well I am glad you took the risk of offending me, because that worked!!! I have a spare battery and figured what the hell, let's give it a try. Booted right up, I reflashed the firmware and now everything seems to be working ok, even the news reader that was previously broken.

Perhaps the other battery is defective, or the charger has a problem? Plugging it into the charger didn't fix the problems I was having.

Woooohoooooooooooo!!!!!