Japan's largest mobile phone carrier to tie-up with Google

Japan's top mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo will join with Internet search engine Google to provide Internet search and e-mail services on the company's handsets.

Starting as early as the spring, users will be able to access Google search, e-mail, scheduling and photo-saving features through NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode Internet network, Japan's main business daily The Nikkei said, without identifying its sources.

The two firms plan to integrate the search feature with handset software, enabling the development of new services, the paper said.

Tokyo-based DoCoMo Inc. is also considering developing a next-generation handset using Google's free operating system for mobile devices, it said. Such a phone could be introduced in the second half of next year, paving the way for the companies to roll out a wide range of cutting-edge services.

Kyodo News agency carried a similar report.

DoCoMo spokeswoman Makiko Furuta said users can already search the Internet with Google and other search engines through its i-Mode service. DoCoMo is also exploring other possibilities with domestic and foreign search service providers, but nothing has been decided, she said.

DoCoMo's business strategy has been to handle everything from communications infrastructure to services. With the surge in Internet use, however, the company determined that it could not meet customer needs on its own, the Nikkei said.

While DoCoMo has logged strong profits under its existing business model, young customers _ the core users of mobile Internet services - have recently defected to KDDI Corp. and Softbank Mobile Corp.

DoCoMo has been the sole carrier to lose subscribers since the introduction of number portability in the autumn of 2006. Number portability allows customers to switch carriers but keep the same phone number.

For Mountain View, California-based Google Inc., the alliance will give the company better access to the Japanese search engine market, the Nikkei said. Although Google is the world's leading search engine, in Japan it lags behind Yahoo Japan Corp.

Domestic mobile service subscriptions exceed 100 million as of the end of last year, with some 70 million users accessing the Internet through their cellular phones.

Surgery for girl with eight limbs is going smoothly doctors say

Lakshmi Tatma, 2, sits in the lap of her mother, Poonam, a day before the marathon surgery.


BANGALORE, India -- Partway through a mammoth 40-hour operation on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs, surgeons in India said the procedure is going according to plan, with no problems encountered.



"The surgery is going on very well so far," head surgeon Dr. Sharan Patil told . The surgery to separate Lakshmi Tatma from her "parasitic twin" continues, he said, with a team of some 30 surgeons.

"We've managed to remove the parasitic twin out of Lakshmi's body and started reconstructing her pelvic bone. We have managed to get the pelvic bone together."

The little girl, he said, has "responded very well. ... Everything is going according to plan."

The task began early Tuesday in the southern Indian city of Bangalore and is expected to go on through the night, with surgeons working eight-hour shifts.

The conjoined twin stopped developing in the mother's womb, and has a torso and limbs, but no head. It was joined to Lakshmi at the pelvis.

When Lakshmi was born into a poor, rural Indian family, villagers in the remote settlement of Rampur Kodar Katti in the northern state of Bihar believed she was sacred. As news of her birth spread, locals waited in line for a blessing from the baby.

Her parents, Shambhu and Poonam Tatma, named the girl after the Hindu goddess of wealth who has four arms. However, they were forced to keep her in hiding after they were approached by men offering money in exchange for putting their daughter in a circus.

The couple, who earn just $1 a day as casual laborers, wanted her to have the operation but were unable to pay for the rare procedure, which has never before been performed in India.

After Patil visited the girl in her village from Narayana Health City hospital in Bangalore, the hospital's foundation agreed to fund the $200,000 operation.

The operation is being conducted by specialists in pediatrics, neurosurgery, orthopedics and plastic surgery. Without it, doctors say, Lakshmi would be unlikely to survive beyond early adolescence.

Planning for the surgery took a month, Patil said, and Lakshmi spent that month in the hospital.

Her parents are being given regular updates but are not allowed to see their daughter during the operation.

"We are quite optimistic," Patil told . "We do expect that she should be able to walk normally and lead a normal life."