Briton laughed as he shot Indian student dead, court hears

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Last Week in Asia: Japan?s jail-for-download law, India ends torrent block, Android dominating in China

After a brief respite last week, welcome back to the?Last Week in Asia, our round-up of the key stories and developments from across Asia?s growing technology and Internet spaces.

China

Top story: Android marches on in China, now accounts for 55.4% of smartphones, iOS at 12.4%

We?ve talked at great length about the success of Android?s range of devices in Asia and China, and its stellar growth is continuing in the latter ? the world?s largest smartphone market ? thanks to range of prices that offer mid- and low-end devices.

Chinese research firm iiMedia?s latest figures show the Google-owned platform now accounts for more than 55 percent of the country?s active smartphones,?up from 47.3 percent in the final quarter of 2011.

Apple?s iOS operating system made a slight gain over the period, growing share from 11.7 percent to 12.4 percent, while?Nokia?s Symbian system is second at 25.6 percent, though it continues to slip, having pegged 32.3 percent in Q4 2011.

Android?s open system has seen a number of local players adapt, and tweak, the platform to build their own. While Google?s grip on the platform is also weakened by the fact that there are no paid-for apps there. Android users typically visit a number of different stores ? both official and unofficial ? for downloads.

The result makes China?s app store ecosystem is a very different and fragmented space, as we recently wrote.

Also of note:

India

Top Story:?Indian ISPs Unblock BitTorrent Sites After Appeal [Torrent Freak]

Recent Last Week in Asia round-ups have focused heavily on Indian authorities? moves to block Web content services ? after first ISP Reliance, then rival Airtel, began restricting access to torrent sites.

Now it is all change and Indian Internet users have regained access to the sites, which included video service Vimeo and torrenting sites like The Pirate Bay.

The blocking was originally made in response to a ?John Doe? court order aimed at preventing using watching Indian film ?Dhammu? illegally, the result of which saw ISPs adopt a cautious approach to content downloads.

However, behind the scenes they fought the case and successful won an appeal, allowing them to restore the previously blocked sites.

Also of note:

Japan/Korea

Top story:?Japan Passes Jail-for-Downloaders Anti-Piracy Law [Wired]

Japan took a radical step towards fighting breach of copyright online when it passed a new law included a clause which criminalises downloading copyrighted material or, even, backing up a CD.

The law has raised alarm bells as it could be used liberally so long as the person consuming the content is aware that the?material is illegal to download. It?s been suggest that, on this basis, just watching the wrong kind of content on YouTube may violate the law.

Japan already has strict laws which ban uploading and downloading copyrighted music and video content, but now those found guilty could be handed jail time (up to 10 years) or a significant fine (reportedly as much as 10 million yen or $125,000).

Also of note:

Southeast Asia

Top story:?Apple is hiring in Indonesia, indicating plans for a retail and commercial push there

Apple is stepping up its plans in Indonesia, where it is hiring for four positions aimed at increasing its commercial sales presence in the country with a population in excess of 220 million.

Currently the firm is overshadowed by the presence of BlackBerry and Android, the former of which is particularly strong in the Southeast Asian country.

While it is true to say that Apple?s products are out of the price range of many Indonesians, as is common across much of Asia and developing markets, it could rival high-end devices from RIM and Android ? which are competitively priced.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment so, until these positions are filled, it remains unclear exactly what the Cupertino-based company has planned for Indonesia ? where it has no Apple Stores.

Also of note:

That?s all for this week until next Sunday ? you can keep up with all of our Last Week in Asia round-ups?here?or follow?@TheNextWebAsia?on Twitter for news as it happens.

Images ? 1: Shutterstock/Jirsak 2:?Flickr/Zallio, 3: Shutterstock/Dmitriy Shironosov, 4: The Asia Career Times, 5: Flickr/Nez

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Obama, the GOP and the politics of obstruction

Responding to Doyle McManus' Op-Ed column Sunday on whether the November election represents a referendum on President Obama's job performance or a choice between two different approaches to government, reader Ken Fermoyle of Woodland Hills wrote:

"In this piece, as in so many others that discuss Obama's 'performance' over the past three-plus years, no mention is made of the GOP obstructionist policies that blocked most of the administration's efforts to create new jobs, especially during the past two years.

"In their policy of ensuring that Obama is a 'one-term president,' Republicans have put partisan politics first and Americans (except for the top 1%) a distant second. Corporations have helped, refusing to open their purse of trillions in cash hoards for new hires, instead demanding more and more from their vastly shrunken workforces.

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

"Perhaps Obama could have been more forceful in some areas, but he faces a formidable wall of obstructionism, which should be considered in any appraisal or discussion of his performance."

Doyle McManus responds:

Fermoyle is right: I didn't mention the obstructionism of Republicans in Congress in that column ? because the column wasn't an appraisal of Obama's performance. Rather, it was a comparison between the campaign messages of the two presidential candidates.

But Fermoyle's question is one that many supporters of the president raise, and it deserves an answer: Can Obama's performance as president be faulted when the Republicans in Congress have tried to stop him from enacting his agenda at every turn?

A complete response would take more than the space of this column allows, but here's a start: Yes, Republicans have obstructed the president's agenda. That's partly because they want him to fail politically, but also because there's such a wide gulf between their policies (a much smaller government that levies lower taxes on the wealthy) and his (an activist government financed partly by higher taxes on the wealthy).

Some obstruction by Republicans in Congress has been illegitimate; it's infuriating, for example, that Republican senators yanked their support for a bipartisan deficit commission as soon as Obama endorsed the idea.

But Republican opposition to the president's tax proposals or his healthcare law shouldn't come as a surprise.

In this unforgiving climate, Obama's job has been to co-opt, then to outfox

and now to out-campaign enough Republicans to keep his agenda moving forward. He hasn't been notably successful at the first two; for his sake, he'd better do better at the third.

As for the apparent suggestion that corporations have held back on hiring for political reasons, I don't buy it. I wish corporations were hiring more people, but they're mainly in the business of maximizing profits, not defeating the president ? or, for that matter, creating jobs.

ALSO:

Letters: An elephant's life

Letters: With friends like Pakistan....

Letters: The Democrats aren't dead yet

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Obama: Euro crisis could affect my re-election

President Barack Obama takes his place with other leaders for the Family Photo during the G20 Summit, Monday, June 18, 2012, in Los Cabos, Mexico. From left, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama takes his place with other leaders for the Family Photo during the G20 Summit, Monday, June 18, 2012, in Los Cabos, Mexico. From left, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama arrives at the G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Monday June 18, 2012. The leaders of the world's largest economies have agreed to step up their efforts to boost growth and job creation, which they call the top priority in fighting the effects of the European economic crisis, according to a draft of the statement to be released Tuesday at the end of the Group of 20 annual meeting. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld)

President Barack Obama takes his place with other leaders for the Family Photo during the G20 Summit, Monday, June 18, 2012, in Los Cabos, Mexico. From left, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Jose Graziano da Silva, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, U.S. President Barack Obama, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Hu Jintao. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama, center, takes his place with other leaders, including Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for the Family Photo during the G20 Summit, Monday, June 18, 2012, in Los Cabos, Mexico. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, greets Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, Monday, June 18, 2012. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin huddle on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Mexico, in what officials say will be a candid, get-down-to-business meeting about their mutual interests and disagreements. It's their first meeting since Putin returned to Russia's top job. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

LOS CABOS, Mexico (AP) ? President Barack Obama is acknowledging that Europe's economic situation could have a spillover effect on his own re-election prospects.

Wrapping up the Group of 20 economic summit of world leaders, Obama expressed confidence in Europe's ability to right its own financial ship. He said he was hopeful that voters would validate his own efforts come November if he stayed focused on strengthening both the U.S. and world economies and creating more jobs at home.

"I've consistently believed that if we take the right policy steps, if we're doing the right thing, then the politics will follow, and my mind hasn't changed on that," the president said a news conference in this Mexican resort Tuesday at the close of what is expected to be his last foreign trip before the November election. He returned to Washington early Wednesday.

Obama said he was encouraged that European leaders understood the depth of the problem and were working in unison to address it.

"Even if they cannot achieve all of it in one fell swoop, I think if people have a sense of where they are going, that can provide confidence and break the fever," Obama said.

Locked in a difficult re-election campaign, Obama acknowledged he couldn't control the pace of action in Europe despite the repercussions the continent's debt crisis could have on the U.S. economy and his own re-election prospects. The U.S. economy is undergoing a slow recovery amid a slump in hiring and indications that the housing market is healing. Those mixed signals have muddled Obama's prospects for a second term as GOP challenger Mitt Romney mounts a campaign singularly focused on the state of the U.S. economy.

Obama also was frank in laying out the disagreement among the United States, Russia and China over whether Syrian President Bashar Assad can remain as leader of Russia's main Mideast ally. He blamed wholesale slaughter of civilians squarely on Assad's government and said while the U.S. and Russia, in particular, both fear all-out civil war in Syria, they remain divided about exactly what to do next.

Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of meetings at the posh seaside resort. China and Russia have close ties to Syria and have vetoed two U.N. resolutions that mentioned the threat of sanctions against Assad's regime.

The bloodshed in Syria and the economic crisis in Europe dominated the discussions at the gathering of the world's leading and developing nations.

Obama told reporters that in two days of intensive meetings, Europe's leaders showed a "heightened sense of urgency."

The president maintained that Europe had the capacity to solve the crisis on its own, indicating the U.S., still battling its own economic woes, would not be offering any financial pledges to help its international partners.

Still, Obama recognized the challenge European nations faced because each country has to separately approve any action to stabilize the fiscal union.

Mindful of his audience of voters in the U.S., Obama said, "The best thing the United States can do is to create jobs and growth in the short term even as we continue to put our fiscal house in order over the long term."

Obama urged Congress to focus on steps it could take to boost job creation and economic growth, pitching legislation he proposed months ago that has little chance of garnering Republican support in an election year.

All sides at the G-20 summit seemed intent on sending confident signals to jittery markets and unhappy electorates.

Underscoring the stakes, Obama broke from the main summit Tuesday for a brief meeting with leaders from Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the European Union.

Despite the words of unity, European leaders showed signs that they have heard enough about their troubles, particularly from Americans. Memories linger of the 2008 financial crash that was born in the United States and destroyed jobs and wealth.

"The eurozone has a serious problem, but it is certainly not the only imbalance in the world economy," Italian Prime Minster Mario Monti said. He said the United States' own financial problems were mentioned in G-20 talks "by almost everybody, including President Obama."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso took an aggressive tone with reporters Monday, also pointing some blame at North America and saying, "Frankly, we are not coming here to receive lessons in terms of democracy."

Associated Press

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