For US soldiers, repeat deployments 'definitely take a toll'

The Third Infantry Division is used to being deployed. Now, after multiple deployments to Iraq, the 3rd ID has been sent to Afghanistan for the first time. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

By Lester Holt, NBC News

KABUL ? ?How many deployments for you? Iraq, Afghanistan or both??

In an army that?s been waging war in Afghanistan for 11 years, talking about past deployments is what amounts to small talk on the many bases I?ve visited this past week from Kabul to Kandahar, as well as along the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan. Soldiers rattle off the dates and locations of their deployments, and point out fellow soldiers with whom they served.

The Army?s Third Infantry Division moved its headquarters recently from its home base at Fort Stewart, Ga., to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The move marked the division?s first deployment to Afghanistan, but it?s fifth to a war zone in the last 10 years.?

The Third Infantry Division made history in 2003 when it kicked off the war in Iraq as the so-called ?tip of the spear,? driving up from Kuwait straight into Baghdad in what veterans remember as the ?Thunder Run.?

Sgt. First Class Joseph Aiello says he couldn?t imagine back then that he would be in Afghanistan nine years later, still fighting a war.? When the Iraq war began, he was dating his sweetheart Terri. Today they are parents to three small children. Aiello has been on four of the division's five deployments since 2003.


?It definitely takes a toll on family,? Aiello told me. He added, however, that worrying about home and family when you are in a war zone has its risks.

?The minute you lose focus that?s when incidents can start to happen,? said Aiello. ?You need to maintain focus while you?re here to do a job and that?s what we will get done.?

The? Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd touches base with NBC reporters across the Mid-East including NBC's Atia Abawi in Kabul, Martin Fletcher in Tel Aviv, Ali Arouzi in Tehran and Ann Curry from the Syrian border.

Serving on the home front, too
Back in Georgia, Aiello?s wife, Terri, makes her own contribution to the war, as a physical therapist assistant helping wounded vets. At home she has become accustomed to living the life of a single mom.

Photo Blog: Exploring home abroad: Afghan-Americans in Kabul

?A bad day would be having a stressful day [at work] and then going home and the boys are fighting, Alyssa?s cranky and the homework?s not done,? she said about her three children.

She?s learned to push ahead alone. ?Nothing really changes. It?s just that he?s not there to experience everything with us.??

Her sacrifices are not lost on her husband.

?A lot of people say that the soldiers got a hard job and everything like that. But the way I look at it, sir, is I definitely think the wives have the hardest job in the Army,? Aiello told me.

?No different?
Aiello is one of only a handful of Third Infantry Division soldiers with the unit today who were part of the original march into Baghdad back in 2003. The division?s pace of deployments over the last 10 years is nothing short of remarkable, but no more remarkable than the multiple deployments that have become the norm for thousands of U.S. service members.

Eleven years of war have left tens of thousands of service families, like the Aiellos, sharing the void of long and too frequent separations.

Maj. Gen. Robert Abrams, commanding general of the Third Infantry Division and the International Security Assistance Force?s Regional Command-South, underscored the point.

?There are others making equal sacrifices across the army, so we don?t see ourselves any different,? Abrams said.

Anwarullah / Reuters

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Aiello recalled the long wait for letters from home in those early days following the Iraq invasion. Now he does video chats with his family regularly via Skype, which didn?t exist in 2003.

On the TODAY Show this weekend, dozens of service members crowded around our broadcast location here at the joint task force headquarters for ISAF in Kabul. Many of them carried signs with pictures of the children whose birthdays, and sweet-16 parties they are missing back home.

A suicide bomber in Afghanistan kills at least 14 people, including 3 NATO service members, bringing the US death toll on the ground to 2,000 with 20 percent of American combat deaths stemming from insider attacks. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

The international coalition has set the end of 2014 to withdraw most combat forces from Afghanistan. In the meantime, the United States will continue to ask a lot from so few. The troops and the families will wait for them to return one day and stay home for good.

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/01/14169626-for-us-soldiers-repeat-deployments-definitely-take-a-toll?lite

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Razer CEO wants annual Blade laptop refreshes, isn't worried about price complaints

Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan is charismatic, clearly very smart and passionate -- not a bad combination considering he's the face and voice of a major international hardware manufacturer. Razer's latest, the second-generation Blade gaming laptop, launches this week for the whopping price of $2,500, and we spoke with Min-Liang about just that. "This," he said, referencing the second-generation Blade's slim power brick, "costs seven times this," he added, pointing to a competitor's power supply. "Do we have to do this? Probably not." And that's emblematic of Razer's whole approach to the Razer Blade, as a line of gaming computers. Expensive? Yes, very. But significantly nicer and more detailed that its less expensive competition? Also yes. Also very.

As our own Sean Buckley put it in our review of their latest gaming laptop, "the Blade is a gorgeous machine." It's true -- at just 0.88 inches tall and 6.6 pounds, the new Blade is remarkably thin and light for a 17-inch laptop with enough juice under the hood to sate even the most spec-obsessed of PC gamers. But are enough gamers out there willing to trade a lower price tag for a better-looking machine? Razer and its CEO certainly think so, and they've got numbers from the first, more expensive Blade to prove it. "The original Blade was at $2,799. Back then, it was pricey, but we've been surprised at the amount of demand for that. We thought we were gonna sell out in 30 days -- we had 30 days' stock. But we sold out in 30 minutes for the first batch," he said. And, as far as pre-order numbers go for the second version, Min-Liang's confident they mean good things for the future of the Blade.

"We're getting hammered with the pre-orders for the new Razer Blade. Right now, we'll be able to ship most of the orders by September 30, fingers crossed. But we're trying to bring in as many units as possible," he excitedly explained. Min-Liang isn't too worried about offending first-gen buyers, either -- the first Razer Blade launched in early 2012 for just shy of $2,800. Less than 10 months later, the second-gen Blade is launching for $300 less with a significantly upgraded graphics card. Sure, first-gen adopters get a $500 discount on the new Blade, but the sting of early adoption is especially rough in such an instance.

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GTLDs Will you buy one? - Web Hosting Talk

I'd expect the cost to be pretty high for most. Given the $185k fee just for application, not to mention the investment required in infrastructure to run it.

I don't think we'll see that many which are made generally available at low cost. More likely to be specifically targeted at certain markets, probably at the sort of pricing we see for .xxx potentially more. I'd also take a guess that a number would not even be made available for general registration - such as the ones Google applied for.

Source: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1196683

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Russia tells NATO to stay away from Syria

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia told NATO and world powers on Tuesday they should not seek ways to intervene in the Syrian war or set up buffer zones between rebels and government forces.

The statements from Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov was one of Moscow's most specific warnings yet to the West and Gulf Arab leaders to keep out of the 18-month-old conflict.

"In our contacts with partners in NATO and in the region, we are calling on them not to seek pretexts for carrying out a military scenario or to introduce initiatives such as humanitarian corridors or buffer zones," Gatilov said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russia and China have vetoed three U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and blocked attempts to impose sanctions on the country or intervene more directly in its conflict.

Syria's neighbor Turkey has floated the idea of setting up "safe zones" inside Syria to protect civilians but that would also have to be approved by the Security Council.

Gatilov urged restraint between Syria and NATO-member Turkey, one of Assad's harshest critics. Ankara has repeatedly complained of artillery and gunfire spilling over its border and last week it signaled it would take action if there was a repeat of a mortar strike on its territory from inside Syria.

"We believe both Syrian and Turkish authorities should exercise maximum restraint in this situation, taking into account the risings number of radicals among the Syrian opposition who can intentionally provoke conflicts on the border," Gatilov was quoted as saying.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-urges-nato-not-intervene-syria-interfax-094236818.html

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