Microsoft's Gates Wants Meeting with Brazil's Lula
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SAO PAULO, Brazil  - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O is  lobbying Brazil's government to agree to a meeting between the  company's chairman, Bill Gates, and President Luiz Inacio Lula  da Silva at the World Economic Forum next week, a Brazilian  official said.
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Microsoft chief Bill Gates, on a European tour to promote the group's new Windows Vista operating system, has stopped in Romania and announced plans to invest in the newest EU member.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) chairman Bill Gates is visiting the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, but has not scheduled a meeting with the head of the antitrust office, which has imposed measures on the company.
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points the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil Nov. 28. AP. RIO DE JANEIRO  - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf holds talks Monday with Brazilian President Luiz
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NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 16: A day after inking pacts with two of the countryâs leading technology firms, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday.
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LAS VEGAS - For the last time as Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates delivered the opening speech at the Consumer Electronics Show. Microsoft made several announcements, including a partnership with NBC naming MSN as the exclusive online partner for the Beijing Olympics. Sports fans will be able to watch more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand content over the Web.
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Microsoft boss Bill Gates tells the BBC that better security is the top priority for the company.
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Microsoft CEO Bill Gates gave a glimpse of his future as a philanthropist in a speech in Switzerland on Thursday, calling for a new kind of &quot;creative capitalism&quot; from businesses to help improve the lives of the world&#39;s poorest people.Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates challenged companies worldwide to work with governments and nonprofits to find ways to be charitable and solve the problems of the poorest people without sacrificing their own business needs.&quot;We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve the wealthier people serve poorer people as well,&quot; he said, speaking via a webcast from Switzerland.The idea of creative capitalism combines the &quot;two great focuses of human nature -- self-interest and caring for others,&quot; Gates said. By keeping in mind business acumen, corporations can find new and innovative ways to solve major problems for 1 billion of the world&#39;s poorest people, who don&#39;t get enough food or don&#39;t have drinking water or reliable access to medication, which the rest of us take for granted, he said.&quot;This system driven by self-interest is responsible for incredible innovations that improve lives,&quot; Gates said. &quot;But to harness this power to benefit everyone, we need to refine the system.&quot;Gates plans to retire from full-time duties at Microsoft in July and devote most of his time to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization he runs with his wife.Gates acknowledged Thursday that profits may not always be possible when companies try to serve the poor, so corporate leaders should change their thinking and not expect that they must make money from new business models around philanthropy. Rather, recognition for the good it does in the world should be enough for a company to take an interest in serving others, because that recognition also has business value.&quot;Recognition enhances a company&#39;s reputation, appeals to customers and attracts good people to an organization,&quot; he said. &quot;In a market where profits aren&#39;t possible, recognition becomes a proxy for profit.&quot;In a question-and-answer period following his speech, Gates said that rather than having goals that are too lofty, companies should focus on the businesses they know -- whether food, drugs, media, or technology -- to work with governments in developing countries to bring resources to the poor.He cited an example of an unnamed Dutch company, sharing its rights to a cholera vaccine to provide the medication to Vietnam for less than $1 a dose, as an example of a company leveraging its core business to bring much-needed resources to the developing world.Gates also mentioned the Red campaign as an example of creative capitalism. The campaign, supported by companies such as the Gap, Motorola, and Armani, was born out of a late-night bar conversation he had with Bono of the rock band U2, according to Gates.The Red campaign gives portions of profits from products sold to raise money for disease treatment programs in Africa. Earlier this week, Dell and Microsoft said they will sell special crimson-red versions of the XPS line of computers as part of the program. To date, Red has provided $50 million to a global fund for treating AIDS and malaria, and nearly 2 million people in Africa are receiving &quot;life-saving&quot; drugs today, Gates said.Prior to the Dell announcement, Microsoft already had been putting Gates&#39; idea of creative capitalism in practice through programs such as &quot;Unlimited Potential,&quot; which aims to promote technology skills and bring computers to emerging markets.Business leaders are not the only ones who will have to change the way they think to put creative capitalism into practice, Gates said. NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) also must be more open-minded about working with businesses to come up with new ways to serve the poor.&quot;Once upon a time the NGOs had a bad attitude&quot; about working with businesses, because they would expect too much from companies and, as a result, companies that worked with NGOs often ended up with their reputations tarnished, he said. While &quot;there is still some of that, the attitudes of both NGOs and the private sector have improved quite a bit,&quot; Gates said.
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Brazilian President Luiz InÃ¡cio Lula da Silva announced that, during his visit to New York in September, the governments of Brazil and Chile will meet with other presidents to discuss the creation of an international fund to help the poorest countries
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A Russian mobile-phone operator is the latest service provider to team with Microsoft to offer Windows-based PCs on a subscription basis through the company&#39;s Unlimited Potential program.A partnership with Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS), unveiled Wednesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is similar to ones that Microsoft already has in place in Mexico and Brazil as part of a plan to bring affordable technology to developing countries.Through the partnership, Microsoft in June will deliver PCs running Windows Vista that offer built-in mobile broadband access to customers on a subscription basis, rather than requiring customers to pay for them outright. The two companies also are working on a road map to introduce new mobile communications services that can be accessed on those PCs but did not specifically say what those new services will be.Both the PCs and services will be offered to about 85 million MTS customers in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Belarus as part of the MTS Connect program, the companies said.The MTS deal is similar to one that Microsoft has with service providers TelMex in Mexico and Telefonica in Brazil to offer low-cost PCs through the Subscription Computing Program, which preceded Unlimited Potential. Eventually, that program became part of Unlimited Potential, through which Microsoft works with community leaders in countries where technology has not yet had a significant impact on businesses and communities.Unlimited Potential is directly related to&#160;Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates&#39; idea of &quot;creative capitalism,&quot;&#160;which suggests that companies worldwide work with governments and nonprofits to find ways to be charitable and solve the problems of the poorest people without sacrificing their own business needs. Gates recently outlined this idea in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Analysts and observers have suggested another reason why Microsoft is interested in working with emerging markets on technology efforts: The fight against Linux, which is proving a less expensive and easier-to-access option for people in countries with scant access to technology. Indeed, Unlimited Potential and creative capitalism combine both altruism and business interests, and Microsoft executives have acknowledged the need to foster education and business development to get software like Windows and Office in the hands of people who wouldn&#39;t typically be able to afford it.
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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates inaugurated a technical support center in Bucharest on Thursday, saying he was confident that Romania's recent accession to the European Union would boost foreign investment and ...Comment
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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will meet with French President Jacques Chirac here Wednesday during a visit to France to defend his company's software against competition from Linux and other free Internet-based software.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called on the U.S. Congress toÂ raise the cap on skilled-worker visas, saying the county's economic future was at stake. Gates, testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he'd prefer that "unlimited" numbers of highly skilled foreign workers be allowed into the U.S., although he acknowledged that might not be politically feasible. Right now,Â the controversial H-1B program, which tech vendors and other companies use to hire foreign workers, has an annual cap of 65,000 people a year, and the cap is typically reached in the first couple of months the applications are available. "We have to welcome the great minds of this world, not drive them out of this country," Gates said, repeating his earlier calls for a higher H-1B cap. "These employees are vital to American competitiveness. We should encourage them to become permanent U.S. residents; they provide the nation economic growth, alongside America's native-born talent." Several U.S. tech companies have recently said they have hundreds of unfilled jobs because they can't find qualified workers. Gates also repeated two other themes he said are necessary for the U.S. to continue to compete in a global economy: He called on Congress to improve the U.S. education system and increase government spending on research and development. Without those three changes, the U.S. is at risk of losing its economic power and high standard of living, he said. "When I reflect on the state of American competitiveness today, my immediate feeling of pride is mixed with great anxiety," he said. "The challenges confronting America's global competitiveness and technological leadership are among the greatest we have faced on our lifetime." This generation of U.S. residents is too often living off the innovations of the past, he said. He called for "courageous" leadership to fix failing U.S. high schools, find more money for research, and welcome more immigrants. Few senators challenged Gates' position on foreign-worker visas, instead asking questions about Gates' ideas on improving education, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation'sÂ funding of experimental high-school programs. U.S.-based tech worker groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA) have opposed a higher H-1B cap, arguing that companies use the program to hire foreign workers for less money than unemployed U.S. workers would receive. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said he heard different stories from industries and workers during forums on the economy in his state last month. "Time and time again, local businesses told me that they just could not find the engineers or the computer scientists they needed to run their businesses," he said. "At the same time, skilled workers in my state are watching their jobs move overseas, not because foreign workers are more qualified, but because U.S. companies can get away with paying poverty wages to workers in other countries." Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who often votes with Democrats, also questioned the effect of outsourcing. U.S. companies can hire overseas engineers at a "fraction of the cost" of U.S. engineers, he said. The free trade agreements that allow easy outsourcing benefits the U.S., Gates answered. The U.S. tech industry is able to grow by being able to sell products all over the world, he said. "The demand worldwide for highly qualified engineers is going to guarantee them all jobs wherever they are located," Gates said. "The IT industry, I guarantee you, will be in the United States as long as we can get these people to come to the United States." Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said he agreed that Congress needed to raise the H-1B cap. He asked if an annual cap of 300,000 would be appropriate. "It'd be a fantastic improvement," Gate said. "My basic view is we should welcome as many of these people as we can get."
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When President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited China in May of 2004, he was like an innocent abroad. He naively thought the Chinese would welcome his attempts to form a strategic partnership between two of the worldâs largest developing countries.
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SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 7 -- The United States and Brazil, the two largest biofuel producers in the world, are meeting this week to discuss a new energy partnership that they hope will encourage ethanol use throughout Latin America and that U.S. officials hope will diminish the regional influence of oil-rich Venezuela....
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is to hold talks with Pakistan&#39;s leader, who is on his first official visit to Latin America.
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met with ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Tuesday as Brazil offered Cuba millions of dollars in credit and help in its search for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.