Varied Views of a Border

In some spots along the Mexican-American border, a well-fortified fence extends as far as the eye can see, while in others a wall ends abruptly in the ocean. Beyond these images of the United States’ southern border, we are interested in your photos.

An aerial view of the border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, where it meets the Pacific Ocean.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

An aerial view of a Border Patrol vehicle along a section of the border wall south of Mission, Tex., near the Rio Grande. In this case engineers built the wall along an existing levee in the floodplain just north of the river.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

An aerial view of the Rio Grande, which snakes its way through the Rio Grande Valley. Many do not understand the difficulty of building fences or monitoring thick brushland along the river. It is also complicated to block American farmers from accessing the river, which irrigates crops in this agricultural region.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

The rusted old border wall separates Tijuana, Mexico, right, and a Border Patrol-controlled buffer zone, left. Once high volumes of drug trafficking in this impoverished area have diminished significantly.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

The Border Patrol installed an iron fence to keep drug smugglers from using their roads to move drugs. This is an area south of Mission, Tex., where the river is quite narrow and easy to cross or float drugs across.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

A border fence ends in the rugged terrain in East Tijuana. This photograph was taken in the mountains east of San Diego.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

Migrants hoping to arrive in California by boat are traveling more and more northward to elude border patrol. Torrey Pines State Beach (pictured) is more than 30 miles from the border but was once a popular location because of its proximity to the road.
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times.

A woman makes her way back to Mexico at the Nogales Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: March 1

NEWS As the sun set on Rome and on his turbulent eight-year papacy, Pope Benedict XVI, a shy theologian who never seemed entirely at home in the limelight, was whisked by helicopter into retirement on Thursday. Rachel Donadio reports from Vatican City.

As President Obama and Congressional Democrats have tried to force U.S. House Speaker John Boehner back to the table for talks to head off the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on Friday, Mr. Boehner has instead dug in deeper, refusing to even discuss an increase in revenue and insisting in his typical colorful language that it was time for the Senate to produce a measure aimed at the cuts. Ashley Parker reports from Washington.

Local councils in rebel-held towns are trying to set up courts, police forces and social services, amounting to Syria’s first experiments in self-government after years under the Assads. David Kirkpatrick reports from Tilalyan, Syria.

In South Africa, where violent crime, vigilante attacks and police brutality are daily fare, a cellphone video of a man being dragged behind a police truck has incited outrage for its brazen and outsize cruelty. Lydia Polgreen reports from Johannesburg.

A U.S. soldier, Pfc. Bradley Manning, on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he released the information to help enlighten the public about “what happens and why it happens” and to “spark a debate about foreign policy.” Charlie Savage reports from Fort Meade, Maryland.

Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former dictator known as Baby Doc, walked into a muggy, packed Haitian courtroom on Thursday, sat down next to shocked victims and for the first time answered questions in a court of law about his brutal 15-year reign. Isabeau Doucet reports from Port-au-Prince, and Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City.

The European Union took a big step Thursday toward putting strict limits on the bonuses paid to bankers, hoping to discourage the risk-taking behavior that set off the financial crisis. But the proposal to cap bankers’ bonuses must still be approved by a majority of the E.U.’s members. James Kanter reports from Brussels and David Jolly from Paris.

FASHION Alexander Wang’s debut collection for Balenciaga was a promising start. Suzy Menkes reviews from Paris.

ARTS Historians will soon release a report on the Vienna Philharmonic’s links to Nazi activity in the 1930s and ’40s. James R. Oestreich reports.

SPORTS Somluck Kamsing became a muay Thai star 20 years ago. Now, at age 40, he’s back at his home ring and trying to bring artistry back to the sport. Joseph Hincks reports from Bangkok.

Under the owner Roman Abramovich, no manager of Chelsea can expect to last long, but Rafael Benítez took exception at being labeled “interim” from day one. Rob Hughes reports from London.

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IHT Rendezvous: Environmentalists and Anti-Whalers: ‘Pirates’, or Protectors?

BEIJING — The battle between Japan’s “whale researchers” and anti-whaling groups has long been a furious one, often fought, precariously, between vessels heaving in icy seas.

But who here is the protector, who the pirate?

This week a federal judge in the United States ruled that Sea Shepherd, the anti-whaling group, was a “pirate,” in a suit brought by the whale researchers, the Institute of Cetacean Research in Japan. (The institute, set up in 1987, a year after an international moratorium on whaling took effect to protect fast-dwindling species, says it is a “whale research program” but environmentalists say it is involved in commercial whaling and its Web site says it engages in “whaling.”)

“You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch” to be a pirate, ruled Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit, in an opinion dated Feb. 25 in Seattle. (The 9th Circuit is an appeals court that is one level below the Supreme Court, the highest court in the nation.)

“When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be,” the judge ruled, finding in favor of the Institute, which he described as “Japanese researchers who hunt whales in the Southern Ocean.”

The judge defined a pirate as someone involved in acts of violence on the high seas and, importantly, driven by “private” ends.

Here’s how the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy, as cited by the judge: “illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship . . . and directed . . . on the high seas, against another ship . . . or against persons or property on board such ship.”

The argument is of course more complicated than that (legal judgments usually are) but it does seem to raise the following important question: can environmentalists, who are working to protect their surroundings, be considered to be motivated merely by “private” ends? Or is it a larger, “public” ends that drive them?

The judge said in his ruling the issue had not been much studied. “Belgian courts, perhaps the only ones to have previously considered the issue, have held that environmental activism qualifies as a private end,” he wrote.

Unsurprisingly, the verdict is roiling environmentalists, with Sea Shepherd’s founder, Paul Watson, saying: “They are entitled to their opinion, but the Australian Federal Court deemed the Japanese (whalers) to be pirates.”

What do you think? Can environmentalists fighting to protect our natural surroundings be considered pirates driven by private ends? Are Sea Shepherd’s tactics too extreme? As our environment degrades, might one day the degraders be the ones who find themselves branded “pirates” drive by “private ends”?

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Six Nations Await Iran’s Response to Overture as Nuclear Talks Resume

Pool photo by

The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, at the start of the talks.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Talks between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear program went into a second day on Wednesday, with Western diplomats waiting to get a clear response from Tehran to an offer of step-by-step sanctions relief in return for confidence-building measures from Iran, Western diplomats said.

The six powers want Iran, as a first step, to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent and to export its stockpile of that more highly enriched uranium, which can be more quickly turned into bomb-grade material. The six also want Iran to shut down its Fordo enrichment facility, built deep into a mountain, which Iran has steadily refused to do. In return, the six — the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany — have offered Iran further sanctions relief, reportedly including permission to resume its gold and precious metals trade as well as some international banking activity and petroleum trade.

The ultimate goal of talks with Iran is to get the country to comply with Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop enrichment altogether until it can satisfy the International Atomic Energy Agency that it has no weapons program and no hidden enrichment sites. In return, all sanctions — which have so far cost Iran 8 percent of its gross domestic product, sharply increased inflation and collapsed the value of the Iranian currency, the rial — would be lifted.

No one expects that kind of breakthrough in this round, especially with Iranian presidential elections coming in June and any major concession likely to be perceived as weakness. But the hope is for an incremental movement toward Iranian compliance in return for a modest lifting of sanctions.

On Tuesday night around 10 p.m., a senior Western official said, “We had a useful meeting today; discussions took place this evening; we are meeting again tomorrow.”

Senior Western diplomats have said that this meeting would be a low-level success if it produced a specific agreement to meet again soon, or to meet more often at the technical level, so that there would be an element of momentum to the negotiations. The talks have been intermittent since beginning in October 2009, with the last meeting eight months ago in Moscow.

The six nations talking with Iran have remained united and share an impatience over what they perceive to be its delaying tactics. The Russian envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who has been most opposed to increasing sanctions, said that time was running out for the talks. He told the Interfax news agency that easing sanctions would be possible only if Iran could assure the world that its nuclear program was for exclusively peaceful purposes.

“There is no certainty that the Iranian nuclear program lacks a military dimension, although there is also no evidence that there is a military dimension,” he said.

He said Moscow hoped the talks would now move into a phase of “bargaining,” rather than just offering proposals. “There needs to be a political will to move into that phase,” Mr. Ryabkov said. “We call on all participants not to lose any more time.”

Tuesday’s talks began at 1:30 p.m. with a plenary session that lasted about 2 hours, 30 minutes, largely taken up with the six laying out their latest modified proposal to the Iranians. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, is the chairwoman and speaks for the six. There was also discussion of the proposal by the Iranians and some questions asked, the diplomats said.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were taken up with waiting for an Iranian response, a senior European diplomat said. “Optimistic people are saying that there is modest progress, but realistic people like myself want to wait and see what the Iranians will come back with tomorrow, which can often be a surprise.”

There were a few brief bilateral meetings with the Iranian delegation by the Russians, British and Germans, diplomats said, but not with the French or the Americans. The one and only bilateral meeting between the Americans and the Iranians in the course of the talks was in October 2009 in Geneva, although the chief American negotiator now, Wendy R. Sherman, the under secretary for political affairs in the State Department, has repeatedly said that she is open to another such meeting.

“The onus is very much on the Iranians,” said Michael Mann, a spokesman for Ms. Ashton. He said at Wednesday’s plenary, “We hope to get a more detailed response” from the Iranians to the offer of the six.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 26

NEWS Italian voters delivered a rousing anti-austerity message and a strong rebuke to the existing political order in national elections on Monday, plunging the country into political paralysis after results failed to produce a clear winner. Rachel Donadio reports from Rome.

The U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, said on Monday that the Obama administration has been considering new steps to increase support for the Syrian opposition and hasten the departure of President Bashar al-Assad, and that some of them would be decided at an international conference in Rome this week. Michael R. Gordon reports from Berlin, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon.

Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, announced his resignation on Monday, a day after being accused of “inappropriate acts” with priests, saying he would not attend the conclave to elect a new pope. Rachel Donadio reports from Vatican City, and John F. Burns from London.

Talks between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear program resume on Tuesday after a break of eight months, but there is a general atmosphere of gloom about their prospects for success, even if narrowly defined. Steven Erlanger reports from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found. Gina Kolata reports.

The furniture giant Ikea joined a growing list of brands that have been touched by Europe’s food scandal on Monday and withdrew its signature Swedish meatballs from its markets and cafeterias across most of Europe after one batch was found to contain traces of horse meat. Stephen Castle reports from London, and Andrew Higgins from Brussels.

The Japanese government is set to loosen its grip on Japan Tobacco, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, by selling a third of its stake in a sale that will net the country about $10 billion. Hiroko Tabuchi reports from Tokyo.

FASHION Sites like Marc Jacobs and House of Holland hope that social networking will improve their online sales. Fleur Britten reports.

ARTS Wolfgang Sawallisch, one of the last of the old-school German conductors, who led the Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly a decade and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich for two decades before that, died on Friday at his home in Grassau, Germany. He was 89. Annette Midgette reports.

SPORTS For two countries that have a long history of tangling politically, often extending that rivalry into sports, the cooperation this week between the U.S. and Russian ski teams at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort could strike many as unexpected. Brian Pinelli reports from Krasnaya Polyana, Russia.

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South Korea’s Park Geun-hye Warns North Against Nuclear Pursuits

SEOUL, South Korea — Park Geun-hye, the daughter of a late military strongman, was sworn in Monday as South Korea’s first female president, warning North Korea that the primary victim of its pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles will be the isolated country itself.

“North Korea’s recent nuclear test is a challenge to the survival and future of the Korean people, and there should be no mistake that the biggest victim will be none other than North Korea itself,” Ms. Park said in her inaugural address in front of the National Assembly building in Seoul.

She urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions without delay, “instead of wasting its resources on nuclear and missile development and continuing to turn its back to the world in self-imposed isolation.”

Her motorcade’s arrival Monday at the presidential Blue House marked a triumphant moment not just for Ms. Park but for her family. Ms. Park, 61, was returning to her childhood home, 34 years after the assassination of her father, Park Chung-hee, a divisive figure even now. Mr. Park’s 18-year rule was credited with rapidly raising South Korea’s economy from postwar devastation, but his iron-fisted governance was increasingly maligned as the country evolved toward democracy.

Ms. Park was elected in December thanks largely to the support of South Koreans in their 50s and older. Many younger voters were vehemently opposed to her candidacy, saying she represented a return to the past.

North Korea, meanwhile, has again become a prime national security concern. A week before Ms. Park’s election, the North launched a satellite into orbit in defiance of United Nations resolutions. On Feb. 12, it conducted a third nuclear test. The two events have heightened fears that years of efforts by Washington and its allies to rein in the North’s nuclear ambitions have failed, even as Pyongyang appears to have made progress toward achieving the capability to make long-range nuclear missiles.

Speaking Monday before a large crowd — which earlier had been entertained by the rapper Psy, famous for the song “Gangnam Style” — Ms. Park also addressed economic concerns, a major issue in the election. She said her tasks as president would include “achieving economic rejuvenation, the happiness of the people and the flourishing of our culture.”

In a comment reminiscent of her father, she called for a “second miracle on the Han River.” Seoul, which straddles the Han, began transforming itself into an industrialized metropolis under her father, who sought economic growth at all costs and nurtured a handful of family-controlled companies, such as Samsung and Hyundai, as the engines of an export-driven economy.

Now, as his daughter takes office, one of the biggest complaints among ordinary South Koreans is of widening economic inequality, particularly those conglomerates’ overpowering influence on smaller businesses — a grievance Mr. Park addressed in her speech, saying that a second Han River “miracle” should be based on “economic democratization.”

She promised policies designed to strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises so that “such businesses can prosper alongside large companies.” She said, “By rooting out various unfair practices and rectifying the misguided habits of the past which have frustrated small business owners and small and medium-sized enterprises, we will provide active support to ensure that everyone can live up to their fullest potential, regardless of where they work or what they do for a living.”

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Car Bomb Hits Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A series of early morning attacks hit eastern Afghanistan Sunday, with three separate suicide bombings in outlying provinces and a shootout between security forces and a would-be attacker in the capital city of Kabul.

The deadliest attack was a suicide car bombing at a state intelligence site just after sunrise in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In that attack, a car approached the gate of a compound used by the National Directorate of Security and exploded, killing two guards and wounding three others, said regional government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai. The building was damaged in the attack, he added.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Shortly before the Jalalabad attack, an assailant detonated a van packed with explosives at a highway police checkpoint in Logar province, also in the east. That explosion wounded three police officers but no one was killed, said Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai.

In Kabul, meanwhile, police shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber who was trying to attack an intelligence agency office downtown, according to the city's deputy police chief, Gen. Mohammad Daud Amin. Intelligence agents spotted the bomber before he could detonate the explosives in his vehicle and shot him, Amin said.

The explosives in the vehicle were later defused, he added.

Later in the morning, a man wearing a suicide vest blew himself up outside the police headquarters for Baraki Barak district in Logar province. The man was stopped by police as he tried to force his way into the building, but still managed to detonate his vest, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, the provincial government spokesman.

One policeman was wounded in the Baraki Barak attack, Darwesh said.

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Chinese City Reports Second Bird Flu Fatality

HONG KONG — China has reported a second fatality from the deadly H5N1 bird flu, a 31-year-old man who died of organ failure in the south-central Chinese city of Guiyang.

The flu, which is circulated in poultry and birds, has infected only 600 humans in the last decade, but has proven fatal in half the cases, so public health officials closely monitor its transmission. Scientists fear that the flu could mutate into a form that is highly contagious in humans.

In the most recent case, the man died Friday at a hospital in Guiyang. That city is also where a 21-year old woman died on Feb. 13. The official Xinhua news agency said that both victims had been in close contact with birds, the most common means of transmission.

The news agency added that 110 people who had been exposed to the victims had been released from quarantine.

As of Feb. 15, there have been 10 cases of H5N1 reported worldwide since the start of the year, according to the World Health Organization. In all of 2012, there were 32 cases worldwide.

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India Ink: Classes Warfare

NEW DELHI — It was a widely awaited verdict: Tens of thousands of parents seeking admission for their children to nursery schools in New Delhi were hoping for some remedy against a system that rewards inherited privilege and access to political power. But the High Court of Delhi upheld the status quo on Tuesday.

Most parents have little or no choice over which school their children will attend.

Two years ago the India blog for The Wall Street Journal ran a piece entitled “Delhi’s Nursery Schools Still Tougher to Crack Than Harvard?” The catchy headline was only partly true: New Delhi’s top private nursery schools are perhaps as competitive as an Ivy League college, but that’s not saying much about the means required to get in.

I should know: I spent the last month filling in application forms to 10 private schools for my three-year-old son, and he wasn’t admitted to any.

The Indian public school system is too dysfunctional to be a serious choice for most middle-class parents. As a result, the total number of applicants to the top 20 private nursery schools in New Delhi is well over 50,000 for about 1,500 slots. (This is my rough estimate.) Most parents have little or no choice over which school their children will attend. Rather, the question is which school, if any, will admit their children.

A few years ago, worried about the growing pressure to which children no more than four years of age were being subjected, the city government forbade entrance exams and interviews for nursery schools, as well as the screening of parents’ educational background. Before then, New Delhi schools openly sought out candidates whose parents were affluent, spoke English fluently and mattered in the city’s power hierarchy. A privileged class kept replicating itself.

In theory, the new norms suggested a more egalitarian process: They prescribed a point system, and a lottery would be drawn among candidates who were tied. In practice, this favored the old elite. A school could attribute points to a child who lived nearby, whose siblings were pupils or whose parents were alumni. The residency requirement benefited the rich because the best schools are in affluent parts of the city, and the legacy criteria only served those already entrenched in the system.

Some schools also went out of their way to bypass the law by creating subjective criteria for assigning points to applicants. One top school I sent an application to has a special category for the “Promotion of Indian heritage/Exceptional achievement/Significant inspirational work for the nation/Any other, please specify.” I have asked them to clarify what this means.

The new norms also created two sets of restricted seats. All schools were required to set aside 25 percent of seats for students from poor families, which in New Delhi are defined as having annual incomes of less than $2,500. Perhaps to compensate for the attending monetary loss — poorer students pay reduced fees — the city government also allowed schools to allot 20 percent of the total seats under a management quota free of any regulation.

While I have had no direct access to any school official who decides on such quotas, anecdotal evidence I’ve gleaned from other parents suggests that some schools are trading admission for donations of $40,000 or more — unless, of course, applicants are backed by ministers or powerful bureaucrats. Even schools that are less sought-after are asking between $2,000 and $3,000 just to register students who have been admitted. No receipts are being issued.

The Indian middle class, especially in a city like New Delhi, is a substantial and growing presence. But very few of its members have the means or the connections to secure seats in good schools for their children.

The new admissions system is only a pretense at nondiscrimination. As much as the old, it ensures that rich or well-connected Indians will continue to corner most seats in the country’s top schools.

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Hartosh Singh Bal is political editor of Open Magazine and co-author of “A Certain Ambiguity.’’

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Police Detective in Pistorius Case Faces Attempted Murder Charges

PRETORIA, South Africa — In a remarkable twist in the case of Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee track star accused of murdering his girlfriend, the South African police said on Thursday that the officer leading the investigation against the athlete is himself facing attempted murder charges.

Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Police detective Hilton Botha arrived at court for the bail hearing of Oscar Pistorius on Wednesday.

The disclosure deepened questions surrounding the detective, Hilton Botha, who, under cross-examination at a bail hearing on Wednesday, was forced to concede that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s own version of events based on the existing evidence.

While the prosecution has accused Mr. Pistorius, 26, of the premeditated murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 29, a week ago, the track star himself said he opened fire thinking there was an intruder in his home in a gated community and had no intention of killing her.

In a development that seemed as bewildering as it was sensational on Thursday, Police Brig. Neville Malila said that Mr. Botha is himself set to appear in court in May facing attempted murder charges relating to an incident several years ago when Mr. Botha and two other police officers were accused of firing at a minivan carrying seven people.

The case had initially been dropped but was reinstated on Wednesday, even as Mr. Botha was appearing as the lead police witness in the prosecution’s attempt to prevent Mr. Pistorius from securing bail.

Mr. Pistorius returned to court on Thursday for further arguments about whether he should be granted bail in a case that has riveted South Africa and fascinated a wider audience, reflecting Mr. Pistorius’s status as one of the world’s most renowned athletes, whose distinctive carbon-fiber running blades have given him the nickname Blade Runner.

On Wednesday, what was supposed to be a simple bail hearing took on the proportions of a full-blown trial, with sharp questions from the presiding magistrate, Desmond Nair, and a withering cross-examination that left Detective Botha grasping for answers that did not contradict his earlier testimony.

Initially, Detective Botha explained how preliminary ballistic evidence supported the prosecution’s assertion that Mr. Pistorius had been wearing prosthetic legs when he shot at a bathroom door early on Feb. 14. Ms. Steenkamp, a model and law school graduate, was hiding behind it at the time.

Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read to the court on Tuesday that he had hobbled over from his bed on his stumps and had felt extremely vulnerable to a possible intruder as a result.

But when questioned by Barry Roux, Mr. Pistorius’s lawyer, Detective Botha was forced to acknowledge sloppy police work, and he eventually conceded that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s version of events based on the existing evidence. Mr. Roux accused the prosecution of selectively taking “every piece of evidence” and trying “to extract the most possibly negative connotation and present it to the court.”

Lydia Polgreen reported from Pretoria, South Africa, and Alan Cowell from London.

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India Ink: Irene Genovese, the Traveler from Italy

Why do millions of people, from entire Indian villages to urbane middle managers to foreign tourists, brave the crowds at the Kumbh Mela? During this year’s 55-day pilgrimage, to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 100 million Hindus and others are expected to take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins. India Ink interviewed some of them.

Irene Genovese, 55, a traveler from Tuscany, Italy,  was one among them. This is what she had to say.

Why did you come to the Kumbh Mela this year? Is it your first time?

Yes, it is my first time. I love the experience so far. My partner has been teaching yoga in Italy for about 40 years now, so he wanted to come down here and meet the sadhus who practice yoga regularly.

How have you found it so far?

I am overwhelmed by the number of people there are here! We knew there would be crowds, but didn’t expect this. These are unbelievable numbers. We have also liked the interactions with the sadhus. We live in the Hare Krishna tent so get to interact a lot more with the devotees.

Describe your journey to the Kumbh. Did you travel alone? How long did it take?

We took a stopover in Delhi before coming here. Our Kumbh trip is for only four days. Now we are wondering how we would get back to Delhi. They say there are no last-minute reservations on trains.

Do you consider yourself a religious person?

Yes, I am religious. But my partner is more religious than I. And I respect that.

Do you follow Indian politics? Who do you think is going to win the 2014 election?

I don’t follow Indian politics. I don’t follow politics at all.

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Japan Finds Swelling in Second Boeing 787 Battery

TOKYO (Reuters) - Cells in a second lithium-ion battery on a Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner forced to make an emergency landing in Japan last month showed slight swelling, a Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) official said on Tuesday.

The jet, flown by All Nippon Airways Co, was forced to make the landing after its main battery failed.

"I do not know the exact discussion taken by the research group on the ground, but I heard that it is a slight swelling (in the auxiliary power unit battery cells). I have so far not heard that there was internal damage," Masahiro Kudo, a senior accident investigator at the JTSB said in a briefing in Tokyo.

Kudo said that two out of eight cells in the second battery unit showed some bumps and the JTSB would continue to investigate to determine whether this was irregular or not.

The plane's auxiliary power unit (APU) powers the aircraft's systems when it is on the ground. National Transportation Safety Board investigators in the United States are probing the APU from a Japan Airlines plane that caught fire at Boston's Logan airport when the plane was parked.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority grounded all 50 Boeing Dreamliners in commercial service on January 16 after the incidents with the two Japanese owned 787 jets.

The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no solution yet in sight.

Boeing rival Airbus said last week it had abandoned plans to use lithium-ion batteries in its next passenger jet, the A350, in favor of traditional nickel-cadmium batteries.

Lighter and more powerful than conventional batteries, lithium-ion power packs have been in consumer products such as phones and laptops for years but are relatively new in industrial applications, including back-up batteries for electrical systems in jets.

(Reporting by Mari Saito; Editing by Richard Pullin)

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India Ink: Thomas Friedman Answers Your Questions

New York Times op-ed columnist and author Thomas L. Friedman recently wrapped up a week-long trip to India, where he met with business executives, government ministers and other officials, entrepreneurs and development groups. Even as India’s economy has slowed considerably, Mr. Friedman remains a big believer in what he calls the “miracle of India.’’

Earlier we asked India Ink readers for their questions for Mr. Friedman about India’s changing role in the world economy. Here are his answers to a select few:

By far the most popular reader question was: Is the world still flat?

I wrote the “World Is Flat” in 2004.

I have to confess, I now realize the book was wrong. The world is so much flatter than I thought.

When I wrote “The World Is Flat,” Facebook didn’t exist, Twitter was still a sound, the cloud was still in the sky, 4G was a parking place, LinkedIn was a prison, applications were what you sent to college, Big Data was a rap star and Skype was a typo. All of that came after I wrote “The World Is Flat.”

And so what it tells you is all those trends have actually taken us from a connected world to what we’re now in, which is a hyper-connected world. It’s a difference of degree. It’s a difference in kind.

I believe it is changing every job, every industry and every market.

The trends I identified have only intensified in every direction, enabling individuals to complete, connect and collaborate so much faster, farther cheaper and deeper.

Venkat from N. J. said: “The globalization of business is basically finding a way to justify exploitation of labor,” resulting in an “enormous concentration of wealth in fewer hands.” The majority of “labor working for low-end manufacturing work in pathetic conditions,” while workers in the U.S. face layoffs, particularly the elderly. “Who is paying for this social cost,”and should globalization be regulated, somehow?

The first thing you need to understand about globalization is that it is everything and its opposite. So it is take it with one hand and give it with another hand.

On the one hand it is automating more things faster. On the other hand I met with young Indian entrepreneurs who are leveraging the cloud, open-source tools and very small amounts of capital, and are able to invent companies that can complete globally like never before.

So, who is the exploiter and who is the exploitee in this system? If horses could vote, there never would have been cars.

What we’re getting here is rapid change. The question the reader raises, though, is a very important one, because something has changed which we have not figured out how to adjust to. This is a point that Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee make in their book “The Race Against the Machine,” which I wrote my last column about.

The point they make is that over the last 200 hundred years, three things grew together: productivity, median income and employment. Whether you were an Indian or an American, productivity grew, median income grew and employment grew, and inequality tended to shrink.

That’s a good thing.

Once we hit the flattening of the world, and now the hyper-flattening of the world, those three things are splitting apart. And that’s what the reader is, rightly, concerned about.

I’m concerned about it too.

So what happens when the world gets this hyper-connected? Well, first of all, the returns to education grow enormously. To be able to use these new technologies properly, you need to be educated.

In America today, unemployment for people with four-year college degrees is 3.6 percent, basically nothing. Unemployment for someone who dropped out of high school is now infinity. I exaggerate but you get the point.
It’s called skills-bias polarization.

If you want to have a factory job in America today, doing high-end manufacturing, you need to know algebra and calculus. It’s not just a repetitive motion any more, you need to program the robot.

Second thing is the returns to capital are so much more than the returns to labor. If I have a lot of capital and I can buy a lot of machines, the returns are so much more than if I hire a lot of people.

The third thing causing this phenomenon is in a hyper-connected world, the returns to superstar talent are just staggering. If you are, say, Madonna, well, every Indian kid who has an iPad can now download your songs. That wasn’t the case 10 years ago. You couldn’t reach this market.

So all three of these things are creating much bigger income gaps, much lower employment for people with lower skills, yet much higher productivity and great wealth for owners of capital.

That’s the big change.

The challenge for every developed and developing society is how do you maintain a middle class in such a world. That’s what I’m thinking about for the topic of my next book.

D.C. Agrawal from Princeton, New Jersey, asks: “How would you rate India on governance and public institutional structures compared to other democratic countries?’’

Let’s look at the countries I visited in the last six months: India, China and Egypt. India in my mind has relatively weak governance in terms of delivering services, but a very strong civil society — very vibrant active, social movements, whether it’s Anna Hazare or reaction to the rape case.

China has a very muscular government, in terms of delivering infrastructure and education, but a very weak civil society, although it is getting stronger. And Egypt has a very flabby, overweight government and a very weak civil society. That’s why when the government collapsed — you got the Muslim Brotherhood taking advantage of the revolution, not strong-rooted democratic movements.

I think India’s governance will improve. The government here is not utterly ineffective. It does do some things very well, but clearly it has weaknesses around policing, infrastructure building and providing consistent education. It holds elections very well, it does the census very well.

Let’s remember it is still a billion people. I don’t want to be too hard on it, but people want more, they want better.

India today has, because of hyper-connection of the world, and diffusion of technology, experienced the pushing down to lower and lower income levels more technology empowerment and education. That’s why India today seems like it has a 300 million-person middle class and a 300 million-person virtual middle class.

These are people who now have available to them, whether it’s a cell phone or other technologies, things that you would normally have to have a middle-class income to have. And they have access to certain learning opportunities.

So they’re actually in their minds middle class, thinking like middle class and putting middle-class demands on the government. I think the young woman who was raped in this terrible tragedy was a member of that virtual middle class – the tools she had, what she was doing, expectations of the government.

That’s a big change. It’s putting more pressure on the government. And the government will eventually respond because it has to.

Jason Richardson-White from Bethlehem, Georgia, said: Studies indicate that equal treatment between the sexes is important to slowing the birth rate. I don’t see that globalization is contributing significantly to that end in India. An argument can be made that globalization has made it possible for the people who are most likely to start egalitarian families to leave India for the West?

First let me make a general response:

I did not invent globalization. I promise you. I just wrote about it.

I wrote about the upsides and the downsides. I didn’t start it and I can’t stop it. I have my own problems with it.

Having said that, I profile in my column an N.G.O. that is providing cell phone-based SMS messaging to alert women about their menstrual cycle, on when exactly they are fertile and when they should not be having unprotected sex, if they want to do family planning.

This is totally based on cloud computing. Without globalization it doesn’t exist. It allows a woman in a remote place to do this. There’s privacy to it. You do one interview on the phone to set it up.

People need to keep in mind, globalization giveth and globalization taketh. The biggest revolution about to hit India, in the next two years, is distance learning. Any woman from any village who knows English will be able to take courses from Harvard, Stanford and M.I.T.

Do you know what this means for women in conservative families, who don’t want them to go to school? It’s going to be a revolution. I’m very excited about the kind of educational empowerment that is going to be coming the way of Indian women that will give them greater earning power, greater control over their own bodies and greater ability to negotiate with their sexual partners.

Anand Kumar from Chicago, Illinois, asks: Tom, China may not be loved in the West, but is respected and admired for its accomplishments. How do you think India ranks on the loved vs. respected and admired spectrum?

What an interesting question.

I think India’s brand remains very strong around the world. I appreciate India’s democracy.

What if 1 billion 50 million Indians were living like Syria today? The whole world would be different. Literally, the whole world would feel different today.

So to me India is a miracle. One billion fifty million people holding free and fair elections, just about every day, in the country. We now take it for granted because it has gone on for so long. I think it’s amazing.

I can’t generalize about the whole world, but I’m still enormously optimistic about what I see here.

Zaigum Kashmiri from Clarence, New York, asks: Tom, I know you are an Indophile and write great things about India. But, honestly, how can anybody be hopeful about India’s economic and social progress, keeping in view the lawlessness, dysfunctional government, corrupt police, a huge incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy and poverty?

I think the important thing to always remember when you look at India is not the snapshot, but the slope of the change.

If you take a snapshot, those will be some of the things you see.

But if you came with me to my meeting with NASSCOM [National Association of Software and Services Companies, India's technology industry association] this week, you’d see eight young entrepreneurs leveraging the flat world to start global businesses that not only contribute to the world but that make Indians unpoor.

They’re amazing.

So you always have to keep these things in balance. What excites me most about India today is the trend line. Every time I come here, I see more and more Indians starting things, collaborating on things and inventing things to make Indians unpoor. And to me that’s the most important thing you have to keep in mind.

By the way, everything the reader cited there, you could say that about America. We have all that, plus guns.

No country is a paradise. Everyone is a work in progress. You have to think about where the thrust is.

I’d like to think that with all our problems in America, we’re still tilted in a positive direction. I’d like to say the same about India.

(Interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)

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Dismissed as Doomsayers, Advocates for Meteor Detection Feel Vindicated

For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles.

Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dr. Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive, has warned about space threats.

No more. The meteor that rattled Siberia on Friday, injuring hundreds of people and traumatizing thousands, has suddenly brought new life to efforts to deploy adequate detection tools, in particular a space telescope that would scan the solar system for dangers.

A group of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped build thriving companies like eBay, Google and Facebook has already put millions of dollars into the effort and saw Friday’s shock wave as a turning point in raising hundreds of millions more.

“Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” said Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive who leads the detection effort. “This is a wake-up call from space. We’ve got to pay attention to what’s out there.”

Astronomers know of no asteroids or comets that pose a major threat to the planet. But NASA estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the big dangers have been discovered.

Dr. Lu’s group, called the B612 Foundation after the imaginary asteroid on which the Little Prince lived, is one team of several pursuing ways to ward off extraterrestrial threats. NASA is another, and other private groups are emerging, like Planetary Resources, which wants not only to identify asteroids near Earth but also to mine them.

“Our job is to be the first line of defense, and we take that very seriously,” James Green, the director of planetary science at NASA headquarters, said in an interview Friday after the Russian strike. “No one living on this planet has ever before been hurt. That’s historic.”

Dr. Green added that the Russian episode was sure to energize the field and that an even analysis of the meteor’s remains could help reveal clues about future threats.

“Our scientists are excited,” he said. “Russian planetary scientists are already collecting meteorites from this event.”

The slow awakening to the danger began long ago, as scientists found hundreds of rocky scars indicating that cosmic intruders had periodically reshaped the planet.

The discoveries included not just obvious features like Meteor Crater in Arizona, but wide zones of upheaval. A crater more than a hundred miles wide beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico suggested that, 65 million years ago, a speeding rock from outer space had raised enough planetary mayhem to end the reign of the dinosaurs.

Some people remain skeptical of the cosmic threat and are glad for taxpayer money to go toward urgent problems on Earth rather than outer space. But many scientists who have examined the issues have become convinced that better precautions are warranted in much the same way that homeowners buy insurance for unlikely events that can result in severe damage to life and property.

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, astronomers turned their telescopes on the sky with increasing vigor to look for killer rocks. The rationale was statistical. They knew about a number of near misses and calculated that many other rocky threats whirling about the solar system had gone undetected.

In 1996, with little fanfare, the Air Force also began scanning the skies for speeding rocks, giving credibility to an activity once seen as reserved for doomsday enthusiasts. It was the world’s first known government search.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration took a lead role with what it called the Spaceguard Survey. In 2007, it issued a report estimating that 20,000 asteroids and comets orbited close enough to the planet to deliver blows that could destroy cities or even end all life. Today, with limited financing, NASA supports modest telescopes in the southwestern United States and in Hawaii that make more than 95 percent of the discoveries of the objects coming near the Earth.

Scientists lobbied hard for a space telescope that would get high above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. It would orbit the Sun, peering across the solar system, and would have a much better chance of finding large space rocks.

But with the nation immersed in two wars and other earthly priorities, the government financing never materialized. Last year, Dr. Lu, who left the NASA astronaut corps in 2007 to work for Google, joined with veterans of the space program and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to accelerate the asteroid hunt.

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U.S. Embassy Denies Intervening in Mexico Cabinet Choice

The United States Embassy in Mexico on Friday issued a statement denying an article in The New York Times that reported that Ambassador Anthony Wayne had met with senior Mexican officials to discuss American concerns about the possible appointment of Gen. Moisés García Ochoa of Mexico as that country’s defense secretary.

“Despite significant reporting in the Mexican press during the presidential transition about the potential candidates to head Mexico’s military,” the statement read, “Ambassador Wayne did not discuss Gen. Moisés García Ochoa with Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, now secretary of government, or Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, now secretary for agrarian, territorial and urban development (SEDATU), as reported in the New York Times story.”

The embassy’s statement comes 11 days after the Times article about Washington’s exchanges with Mexico regarding General García Ochoa. It follows an avalanche of outrage in the Mexican news media, whose columnists and commentators have accused the United States of “vetoing” General García’s nomination and of infringing on Mexican sovereignty. Some in the news media have called on Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to rethink the terms of his government’s cooperation with the Obama administration on security matters.

The embassy statement on Friday also came after an earlier statement by William Ostick, a State Department spokesman, that did not dispute the facts in the Times’ account.

On Feb. 4, The Times reported that some senior American officials suspected General García Ochoa of skimming money from multimillion-dollar defense contracts. It reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration suspected the general of having links to drug traffickers dating back to the late 1990s. And the newspaper reported that Ambassador Wayne discussed those concerns with Mexican officials.

In the end, General García Ochoa was passed over for his government’s top military job. The Times reported that it was unclear whether American concerns played a role in Mexico’s decision.

The Mexican government made no statement to The Times on the article. But Mr. Osorio Chong denied to Mexican newspapers that the United States had vetoed or made suggestions on any appointment, and Mr. Ramírez Marín has told Mexican reporters that while he and Mr. Chong were present at a meeting with the ambassador before the inauguration to discuss relations, the general’s possible appointment was not discussed.

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India Ink: Kerala's Tangled Tryst With International Affairs

Indian states, though powerful in matters of internal administration, rarely deal with foreign governments. A bizarre shooting near Kerala’s coast involving Italian marines last year, which killed two Indian fishermen, gave the state a crash course on international diplomacy, one that also tested Kerala’s political standing with the central government.

One year after the shooting, the case appears to be nearing a quiet conclusion in what could have been a messy international fight. Though the outcome may not completely satisfy Keralites, they are not likely to find fault with their government. Kerala fought for as long as it could to handle the case on its own turf, and its determination has strengthened the state’s position in domestic politics.

In the afternoon of Feb. 15, 2012, two impoverished fishermen, returning to the Kerala coast from an exhausting fishing expedition, were shot dead by two Italian marines who were guarding an oil tanker, the Enrica Lexie, on suspicion that the fishermen were pirates.

The Indian authorities say the Italian marines had behaved suspiciously on the fateful day. After the marines killed the two fishermen, their ship sped away, the authorities said, angering the Indian Coast Guard, which pursued the tanker and brought it to the Kochi port under escort.

The Italian authorities, on the other hand, say that the marines warned an approaching boat to keep away, and that when it did not, they had no choice but to fire warning shots into the air. Since the shooting took place in international waters, the ship was not obliged to come to the Indian shore and that the matter would have been investigated back in Italy, the Italian authorities say.

If Italy had admitted its marines had made a mistake and offered compensation out of court in the early days, the case would have ended long ago. But Italy insisted that there was a piracy attempt and that since the shooting took place in international waters, India had no jurisdiction to try the marines on murder charges in India.

Then Kerala’s courts intervened and affirmed jurisdiction. A judge later rejected an out-of-court settlement that the Italians had worked out with some local church leaders.

Emotions ran high in Kerala, accentuated by the suspicion that Italy’s Delhi connections would let the marines off the hook at any time. The two Italians were lodged in prison first and then in a more comfortable guesthouse at the repeated requests of the Italian government at the highest level in Delhi. High-ranking Italian officials visited Kerala multiple times on behalf of the marines.

But Kerala’s courts maintained pressure, and it appeared that the case was moving toward a conviction. Then the Italian government filed a petition with the Supreme Court arguing that because the shooting occurred in international waters that the trial could not be held in India.

The chief minister of Kerala, Oommen Chandy, may have heaved a sigh of relief when the case was moved to the Supreme Court, but the shift initially caused much consternation in the fishing community in Kerala. The victims’ next of kin and the owner of the fishing boat were disappointed that the huge compensation that they had expected to receive through a direct settlement with the Italians or through a court order eluded them.

In fact, when the marines were allowed by the Kerala High Court to go home for Christmas after depositing 60 million rupees ($1.1 million) as surety, the local people were praying that they would not come back. The marines returned ahead of time, much to the disappointment of the next of kin.

Delhi took the line that the whole incident was an unfortunate accident, not involving any machinations by the Italians. It is in that direction that the case has moved.

Last month, the Supreme Court rejected Italy’s argument but ruled that the case should be moved out of Kerala and into a special Indian court under international maritime law. Since the shootings had happened in the contiguous zone and not territorial waters, Kerala had no jurisdiction, the Supreme Court said.

Even if the marines are ultimately convicted, it is likely they will return to Italy. On Monday, India announced that in November it had ratified a treaty with Italy, which was agreed upon before the shooting incident occurred, that allows citizens convicted of crimes in either country to serve their prison sentences in their home country.

Though it wasn’t the outcome it had sought, Kerala is taking a pragmatic view. Moving the legal battle from Kerala itself has brought down the profile of the case and the pressure of public opinion. Now, the state will accept any decision by the Supreme Court as long as adequate compensation is given to the next of kin and the boat owner.

The episode was not without its benefits for Kerala, which emerged with its principles intact. The central government never challenged Kerala, nor did it pressure the state to make concessions, and Mr. Chandy himself emerged as a tough negotiator and a champion of the law, which can only benefit the state in the future.

Ironically, the heroic efforts of the Italian government to get their nationals released from an Indian prison won the appreciation of many Indians, including Keralites. They pointed to the sustained efforts at the highest level by Italy to rescue the marines and criticized the Indian government for not doing enough for its own nationals in prisons abroad, accused of far less serious crimes.

Mr. Sreenivasan, a former Indian diplomat, is the executive vice chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council. His views are personal and do not reflect the policy of his state.

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India Ink: A Volatile Brahmaputra River Will Grow Only More So

ELOPA, Arunachal Pradesh — Amid a desert of volleyball-sized boulders, Jibi Pulu bounces his Tata jeep over a trickling nullah. In his childhood, just 30-odd years ago, this stream used to irrigate his family paddy fields right here in the flatlands and provide fresh water to his ancestral village in the hills above the floodplain of the Dibang River, a major tributary of the Brahmaputra.

Today, the paddy fields are gone, and the village is abandoned, fallen prey to hillside erosion and river siltation. “This plain was once a narrow band of huge trees,” said Mr. Pulu, who heads the Idu-Mishmi tribe’s Community Resource Management Committee. “Now it’s a stony wasteland stretching for farther than the eye can see.

“As a young boy, I could sit here and watch animals come down right there to the river to drink – sambar deer, barking deer, wild boars, tigers, leopards, herds of wild elephants. It was like an African safari park. Now all you see of the animals are occasional tracks and droppings.”

Experiences like Mr. Pulu’s give vivid life to the numeric inputs that fuel Professor Subashisa Dutta’s statistical models. Together with his fellow civil engineering professor Shyamal Ghosh at the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati, Mr. Dutta has published the most recent climate change models of the Brahmaputra River basin. Using the known flood characteristics of the basin, they plugged in regional rainfall projections under the climate change scenario that assumes warming over the Indian subcontinent because of greenhouse gas concentrations.

The results look grim. The Brahmaputra valley will experience “longer floods and more flood events outside the monsoon period,” Mr. Dutta predicted. Not only will peak flows increase, but so will the incidence of pre-monsoon floods, which could jeopardize key production phases in the agricultural cycle.

The worst threat, he added, will not come from cataclysmic once-in-a century floods, but rather from increasing year-to-year volatility. “Five-year-period floods will have more change than the 50-year-period floods,” Mr. Dutta said. And some of the biggest impacts will happen at the tributary level, rather than on the main channel of the Brahmaputra.

“Many tributaries on the North Bank are changing course or transforming from a meandering river to a braided river,” he said. This can only make the floods “flashier, drastically changing the hazards,” he warned.

Right across the Indian Institute of Technology’s expansive academic complex, Arupjyoti Saikia, a historian, has reached much the same conclusion from a far more anecdotal, almost personalized approach. Freshly returned from a fellowship at Yale University’s Agrarian Studies program, Mr. Saikia is now writing a kind of biography of the Brahmaputra.

It’s a short biography, in geologic terms. If the Brahmaputra were a person, it would be a tempestuous teenager who frequents all-night raves during the wet season. Its youthful temperament reflects the young geology of its Himalayan catchment basin as much as the heavy monsoon rainfall it receives.

Viewed on the human time scale, on the other hand, the Brahmaputra presents an immemorial landscape that is in peril. Though the plains in Assam have been settled for thousands of years, Mr. Saikia noted that only in the last hundred have people lived so close to the river.

Population pressure on the land, he explained, has pushed people to migrate into areas vulnerable to flood. In the past, those who cultivated in the flood plains always migrated to higher land during flood season. But nowadays, Assam is much too crowded for people to make these seasonal migration shifts.

To screen the encroaching population from river hazards, the government of India went on a misguided embankment-building spree between the late 1940s through the 1970s.

People believed – and still do – that the embankments would protect them against floods. But time and again, that hope has proved false. Just this past flood season over 60 embankments broke, sending surging water into thatched-roof villages.

For at least four decades it has been clear to the technocrats that embankments spelled trouble, only compounding the hazards of the river while failing to tame it. But by the 1970s, “it was already too late; there was no going back,” Mr. Saikia lamented. “It permanently jeopardized the rhythm of the water.”

Yet “the Brahmaputra is still free,” Mr. Saikia said, sighing. Come monsoon time, “it can still play with its rhythm and it can dance as it likes.”

Jibi Pulu, who remembers the flowing waters that fed the rice paddy of his youth, knows this firsthand in his home region of the Dibang basin.

“See that plinth over there,” he said, pointing to a crumbling block of concrete atop an undercut bank. “Some Hindus tried to tame the river by building a Shiva temple there.” But just last year, the Dibang danced right over Nataraja, the lord of the cosmic dance.

Brian Orland’s dispatches will appear regularly in India Ink. Last month, he wrote about population growth along the Brahmaputra.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 13

NEWS In his State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to fight for a higher minimum wage, more government investment in schools and clean energy, and deficit reduction through spending cuts and tax increases. Mark Landler reports from Washington.

Whether or not Xi Jinping gets tough on North Korea could tell the United States what kind of leader he will be, and what kind of relationship he envisions with Washington. Jane Perlez reports from Beijing.

“It wasn’t one thing, but a whole combination of them” that caused Pope Benedict XVI to resign, a Vatican expert said. Scandals have battered the papacy relentlessly. Rachel Donadio reports from Vatican City.

Created five years ago to focus on training the armed forces of dozens of African nations and strengthening social, political and economic programs, the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command now finds itself on a more urgent mission: confronting a new generation of Islamist militants who are testing the United States’ resolve to fight terrorism without being drawn into a major conflict. Eric Schmitt reports from Niamey, Niger.

Seven top industrial nations, including the United States and Germany, pledged on Tuesday to let foreign exchange markets determine the value of their currencies. The statement eased fears in Japan, where officials had been under fire from some officials in Europe and the United States who said they were unfairly bringing down the yen’s value. James Kanter reports from Brussels and Annie Lowrey from Washington.

The Spanish Supreme Court ruled unexpectedly Tuesday that the previous government had gone too far in its pardon of Alfredo Sáenz, the chief executive of Banco Santander, reinstating his criminal record and throwing into question his continued tenure at the bank. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

Giuseppe Orsi of the the Italian state-controlled defense group Finmeccanica was arrested in an investigation centered on the sale of helicopters to the Indian government. David Jolly reports.

Ryanair, based in Dublin and Europe’s largest budget airline by number of passenger, said it had been informed at a meeting Tuesday with officials of the European Commission that Brussels “intends to prohibit” the airline’s nearly €700 million, or $942 million, bid for Aer Lingus. The company said its proposed concessions and remedies did not go far enough to allay antitrust concerns. Nicola Clark reports from Paris.

ARTS Valery Gergiev, the Russian conductor, is preparing to open the Mariinsky 2, his new theater for opera and ballet in St. Petersburg. Alison Smale reports.

FASHION In New York, collections are either beautiful expressions of a designer’s vision or forgettable shows suitable for those continuous loops in city cabs. Suzy Menkes reviews the shows.

SPORTS Wrestling, one of the earliest and most elemental Olympic sports, was dropped from the Summer Games on Tuesday in a stunning and widely criticized decision by the International Olympic Committee. Jeré Longman reports.

Jürgen Klopp has built a soccer club in Dortmund that consistently wins on an affordable payroll, so it is no surprise that many think he may soon head to one of the bigger clubs in Europe. Rob Hughes writes from London.

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IHT Rendezvous: In China, Shock and Acceptance Over Pope's Resignation

BEIJING — In China, where official relations with the Vatican are a “never-ending crisis,” as the Vatican Insider put it recently, the news of the resignation of Pope Benedict has been slow to spread. The Chinese state doesn’t recognize the Pope as the leader of China’s Catholics and has had its own “patriotic” church since the Communist Revolution in 1949.

But by noon Tuesday the news that rocked the world was arriving here, too. One priest’s reaction was accepting – even approving.

“I’m open-minded. You can retire as Pope,” said Father Yan, in a telephone interview from a Chinese province. (He can only be identified by his last name since speaking out about Roman Catholicism is politically sensitive in China.)

“When God makes us old, he doesn’t want us to work,” Father Yan said.

“People haven’t really talked about it here. It’s a sensitive issue because of relations, but it won’t impact on relations. The state church will accept it. You change a Pope and things go on for the state church,” he said. “But I think it’s very good to retire. It’s OK. He’s old.”

Another priest I called for reaction was stunned – he was hearing the news for the first time.

“I’m shocked. I don’t think I quite believe it,” said Father Dang in a telephone interview. (He too could only be identified by one name.)

“I think the reaction here won’t be too big,” was his immediate response. “But then again maybe it will be. I’m totally shocked.”

Many of China’s Catholics, who number about 12 million, “look two ways,” acknowledging the Pope’s spiritual leadership but the government’s de facto authority and, by extension the authority of the state church. In this slideshow, my colleague Sim Chi Yin presents beautiful images of a baptism at an official church, part of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Many Chinese people also worship in unofficial “underground” churches.

I explored this ongoing, modern-day “schism” in a column, finding that “many ordinary Catholics dislike the strife between Beijing and Rome and seem comfortable with a pragmatic blend of the two.”

Another reason the news of the Pope’s resignation, announced by him in Latin during what was supposed to be a routine meeting in Rome on Monday, has been slow to seep into China was because of the slowing effect of the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday, which began last Saturday. For days, Chinese, including Catholics, have been paying more attention to homegrown customs and family members than to world news.

“I haven’t actually checked the news in two days,” Father Dang said.

Chinacath.org, a Chinese language Web site for Catholics that is within the Great Firewall that blocks unwanted overseas Internet content, indicating it is officially approved, carried the news of the Pope Benedict’s pending departure on its homepage, with the text of his speech announcing his resignation, in English.

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IHT Rendezvous: Builder of China's 'Great Firewall' Finds His Holiday Greetings Spurned

BEIJING — Fang Binxing is known here as the “Father of the Wall,” that is, the Great Firewall — the sprawling system of technological controls in China that has created a parallel online world, or “Chinternet,” where global favorites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are blocked.

In fact, it’s fair to say that Mr. Fang is unpopular among quite a few of China’s hundreds of millions of netizens, though he does have his admirers, including among those who support the government’s large-scale efforts to “weiwen,” or maintain stability.

Just how unpopular he is was demonstrated again over the weekend when his New Year’s microblog greeting was promptly bombarded with messages telling him to “go to hell,” according to netizens (it wasn’t possible to read each message, but Mr. Fang’s post had been forwarded over 23,000 times at the time of writing).

Pithily, in one word repeated again and again, the critics said: “gun,” or “滚.” (The word literally means “roll,” or, in an officially accepted slang variation, “beat it.”)

“Fang Binxing sends everyone New Year’s greetings! May all be joyful and successful in the Year of the Snake!” he posted on his Sina Weibo, or microblog, account, on Saturday, continuing with salutations to his university (he is the president of the University of Posts and Telecommunications in Beijing) and a poem.

“Yesterday, a university president wished everyone Happy New Year on his microblog account and the result was he got over 10,000 forwards saying ‘go to hell,’ ” He Bing, deputy director of the School of Law at the China University of Political Science and Law, posted to his nearly 395,000 followers on Sina Weibo.

“As long as people like this continue to be the presidents of universities there’s no hope for China,” Mr. He’s post continued. By Tuesday afternoon it had been forwarded about 3,700 times.

Mr. Fang acknowledged in an interview in 2011 that he had designed major parts of the Great Firewall. He is a lightning rod for protest among the Internet-savvy who want broader freedom of speech.

He’s had eggs and a shoe thrown at him, and in 2011 had to close his newly opened microblog after thousands of users left comments within hours — almost all of them critical, the populist newspaper Global Times noted.

“I regard the dirty abuse as a sacrifice for my country,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Fang as saying.

Attention is growing around the world on how the Chinese state uses the Internet, with The Washington Post reporting today on a new intelligence assessment in the United States. The newspaper writes that according to a National Intelligence Estimate, the United States is the target of “a massive, sustained cyber-espionage campaign” and that China is “the country most aggressively seeking to penetrate the computer systems of American businesses and institutions to gain access to data that could be used for economic gain.”

The Post is one of a number of U.S. news organizations, including The New York Times, that recently reported having been subjected to cyberattacks believed to have Chinese origins. (The Times has been blocked in China since running a story last year about wealth accumulated by the family of the outgoing prime minister, Wen Jiabao.)

Back in Beijing, Mr. Fang hasn’t posted anything since his New Year greeting, so it isn’t clear how he feels about the reaction to it. Meanwhile, word continues to circulate that more “upgrades,” or tightening, of the Great Firewall lie ahead.

In December, several overseas-based companies that provide VPNs to both non-Chinese and Chinese users in the country (a VPN, or virtual private network, enables users to get around the Chinternet, or “cross the Wall” as it’s known here, by logging on via overseas servers) said their services had been interrupted.

In what some read as a warning, Mr. Fang appeared to tell Global Times that overseas-based companies offering VPNs to people in China must register with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

“I haven’t heard that any foreign companies have registered,” he said. Unregistered VPN service providers are not protected by Chinese law and any company running a VPN business should realize it has a responsibility to register, he said, according to Global Times.

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