The second BlackBerry outage in less than a week disrupted service for millions of users on two continents Tuesday and Wednesday. The company behind the service, Canada's Research in Motion Ltd., blamed a software upgrade for the problem, which it said was confined to North and South America. RIM said BlackBerry users were unable to send or receive e-mails and instant messages but did not lose phone service. Many users also found the Internet inaccessible. RIM said the disruptions began around 1:45 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, worsened around 6:30 p.m. and began to be fixed around 11:30 p.m. Service appeared restored by Wednesday afternoon. RIM would not disclose exactly how many subscribers were affected. The glitch comes after another outage last Thursday and at least three breakdowns in 2008.

- Associated Press