sales for the Curve 9315 begin on January 16th and the phone will cost $ 49.99 out of pocket plus a $ 10 payment each month as part of Equipment Installment Plan. T-Mobile’s full press release follows below.

[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]

BlackBerry Curve 9315 Smartphone Introduced By T-Mobile and RIM

[More from BGR: RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone]

T-Mobile’s most affordable BlackBerry smartphone provides productivity tools and features to keep customers connected

BELLEVUE, Wash. and WATERLOO, ON – Jan. 3, 2013 – T-Mobile USA, Inc. and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced the most affordable BlackBerry® smartphone on T-Mobile’s nationwide network – the BlackBerry^® Curve^™ 9315. Powered by the BlackBerry® 7.1 operating system with 3G connectivity, the sleek new smartphone is easy-to-use and provides tools that enable customers to stay connected to the people and information that matter most.

“At T-Mobile, our goal is to delight customers. The new BlackBerry Curve 9315 will delight customers with unprecedented value while also allowing them to combine their mobile business and personal use in one great device,” said Brad Duea, senior vice president of product management at T-Mobile. “The Curve 9315 is the most affordable BlackBerry smartphone on our nationwide network and provides our customers with a wide variety of productivity and social features to keep them connected and make their mobile lives easier.”

“We’re pleased to work with T-Mobile to bring the BlackBerry Curve 9315 to customers,” said Richard Piasentin, managing director for the U.S. at Research In Motion. “The Curve 9315 is designed to make it incredibly easy to stay connected with friends, family and coworkers and will be popular with customers upgrading to a smartphone for the first time, as well as existing Curve customers looking for a step up in speed and functionality.”

Combining an intuitive interface with a QWERTY keyboard, the BlackBerry Curve 9315 features built-in Wi-Fi® connectivity for voice and data, enabling customers to access the information they need when and where they need it, and Wi-Fi calling, allowing calls and messages over an available Wi-Fi network. With a dedicated BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) key, preloaded apps for Facebook® and Twitter® and the Social Feeds 2.0 app, customers can easily interact with their friends, coworkers and social networks whether it’s instant messaging, posting or tweeting.

The new BlackBerry Curve 9315 offers a 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash and digital zoom as well as video recording capabilities. Customers also have the ability to geo-tag the location of their pictures by utilizing the smartphone’s built-in GPS. In addition, the smartphone features a microSD card slot for up to 32GB of additional media storage and a built-in FM radio letting customers tune in to local FM stations. With the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, customers have exclusive access to a wide range of apps, allowing them to enhance their smartphone experience with entertainment, personalization and productivity apps of their choosing.

The BlackBerry Curve 9315 will be available in an exclusive pre-sale for T-Mobile business customers beginning January 16 and is expected to be available in T-Mobile retail stores, via http://www.T-Mobile.com, and with select dealers and national retailers beginning January 23, 2013. For well-qualified customers, the Curve 9315 will require a $ 49.99 out-of-pocket down payment and 20 equal monthly payments of $ 10 per month via T-Mobile’s Equipment Installment Plan (EIP)¹, with a two-year service agreement and qualifying T-Mobile Value voice and data plan. Customers may also purchase the Curve 9315 for $ 49.99 after a $ 50 mail-in rebate card, with a two-year service agreement and qualifying T-Mobile Classic voice and data plan.²

This article was originally published by BGR

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Melissa Joan Hart Shares Son's Plea for Less Phone Time

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/03/2013 at 06:00 PM ET

As a mom of three boys, Melissa Joan Hart knows all too well how to tackle even the toughest brotherly love.

But for her sons Mason Walter, 7 next week, and Brady Hart, 4½, it’s more often a lesson that love, well — hurts!

“They are boys, for a minute they are best friends and it’s usually 20 minutes and then it’s full on wrestling,” the Melissa & Joey star, 36, joked while cohosting Thursday’s Anderson Live.

“Then I have to pull them apart because the youngest one is always going to get hurt.”

Between her time spent overseeing her boys’ sibling bonding sessions and late night feeds with the family’s newest addition, 3-month-old Tucker McFadden, Hart is feeling the effects of sleep deprivation.

“I am a little exhausted. I have not [slept] a solid night. Two hours at a time,” the actress says. “It’s a loud house, it’s a very busy busy house.”

Courtesy Melissa Joan Hart

And she’s about to get even more caught up in all the commotion; The actress’s New Year’s resolutions include taking a time out from her phone and concentrating more on her kids. “[Brady] will be talking to me and he’s like, ‘Mommy, put the phone down. Look at me, talk to me,’” Hart admits.

When the going gets really tough, however, the hands-on mom isn’t afraid to occasionally pull out her secret weapon.

“My Bloody Mary, that’s how Mommy can do it all,” she jokes, sharing a picture of herself sipping on a cocktail while cradling her baby boy.

');var brightcovevideoid = 2071092654001

');var targetVideoWidth = 300;brightcove.createExperiences();/* iPhone, iPad, iPod */if ((navigator.userAgent.match('iPhone')) || (navigator.userAgent.match('iPad')) || (navigator.userAgent.match('iPod')) || (location.search.indexOf('ipad=true') > -1)) { document.write('

Read More..

FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Read More..

Diabetes is a stubborn adversary

One by one, the diabetic patients reluctantly stepped on the scale in the basement of a South Los Angeles clinic. Nearby, a nurse scribbled numbers on a chart.

Camara January, 31, her round face framed by a sparkly headband, held her breath. The number stopped at 245 pounds. "That's not good," January said. Tracy Donald, 45, stepped up. Just under 240 pounds. "That is wrong," she said. Ramon Marquez, 62, tall and clean-shaven, methodically took off his watch, his cap and his shoes. 170 pounds. Ramon strips down to almost nothing, the others jokingly complain.

They are among those who come each month to the To Help Everyone (T.H.E.) Clinic, hoping to finally gain the upper hand on their diabetes, a disease wreaking havoc on their bodies — and their community. Several have been hospitalized. Some have seen relatives die from complications. All have struggled to manage blood sugar levels that spike and plummet to ominous extremes.

FULL COVERAGE: T.H.E. Clinic in South L.A.

A chronic illness that can lead to heart attacks, blindness and kidney failure, diabetes is exploding across the United States and raising enormous obstacles to the Obama administration's drive to control costs and reform the healthcare system. In California alone, the disease costs taxpayers and businesses roughly $24 billion annually. One in seven California residents has diabetes — a 32% increase in the last decade.

"This is a train going in the wrong direction," said Dean Schillinger, a UC San Francisco Medical School professor and medical officer at the California Diabetes Program, run by the university and the state public health department.

PHOTOS: T.H.E. Clinic: Battling diabetes

Community health centers like T.H.E. Clinic are a crucial front line in the federal government's war against diabetes. They're charged with slowing the advance of the disease, which disproportionately affects poor patients whose care may be taxpayer-funded.

To do so, clinics must get millions of patients to change deeply ingrained eating habits, embrace regular exercise regimens and better manage their health to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.

Many low-income, urban patients struggle with the willpower challenges afflicting diabetes sufferers everywhere. But their struggle is often complicated by limited understanding of the links between lifestyle and blood sugar levels, along with fewer safe, affordable and convenient options for healthy activities and fresh food.

"The approach of telling people they need to lose weight and exercise is clearly not working," said Martha Funnell, past chairwoman of the National Diabetes Education Program.

::

Like her mother and grandmother, 17-year-old Charnay Winbush has diabetes. She injects herself with insulin five times a day and wears a bracelet identifying her illness. But Charnay often tells people she isn't diabetic.

Without her injections, she feels weak and tired. When her blood sugar levels climb, she gets extremely thirsty and can't stop sweating. One incident sent her to the emergency room this summer. "I was scared," she said.

Doctors at T.H.E. Clinic tell Charnay she needs to lose weight, but she continues to gain. She keeps small bags of candy in the refrigerator next to her insulin. Counting calories brings unwelcome memories of math class, she says. The only exercise she likes is playing virtual tennis or bowling.

The diabetes battle permeates almost every aspect of T.H.E Clinic's routine. Patients are greeted in the waiting room by television programs about the disease. They are routinely tested for it, counseled about how to prevent it and referred to nutritionists and diabetic education groups to manage it.

Research shows such efforts can produce results. Patients surrounded by support and education programs do better at controlling their blood sugar, eat more healthfully and use their medication as recommended.

At the Saturday session, retired nurse Emily Moore handed out a soul food cookbook with healthy recipes. Patients shared about their favorite types of exercise. One woman said she liked dancing to disco music, another announced she was going to Zumba classes.

The sessions began as a diabetes education class but soon morphed into a less formal support group, said M.D. Donnell, education manager at T.H.E. Clinic. Patients say they come for the snacks, the nutrition advice and the camaraderie. James Hicks, whose leg was amputated after a diabetes-related infection, said he serves as a cautionary tale for others. "You never want to get this far," he said.

Read More..

Plane Carrying Vittorio Missoni Lost Near Venezuela

MILAN — Venezuelan emergency services mounted a sea-and-air rescue mission on Saturday after a plane carrying the fashion executive Vittorio Missoni went missing off the coast of Venezuela.

The plane carrying Mr. Missoni, 58; his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni; another couple and two Venezuelan crew members disappeared after taking off from the resort of Los Roques, an archipelago off the coast of Venezuela, Italian media said.

“It disappeared yesterday. They have been looking for it with helicopters and ships, but have not found anything yet. They are still searching for it this morning,” the Italian consul in Venezuela, Giovanni Davoli, said.

Mr. Missoni is the oldest son of the founders of the fashion house famous for its exuberantly colored knits, featuring bold stripes and zigzags. He is co-owner with two siblings, Luca and Angela, who handle the technical and design sides of the firm.

“The Missoni family has been informed by the Venezuelan Consulate that Vittorio Missoni and his wife are missing, but we don’t know any more,” a Missoni spokeswoman, Maddalena Aspes, said.

Other members of the Missoni family are traveling back to Italy from a holiday in France, Ms. Aspes said.

Mr. Missoni and his siblings took over managing the company from their parents Ottavio and Rosita in 1996, aiming to relaunch the brand to a larger, younger market as rivals Gucci and Burberry have done. Under Vittorio’s tenure, Missoni has opened hotels in Scotland and Kuwait and started the Missoni Home collection.

By 2011, the brand’s appeal was wide enough for American mass-market retailer Target to ask it to design a collection.

Read More..

A+E Networks and Amazon Prime Reach Licensing Deal

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Pawn Stars” fans, rejoice; you’ll now be able to catch Big Hoss and Chumley on Amazon Prime.

Amazon announced Friday that it has struck a licensing deal with A+E Networks to carry A&E, bio, History and Lifetime programs on its premium Prime Instant Video service. The deal includes prior seasons of programs such as “Pawn Stars,” “Storage Wars” and “Dance Moms.”

Amazon Prime, which allows subscribers to stream videos through a variety of gadgets, costs $ 79 a year.

The pact between Amazon and A+E Networks comes a few months after rival streaming service Netflix decided to drop all but about 300 hours of A+E programming. Netflix, which had been seeking exclusivity from A+E for its content, opted not to renew its agreement with the company.

Brad Beale, Amazon’s director of digital video content acquisition, said that Amazon has more than doubled the amount of content for Amazon Prime customers.

“We remain focused on adding TV episodes and movies to Prime Instant Video that we think our customers will enjoy,” Beale said. “A+E Networks has some of the most popular shows on television and we know our customers will love streaming the A+E content with Prime Instant Video.”

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: A+E Networks and Amazon Prime Reach Licensing Deal
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/ae-networks-and-amazon-prime-reach-licensing-deal/
Link To Post : A+E Networks and Amazon Prime Reach Licensing Deal
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

PHOTO: Check Out Jessica Simpson's Daring Dinner Wear

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/04/2013 at 03:00 PM ET

FameFlynet

Blonde bombshell!

An expectant Jessica Simpson shows off her assets as she leaves a restaurant Thursday evening in Oahu, Hawaii, where she’s currently vacationing with her fiancé Eric Johnson and their 8-month-old daughter Maxwell Drew.

“I find myself going for more sophisticated looks, but I do think that’s kind of trendy right now — just a classier-looking woman,” the Fashion Star mentor, 32, tells PEOPLE of her recent style choices.

“I love to show off my curves, but being a mom, I guess I do it in a little bit more classy way, even though for Halloween I was a milkmaid – but there are moments.”

RELATED: Jessica Simpson Reveals Her Baby Bump

Read More..

FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Read More..

Dumped Christmas trees are a gift for Lake Havasu fish

The ghosts of Christmas past can be found in some unusual places. The bottom of Lake Havasu, for instance.

There, thousands of Christmas trees sunk by wildlife biologists have found a second life as fish habitat in an ecosystem damaged by the damming of the Colorado River decades ago.

What nature once provided — a steady source of organic material such as brush and uprooted trees — disappeared when the once wild and muddy river was tamed.

By the late 1980s, Lake Havasu's now crystal clear waters harbored few places where newly spawned fish could find shelter from predators. Fish populations were a fraction of what they had been a generation before.

"There was no place for the young fish to hide until they matured," said Kirk Koch, a fisheries program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "Instead, they would be consumed by bigger fish."

The solution was a gift that keeps on giving: Christmas trees.

More than 30 million farm-harvested trees are sold nationwide each year. No matter how pretty they're decorated, they all meet the same ignoble fate: ground up as mulch or buried in landfills.

When it began in 1992, the effort at Lake Havasu was the largest fresh-water habitat recovery program in the nation, Koch said.

Over the next decade, $16 million and countless hours of work by volunteers created 875 acres of artificial reefs.

Structures were formed by sinking PVC pipe, concrete sewer pipe and cinder blocks in 42 coves. Then, discarded Christmas trees were lashed together, weighted down and dumped around the structures. Piles of brush were added.

As the trees and brush decomposed, the pipe and concrete structure grew a biological skin of mosses and algae that was then colonized by insects. In addition to providing shelter, the Christmas tree structures also became a source of fish food.

Scuba divers check sites annually and have found that fish are drawn to Christmas trees as much as Santa is.

"When they started, they could count all of the fish at any spot on their fingers," Koch said. "Progressively, they found more fish — way, way more fish — than they can count."

The project turned Lake Havasu into a popular sport fishing destination.

"Before this, the lake was basically dead," said Arnold Vignoni, president of the local chapter of Anglers United, whose members help maintain the reefs. "The bass tournament guys — and we have lots of bass tournaments here now — say the fishing is just outstanding."

It takes a Christmas tree five to six years to decompose under water. So each year, volunteers toss in as many as 500 additional trees and a thousand brush piles to replenish the reefs.

Part of the benefit of creating habitat with Christmas trees is that it's cheap — trash haulers are happy to unload onto others what they pick up at the curb.

This year, Riverside County supervisors approved a plan to transfer 2 tons of trees collected at county landfills to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which will dump them into two lakes that badly need them.

The load will make Quinn Granfors' job much easier.

Granfors, a state fisheries biologist, has been tossing trees into Lake Elsinore and Lake Perris since 2006. Working under budget constraints, he was left to scrounge around on his own after Christmas in search of trees. Now they'll be coming to him.

In the coming weeks, he and volunteers will send hundreds of weighted trees to the bottom of the lakes.

"I kind of joke with the guys that they're now qualified to get a job with the mob," Granfors said. "Because they know how to make organic material disappear."

mike.anton@latimes.com

Read More..

Fatah Party Stages First Rally in Gaza Since 2007

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Palestinians waved a Palestinian flag, left, and a Fatah flag, right, during a rally marking the 48th anniversary of the founding of the Fatah movement, in Gaza City on Friday.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Leaders of the Palestinian Fatah party led tens of thousands of supporters Friday in a mass rally in the Gaza Strip, the first such gathering for the largely secular party in the territory since the rival Islamist Hamas seized power there in 2007.

The demonstration, which was condoned by Hamas, showed how the long-bitter relations between the rival Palestinian factions have improved since an Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in November.

While Friday's rally pointed to the improving ties between Hamas and Fatah, it also served as a reminder of the conflicts within Fatah that continue to dog the movement: Officials cancelled the event halfway through after 20 people were injured due to overcrowding, and shoving matches erupted between separate Fatah factions.

Yahiya Rabah, a top Fatah official in Gaza, said the rally was cancelled "due to the huge number of participants and logistical failures."

But witnesses said one pushing match was between supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and partisans of former Fatah's former Gaza security commander Mohammed Dahlan, who was expelled from the party because of conflicts with Abbas.

Another Fatah official, who spoke anonymously because he did not want to embarrass the party, said the rally was cancelled because hundreds of Dahlan supporters jumped up on the stage and clashed with Abbas supporters.

Fatah spokesman Fayez Abu Etta attributed the injuries to overcrowding and the excitement of the rally.

Overnight, throngs had camped out in a downtown Gaza square to ensure themselves a spot for the anniversary commemoration of Fatah's 1965 founding, and tens of thousands marched early Friday carrying Fatah banners. When the rally began, people stampeded to the stage to try to shake leaders' hands.

Hamas was not directly involved in the event but allowed it to take place. Top Fatah officials arrived in Gaza for the first time since they were ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007.

Abbas, who rules in the West Bank, did not attend the event, but spoke to the crowd via a televised address, telling them that "there is no substitute for national unity."

Organizers then ended the rally, cancelling the other planned speeches and musical performances.

Hamas has gained new support among Palestinians following eight days of fighting with Israel in November, during which Israel pounded the seaside strip from the air and sea, while Palestinians militants lobbed rockets toward the Israeli cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the first time.

Following the fighting, relations have thawed somewhat between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas was allowed to hold its first West Bank rallies since the 2007 split in which Hamas seized Gaza and Fatah was left in control of the West Bank. Hamas returned the favor Friday by allowing the Fatah rally.

Senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath said the party received a congratulatory message from Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who expressed hope that the two factions could reconcile their differences and work together as joint representatives of the Palestinian people.

"This festival will be like a wedding celebration for Palestine, Jerusalem, the prisoners, the refugees and all the Palestinians," Shaath said.

Reconciliation between the two factions, however, is still far from a done deal. Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, considered more pragmatic than Hamas' Gaza-based hardline leaders, forged a reconciliation agreement with Abbas in 2011.

But the Gaza-based leadership, unsupportive of the deal, has held up implementing it. Fatah enjoys Western support and has been pressured not to forge a unity agreement with the militant Hamas - facing a potential cutback in foreign aid if it does. Hamas has carried out hundreds of deadly attacks against Israeli citizens and is regarded by the U.S. and Israel as a terrorist organization.

Fadwa Taleb, 46, who worked as a police officer during the previous rule of Fatah, gathered at the rally with her family. "We feel like birds freed from our cage today," Taleb said. "We are happy and feel powerful again."

A Gaza security official said a Fatah-linked former aide to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of a heart attack in the square overnight, saying he was shocked by the large crowd that was allowed to gather.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Abbas signed a presidential decree changing the name of the Palestinian Authority to the "State of Palestine," following the Palestinians' upgraded status at the United Nations as a non-member observer state.

According to the decree, reported by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa Thursday night, all stamps, signs, and official letterhead will be changed to bear the new name.

It is the first concrete, albeit symbolic, step the Palestinians have taken following the November decision by the United Nations. Abbas has hesitated to take more dramatic steps, like filing war crimes indictments against Israel at the International Criminal Court, a tactic that only a recognized state can carry out.

Read More..