WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry said Tuesday he will offer a new explanation and clarification of a $7.5-billion Pakistan aid bill that has prompted a firestorm of anti-American sentiment inside Pakistan.
A member of an Islamic fundamentalist party protests the aid bill October 2 in Pakistan.

A member of an Islamic fundamentalist party protests the aid bill October 2 in Pakistan.

Opponents say the United States is meddling in Pakistani affairs.

Kerry, D-Massachusetts and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stood beside Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday afternoon to announce that he and other congressional leaders would release what Kerry called "report language with the force of law" to clear up questions about the nonmilitary aid bill.

The explanation would accompany the bill, which was passed unanimously by the House and Senate, when it is formally sent to President Obama to sign into law, something that could happen in coming days.

"If there are misrepresentations, we're going to clarify this," Kerry told reporters after he and Qureshi met in private.

The United States says the aid bill makes no new demands on Pakistan, but some Pakistani politicians say it will result in American micromanagement of Pakistan civil and military affairs.

Kerry said the multibillion-dollar aid package would provide "deeper, broader, long-term engagement with the people of Pakistan." He said the aid is a sign of friendship and was never intended to interfere with Pakistan's government.
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Kerry and the Pakistani foreign minister are set to meet again Wednesday. The statement of clarification will probably be submitted jointly by Kerry; Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee; and Rep. Howard Berman, D-California and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- The economic might of India may bring to mind technological savvy and overseas call centers. But to understand the Indian economy, a visit to a roadside dentist like Raj Kishore is more illuminating.
The Indian economy is fueled by independent workers such as Radha Kumar.

The Indian economy is fueled by independent workers such as Radha Kumar.
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"I can extract, I can fill up, I can scale, I can make dentures, I can make bridge metal or non-metal." Kishore said as he fitted dentures for a customer.

One thing he can't do is show a license to practice -- like many roadside dentists sitting on sidewalks awaiting customers.

While information technology and outsourcing has earned India the nickname as "the world's back office," the sector employs a fraction of India's population -- only 2 million of India's more than 500 million workers, according to NASSCOM, an IT and business process outsourcing trade organization.

So where do the majority of people work in India? The International Labor Organization and economists say as many as 95 percent of the workforce makes a living in what is known as the informal or unorganized sector.

"Roughly today about 50 percent of the production is from the unorganized sector," says New Delhi-based economics professor Arun Kumar, referring to jobs and services that exist without a storefront, union to represent the workers, or corporate structure.

Although things are changing and the economy has boomed in recent years, Indians are still emerging from poverty. Finding employment can be tough so people have literally created jobs out of sheer necessity, such as roadside dentist Kishore.

Kishore says he learned his trade from a dentist and a dental course but he does not have a degree in dentistry. He and those around him provide a service to customers who couldn't dream of affording a licensed dentist in an office.

That is just one of thousands of jobs that make up India's informal economy.
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Radha Kumari is a Mehandi artist. She uses henna to make intricate traditional designs on women's hands and feet. It's an old art that is steeped in tradition and is typically worn by brides the day before the wedding ceremony but is also popular during other Indian holidays and with tourists. She learned the trade from her sister at age 10 and started working as a teenager.

"I started doing this work because I was needy. I have no parents; my sister has done everything for me so it was very important for me to work," said Kumari, a mother of two, while she swirled henna on the hand of a customer.

She makes 25 to 50 rupees (50 cents to $1) per hand, she said. She and other henna artists are often "troubled" by city authorities or police who come to kick them off of the sidewalks or ask for bribes -- technically Kumari and others are breaking the law by setting up shop on government property.

City government authorities showed up while CNN was interviewing Kumari, causing the henna artists around her to pack up and run away.

It's a tough life. "If there can be anything better, I would definitely love to do it," she said. "Here there is no certainty. Today I'm allowed to sit here, tomorrow I may not be." But Kumari says it's better than nothing at all.

Experts say the informal economy helped keep India out of recession, since it is not tied to the global markets. While the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit has help the Indian economy growing, the largely unregulated workforce promises to have negative impacts on the Indian economy as well, as transactions are often in cash and difficult to trace and tax.
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But the working conditions and low pay leave millions living in poverty.

"Their conditions are very poor because they have no protective gear of any kind, they have no real social security of any kind," said Arun Kumar, an economics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. "They face a lot of hardship of all kinds in terms of their existence, where they stay, what do they do, their health conditions, et cetera."

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed Tuesday that Washington and Moscow are working together to ensure Iran's nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes, but Russia has stopped short of committing to Iranian sanctions.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev greets U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday outside Moscow.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev greets U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday outside Moscow.

Speaking to reporters after a closed-door meeting, Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated there has been no agreement between the countries on any sort of sanctions plan, even though Russia is not opposed to sanctions in principle.

The United States is using a two-track approach, pursuing diplomacy with Iran and going on to stronger measures -- such as sanctions -- if that effort fails.

"We are aware that we might not be as successful as we need to be," Clinton said. "So we have always looked at the potential of sanctions in the event that we are not successful, that we cannot assure ourselves and others that Iran has decided not to pursue nuclear weapons."

Clinton quoted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's recent comment that sanctions might be "inevitable" but not at this stage. Video Watch as Clinton stresses the importance of the diplomatic track with Iran »

While the Obama administration has been cautiously optimistic about the "inevitable" comment, Russia has long believed that sanctions are not yet necessary, even though they may be a factor to consider down the road.

Lavrov said that sometimes sanctions theoretically need to be imposed when all diplomatic efforts are exhausted -- but not in the case of Iran.
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"Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive," he said.

World powers have long been concerned that Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon, and those suspicions were heightened by the discovery of a secret uranium enrichment plant near Qom. However, Iran has consistently said it is developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

"Iran's nuclear program remains a matter of serious concern. We're working closely with Russia through the P5 and 1 process," Clinton said, referring to the diplomacy with Iran conducted by Germany and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

"We are working to ensure that Iran moves forward with us on this engagement track," said Clinton, who added that Iran must show without any doubt it is pursuing unequivocally only a peaceful use of nuclear power.

Clinton also met with Medvedev at his residence outside Moscow. Other items on Clinton's agenda included Afghanistan, arms control and the new U.S.-Russia bilateral presidential commission.
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Clinton spoke about surmounting historical difficulties in U.S.-Russian relations, changing a relationship "once defined by the shadow of mutually assured destruction into that based on mutual respect and over time increasingly mutual trust."

"We are different countries; we have different historical experiences, different perspectives," she said. "But we are planting those disagreements in a much broader field of cooperation, and hopefully we are enriching the earth in which this cooperation can take root."

William C. Thompson Jr. walked into Tuesday night’s mayoral debate a likeable man who is being outspent 16 to 1, and whose views and background are more than a bit of a mystery to many New Yorkers.
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William Thompson greeted his supporters before his debate with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday night.

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Unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, he seemed to have exited in the same fashion.

Save for his accent, which carries the unmistakable cadence of his native Brooklyn, and for his insistent attacks on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s flip-flop on term limits, Mr. Thompson, the city comptroller, resembled a painter who left too much of his canvas blank.

He grew up as the high-achieving son of a prominent politician and a teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood of elegant brownstones that now suffers a plague of foreclosures and homelessness. During his time on the Board of Education, he voted for two chancellors who concentrated on the poorest students and wrested power from corrupt local school boards. Test scores rose sharply in his final years there.

A viewer would have learned little to nothing of these facts. Mr. Thompson’s personal anecdote count Tuesday totaled zero.

The conundrum for Mr. Thompson is that he’s carved a three-decade career in public life by being a conciliator, a nimble-footed inside player herded board members to votes and — with one notable exception — really tried to avoid annoying former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

He lacked power to make most policy decisions and seemed allergic to crusades. All of which is perfectly defensible, but public powerlessness is not the stuff of compelling narratives.

On Tuesday Mr. Bloomberg attacked him, erroneously, for being “in charge” of the schools in the 1990s. Mr. Thompson scrunched his face, incredulous.

“I was in charge?” he said, turning to look at the mayor. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Mr. Bloomberg replied with just a hint of a Cheshire cat smile.

In fairness, neither mayor nor comptroller made the night electric; Mr. Bloomberg in particular tended to dole out energy a miserly watt at a time. The city is sunk into recession’s mire, unemployment tops 10 percent — black male unemployment edges toward 50 percent — and foreclosure threatens working class families, and the candidates made glancing mentions of all of this. (Neither candidate uttered the word foreclosure).

A reporter asked the candidates about a controversial fact of life in minority communities: Police each year frisk more than half a million young men, more than 80 percent of them black or Latino. The number of frisks has increased during the past decade, sweeping up hundreds of thousands of teenagers and college students. Police have arrested fewer than 5 percent of this number.

Mr. Thompson wants to curtail it. “We know it’s being overused,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg conceded no problem. “I do think the police have struck a good balance,” he said soothingly.

Mr. Bloomberg is not much for emoting. He rolls his eyes, his voice cuts monotone and his touch is rarely common. But he came into the night with considerable advantages. He is a reasonably popular two-term incumbent (residents tend to like his policies more so than him), and he sits atop a great green bag of personal swag, having so far spent $65 million of his own money on this campaign.

Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, is unsentimentally promiscuous about party loyalty. But in his governing style, he looks an awful lot like a moderate Democrat, which complicates matters for Mr. Thompson, who as it happens is a moderate Democrat.

None of which is to suggest that Mr. Thompson has no line of attack — the decaying economy suggests opportunity. But the Thompson campaign has been curiously relaxed — last weekend he appeared at two churches, according to his schedule. He offered passionate words Tuesday night about the plight of middle-class New Yorkers.

But he offered no storehouse of stories of actual suffering to put meat on the bones of his attack.

Instead Mr. Thompson concluded as he began, by doubling down on a single bet: term limits. The election, he said, will be New Yorkers’ referendum on term limits. “And that we say: We are not for sale!”

In less than four weeks, he’ll find out if that is enough.