Diplomacy, Diwali, dinner on Obama's agenda in India - USA Today

MUMBAI, India — A female tribal leader working to get more girls into classrooms, in a rural society that places boys first. A former civil servant running a website to battle corruption. Schoolchildren who got the first couple dancing for the Hindu festival Diwali.These were some of the Indians whom President Obama met Sunday on the second day of his four-nation Asia tour. The issues raised highlight the massive challenges facing this poor but fast-growing nation of 1.1 billion people, to whom Obama promised he would elevate the U.S.-India partnership "to an entirely new level."

He also faced the sensitive question of Pakistan-based terrorism, when asked, at a town-hall-style meeting with students, the question on many Indians' minds: Why hasn't the USA declared Pakistan a terrorist state? Obama stressed the need to work with Islamabad "to eradicate this extremism that we consider a cancer within the country that can potentially engulf the country."

His answers satisfied Swetha Anandhan, a microbiology student at Mumbai's St. Xavier's College, which hosted the event.

"You have to accept his need for diplomacy. I think he's doing a good job, but I will wait for a year or two" to see whether he can really deepen India-U.S. ties, said Anandhan, 20.

Other students welcomed Obama's focus on India, the longest stop of his week-long trip.

"We are a huge nation, with a huge population, and poverty is everywhere," said Mohini Bhattacharya, 21, a post-graduate in microbiology. "But Obama gives us hope we can be on a par with the superpowers," she said.

Kishu Daswani, a professor at Mumbai's Government Law College, said he was withholding judgment.

"The response of India is fairly guarded at the moment," said Daswani, who attended Obama's exchanges with students. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We need to get to specifics."

Obama had dinner Sunday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and was to attend a state banquet tonight with Indian President Pratibha Patil.

Obama will also visit today a memorial to Mohandas Gandhi, who he said Sunday had taught him to be "persistent and stubborn" to achieve his journey.

Tribal leader Sharmi Bai can attest to that. In the patriarchal society of the Garasiya tribe in Rajasthan, Bai, 35, has won two elections to local councils in the past five years through her determination to help girls and women. "Some believe that investment in a boy pays off, but it's wasted on a girl," said Bai about the many village girls forced to help out at home instead of going to school.

The Obamas' first stop Sunday was to join in Diwali celebrations, and a dance, with students at the city's Holy Name School.

Education campaigner Anil Sadgopal expressed disappointment the president chose a private school over one of the city's 2,000 public schools. Similarly, the choice of St. Xavier's, with its English-speaking, upper middle-class students, also ensured Obama reached only the elite, ruling class, he said.

Instead, the U.S. visit should have highlighted the desperate need to increase public funding to change the "horrible" situation whereby 10%-20% of Indian children never enter school, a majority drop out by eighth grade, and only 10% of 18- to 24-year-olds attend college, said Sadgopal, a leader of the All India Forum for Right for Education, a pressure group.

In his meeting with Obama, T.R. Raghunandan discussed India's corruption problem. In August, Raghunandan set up ipaidabribe.com, where Indians can report the bribes they are forced to pay to access public services.

"The poor can't get the services they are entitled to because the rich increase the price by paying bribes," Raghunandan said.

Many Mumbai residents marked the fourth day of their Diwali festival Saturday by visiting the city's famous temple to Mahalaxmi, the goddess of wealth. With offerings of lotus flowers, coconuts and sweets, they prayed for prosperity — and pleaded for clean government.

"All Indian politicians are corrupt, they promise a lot but don't deliver," said Vipul Savla, 32, owner of a suit-making business. "Obama, too, will make promises, but can he deliver?"

As India's economy has boomed, so has his small firm, with 15% annual growth in the past five years, Salva said. He says he is "confident and comfortable" about the future.

"We don't need America, we are powerful now, and we stand on our own," said Dharmendra Bhatt, boss of a real estate agency.

Bhatt echoed widespread concerns here that the USA supports Pakistan without taking effective action to curb Pakistan-based terrorism. He also opposes the opening up of Indian markets to U.S. firms, one of Obama's avowed aims.

"The USA is afraid of India's economic growth, and they know we will be the No.1 economy in the future," Bhatt said.

Obama's visit "won't help me or any of the washermen working here," complained Subhir Kannajiya, at the Mahalaxmi dobhi ghat, an open-air, hand-beaten laundry center so vast it has become a tourist attraction.

"Some are getting rich in Mumbai, but most of the people are still poor," he said.

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Violent protests against nuclear waste train - ABC Online

By Rachael Brown, wires

Posted November 8, 2010 10:55:00

Police wielding batons have clashed with protesters who disrupted the passage of a train carrying nuclear waste from France to Germany.

The train is returning German nuclear waste for storage after it was treated in France.

The train was stopped in northern Germany by activists abseiling from a bridge over the railway tracks.

Officers used batons and pepper spray on hundreds of protesters trying to sabotage the tracks and the activists retaliated by throwing firecrackers.

During the clash the activists managed temporarily to set fire to an armoured police vehicle.

A police spokeswoman said the fire was quickly extinguished and no officers were hurt.

The train carrying the nuclear waste, dubbed by activists as "the most radioactive ever", is heading for Dannenberg where the 123 tonnes of waste will be loaded onto trucks for the nearby storage facility of Gorleben, in central Germany.

The country's anti-nuclear campaigners have been outraged by a parliamentary vote to extend the lifespan of Germany's 17 nuclear power plants, which were meant to come offline in 2020.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Dannenberg to signal their opposition to the cargo.

Organisers said 50,000 people had turned out but police said the figure was closer to 20,000.

Around 16,000 police have been mobilised to deal with the protests in Germany.

- ABC/AFP

Tags: nuclear-issues, recycling-and-waste-management, government-and-politics, world-politics, activism-and-lobbying, germany

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Dell's Windows Phone 7 Switch: Good for Microsoft's Enterprise Hopes? - eWeek

Is Windows Phone 7 slated to become the next big enterprise device?

That becomes a more pressing question following news that Dell plans on dumping Research In Motion's BlackBerry from its corporate offices, in favor of Windows Phone 7 devices manufactured by the company. Within hours of that news leaking online, RIM responded with some biting commentary:

"We find it highly unlikely that they will actually save any money with this move and far more likely they were looking for a little free publicity," Mark Guibert, RIM's senior vice president of corporate marketing, wrote in an e-mail to Dow Jones Newswires.

In a Nov. 5 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dell Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden indicated that the company's switch will save around 25 percent on mobile communication costs, and that negotiations had begun with T-Mobile to carry corporate voice and data.

Dell's Venue Pro includes a 4.1-inch multitouch display and sliding QWERTY keyboard. Fronted with ultra-durable Gorilla Glass, it closely resembles RIM's BlackBerry Torch 9800, which also includes a sliding keyboard. The difference, of course, is the Venue Pro's Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Whether Dell made the switch to promote its own smartphone line or if it decided that ejecting RIM indeed translated into substantial cost savings, other large businesses are likely to debate whether to embrace Windows Phone 7 for their executives and workers.

Some analysts believe that, while Windows Phone 7's tight integration with features such as SharePoint offers a lot to the enterprise, the platform does have an Achilles' heel. "It will be hard for apps to be ported unless they are already Silverlight-compatible or built-in standard .Net mobile protocols," Jack Gold, primary analyst for J. Gold Associates, wrote in an Oct. 11 research note. "The majority of enterprise apps are not."

That being said, Gold added, businesses could find a lot of benefit in the Windows Phone 7 platform. "Business users [are] at the core of the previous Windows Mobile constituency, but many have defected over the past year," Gold wrote. "It is unclear whether Microsoft can win them back, or even keep the existing, albeit significantly diminished, base of enterprise users." Despite that, he added, "the business hub on WP7 looks compelling (provided you are an Exchange/Outlook user)."

Microsoft seems aware of the need to push Windows Phone 7 as a business device, having announced at several points its intention to include productivity-centric features such as cut-and-paste into future editions of the software. It has also been encouraging developers to build work-style apps for the platform. 

"Critics have commented on the lack of specific features like copy & paste and lack of 100s of thousands of new applications," Arpan Shah, Microsoft's director for SharePoint, wrote in a Nov. 4 posting on his corporate blog. "And while both are true, copy & paste will be available as an update in a matter of weeks (early 2011) and as for applications, it's just a matter of time."

Shah's blog posting suggests the timetable for the feature's addition is still on track. While early critics focused on that missing cut-and-paste, Windows Phone 7's first iteration will also lack support for tethering, Adobe Flash and full multitasking.  

To be fair, despite its hold on the enterprise market, the BlackBerry also lacks a large number of apps?at least in comparison to the Apple iPhone or the growing Google Android family of devices. Businesspeople have traditionally gravitated toward RIM's offerings because of their messaging abilities and reputation for security. But Microsoft wants Windows Phone 7 to appeal on those fronts as well; a substantial part of the company's marketing push, particularly its television ads, portrays the smartphones as the ultimate timesavers?at least when it comes to using mobile features. And its "Office" and "People" hubs have been designed to feed information to users in a tightly integrated, streamlined way.

But whether Dell represents the first of many companies to jump to Windows Phone 7 remains to be seen. Microsoft doubtlessly hopes that's the case. RIM most likely doesn't.

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