for the first problem, it looke your rays dont go deep enough. it is one of the settings in raytrace in render globals. you can try to put the reflect and refrat limits to 10 with the maya renderer.

indirect illumination works with mental ray (not sure if maya renderer supports it as well). for global illumination you need set not only the reflectivness but also the diffuse. you might also want to try out final gather - then you dont need lighta at all - you can illuminate e.g. with a not primary visible sphere with incandescene ...