Indonesians Still Love Their BlackBerrys

For Sanuri, a customer service technician at a Jakarta electronics chain, buying a phone is a big decision. The 28-year-old father of one (who like many Indonesians has only one name) makes about $ 160 a month, minimum wage in the Indonesian capital. But like many Jakarta residents, he’s willing to spend more for an impressive-looking phone. Last year he decided to get rid of his old Nokia (NOK) in favor of a $ 440 BlackBerry Torch. To finance it, he had to get a loan from his employer.

The phone was worth the expense, says Sanuri, who relies on the free BlackBerry Messenger service to keep in touch with colleagues and schedule client visits. “Everyone knows what the others are doing,” he says. Even though Indonesian retailers are offering more alternatives to BlackBerry, Sanuri isn’t switching. “There are more benefits I can get from BlackBerry,” he says.

While smartphone users around the world are tossing their BlackBerrys and buying Google’s (GOOG) Android-powered phones and Apple’s (AAPL) iPhones, Indonesia remains a rare bright spot for Research In Motion (RIMM). The global market share for the Waterloo (Ont.)-based company’s smartphones fell to just 4.3 percent in the third quarter of this year, down from 9.5 percent in the same quarter of 2011, according to market research firm IDC. Yet in Indonesia, the BlackBerry operating system accounts for 37 percent of the market. RIM is still losing ground there, just not as quickly as elsewhere (in 2011, BlackBerrys accounted for 43 percent of the market). Android is now the top operating system, but BlackBerry remains ahead of the 2.5 percent share for No. 3 Apple iOS, thanks largely to the dominance of BBM. Indonesians also like RIM’s low-cost BlackBerry Internet Service plans such as BIS Social and BIS Lite that offer access to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook (FB) for as little as $ 4.69 a month.

“Any retailer has to have BlackBerry,” says Ryota Inaba, chief executive officer of Rakuten Belanja Online, an e-commerce joint venture of Japanese online retailer Rakuten and Global Mediacom (BMTR), Indonesia’s biggest media company. Indonesia “is the market for RIM.” Inaba is a BlackBerry user himself, albeit a reluctant one. “I don’t like using BlackBerry, to be honest,” he says. But few of Inaba’s 40 staff members have high-end smartphones and a lot of them don’t even use e-mail, preferring instead to chat over BBM. “BlackBerry is the fastest way to communicate,” says Inaba, who sends about 20 instant messages a day via the BBM service.

Indonesia isn’t as coveted a market as China or India, but it does have the world’s fourth-largest population (some 242 million people), and its economy is expected to increase more than 6 percent this year. RIM clearly views it as a market worth protecting. Singapore-based spokesman Benjamin Chelliah says RIM is “currently investigating” launching a new money transfer system for its Indonesian BBM platform. RIM is also trying to foster Indonesia’s growing app developer community. In October, RIM opened a BlackBerry Innovation Center at the Bandung Institute of Technology to provide scholarships and other financial support to young engineers working on BlackBerry mobile apps; the same month, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins traveled to Jakarta to promote the brand.

In late November, RIM hosted a two-day conference for app developers in Bangkok, part of a campaign to build interest ahead of the January launch of its new operating system, BlackBerry 10. Regional managing director Urpo Karjalainen told attendees that RIM is “absolutely committed” to Asian markets, and that its “unique BlackBerry service has been the foundation of our success here.”

Fending off competition and slowing its market share slide won’t be easy. Google’s Android operating system has been making significant inroads into Southeast Asia. Samsung has been the main beneficiary, with its smartphone market share doubling from a year ago to 40 percent. RIM’s share across the region is now 14 percent, down from 18 percent in 2011. Nokia is taking aim at Indonesia too, announcing on Dec. 4 the launch of two Lumia smartphones using Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system.

In response, RIM and retailers are offering cheaper BlackBerrys priced around $ 100. “There’s going to be a little bit of an OS war,” says Sudev Bangah, country manager in Jakarta for IDC. As that fight heats up, aggressive pricing and new BBM services will allow “RIM to reinvent itself in a market it cannot afford to lose.”

The new operating system will probably have limited impact on Indonesians in rural areas, who prefer cheaper phones. But for the upscale market, a pricey new BlackBerry might draw interest in Jakarta, where people “are willing to spend a little bit more,” says Bangah, who expects the new OS to boost BlackBerry shipments next year. In Indonesia, at least, RIM’s not finished yet.

The bottom line: Even in Indonesia, where they’re still popular, BlackBerrys are losing ground, going from 43 percent of the market last year to 37 percent.

With Harry Suhartono

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Australian prank call radio to donate profits to nurse’s family

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.

Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.

The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.

“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.

“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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US designates Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra front a ‘terrorist’ group at lightning speed

The US State Department designated the Jabhat al-Nusra militia fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria a foreign terrorist organization today.

The speed with which the US government moved to designate a fairly new group that has never attacked US interests and is engaged in fighting a regime that successive administrations have demonized is evidence of the strange bedfellows and overlapping agendas that make the Syrian civil war so explosive.

The State Department says Jabhat al-Nusra (or the “Nusra Front“) is essentially a wing of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the jihadi group that flourished in Anbar Province after the US invaded to topple the Baathist regime of secular dictator Saddam Hussein. During the Iraq war, Sunni Arab tribesmen living along the Euphrates in eastern Syria flocked to fight with the friends and relatives in the towns along the Euphrates river in Anbar Province.

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The terrain, both actual and human, is similar on both sides of that border, and the rat lines that kept foreign fighters and money flowing into Iraq from Syria work just as well in reverse. Now, the jihadis who fought and largely lost against the Shiite political ascendancy in Iraq are flocking to eastern Syria to repay a debt of gratitude in a battle that looks more likely to succeed every day.

The Nusra Front has gone from victory to victory in eastern Syria and has shown signs of both significant funding and greater military prowess than the average citizens’ militia, with veterans of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya among its numbers.

The US of course aided the fight in Libya to bring down Muammar Qaddafi. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the chance to fight and kill Americans was the major drawing card.

In Iraq, the US toppled a Baathist dictatorship dominated by Sunni Arabs, opening the door for the political dominance of Iraq’s Shiite Arab majority and the fury of the country’s Sunni jihadis. In Syria, a Baathist regime dominated by the tiny Alawite sect (a long-ago offshoot of Shiite Islam) risks being brought down by the Sunni majority. Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in the odd position of now rooting for a Baathist regime to survive, frightened that a religiously inspired Sunni regime may replace Assad and potentially destabilize parts of his country from Haditha in Anbar’s far west to the northern city of Mosul.

For the US, the situation is more complicated still. The Obama administration appears eager for Assad to fall, but is also afraid of what might replace him, not least because of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. If the regime collapses, the aftermath is sure to be chaotic, much as it was in Libya, where arms stores were looted throughout the country. The presence of VX and sarin nerve gas, and the fear of Al Qaeda aligned militants getting their hands on it, has the US considering sending in troops to secure the weapons.

That’s the context in which today’s designation was made – part of an overall effort to shape the Syrian opposition to US liking, and hopefully have influence in the political outcome if and when Assad’s regime collapses. But while the US has been trying to find a government or leadership in waiting among Syrian exiles, Nusra has been going from strength to strength. Aaron Zelin, who tracks jihadi groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes in a recent piece for Foreign Policy that 20 out of the 48 “martyrdom” notices posted on Al Qaeda forums for the Syria war were made by people claiming to be members of Nusra.

Zelin writes that it’s highly unusual for the US to designate as a terrorist group anyone who hasn’t attempted an attack on the US. In fact, the US only designated the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, which had been involved in attacks on US troops there for over a decade, this September.

His guess as to why the US took such an unusual step?

The U.S. administration, in designating Jabhat al-Nusra, is likely to argue that the group is an outgrowth of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). While there is not much open-source evidence of this, classified material may offer proof — and there is certainly circumstantial evidence that Jabhat al-Nusra operates as a branch of the ISI.

Getting Syria’s rebels to disavow Jabhat al-Nusra may not be an easy task, however. As in Iraq, jihadists have been some of the most effective and audacious fighters against the Assad regime, garnering respect from other rebel groups in the process. Jabhat al-Nusra seems to have learned from the mistakes of al Qaeda in Iraq: It has not attacked civilians randomly, nor has it shown wanton disregard for human life by publicizing videos showing the beheading of its enemies. Even if its views are extreme, it is getting the benefit of the doubt from other insurgents due to its prowess on the battlefield.

Will it hurt the group’s support inside Syria? It’s hard to see how. The US hasn’t formally explained its logic yet, but it’s hard to see how that will matter either. The rebellion against Assad has raged for almost two years now and the country’s fighters are eager for victory, and revenge. The US has done little to militarily assist the rebellion, and fighters have been happy to take support where they can get it.

Most of the money or weapons flowing into the country for rebels has come from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and some of that support, of course, has ended up in the hands of Islamist militias like Nusra.

Usually the US doesn’t like support flowing to its designated terrorist organizations, and leans on countries like Saudi Arabia to cut off support. But in this case, a doctrinaire enforcement of its will could look like helping Assad (who has insisted everyone fighting his government is a terrorist since long before Nusra even existed).

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“The Colbert Report” mames new co-executive producer, head writer

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “The Colbert Report” has promoted former supervising producer and head writer Barry Julien to co-executive producer, series host, writer and executive producer Stephen Colbert said Monday. In addition to Jullien’s promotion, Opus Moreschi, previously a writer for the series, has been moved up to head writer on the Comedy Central news-show spoof.

Julien joined “The Colbert Report” as a writer in 2007, moving to head writer in 2009 and picking up the supervising producer title last year. Moreschi came aboard the show in 2008.

“Barry Julien and Opus Moreschi are tireless, visionary producers and incredibly talented writers,” Colbert said of the promotions. “For instance they wrote this sentence.”

Both Julien and Moreschi have won Writers Guild Awards and Emmy Awards during their “Colbert Report” stints.

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More Than Half of Hispanic Coloradans Lack Dental Insurance

The organization Colorado Trust reported on Monday that the results of a new Colorado Health Access Survey shows that more than half of Hispanics in the state do not have dental insurance. The overall number of people in the state without dental insurance grew 17 percent in in two years. Here are the details.

* The results of the 2011 Colorado Health Access Survey, released this month, show that 52.8 percent of Hispanic Coloradans lack dental insurance. This is higher than the rate of uninsured white Coloradans, at 39.1 percent, and black Coloradans, at 29.9 percent.

* The number of Hispanic Coloradans without dental care increased by 11 percent from 2008-09 to 2011, the survey showed.

* Among both kindergarten and third-grade children, the survey stated, more Hispanic children have at least one cavity than black or white children. The prevalence of untreated tooth decay is higher among Hispanic children in the state.

* According to Colorado Trust, having dental insurance is associated with seeking and receiving dental care. In 2011, 76.9 percent of the people who had dental insurance visited a dental professional. That number declined to 44.5 percent among those without insurance.

* Some factors affecting dental care besides insurance status include costs for services not covered by insurance and a lack of dental providers in rural areas of the state, Colorado Trust reported.

* The study found that Coloradans were more likely to forego dental care due to cost than any other type of care.

* Seniors 65 and older made up the age group most likely to not have dental insurance in Colorado, according to the study. Those living in rural areas were the least likely to visit a dental professional.

* Around 2.1 million people in the state did not have dental insurance in 2011, including 36.3 percent of the employed, working-age adults in the state. 18.6 percent of employed, working-age adults in Colorado lacked health insurance in 2011.

* Colorado Medicaid limits dental benefits to enrollees age 20 and younger, and traditional Medicare does not provide a dental benefit, the study stated.

* “Oral health care should not be considered optional or a luxury,” said Ned Calonge, M.D., President and CEO of The Colorado Trust. “Going without basic dental care often leads to oral disease with unnecessary pain, more invasive care and higher costs, and can result in even bigger health problems.”

* The 2011 Colorado Health Access Survey was conducted through random telephone interviews with members of 10,352 households across the state.

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Oil edges up ahead of US central bank meeting

BANGKOK (AP) — Oil prices edged up Tuesday despite growing uncertainty about the strength of China‘s economic recovery as investors looked to the Federal Reserve to implement new measures to help the U.S. economy.

Benchmark crude for January delivery was up 23 cents to $ 85.80 per barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 37 cents to close at $ 85.56 per barrel on the Nymex on Monday.

Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, was up 33 cents per barrel to $ 107.66 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

The Fed, which begins a two-day policy meeting later Tuesday, is widely expected to say it will start buying more long-term Treasurys to replace a program that expires at year’s end.

Under the expiring “Operation Twist” program, the Fed has sold short-term Treasurys and used the proceeds to buy $ 45 billion a month in long-term Treasurys, which is a way of “twisting” long-term rates lower, relative to short-term rates.

Meanwhile, an abrupt fall in China’s export growth and slowing import growth suggests that the recovery in the world’s No. 2 economy is faltering, analysts at Capital Economics said in a report.

The data “have added to our doubts about the strength and sustainability of China’s rebound,” the report said. “The weekend’s figures on investment, retail sales and industrial production were more encouraging but they underlined that recent strength has been driven by infrastructure spending rather than a broad-based pick-up across the economy.”

Markets are also awaiting this week’s meeting in Vienna of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which produces about a third of the world’s oil supply.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

— Heating oil rose 1.5 cents at $ 2.912 a gallon.

— Natural gas fell 1.6 cents to $ 3.444 per 1,000 cubic feet.

— Wholesale gasoline rose 0.7 cents to $ 2.605 a gallon.

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McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

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HTC still tripping Samsung up in Windows Phone race

It is not clear that Samsung (005930) even cares — but HTC (2498) continues outmaneuvering its far bigger rival when it comes to Windows Phones. The budget HTC Windows Phone 8S is no available from UK operator Three starting at the notably low £17 per month contract price. This is about half of what the monthly contract price of Samsung’s ATIV S Windows Phone model is expected to cost in the UK. Once it finally arrives. Possibly during the last week of the year. There is no firm word on when ATIV S might arrive on AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) at this point.

So not only did Samsung miss the U.S. and European Christmas sales seasons completely with its first Windows Phone 8 device, HTC actually managed to get both the high-end Windows Phone 8X and the budget 8S out before Christmas in some key markets. And Three now actually seems to be giving robust marketing support for HTC’s Windows Phone devices. They are featured prominently on the website and 8X buyers get a free Windows Pro upgrade for their PCs.

It is worth noting that the Windows Phone 8S looks very competitive in the UK prepaid market with a £180 price tag at Three. The Samsung Galaxy S Advance  is £270 and Nokia’s (NOK) Lumia 710 is £200.

HTC recently started looking like Jessica Biel — too bland and too expensive — but with the 8S, it might be getting some of its European budget groove back. It is now starting to look like the November sales momentum HTC just showed will extend to December.

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Half a century on, Rolling Stones rock Brooklyn

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fifty years since their first London jam sessions, the Rolling Stones kicked off the U.S. leg of a brief anniversary tour with a vibrant show in New York on Saturday that belied their years – wrinkles and nostalgia aside.

Drummers wearing gorilla masks warmed up the crowd packed into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center as black-clad women swung their long tresses in rhythm.

Mick Jagger pranced, shimmied and howled his way through the 2-1/2 hour show, pausing to reminisce about the band’s history and its first New York concert at Carnegie Hall in 1964.

For a group whose early years were punctuated by quarrels and occasional brushes with the law, the biggest controversy ahead of Saturday’s show was the price of seats – up to $ 800, and as much as 10 times that amount on websites offering last-minute tickets.

In those days, milk was cheaper and “tickets to the Rolling Stones was – well, I’m not going to go there,” Jagger acknowledged.

The band’s last major tour was in 2007 and the latest reunion almost didn’t happen, owing in part to a spat between Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards over comments Richards made about the singer in a 2010 autobiography.

Richards joked in a recent interview: “We can’t get divorced – we’re doing it for the kids.”

A tribute video opened Saturday’s proceedings featuring celebrities heaping praise on the band.

“They’re great songs to do bad things to,” said actor Johnny Depp. “Just how skinny they all are… It really, really pisses me off,” said actress Cate Blanchett.

The Stones – average age 68 – ripped through 20 hits that began with “Get Off of My Cloud” and closed with “Sympathy for the Devil” and an encore of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, “Jumping Jack Flash” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”.

Women in the crowd opened their arms wide as Jagger, wearing a silver sequined jacket, strutted along the horseshoe-shaped stage for “I Wanna Be Your Man”, a Beatles tune. The band was then joined by R&B singer Mary J. Blige for “Gimme Shelter”.

“People say ‘why do you keep doing this?’” Jagger told the crowd. He thanked fans for buying records and “generally being amazing for the last 50 years.”

The Stones started their brief diamond jubilee tour in London and are due to play twice in Newark, New Jersey.

Fans said it could be the last chance for New Yorkers to see the band live.

“It’s the only concert I wanted to see before I die,” said Lucy Webley, 33.

(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Vodafone and GSK link on African vaccines programme

LONDON (Reuters) – British mobile phone group Vodafone and drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline are joining forces on a novel project to increase childhood vaccination rates in Mozambique using text messaging.

At the same time Vodafone has formed a strategic partnership with the non-profit GAVI Alliance to study how health ministries across sub-Saharan Africa can use mobile technology to improve their immunisation programmes.

The move is the latest example of mobile phones being used to improve healthcare in Africa. Now widespread across the continent, mobile phones are already deployed in other schemes, including ones to check that people are taking HIV/AIDS drugs properly.

The one-year pilot project in Mozambique, supported by the Save the Children charity, will register mothers on a ministry of health database, alert them to the availability of vaccinations and allow them to schedule appointments by text.

The aim is to increase the proportion of children covered by vaccination by an additional 5 to 10 percent, Vodafone and GSK said on Monday.

The partnership with GAVI, which funds bulk-buy vaccinations for poorer countries, will last three years and is being supported by the British government. Britain will match Vodafone’s contribution of technology and services with a $ 1.5 million cash contribution to GAVI.

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