IHT Quick Read: Dec. 1

NEWS For much of her youth, Mazarine Pingeot, daughter of the late French president François Mitterrand and his mistress, was a state secret. She would sneak into the Élysée Palace through a back door that led directly to Mr. Mitterand's private apartments; when she got a bicycle, bodyguards followed her on bicycles, too. Now 37, Ms. Pingeot, an author and philosophy professor, has published “Bon Petit Soldat” (“Good Little Soldier”), a diary that includes memories of that unusual childhood. “Being unable to share a secret makes this secret very heavy,” she tells Maïa de la Baume. “You protect it rather than protecting yourself.”

Lawmakers in Germany's lower house of Parliament easily passed the next round of financial support for Greece on Friday, despite growing doubt among members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition and opposition parties that the measures will be sufficient to resolve the Greek problem. Melissa Eddy reports from Berlin.

A delegation dispatched by China's new leader, Xi Jinping, met with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Friday, North Korean state media reported, amid signs that North Korea is stepping up its nuclear and long-range missile programs. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

Once regarded as a refuge for political mavericks, the UK Independence Party, which wants Britain to quit the European Union, made strong gains in three by-elections held this week, adding still more pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron to take a tough line on Europe. Stephen Castle reports from London.

A nephew of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident now living in the United States, was sentenced to more than three years in prison on Friday for assaulting a government official who broke into the family's home in April during a frenzied search for Mr. Chen, according to relatives. Chen Kegui, 33, was convicted after a brief closed-door trial in Shandong Province, not far from th e farmhouse where paid thugs kept his uncle illegally confined for 18 months. Andrew Jacobs reports from Beijing.

ARTS A chunk of the stock of antiquities accumulated by the dealer Joseph Uzan recently went on sale at Drouot in Paris, and the results suggest the end of an era in which objects were appreciated for their own sake, Souren Melikian writes. Many delightful and inexpensive pieces that once would have induced connoisseurs to compete against each other went unnoticed, and those that sold made laughably modest prices.

SPORTS Formula One somehow reinvented itself in 2012, coming up with a scenario that again defied all the predictions. In the third year of its effort to improve the show by changing the technical regulations to encourage cars to pass each other, it created the most unpredictable racing so far, Brad Spurgeon writes.

Steamy Turkish TV Drama Draws Fire From Prime Minister

“Magnificent Century,” a sort of Ottoman-era “Sex and the City” set during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, is wildly popular in Turkey and across the Middle East. But one person who is decidedly not a fan is Turkey's conservative prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is so incensed at the show's steamy depiction of the heroic sultan that he has urged legal action against the series.

In the latest cultural battle to erupt in Turkey, Mr. Erdogan last weekend slammed the lavish historical drama, which chronicles the palace and harem intrigue swirling around the sultan, including the rise of Hurrem, the slave who became his powerful wife. Suleiman ruled the Ottoman empire from 1520 to 1566 at the height of its glory and is revered as a valiant warrior and wise Kanuni, or Lawgiver.

Responding to criticism from the opposition that Turkey's intervention in the region was undermining the country's security, Mr. Erdogan baffled some observers b y apparently conflating the critique of Turkey's robust foreign policy with the portrayal of a debauched Suleiman on the show. Suleiman, he seemed to underline, had been a brave and adventurous conqueror.

Critics “ask why are we dealing with the affairs of Iraq, Syria and Gaza,” Mr. Erdogan said in a speech Sunday at the opening of an airport in western Turkey, according to Reuters. “They know our fathers and ancestors through ‘Magnificent Century,' but we don't know such a Suleiman. He spent 30 years on horseback, not in the palace, not what you see in that series.”

He said that the director of the series and owner of the channel that broadcasts it had been warned, that judicial authorities had been alerted and that a judicial decision was expected. “Those who toy with these values should be taught a lesson within the premises of law,” he said, according to The Hurriyet Daily News.

Cultural critics and political rivals railed against Mr. Erdogan, accusing him of cultural authoritarianism and censorship. Muharrem Ince, deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People's Party, accused Mr. Erdogan of behaving like a sultan, saying that he was jealous of the series' popularity and determined to be the only sultan in the country. Mr. Erdogan, whose governing party has Islamic roots, has sought to embrace and rehabilitate the Ottoman Empire, a period of grandeur when the sultans claimed the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world before the empire's ignominious decline by World War I.

Turkey's culture and tourism ministry responded that popular Turkish soap operas were generating tens of millions of dollars in export income for Turkey and were widely watched across the region, expanding the exposure of the country. “Magnificent Century” attracts a third of the prime-time audience in Turkey and draws an audience of up to 150 million from Cairo to Kosovo, analysts said.

Even the sultan's real heirs appeared more sanguine than Mr. Erdogan. Osman Selaheddin Osmanoglu, son of the last prince in the Ottoman Palace, told The Hurriyet Daily News that while he did not appreciate the lascivious portrayal of his ancestors, he wasn't all that bothered as it was only a fictional work. “I am following the series,” he said. “But I don't take it seriously since it is only a soap opera.”

The show is no stranger to controversy. After it was first broadcast in January last year, the Supreme Board of Radio and Television said it had received more than 70,000 complaints, and said that Show TV, the channel broadcasting the series, had wrongly exposed “the privacy of a historical person” and owed the public an apology.

Mr. Erdogan at the time called the program disrespectful and “an effort to show our history in a negative light to the younger generations.” Dozens of egg-throwing protesters chanted “God is great” outside th e Show TV studios.

Some viewers were irate because the series showed the Sultan drinking alcohol - banned in Islam - and womanizing with concubines in the harem. They also complained that the scriptwriters were engaging in dangerous and disrespectful historical revisionism.

Melis Behil, a film studies professor at Kadir Has University, said in an interview that the show, which has helped spur a cultural revival of the Ottoman Empire across the country, had been inspired by the success of historical dramas like ones about the Tudors and thus focused on the manners and personal lives of the characters as opposed to the traditional battlefield scenes of many Turkish epics.

“The religious right are complaining that Suleiman was a great leader and all you are showing is his sex life and private parts,” she said.

Our Brussels Correspondents Answer Readers\' Questions About the Euro, Europe and the Union

The news this week from besieged Europe was - relatively - good, sort of. Yields on Italian government bonds - the amount Italy has to pay investors to assume a piece of their debt - fell to the lowest levels in more than a year. The German parliament, the Bundestag, approved Germany's latest contribution to bailout broke Greece. And though unemployment in the euro zone reached record heights, the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, predicted today that the euro zone's economy would begin to recover in the latter part of next year.

But how long will it last? We have been here before, a lot. The market decides things are OK for the moment, before souring on Europe again. The spectacle of European leaders failing to agree on the outlines of a European Union budget came only last week - and that specter will rear its head again next year when those same leaders have to fashion a budget, and Greece will have to stay afloat, and Spain, Italy and Portugal will have to continue implementing structural reforms, and France may face a reckoning of its own, and Britain….Well, you understand.

We recently asked readers for their questions about the future of the European experiment. To bring some long-term clarity to all the short-term clutter, our Brussels correspondents, James Kanter and Andrew Higgins, have supplied the answers.

Judy W. from Cumberland, Maryland, asked, “Do you think the U.K. will end up leaving the E.U. and would be in their best interest to leave?”

Well, Judy, opinion polls in the Britain certainly suggest that hostility to the E.U. is mounting and nobody has ever lost votes in the U.K. by campaigning against Brussels. In fact, our colleague Stephen Castle reports today that the UKIP, “the party that wants Britain to quit the European Union, made spectacular gains in three by-elections held Thursday, increasing pressure on the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, to take a tough li ne on Europe.”

But saying and doing are two different things. And should a referendum on Britain's membership in the European Union be held, I doubt a majority would vote to actually pull out altogether. Britain would gain a financial windfall by leaving as it would no longer have to make annual contributions to the E.U. budget, but it would likely pay a very heavy economic price if it separates itself from the “single European market.” Potential losses will, I suspect, tilt opinion away from the exit, no matter how suspicious many Britons are of the “European project.” And, if a British withdrawal ever became an imminent possibility, the influential banking lobby in the City of London would pull out all the stops to try and make sure this doesn't happen. It would want to make sure Britain is not absent from a decision-making process in Brussels that has a direct impact on global banking. Having financiers and hedge fund managers on its side will not endear t he E.U. to the general public but would help mobilize money for a referendum campaign. (Andrew Higgins)

Abo in Paris and Judy W. got into a mini-debate over what countries contribute how much to Europe and how much they get back, leading to the question, “Does it make sense for countries to look at what they ‘put in' and what they ‘get out' as far as subsidies and benefits?”

The question goes to the heart of why the European Union summit aimed at agreeing to a seven-year budget for the Union collapsed last week. Net contributor countries like Britain, Germany and Sweden were at loggerheads with net recipient countries like Poland, Lithuania and Spain over the size of the budget - about "1 trillion between 2014 and 2020, or $1.3 trillion. Britain was fighting hard to maintain an annual rebate that was worth about "3.5 billion last year. Denmark was demanding a rebate, too. But that kind of haggling is mostly pointless, according to the European Commission, the Union's policymaking arm.

The commission says none of what countries “put in” and “get out” truly reflects the advantages of being part of a single market of 500 million people. As an example, the commission says the benefits of E.U. membership to the British economy are many times higher than its annual net contribution of around "7 billion (after subtracting the rebate and after subtracting the money from the E.U. budget spent in Britain in 2011). The commission also says there are many hidden benefits to membership such as common rules on health, environment and consumer protection. Of course, the commission has a dog in this fight: Its refusal to trim its costs, including generous salaries and pensions, earned it a rebuke last week from British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said its officials continue to “exist as if in a parallel universe.” (James Kanter)

A popular question among readers - and markets - continues to be, “Wouldn't the E.U. be better off if Greek were made to leave the euro?” A related question we received was: “Why doesn't the E.U. draw up sensible plans for a country to leave the euro?”

To the second question, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands suggested today that a country should indeed be able to leave the euro and stay in the European Union.

Most observers assume that plans for Greece to leave the euro zone have been drawn up. But there are a host of reasons why such a plan hasn't been put into effect. One is that the euro project is as much political as economic. For many European policymakers, it's anathema that a country that is part of a flagship project for ever closer Union like the single currency could be shown the door. There also are fears that removing Greece from the euro area would actually do very little to solve some of the problems underlying the single currency. Once Greece goes market speculators could drive up the bond spreads of other c ountries like Portugal and Italy with economies that are a lot weaker than those of countries like Germany, which could still force the euro zone to unravel. (J.K.)

Judy W. also asked, “With the current impasse over the budget, is there any thought given to stopping E.U. enlargement since so many of the new countries are in need of large subsidies? Do you think Turkey will ever be admitted to the EU or will its candidacy just fade away?”

Turkish accession has been moving at a snail's pace since formal negotiations began with the government in Ankara seven years ago. Currently the process is in a deep freeze partly because Cyprus holds the rotating E.U. presidency and wants a solution to the Turkish occupation of the northern third of the island. Yet Turkey, too, is looking beyond the E.U. as its economy booms.

That's all the more understandable when you recall that Turkey first applied to become a member in 1987. Rather than Turkey, the countries most l ikely to be next are from the Western Balkans. Croatia already is set to join in mid-2013. Brussels officials say that refusing membership for candidates like Serbia would be foolish because that would add to the risks of instability in the region. Containing violence there could be costlier than Serbian membership.

One of the biggest concerns about enlargement is whether newer members from Eastern and Central Europe are sticking by the rules on pluralism, human rights and openness. Cases of corruption in Bulgaria and suggestions of an authoritarian drift in Hungary may be factors dampening the appetite for enlargement more than the costs of welcoming additional countries with lower levels of economic development. (J.K.)

France Abuzz Over the Whopper\'s Return

LONDON - Eat your hearts out, gastronomes. The topic du jour, according to social media and headlines in the French press is the return to France of Burger King, the American fast food chain, after more than 15 years.

From enthusiastic posts on Twitter to sociological reflections in the ever-so-serious Nouvel Observateur, France this week has been celebrating, or in some cases lamenting, the second coming of the Whopper.

Julieta Salgado in Brooklyn was among those who spotted the trans-Atlantic trend:

“It's official. Burger King is returning to France,” proclaimed Capital, a French business magazine, headlining the announcement on Thursday that the Miami-based chain is to open two outlets, in Marseille and in Champagne, in an agreement with Italy's Autogrill restaurant operator.

The confirmation came after a mounting wave of rumors that served to underline France's love-hate relationship with all things American.

Ahead of the announcement, the Nouvel Observateur dedicated a 1,400-word article to the speculation, in which the magazine's Olivier Cimelière pondered whether it reflected an orchestrated marketing buzz or a recurring hoax.

So what's all the fuss about?

Mr. Cimelière asked the same question and concluded that ever since the chain ended a 17-year presence in the French market in 1997, its eventual return had taken on the aspects of an urban legend on a par with the elusive Himalayan yeti.

“The outlets closed but a myth was born among French aficionados,” Mr. Cimelière wrote. “Burger King is in their eyes the sole and authentic hamburger with the taste of America. Everything else is just a pale imitation - junkfood!”

The chain had pioneered hamburgers in France by opening its first restaurant on the Champs Elysées in 1980 at a time when most Parisians were still heading at lunchtime to mom-and-pop corner bistros.

Since then brands such as Quick Burger and what the French call “MacDo” have spread to satisfy the country's increasing appetite for fast food, to the despair of culinary purists. The sector even has an online magazine - Snacking.fr.

In 1999, José Bové, a union activist, famously led demonstrators who dismantled a McDonald's restaurant in southwest France just days before it was due to open in a protest against globalization.

A decade later, McDonald's succeeded in outraging fine art lovers and gourmets alike by announcing plans to open an outlet near the Louvre.

The buzz over Burger King, however, is a rough indicator that for every French person who decries the Americanization of French culture there is another who embraces the country's obsession with Americana, whether it comes in the form of fast food or Hollywood film noir.

Marion de M., an “engaged citizen” also writing in the Nouvel Observateur, was not sure whether the burger brand's return was good news or not.

She believ ed the hype was the result of a combination of absence and rumor. “Our best memories of the Whopper are revived, making us forget the sweet, post-onion rings breath.”

Burger King's return was like “a shared collective joy,” she wrote. “To say you're happy about it means signing up to that community. You're part of a group. It's cool (or you think it is).”

She said she knew plenty of people who would make a pilgrimage to Burger King. “They'll go once, maybe twice and then BK will become a banal part of their lives. They'll pay no more attention and the BK myth will be over.”

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 30

NEWS Security forces in Myanmar mounted a violent raid Thursday against Buddhist monks and villagers protesting the expansion of a copper mine, using incendiary devices to set fire to protesters' encampments, according to witnesses. The crackdown was the largest since President Thein Sein's government came to power 20 months ago, and analysts said its brutality - online photos showed monks with badly seared skin - could hamper the president's efforts to convince the country he has made a clean break from the military governments of the past. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

After President François Hollande and his industry minister raised the possibility that the French state would take over an ArcelorMittal steel factory in a dispute over the foreign company's plans to close two blast furnaces, union workers in another industry - shipbuilding - are calling for the government to seize their South Korean employer's property. The French corporate establishment i s bracing for a global backlash, if the nationalization impulse takes hold. David Jolly reports from Paris.

A long-awaited report on the behavior of British newspapers embroiled in the phone hacking scandal recommended on Thursday a new system of press regulation that would be backed by parliamentary statute, setting up what threatened to become an acrimonious debate about curbs on Britain's 300-year-old tradition of broad press freedom. Weighing in at 1,987 pages, the report reprised nine months of testimony at the inquiry led by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, who was appointed at the height of the scandal that erupted around the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid. John F. Burns and Alan Cowell report from London.

Jasmine Lee, who was born Jasmine Bacurnay in the Philippines, made South Korean history in April when she became the first naturalized citizen - and the first non-ethnic Korean - to win a seat in the country's National Assembly. Her election re flected one of the most significant demographic shifts in South Korea's modern history, as a country that once took pride in being of “one blood” faces the prospect of becoming a multiethnic society, with one marriage in 10 now involving a foreign spouse. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

British banks need more capital to protect them against fallout from the crisis in the euro zone, the Libor rate-manipulation litigation and other potential costs, the Bank of England warned in a report Thursday. The central bank said that current capital ratios at major British banks were probably insufficient because possible future losses and costs of bad loans or other past business decisions might be bigger than expected. Julia Werdigier reports from London.

ARTS In his latest film, “Hyde Park on the Hudson,” Bill Murray plays President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he manages an affair with a distant cousin, a visit from George VI of Britain and the crippling effects o f his polio. It is a part that almost no one, least of all Mr. Murray, expected him to play, and it again raises the question: Why does he do what he does? Dave Itzkoff asked him.

SPORTS The latest symbol of the college football arms race is not the coaches' salaries themselves, but rather the money that university officials are spending to buy out those contracts when a coach falters. Jeré Longman reports.

From the Ashes, Tibetan Buddhism Rises in the Heart of the Forbidden City

On a freezing Tuesday this week, dozens of special guests from China's cultural, political and business elites gathered within the blood-red walls of the Forbidden City. They were there for the opening of the newly restored Hall of Rectitude, the center of Tibetan Buddhism during China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing.

After a fire in 1923, the hall and about a half-dozen surrounding buildings that comprise the Buddhist architectural complex lay in ruin for nearly a century in the northwestern corner of the 8,000-room former imperial palace.

After six years of restoration funded by the Hong Kong-based China Heritage Fund, the Zhong Zheng Dian, as it's known in Chinese, is back, rebuilt from the ground up, though it won't be open to the public for at least two years according to officials at the Forbidden City's Palace Museum, the Beijing News said (in Chinese).

The opening comes at a tense time in relations between the Beijing government and people in th e Tibet autonomous region. At least three more Tibetans burned themselves to death in protest of Chinese rule this week, according to a Web site run by Tibetan exiles.

This brings the number of self-immolations by Tibetans to about 90, according to overseas-based Tibet advocacy groups. Significantly, the protests are taking place outside the autonomous region in the Tibetan-populated homeland provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu, which were once relatively peaceful, said Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibetan studies at Columbia University. This presents a “very dramatic issue for China and its strategies,” Mr. Barnett said.

The painful state of Sino-Tibetan relations wasn't mentioned at the event on Tuesday afternoon, where the guests included the China-born, naturalized American Nobel prize winner, Chen Ning Yang (Physics, 1957); a deputy foreign minister, Cui Tiankai; and Shan Jixiang, the recently appointed head of the Palace Museum, who has big plans fo r the institution.

Historically and religiously, the event was deeply significant.

Much of China's claim to Tibet rests on the close relationship that existed between Beijing and Lhasa during the reign of three Qing emperors - Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong - in the 17th and 18th centuries. Tibet's religious leader, the Dalai Lama, exercised great influence on the emperors during that time, in a patron-priest relationship.

Artistically, too, it's significant: the palace's large collection of Tibetan art and artifacts, including ritual worship objects, once again have a unified home in three galleries, as well as a small research space, the Research Center for Tibetan Buddhist Heritage.

“It's like a home-coming for the artifacts,” said Gerald Szeto, an architect at the Beijing-based firm of Mo Atelier Szeto, who did the interior design of the galleries. “For a hundred years the whole area was left fallow,” he said.

The Palace Museum says it has about 20,000 Tibetan Buddha statues in its collection dating from the 7th to the early 20th centuries, and over 1,000 tangkas, or religious paintings. Some were on display on Tuesday, including an intricate, highly-colored, 18th century, three-dimensional mandala of brass and enamel (above), and tangkas painted in gold.

“The art and ancient artifacts are very mysterious to the outside world because they've never been shown before,” Luo Wenhua, a curator and researcher of Tibetan and Buddhist art at the museum, said in a telephone interview.

“There are written records for almost every piece in the imperial collection, including where it is from, which year it was made, and the name of donors, its history and so on,” said Mr. Luo, who has in the past called for greater protection for Tibetan Buddhist history in the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai, here in Chinese.

“Some have very detailed information. This makes the pieces mor e precious, no matter what their artistic or academic value, because compared to other similar stuff in the rest of the world there are clear clues as to their identities,” he said.

“It supports the study of Buddhist culture in Tibet and Mongolia, and its influence in China.”

Europe Moves to Curb Power of Ratings Agencies, Sort of

LONDON - European legislators this week struck the latest blow in the Continent's battle with the international ratings agencies by approving new controls that one commentator said on Thursday marked the end of their “golden age.”

The measures follow a string of downgrades of the sovereign debt of European states that have dented national pride as much as the ability of governments to raise money in the marketplace.

The plan principally targets the “big three” U.S.-based agencies - Fitch, Moody's, and Standard & Poor's - which are accused by their European critics of exercising too much power and not enough responsibility in assessing national and corporate debt.

They have been accused of exacerbating Europe's debt woes by issuing downgrades at delicate moments of the euro crisis, and their judgment has been challenged over the top scores they awarded to doubtful debt ahead of the 2008 financial meltdown.

In the latest downgrade, Moody's las t week took away France's prized AAA rating, citing the country's loss of competitiveness and excessive regulation.

Under measures approved by the European Parliament and awaiting endorsement by European Union governments, the agencies face new rules that include making it easier for investors to sue them if they get it wrong.

In a possible foretaste of that, prosecutors in southern Italy were reported to have called for seven executives at Standard & Poor's and Fitch to be tried over downgrades that were made to Italy's sovereign debt rating last year.

“In tough times it's natural that people are looking for a scapegoat for all the turmoil,” Management Today, a British business news Web site, said of the Italian case.

Standard & Poor's reportedly dismissed the Italian claims as “entirely baseless and without any merit.”

The latest moves in Europe came after the big three warned that the United States could be facing its own downgrade as it approaches the so-called fiscal cliff.

The measures approved by the European Parliament would bar the agencies from rating corporate or national debt if they did not have sufficient quality information on which to base their findings.

They would also be subject to a timetable of when they could publish their unsolicited assessments of European debt.

The new rules would also bar agencies from rating companies in which their shareholders have a major stake. That could prevent ratings being issued on Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. by Moody's, an agency in which the Sage of Omaha has a 12.75 percent stake.

The Financial Times questioned how such rules will be implemented in practice and how they would apply to ratings in the United States.

Michel Barnier, Europe's internal market commissioner, welcomed agreement on rules that aimed to reduce “the over-reliance on ratings, eradicate conflicts of interest, and establish a civil liabili ty regime.”

Others were more skeptical about the impact of what, in the end, was a compromise deal that did not go as far as some European critics of the agencies wanted.

“This reform is no big breakthrough in changing the rating agency market,” Sven Giegold, a German member of the European parliament, told Reuters. “It's a step towards better supervision but there are no big structural changes.”

Les Echos, the French business daily, also suggested that the Europeans appeared to have lost interest in setting up their own rival agency to replace the big three. It said there was no longer much talk about that project, which the European Commission is due to report on in 2016.

Norbert Gaillard, an economist who specializes in the sector, said many investors were concerned about the creation of a public or quasi-public agency that would have to be set up from scratch.

“You might as well say it's been put in the cupboard and will never se e the light of day,” he told Les Echos.

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 29

NEWS Leaders of the Egyptian assembly drafting a new constitution said Wednesday that they would complete their work by the next morning, a move that appeared aimed at trying to defuse a political crisis that has gripped the country since the president issued an edict that put his decisions above judicial scrutiny. David D. Kirkpatrick reports from Cairo.

The European Commission on Wednesday approved a payment of 37 billion euros, or $48 billion, from the euro zone bailout fund to four Spanish banks on the condition that they lay off thousands of employees and close offices. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid and James Kanter from Brussels.

With Greece's coffers nearly empty, the government said Wednesday that it would have to borrow 10 billion to 14 billion euros to pay for a debt buyback that its international creditors have demanded in exchange for releasing more bailout money to the troubled country. Niki Kitsantonis reports from Athens and Liz Alderman fro m Paris.

The new Khalifa shipping port in Abu Dhabi is part of a large-scale project meant to revamp transportation and trade in the emirate. Sara Hamdan reports from Abu Dhabi.

Google is fighting a proposal that would force it and other online aggregators to pay German newspaper and magazine publishers to display snippets of news in Web searches. Kevin J. O'Brien reports from Berlin.

The United States government has temporarily banned the British oil company BP from new federal contracts, citing the company's “lack of business integrity.” John M. Broder reports from Washington and Stanley Reed from London.

This year has ranked among the nine warmest since records began more than 160 years ago, continuing a trend for the planet that is increasing the dangers of extreme weather events, according to United Nations meteorologists. Nick Cumming-Bruce reports from Geneva.

ARTS Many of the artworks owned by the aristocratic Alba family will b e displayed starting Friday in a new gallery space within Madrid's city hall - an unusual event for Spain, which does not have the tradition of historic British families who open their properties and collections to the general public. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

Indonesia and Others See \'Embarrassing\' Rise in H.I.V. Infections

HONG KONG - A new United Nations report on H.I.V.-AIDS has some encouraging findings, notably dramatic reductions in new infections in southern Africa, although several countries in Asia now have infection rates 25 percent higher than they were a decade ago.

One of those countries is Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation. The health minister, Nafsiah Mboi, called the U.N. findings “so embarrassing,” especially in light of large expenditures on prevention programs in Indonesia.

“I don't know what mistakes I have made,” she told reporters. “It was shocking to me.”

Statistics from Indonesia's National AIDS Commission cited by The Jakarta Post show that condom use remains low, especially consistent use among sex workers. Ms. Nafsiah, the paper said, has backed the distribution of free condoms to young people, an effort opposed by conservative lawmakers and religious groups in the predominantly Muslim country.

Cho Kah Sin, the co untry director for the Unaids agency, suggested that Indonesia's infection numbers appear higher because the epidemic reached full force there later than it did in other countries.

Another country with worrisome statistics is the Philippines.

Teresita Marie Bagasao, head of the Manila office of Unaids, told The Philippine Daily Inquirer that “while the absolute number of H.I.V. infections in the Philippines is still relatively low, the rate of increase in the number of cases is a cause for concern.”

The Philippine Department of Health said there were an estimated 600 H.I.V. cases in 2001. Last year, the number of new infections was 4,600.

“The Philippines is still one of only seven countries in the world to have recorded a sharp increase in the number of H.I.V. cases,” Ms. Bagasao said. “While other countries managed to stabilize their epidemics, the Philippines still needs to muster the political will to face the challenge posed by this gro wing epidemic.”

The news site Rappler, citing a national health survey, reported that “the proliferation of social media networks and online dating sites in the Philippines have also made casual sexual encounters extremely accessible among the MSM (men who have sex with men) community.”

The U.N. report, issued in conjunction with World AIDS Day this Saturday, shows nine countries with at least 25 percent increases in infection rates since 2001. Six of those countries are in Asia - Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - in addition to Georgia, Guinea-Bissau and Moldova.

Some 34 million people were living with H.I.V. last year, compared to 29.4 million in 2001, the report said.

“Still, 25 countries have witnessed a decline of 50 percent or more in new H.I.V. infections since 2001,” according to the Web site CSR-Asia. “Among the countries with the greatest declines are Papua New Guinea, Thailand, India and Cambodia.”

As Donald G. McNeil Jr. reported in The Times, the annual U.N. report shows that “globally, progress is steady but slow.”

“By the usual measure of whether the fight against AIDS is being won,” he wrote, “it is still being lost: 2.5 million people became infected last year, while only 1.4 million received lifesaving treatment for the first time.”

Donald cited comments by Michel Sidibé, the executive director of Unaids, about the successes in reducing infection rates, particularly in Africa:

The most important factor, Mr. Sidibé said, was not nationwide billboard campaigns to get people to use condoms or abstain from sex. Nor was it male circumcision, a practice becoming more common in Africa.

Rather, it was focusing treatment on high-risk groups. While saving babies is always politically popular, saving gay men, drug addicts and prostitutes is not, so presidents and religious leaders often had to be per suaded to help them. Much of Mr. Sidibé's nearly four years in his post has been spent doing just that.

Many leaders are now taking “a more targeted, pragmatic approach,” he said, and are “not blocking people from services because of their status.”

The Chinese health authorities last week ordered hospitals to stop refusing treatment to H.I.V. positive patients, state media reported.

The order came after social-media messages began circulating about a 25-year-old man with lung cancer who was denied surgery at a hospital in Tianjin because he was H.I.V. positive. He went to another hospital, did not reveal his infection and got the surgery, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

The U.N. report said the number of people on H.I.V. treatment in China has increased nearly 50 percent in the last year.

An excerpt from a recent report on NPR:

New infections in China have nearly quadrupled since 20 07, the report found. HIV prevalence is still generally low in China compared to that in many African countries, but China had nearly 40,000 new diagnoses in 2011, and the steady incline is concerning.

“There is a significant epidemic in men having sex with men in China, which happens in almost all of the major cities,” said Dr. Bernard Schwartlander, a director at Unaids. “The Chinese are very pragmatic people. They have recognized the problem, and they have started a strong and proactive program to reach these populations.”

“They are completely controlling the epidemic among people who are injecting drugs,” said Mr. Sidibé. Even so, the epidemic is growing among homosexual men, he said, with over 30 percent of the new infections occurring among them.

New Geometry in Women\'s Fashion

Go RunwayStripes, checks and digitally generated prints all came down the spring runways.

When I was a sweet 7 years old, my doll drawings were all curves. I drew curly hair, circular eyes, puff-sleeved dresses with full skirts. Even the shoes were round-toed, not pointy like Cinderella's glass slippers. Today, however, any little girl who has her mind set on a career in fashion would do well to add a ruler and a T square to her box of crayons.

Were there anything but straight lines in the spring-summer collections that will hit the stores by the end of the holiday season? The cut was streamlined - lean tunics and pants were practically ubiquito us. Blouses were mostly crisp and collared rather than the full-sleeved peasant variety. Dresses followed a narrow A-line and stood away from the body.

Then there were all of those intersecting prints: straight lines, bold squares or diamond shapes, often raked at an angle (and often inspired by the Miu Miu collection from last season). Sure, polka dots are still around - the residue of Marc Jacobs's fascination with the work of the obsessive Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and his collaboration with her for Louis Vuitton. But one look at Jacobs's Vuitton collection for spring and you have the motif of the entire season ahead: dresses with stripes and checks and one, two, three different hem lengths. As the models descended a pair of escalators at the Vuitton show in Paris, there were nothing but straight lines as far as the eye could see. Jacobs says he was inspired by the artist Daniel Buren's installation of round pegs in the gardens of the Palais Royal, but in fact th ose clothes - not to mention the vertical and horizontal lines in Jacobs's namesake collection - brought to mind the Op Art era of the 1960s.

The geometry of fashion favors either a compass or a ruler. Had I grown up a hundred years ago, at the end of the belle époque, my rounded drawings would have been perfectly in style: circular hats balanced on pouffed up-dos, a bust swelling out like a balcony and a bustle at the rear. The 1920s gal swapped curves for angles, with straight shimmy dresses and neat, cropped hair. This kind of straight-edge dressing may go in and out of fashion, but it always signals a forward march. In the 1960s, linear looks of the space age made a dynamic thrust against the ladylike clothes of the postwar period - all nipped-in New Look jackets and big skirts - just as broad shoulders and sharp tailoring of the '80s would knock out the floppy Woodstock look.

The one word that defines spring 2013 is “graphic. ” If I shut my eyes and wait for fashion images to pop up, I see first the checkered Louis Vuitton collection, then Junya Watanabe's dynamic color blocks on athletic stretch sportswear. I pick up that color blocking again on the zippered, calf-high boots at Jil Sander. I see stripes cutting through the southern Italian poster prints at Dolce & Gabbana; complex, crafted pieces-of-a-puzzle at Proenza Schouler; and the carefree stripes, blocks and zigzags from Yoshiyuki Miyamae at Issey Miyake. But most of all, I see black lines, zapped like strips of electrical tape over airy pink chiffon at Christopher Kane. There could not be a more symbolic way of declaring that fashion is x-ing out femininity.

Why now? The tougher and more masculine geometric angle is a direct response to the girly, fluttery dress-and-cardigan look of the early 2000s. It is also the result of technology. Color blocking achieves a new dimension when it is superimposed on a floral pattern or intermin gled with other graphic prints. Similarly, the sort of body mapping, best illustrated by the queen of prints Mary Katrantzou, could not have been achieved before the advent of digital design. When prints and grids fit convincingly on a garment whose silhouette already succeeds in flattening the body onto one smooth plane, the geometry adds up to a modern look.

So if I take a step back to my childhood, how would my doll drawing look now? An elongated rectangle, crisscrossed with squares and stripes set at an angle. The head is outlined by a sharp bob. The feet might be in pumps with a square block of a heel and a ball as decoration.

Note to you American Dolls: time for an update.

Europe Divided Ahead of U.N. Palestinian Vote

LONDON - Spain has followed France in announcing it will support a Palestinian bid for enhanced status at the United Nations when the issue goes to a vote of the General Assembly.

Within hours, however, Britain indicated on Wednesday that it would abstain unless the Palestinians met its conditions for a “yes” vote.

After the announcements from Paris and Madrid, the Palestinians could have been forgiven for spotting an emerging consensus among the Europeans in favor of its bid on Thursday to achieve recognition as a non-member observer state.

But Britain's likely abstention served to underline the continuing divisions within Europe, some tactical and others fundamental, over how to advance the Mideast peace process. European governments remain almost equally divided over how to address the issue of upgrading Palestine's status. The United States has made it clear it will veto the proposal.

William Hague, the British foreign minister, said he was still prepared to vote in favor if he received assurances that the Palestinians would immediately return to the negotiating table with Israel and not attempt to use their enhanced U.N. status to pursue legal action against Israel for its conduct in the occupied territories.

There is nothing quite like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for highlighting the difficulties of achieving a common foreign policy among the 27 members of the European Union.

The divisions were apparent in a vote late last year in which 11 European states voted to allow the Palestinians to join UNESCO, the U.N.'s cultural heritage body. Five countries were opposed and 11 abstained.

Announcing Spain's intention to support enhanced status for the Palestinians on Wednesday, José Manuel Garcia-Margallo, the foreign minister, said Madrid would have preferred that the European Union vote together.

“Up to the last second we have been working to achieve consensus among the 27 member s tates,” he told Parliament. “It was not possible and we have had to take the unilateral option.”

Pro-Israeli stalwarts such as the Netherlands have said in advance that they will not support the Palestinian bid. Frans Timmermans, the Dutch foreign minister, said it would not contribute to the peace process.

As long-term Middle East-watchers are fond of remarking, the peace process is sadly all process and no peace.

But the failure of a long run of now almost forgotten initiatives to achieve a lasting peace, and the lack of a common position among the Europeans, has not deterred the Continent's leaders from insisting on a central role in attempts to resolve the conflict.

The European Union is one quarter of the so-far largely ineffectual Middle East Quartet. Non-E.U. Norway oversaw the Oslo peace process, and the 1991 Middle East peace conference was held in Madrid.

Since then, Europe has become the major source of the funds that prop up th e economy of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Following the latest round of Israeli raids against Gaza, the European taxpayer is likely to pick up much of the bill for putting the territory back together.

But, in spite of this diplomatic and financial commitment, Europe remains in, at best, a supporting role in the peace process amid occasional efforts to elbow its way to the front, as in the long-forgotten Venice Declaration of 1980.

The Palestinians have an interest in bringing Europe into the debate over issues such as U.N. status. On the broader issue of a comprehensive peace, Israel is insistent that only the United States is acceptable as the ultimate mediator.

Mr. Hague acknowledged the centrality of the United States when he told the British Parliament on Wednesday that he had urged Washington to launch a new peace initiative in the region.

Germany's Der Spiegel, writing in September ahead of the first statement by a preside nt of the European Council to the U.N. General Assembly, correctly predicted that Herman van Rompuy would avoid any new policy on Israeli-Palestinian peace for fear of stirring up European divisions.

The omission, on a central issue before the world body, the German weekly wrote, “shows how at odds the Europeans remain on the Palestinian question.”

The Source of Congo\'s Bleeding

Yet another of those recurrent headlines just surfaced - “Congo Slips Into Chaos Again as Rebels Gain” - and I tried to add up the death toll since I first covered the Congo in 1967. It can approach 10 million, depending on how you count. Then I tried to work out why.

It is too easy to blame an innate heart of darkness or a soul poisoned by King Leopold's colonial cruelty. That leaves out the part about how big powers did - and do - geopolitics.

When Belgium freed Congo in 1960, its leader, Patrice Lumumba, veered left. CIA and Belgian agents helped to kill him. In the mayhem that followed, Washington backed Joseph-Desire Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko) and stuck by him almost to the bitter end. The chosen despot, various U.S. diplomats told me over the decades, provided stability.

This all requires a book, not a blog post. But among a half century of uncounted faceless victims, I focus on a single name, Baudouin Kayembe. Each week, his Présence Congolaise reported on what was going wrong. He was my stringer in 1967, but I wished that, instead, he had been president.

Gentle and wise, Baudouin chose words cautiously. But his message was clear. The country was preposterously rich in minerals and good land. With tribal accommodation and less obscene thievery by those in power, it could help a whole continent lift itself a notch above poverty.

Baudouin made so much sense that Mobutu threw him in prison, and soon after he was dead. Mobutu's looting rose into the billions, and foreign mercenaries beat back serial rebellion. Western donors bought his loyalty to counter Soviet incursion elsewhere in Africa. Large European and American companies made large profits.

Eventually, and inevitably, the Mobutu linchpin was unplugged. And then, the complex processes of Rwanda, Uganda, and long-exiled Congo warlords went into the mix.

There is, of course, much more to it. Within artificial borders drawn generations earl ier in Europe, traditionally hostile tribes don't accommodate without disinterested outside help. If there are riches to steal, and no real government, obscene thievery is inevitable.

By coincidence, when that headline appeared, I was reading about how Gertrude Bell drew those lines on a Mesopotamian map to define an Iraq within territory Britain wrested from Turkey after World War I. The French did the same with Syria and Lebanon while everyone quarreled over Palestine. I can almost hear colonial ghosts huddled around yet another bargaining table jibing at each other, “How's that working out for you?”

And there is South Asia, from old Persia's border with Afghanistan to a Bangladesh that was once East Pakistan. Or Central Asian borders that Moscow drew. And so on.

Perhaps it is asking too much of human nature to imagine things otherwise. But when death tolls soar from wanton slaughter and related suffering, there is much to consider. It is devilishly d ifficult to distribute blame.

The Chinese Censors\' Peculiar Movie Reviews

BEIJING - China's censorship of films, books and the Internet is far-reaching and persnickety. It can also be puzzling. Why do some movies pass and others don't? Sometimes, it may merely be a question of timing.

As I note in my Letter from China this week, the release of “The Last Supper,” a movie by the director Lu Chuan, was held up by the authorities for nearly five months; it was supposed to have opened last July. The authorities apparently did not want Chinese film-goers watching a tale of the bloody overthrow of the despotic Qin dynasty and the establishment of the Han dynasty - an event that happened about 2,200 years ago - before the power transfer here in Beijing in mid-November, when Xi Jinping became the new head of the ruling Communist Party, succeeding Hu Jintao.

Of course, November's leadership transfer was peaceful and nothing like the bloody ruckus of centuries past. What parallels might be drawn between the two events wasn't clear to this spectator, but the authorities' nervousness seemed to reflect a profound political anxiety.

In contrast, “Beijing Blues,” which won the world's most prestigious Chinese-language feature film prize at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan this week, had a smoother passage. It screened here in July, the month Mr. Lu's film was supposed to open, even though it portrays policemen, a topic the authorities watch carefully, too. Chinese movies are not permitted to show a policeman in a bad light.

Despite this fact, “Beijing Blues” manages to be wonderfully gritty and utterly authentic as it shows cops coping with ordinary Beijingers, quite a few of whom are short of money but long in bravado.

Its central character, a detective called “Hunter” Zhang, or Zhang Huiling, is middle-aged and kind, asthmatic and depressed by his job. But in the quirky fashion that characterizes the entire movie, Mr. Zhang is pleased with his recent discovery of the phrase “nega tive energy,” which, in one memorable scene, he rolls around his mouth as he uses it to describe, again and again, the feeling of being faced with the small-time thieves he must catch. Mr. Zhang estimates he's caught about 2,000 thieves so far and is resigned to a life filled with “annoying things,” he says.

“Beijing Blues” was a surprise choice for the prize - it's a low-budget film by the director Gao Qunshu, who is not among the most famous names. Its characters are played by an amateur cast that includes ordinary people as well as celebrities such as bloggers, publishers and T.V. presenters. The film captures Beijing's whitish, polluted skies, its bitter winter cold, its street humor and moments of darkness.

As Maggie Lee says in a review in Variety magazine, “Mr. Zhang has a number of farcical encounters with high-strung individuals and frenzied mobsters who self-righteously thrash suspects while the police look on with arms crossed.

“A p icture emerges of a metropolis whose inhabitants can be charmingly extroverted yet disturbingly aggressive, an implied comment on the pressures of city life. The moral ambiguity of such a society is underlined by recurring scenes of skeptical citizens unable to tell cops from criminals,” Ms. Lee writes.

“I don't have any big cases,” Mr. Zhang says in the movie. Still, “it's quite a disturbing job.”

Tell that to the censors.

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 28

NEWS While finance ministers from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund bridged their main differences over a bailout for Greece early Tuesday, bringing closer the release of long-delayed emergency aid, what they left undecided means this long-running drama - and the cohesion of the euro union - is far from settled. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

North Korea has stepped up what could be preparations to send up a new rocket from its northwestern launching station in defiance of a United Nations ban, the satellite operator DigitalGlobe said Tuesday, citing recent satellite imagery of the facility. Choe Sang-hun reports from Seoul.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has preached austerity, even as public spending cuts have deepened recessions in the periphery, actually increasing the debt load. Nicholas Kulish reports from Berlin.

Rebel leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo sent out mixed signals on Tuesday, with some saying they were withdrawing troops from the strategic city of Goma, which they captured last week, while others maintained that such a pullout would occur only if the Congolese government met a lengthy list of demands. Jeffrey Gettleman reports from Nairobi.

Thousands of workers in Italy stormed the locked gates of Europe's largest steel plant on Tuesday after the company halted production and said that a court ruling warning of serious environmental problems would force it to shut down. Rachel Donadio reports from Rome.

With envoys from more than 100 nations convening in Dubai to discuss telecommunications, diverse groups are warning of plans to censor the Internet. But analysts say the real debate is about business. Eric Pfanner reports from Paris.

ARTS “Twelfth Night” is a success in London, with Mark Rylance set to make waves again in the role of Olivia, while “The Magistrate” leaves some room for improvement. Matt Wolf reviews from London.

SPORTS The el ders of Brazilian soccer gave no explanation for the most recent firing of the national team coach, and they now seem determined to reach into the past for the next one. Rob Hughes reports from London.

Growth in China\'s Drone Program Called \'Alarming\'

HONG KONG - Earlier this month, at China's biennial air show in Zhuhai, an imposing fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles was seen on the tarmac - drones bearing a striking resemblance to the American aircraft that have proved so deadly in attacks on insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Israel, Britain and the United States have pretty much had a corner on the global drone market, but the recent Chinese air show and a Pentagon report have exploded that notion.

“In a worrisome trend, China has ramped up research in recent years faster than any other country,” said the unclassified analysis published in July by the Defense Science Board. “It displayed its first unmanned system model at the Zhuhai air show five years ago, and now every major manufacturer for the Chinese military has a research center devoted to unmanned systems.”

The report, which said “the military significance of China's move into unmanned systems is alarming,” suggested that Ch ina could “easily match or outpace U.S. spending on unmanned systems, rapidly close the technology gaps and become a formidable global competitor in unmanned systems.”

Two Chinese models on display at the Zhuhai show - the CH-4 and the Wing Loong, or Pterodactyl - appeared to be clones of the Reaper and Predator drones that are fixtures in the U.S. arsenal. A larger drone, the Xianglong, or Soaring Dragon, is a long-range, high-altitude model that would seem to be a cousin of the RQ-4 Global Hawk.

Huang Wei, the director of the CH-4 program at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told the state-run newspaper Global Times that his lightweight drone can carry cameras, ground-searching radar, missiles and smart bombs.

The paper reported that the drone's range of 3,500 kilometers, or about 2,200 miles, made it “ideal to conduct surveillance missions” over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, which are claimed by Beijing, Tokyo and Taipei.

< p>“As the Americans say,” Mr. Huang said, “the U.A.V. is fit for missions that are dirty, dangerous and dull.”

My colleague Scott Shane, in an article on drone warfare last year, posed a few of the tough questions about the spread and use of drone warfare:

If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism, what will the United States say? What if India uses remotely controlled craft to hit terrorism suspects in Kashmir, or Russia sends drones after militants in the Caucasus? American officials who protest will likely find their own example thrown back at them.

“The problem is that we're creating an international norm” - asserting the right to strike preemptively against those we suspect of planning attacks, argues Dennis M. Gormley, a senior research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “Missile Contagion,” who has called for tougher expor t controls on American drone technology. “The copycatting is what I worry about most.”

The qualities that have made lethal drones so attractive to the Obama administration for counterterrorism appeal to many countries and, conceivably, to terrorist groups: a capacity for leisurely surveillance and precise strikes, modest cost, and most important, no danger to the operator, who may sit in safety thousands of miles from the target.

Dozens of countries have bought or built their own unmanned aircraft, primarily for surveillance, although as Scott points out, “adding missiles or bombs is hardly a technical challenge.”

There were no drone flights or demonstrations reported this year at Zhuhai, although the Global Times suggested that 20 red stars and 15 rocket outlines painted on the fuselage of a Pterodactyl stood for 20 airborne missions and 15 missile firings.

A Japanese military plane recently took photos of a drone circling some Chinese naval vessels on a training exercise near Okinawa. The Pentagon believes the drone had been deployed from one of the Chinese ships.

There was no sign this year of Anjian, or the Dark Sword, part of a rumored new generation of Chinese stealth drones. The Pentagon study said the Anjian “represents the aspirations of the Chinese to design something even the Western powers don't have - a supersonic drone capable of air-to-air combat as well as ground strikes.”

Defense News reported recently from Zhuhai that there was a change in tone in how the Chinese were marketing their drones. At the show in 2010, videos and publicity material showed unmanned aircraft attacking American naval vessels, “swarming over aircraft carrier battle groups like angry bees,” Defense News said. This year, however, “a stealthy Blue Shark” drone was shown attacking a Russian carrier.

In March, China announced an 11.2 percent increase in military spending. Its navy has held blue-water trials of the country's first and only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet-era castoff. And the official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday that a Chinese-made J-15 jet fighter had successfully taken off and landed on the carrier, as Edward Wong reported from Beijing.

Michael Schiffer, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, said last summer that Beijing's broad and rapid military buildup is “potentially destabilizing” in the Pacific, as my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller reported. That buildup was detailed in this Pentagon report.

“Mr. Schiffer said that no single development led him to describe China's arms buildup as ‘potentially destabilizing,' although Pentagon officials had increasingly said they were concerned about China's military intentions in the Pacific,” Elisabeth wrote. “Instead, he said, he used the phrase because of China's lack of transparency and its trends in military prowess.”

Th at prowess would seem to include drones.

“The scope and speed of unmanned-aircraft development in China is a wake-up call that has both industrial and military implications,” said the report by the Defense Science Board. “U.S. exports of unmanned systems are highly constrained. China, with no such constraints, has made U.A.V.s a new focus of military exports.”

The analysis recommended that U.S. military planners and the Defense Intelligence Agency should “aggressively” incorporate drones and drone warfare into their war games, simulations and exercises.

Alex Ross Inspires a Festival: All 20th-Century Music, All the Time

LONDON - First there was the book. Now there is the festival. The Southbank Centre announced the details Tuesday morning of The Rest Is Noise, a year-long festival of 20th-century music inspired by Alex Ross's 2007 book of the same name. Mr. Ross, a music critic for The New Yorker magazine, won considerable acclaim for “The Rest Is Noise,” a sweeping survey of 20th-century classical music.

“When I read the book in its proof form, I called up Alex Ross right away,” said Jude Kelly, the artistic director of the Southbank Centre, speaking to journalists and music professionals at the press launch. “I said, let me stage this.”

Ms. Kelly stressed that Mr. Ross, while giving his blessing to the festival, has had no involvement in the programming. That has been largely carried out by Ms. Kelly and Gillian Moore, the head of classical music at the Southbank Centre, and Timothy Walker, the artistic director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The a mbitious plan is to survey 20th-century music and arts chronologically. Twelve intensive weekend programs throughout 2013 will aim to contextualize the music through talks, workshops and films. (The festival opens with the first of the weekends, “Here Comes the 20th Century,” on Jan. 19.)

Ms. Kelly said that she hoped to give audiences the chance not just to discover and explore 20th-century music, but to link the music to “the history of science, technology, philosophical and political movements,” and to ‘the ideas and individuals that shaped the 20th century and the music that was its soundtrack.” The packed schedule of talks over the 12 weekends includes several by Mr. Ross, as well as figures from diverse fields, including the mathematician Marcos Du Sautoy, the historian Orlando Figes, and Jane Pritchard, the dance curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The music program, beginning with works by Richard Strauss and concluding with John Adams, will be the centerpiece of the festival, with 100 concerts given by 18 orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Southbank Sinfonia, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. An accompanying BBC series, “The Sound of Fury: A Century of Modern Music,” will run during the festival.

Vladimir Jurowski, the principal conductor of the London Philharmonic, which is resident at the Southbank Centre, claimed that his orchestra will be the first in the world to devote an entire year's program to 20th-century music. “If I had my way, we would be the first in the world to devote a year to playing just 21st-century music,” Mr. Jurowski added. “Perhaps that's the next project.”

Mr. Ross, are you listening?

In Cairo, Politics on Screen Delayed by Uprising in the Streets

After going dark last year because of political revolution, the Cairo Film Festival was set to come back in 2012 stronger than ever: entries from 64 countries, 3 competitions and a slate of political, edgy movies. But the opening of the festival, which was scheduled for Tuesday, had to be postponed once again because of political unrest in the city. Opening night is now scheduled for Wednesday.

After President Mohamed Morsi seized new powers last week, police and demonstrators clashed in Tahrir Square. The film festival's director, Ezzat Abo Ouf, decided to postpone opening night, according to the Egyptian news agency Ahram.

Even before its planned start, the festival, which began in 1976, was already deeply engaged politically. This year's festival honors those who died in the 25th of January Revolution. The opening night movie, “Winter of Discontent,” by the Egyptian director Ibrahim El Batout, is an account of last winter's events on the streets of C airo. It recounts the lives of an activist, a journalist and a state security officer as the revolution approaches.

In the light of the anti-government uproar, the festival's sponsorship by the ministry of culture has taken on new significance. Wael Omar, one of the directors of the Egyptian film “In Search of Oil and Sand,” declared:

“I refuse to participate in a film festival associated with the ministry of culture when the Egyptian government is attacking citizens on the streets as they voice their disagreement with Morsi's undemocratic and unprecedented Constitutional Declaration, which placed him as a dictator.”

Mr. Omar and his co-director have withdrawn their movie from the competition.

Shirin Neshat: An Artist - Iranian, Muslim and Female - Engages

I first interviewed Shirin Neshat two years ago, in the dimly lighted backroom of an upscale New York restaurant, on the release of the Iranian artist's directorial debut, “Women Without Men.” The movie about the 1953 coup d'état in Iran earned her the Silver Lion as best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival.

The complexities of Ms. Neshat's work has captivated me ever since she first attained international recognition in the mid ‘90s. I was intrigued by our parallel worlds â€" two Muslim Middle Eastern women, eyes lined with pencils of coal, residing in the United States. More than two decades separate us in age, a full generation in either of our respective homelands, Iran and Turkey, but the much longer continuum of culture and gender awareness unite us.

Last week I called her up, having just seen her exhibition, “The Book of Kings,” at the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris. The phone rang â€" once, twice â€" while I rehearsed a message to leave, and then a voice surfaced. Shirin remembered me, said she was leaving soon for Egypt. Could I come to her SoHo studio? We were on.

This new body of work â€" black-and-white photo portraits and a video installation â€" taps the Arab Spring for themes of violence, submission, power, authority, love, Islam as religion and Islam as politics. The work marks a turning point in the artist's career, where she lifts her eyes from her native Iran to explore the larger questions of life in the Middle East.

Read the interview and view intimate photographs of Shirin Neshat's studio taken by me after our conversation in the pages of the IHT.

Canadian Welcomed as \'Team England\' Bank Boss

LONDON - Britain's press reached for the soccer analogy to explain why a foreigner had been picked to head the Bank of England, the country's central bank.

Reporting the surprise announcement that Mark J. Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada, is to take on the key financial post, newspapers commented that it was much like appointing an outsider to head a top soccer team, as long as he was the best man for the job.

The Guardian dubbed Mr. Carney “the Treasury's Sven-Göran Eriksson, ” referring to the Swedish soccer manager who guided the England national team from 2001 to 2006.

Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph, in one of many media commentaries that praised the government's choice, acknowledged that some “will wonder why we need to be bringing in a foreigner in the first place. This not premier league football after all.”

Reuters explained to its international readers that “Britons are used to not worrying about nationality and embrac ing professional credentials instead, allowing foreigners to run their national football teams as well as top companies.” It said the choice could usher central bankers into the realm of globe-trotting elites that dominate the top jobs in business and sports.

Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, hailed the extraordinary and admirable choice of a foreigner such as Mr. Carney to assume the country's most important official position, “even if Canadians are not very foreign.”

He cautioned, however, “It is a gamble because a foreign national will be assuming a job that is inescapably political and, in the current difficult economic and financial circumstances of the U.K., even more political than usual.”

The Daily Express, which was not alone in describing the 47-year-old Mr. Carney as a George Clooney lookalike, said he was unlikely to fail the Britishness test when he made his application for citizenship - “His wife is E nglish, he studied at Oxford and for many years worked in London.”

The Daily Telegraph introduced its readers to Diana, the central banker's British wife, by describing her as an eco-warrior and outspoken critic of global financial institutions who had expressed sympathy for the Occupy movement.

Mr. Carney will embark on his new post with considerable cross-party goodwill. Leaders of the opposition Labour party were falling over each other to welcome his appointment.

“In my view this is a good choice, a good judgment, and his experience will be invaluable,” according to Ed Balls, Labour's financial spokesman in the House of Commons.

Mr. Carney will not be the first Canadian to hold a top post in the British establishment. Andrew Bonar Law, Conservative prime minister from 1922 to 1923, was born in New Brunswick in 1858 (although sticklers will point out that was nine years before the province joined the Canadian Confederation).

Ill-health cut short his term, which lasted only 209 days.

As for other foreigners in top jobs, London's Metro newspaper recalled Mr. Eriksson's “very conservative attitude on the pitch” in the six years that he managed the England soccer team.

Recalling the Swede's mixed record, Metro said it was hoped Mr. Carney's reign as governor of the Bank of England “will be significantly less tumultuous, and ultimately more successful, than Eriksson's fruitless time in charge of the Three Lions.”

Tips on Military Usage

I asked my colleague Jim Dao, who has done great reporting on the armed forces and military life, for suggestions on avoiding some common missteps in military references.

In writing about this or any specialized field, we want to shun jargon and be clear and accessible to all readers. But we should also take care to avoid lapses that would lead expert readers to question our reporting or our attention to detail.

Here are tips from Jim on a grab bag of military-related usage and style points:

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1. Decorated
Let's be careful - and, when possible, specific - in describing a service member as “decorated.”

There are highly significant medals (Silver Stars, Navy Crosses, etc.), and then there are lesser medals and campaign ribbons that some in the military joke are awarded for little more than breathing in a combat theater. Describing someone as “decorated” is vague and could be misleading.

Where the line should be drawn is deb atable, and need not be set in stone. But if a story describes someone as “decorated,” we should ask what the decoration is. If we don't know, let's not use the “decorated” description. And if we know that someone has earned a significant decoration, consider specifying.

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2. Earn, not win
On the subject of military decorations, we should avoid the phrases “won such-and-such medal” or was a “Silver Star winner.” It's not a game or a contest. The widely accepted style is to say Corporal Smith “earned” or “was awarded” the medal.

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3. Noncommissioned officers vs. officers
This was the subject of a recent correction. Noncommissioned officers are enlisted troops who are sergeants or petty officers and above. “Officer” is short for “commissioned officer,” the college-educated leaders who are appointed to their positions. NCOs are subordinate to commissioned officers. Hence NCOs should not be referred to as of ficers.

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4. Enlisted
There are two main tracks in the military: officer and enlisted. That means not all service members “enlist” when they sign up. Officers “join” or “are commissioned” after attending ROTC or a military academy or officer candidate school. Enlisted troops can be promoted to NCOs eventually, but they do not become officers unless they attend officer candidate school.

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5. Special Forces vs. Special Operations Forces
Not a mistake we make very often, but an easy trap to fall into. Special Forces are the Army unit better known as Green Berets. Navy SEALs are not Special Forces (they may conduct raids at your house if you call them this). Neither are other elite Army units like the Rangers. Both of those units are, however, part of the Special Operations Command and therefore can be called special operations forces, a class that includes units from the Air Force and Marine Corps as well.

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6. M arines are not soldiers
Neither are sailors or airmen. Soldiers are in the Army.

“G.I.'s” - a colloquial term that can be useful in headlines - refers to soldiers, or can describe troops in general. But it should not be used specifically to describe members of the Navy, Air Force or Marines.

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7. Retire vs. separation vs. discharge
There are different ways one can leave the military. Some distinctions are highly technical, but this can be a minefield and is worth special care.

The most basic point is that service members “retire” only after 20 years in service, at which point they become eligible for a military pension (or retirement pay, as veterans prefer to call it). A person who leaves after six years is not retiring (unless it is a medical retirement, which can be granted because of injuries in the line of duty).

A discharge ends one's military obligation. There are several categories, with honorable at the top and dis honorable at the bottom.

To separate from the military means the service member is leaving active duty but may still have an obligation to the reserves.

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8. Veterans
Veterans are those who have left the military and returned to civilian life. So the term should not generally be applied to someone who is still in the military.

 
In a Word

This week's grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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Factoid: Enjoys Hollywood films, including “The Godfather.”

“Factoid” suggests a piece of information that is trivial or even unsubstantiated. Let's not use it to mean “interesting fact” or “something you didn't know.”

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I cannot fathom how anyone could enter into this without a number of some sort in mind, so I decided to come up with a rough estimate of what it would cost my spouse and I to have a child.

Make it “my spouse and me,â € the indirect object of “cost.” (The direct object is “what.”)

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It may be that no college leader in the country was as well prepared to face this controversy than Biddy Martin, president of Amherst since September 2011.

We stumble surprisingly often over these kinds of comparisons involving “as” or “than” - perhaps because of hasty or incomplete revision. Make it “as well prepared … as.”

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The first Watson-Crick attempt to build a model of the DNA structure was a disaster. Dr. Watson had misremembered the figure for the water content of DNA that Franklin announced in a lecture. He and Crick proudly invited her and Wilkins to Cambridge to view the model and were humiliated when she instantly pointed out the error.

A reader who didn't know the intricacies of our guidelines on courtesy titles - or who didn't happen to know that Watson is alive, while Crick, Franklin and Wilkins are dead - would simply have been ba ffled about why one has a courtesy title and the others don't. Common sense cries out for consistency in a case like this.

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The seven men on the Politburo Standing Committee have forged close relations to previous party leaders, either through their families or institutional networks.

Not parallel. Repeat “through” or place it before “either.”

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The two coaches stood on the opposite ends of the court on Friday, each one believing their style of play was superior. …

Anthony, Chandler and Wallace - who Woodson used to defend the post - were all in foul trouble during the fourth quarter, which made it difficult for the Knicks to rally.

In the first sentence, make it “his” to agree with “each one.” In the second, make it “whom Woodson used.”

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In Long Beach, on Long Island, a couple bicycles through the autumn chill to the charging station at City Hall to keep their cellphones powered.

Treat “couple” as plural here; make the verb “bicycle,” or rephrase.

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Sir Rex Hunt, the governor of the Falkland Islands when Argentina invaded in 1982, with Lady Mavis at his investiture.

Check the stylebook; it should be “Lady Hunt.”

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I teach physics and the history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and my Web site includes a photograph of myself right next to my e-mail address.

No call for the reflexive pronoun. Make it “a photograph of me.”

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At 11:45 a.m. last Tuesday, the editorial staff of The Washington Post was summoned on short notice to an announcement on the fifth floor of its building to hear something they already knew - that Marcus Brauchli would be leaving after four years as executive editor.

The plural “they” doesn't work with the singular “staff.” Rephrase.

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Olympe Bradna, a French-born dancer and actress who charmed Broadway as a child st ar of Paris's touring Folies Bergère and appeared in Hollywood films opposite Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan before trading stardom for life as a wife and mother, died on Nov. 5 in Stockton, Calif.

It is in the stylebook, with a hyphen: Folies-Bergère.

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Mr. Spielberg's best art often emerges in passages of wordlessness, when the images speak for themselves, and the way he composes his pictures and cuts between them endow the speeches and debates with emotional force, and remind us of what is at stake.

The plural verbs don't agree with the singular subject “way.”

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The Tigers didn't take long to make this decision, bringing in Hunter for a visit on Monday and signing him on Wednesday. And it begs the question, are the Tigers becoming the new Yankees?

This is not what “beg the question” means.

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 27

NEWS Finance ministers from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund patched up their differences over a bailout for Greece early Tuesday with a spate of measures bringing closer the release of long-delayed emergency aid. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

Japan's quiet resolve to edge past its longstanding reluctance and become more of a regional player comes as the United States and China are staking their own claims to power in Asia. Martin Fackler reports from Tokyo.

In Russia, media and protest circles are debating the social significance of “Sveta,” a young woman caught in a political circus since the pro-Putin fan stumbled into the limelight. Sophia Kishkovsky reports from Moscow.

This year's meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opened Monday in Doha, Qatar, will focus on firming up pledges that had been negotiated in the summit meetings of the past few years. John Broder reports from Washington.

The decision to call a vote two years ahead of schedule backfired for Artur Mas, the president of Catalonia, who was apparently punished by voters for trying to shift the debate away from his unpopular austerity measures. Raphael Minder reports from Barcelona.

More than a week after the French center-right opposition party's leadership election, the two candidates continued to wrangle over the outcome on Monday after an attempt at mediation by a former prime minister ended in acrimony late Sunday and an internal panel continued to investigate allegations of electoral mismanagement and fraud. Nicola Clark reports from Paris.

Nationwide primaries to choose the candidate who will lead Italy's center-left Democratic Party in elections next spring have ended without a clear winner, setting the stage for a run-off on Sunday between a seasoned party stalwart and a young upstart who has threatened to shake up Italian politics. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome .

FASHION Some fashion designers are applying computer techniques of digital photography to intensify colors in fabrics and their creations, making their patterns more vivid. Suzy Menkes reports from London.

Figure in Petraeus Scandal Seen Losing Her Post as Honorary Consul

HONG KONG - Jill Kelley, the Florida hostess who unwittingly touched off the scandal that led to the resignation of the C.I.A. director David H. Petraeus, is about to be sacked as an honorary consul for South Korea, according to news reports from Seoul.

The Yonhap news agency cited a senior South Korean official as saying that Ms. Kelley, 37, would lose her largely ceremonial title over the scandal. The agency also reported that Kim Kyou-hyun, the deputy foreign minister for political affairs, said that Ms. Kelley had used her position for personal gain.

The South Korean government had not announced a formal revocation of her title by Tuesday afternoon.

Honorary consuls are little more than courtesy appointments, and Seoul reportedly has 15 such positions in the United States. They are paid a token amount, about $2,500 in the case of South Korea.

“Their mission is to help promote Korea-U.S. relations and protect the rights of Korean Americans,” Yonhap wrote, adding that they have “no specific privileges or protections under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

When Ms. Kelley called the Tampa police on Nov. 11 to complain about a trespasser at her home, she mentioned her title and apparently tried to claim the preferential treatment given to official envoys abroad - diplomatic immunity.

“You know, I don't know if by any chance, because I'm an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property,” Ms. Kelley said in her call, as reported by Bloomberg News. “I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well.”

A recording of Ms. Kelley's call, which begins at 1:24 of the tape, is here.

A diplomatic official quoted by Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy magazine said Ms. Kelley had helped to rally support for the free trade agreement between Seoul and Washington, and she arranged meetings between American busi ness executives and the South Korean ambassador to the United States.

Ms. Kelley, her husband and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, held social gatherings and befriended senior military officers at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the home of U.S. Central Command and the Special Operations Command.

Ms. Kelley has since lost her clearance to visit MacDill without an escort, ABC News reported.

It was not clear whether Ms. Kelley would need new license plates for her silver Mercedes-Benz S500. Her current Florida plates, embossed with “1JK,” identify her as an honorary consul.

The Petraeus scandal came to light after Ms. Kelley contacted the F.B.I. to complain about anonymous e-mails she was receiving, messages that accused her of “inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus,” as The Times has reported.

“The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his b iographer, who agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails,” the Times story said.

“It also ensnared Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after F.B.I. agents discovered what a law enforcement official said on Wednesday were sexually explicit e-mail exchanges between him and Ms. Kelley.”

Mr. Petraeus, a former four-star general, acknowledged the affair with Ms. Broadwell and resigned as C.I.A. director on Nov. 9.

My colleague Scott Shane reported last week that Ms. Kelley has hired Abbe D. Lowell, the Washington defense lawyer who successfully defended John Edwards against the alleged misuse of campaign funds.

“Mr. Lowell, an acquaintance of Ms. Kelley's from the Washington social scene, immediately brought in Judy Smith, an old hand at scandals in the capital, who promotes herself as ‘America's No. 1 Crisis Management Expert,' ” Scott said.

Ms. Khawam is being represented by the celebrity lawyer Glori a Allred, while Ms. Broadwell has hired Dee Dee Myers, the former Clinton White House press secretary.

Ms. Myers told Scott that her firm, the Glover Park Group, was enlisted by Ms. Broadwell's lawyers to “help Paula and her legal team navigate a crowded media environment, manage incoming requests and ensure that her story is accurately told.”

Mr. Petraeus has hired the noted Washington lawyer Robert B. Barnett. “Though he is perhaps best known for negotiating book megadeals for the Washington elite,” Scott said, “his focus this time is said to be steering Mr. Petraeus's future career, not his literary life.”

Universities Ponder Accounting 101: How to Balance the Books

It's considered an impolite topic in some scholarly circles, where academics would rather talk about resources or funding than say the “m” word. But the reality is that academia needs money to survive. Whatever a school's goals are-giving a chance to poor students, encouraging better teaching, driving great research-someone has to pay.

And on the money front, things aren't looking great in Europe. Cynics might say that last week was typical: European Union budget talks fell apart, and more students protested in London over rising tuition fees.

Christopher F. Schuetze reports on how the financial crisis has hit universities in various European nations - which, despite grand-sounding schemes like the Bologna Process, vary greatly in the way they fund and manage their education systems.

It's no surprise that hard-hit economies like Ireland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain had significant education cuts. Ireland, in particular, is facing a challenge: A '90s baby boom means there will be more kids heading to university than ever before, and less money to pay for them.

And the situation sounds dire in Italy. “We are running the risk of the collapse of the system,” Marco Mancini, president of the Conference of Italian University Rectors, said about education cuts.

But the cuts are not universal. Surprisingly, nine E.U. nations - including, notably France, Germany and Switzerland - have increased higher education funding these past few years.

Funding may be uneven, but tuition rates for European students are not, which has led to in-fighting over who pays when young people cross borders. As Nina Siegal reports, some Belgians have bristled over Dutch students enrolling in their schools, where annual tuition is a scant "578 - but costs local taxpayers about "10,000 per year per student.

Part of the problem - if you can call it that - is that most Continental Europeans consider affordable higher edu cation a universal right, to be largely funded by the state and shared by all. Their relatively low domestic tuition fees are the envy of foreign students, who are paying many times those rates.

The notable exception is Britain, which raised its tuition cap for local students to £9,000 a year, making it the third-priciest university system in the world, after the United States and South Korea.

That drastic rise may have a chilling effect on the Continent. “If this is what can be done in the U.K., a democracy with one of the top education systems in the world, what will stop governments from doing it elsewhere?” Howard Hotson of the Council for the Defense of British Universities said to me in a phone conversation.

But, as any accounting student will tell you, you have to balance the books. If public coffers are running low, universities have to find other ways to make up the cash. Raising tuition is one way. Canvassing philanthropists and former graduates is another. D.D. Guttenplan writes about the University College London's rather macabre new appeal for alumni donations.

Yet another is to admit more wealthy foreign students, whose tuition is not funded by the state. But if a school admits too many, it may change the broader feel of a campus, dilute quality, and anger local taxpayers who feel that their children's places are being given away.

I once asked a president of an elite U.S. university whether it used foreign students this way. He said that his own institution's admissions were “needs blind,” meaning they were based only on the quality of the candidates, and not on nationality or economic status. That, ideally, is how it should be done everywhere.

But then he leaned over and - off the record, of course - said “I'm not more moral than anyone else; I just have more money. If the school didn't have its huge endowment, I might be standing on the sidewalk waving in foreign students, to o.”

Do you think universities should be government-funded basic services, like roads and hospitals? Or should they be market-driven? If so, will only big-name, elite schools draw moneyed donors and rich students?

Berlin Needs a Security Strategy

BERLIN - Over the past few weeks, German government officials have been trying to come up with a strategy for Russia. I have written recently about Berlin's strained relations with Moscow and refer again to the issue in my latest Letter From Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition has found it difficult to deal with Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin. She dislikes him, which she has made plain during news conferences and a recent podium discussion in Moscow earlier this month.

At one point during the discussion hosted by the Petersburg Dialogue, Ms. Merkel spoke her mind. She clearly had had enough of Mr. Putin's clampdown on the media and intimidation of editors that dare criticize his increasingly autocratic leadership style.

‘‘If I were offended every time I was criticized, I wouldn't last three days as chancellor,'' Ms. Merkel said. That did not elicit any response.

Criticizing Mr. Putin's Russia is one thing. Doing s omething about it is another. And that is Germany's, and Europe's problem.

Because Germany is Russia's biggest trading partner and because Germany is the most important country in the E.U. by virtue of its size and economy, Berlin needs a security strategy. It would explain, among other things, Germany's national interests, the role of its armed forces and the connection between interests and values. Yet Germany has no security strategy or doctrine.

This is very unsettling for Germany's E.U. partners and NATO allies. Neither organization knows where they stand with Germany over basic questions such as strategy, say diplomats. A security strategy would also make clear to Russia where Germany would draw the line.

Thomas de Maizière, Germany's defense minister, who was Ms. Merkel's chief of staff from 2005 to 2009, may now try to fill this vacuum.

In a lengthy guest column last week in the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, Mr. de Maizière said it was high time that Germany had a debate about international security and about the role of the Bundeswehr, Germany's armed forces, in international missions.

‘‘As defense minister I ask myself why we don't discuss German defense and security policy in schools, universities, churches or any other public forums.''

It is not certain he will take this further in the coming months as the countdown to the German federal elections begin in earnest. It means that Europe - and Russia - will have to wait until after September 2013 for Berlin to come up a security doctrine, if indeed it will even do that.

Eighth Sister? In Asia, Campuses for Women

In May, the Asian University for Women is expected to graduate its first class of 138 students, almost all of whom come from deprived backgrounds and rely on scholarships to pay for the $15,000 that room, board and school fees would cost.

In an IHT Female Factor Special Report, Bettina Wassener visited its campus in Chittagong, Bangladesh, a modest complex that has drawn young women from states as diverse as Afghanistan, China, the Palestinian territories and Indonesia. Most would not have had a chance at an English-language university-level education on a multicultural campus. Now, some of these young women are on exchanges as far-flung as Stanford University in the United States and the Institut d'Études Politiques in France.

The A.U.W.'s founder, Kamal Ahmad, is a native of Bangladesh who was educated in the United States; the grant to use the land is from Bangladesh itself. But the majority of the support comes from the West: Cherie Blair, the Bill & Mel inda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the IKEA Foundation and the U.S. State Department. The search for funds is still on as the A.U.W. slowly works toward building a larger campus.

The A.U.W. has inspired a somewhat different project in Malaysia. Kelly Wetherille talks to Barbara Hou, formerly of the Bangladeshi school, who now wants to build an Asian Women's Leadership University. The A.W.L.U., expected to open in 2015, aims to be an Asian version of the Seven Sisters, the grouping of elite U.S. liberal arts colleges for women. Her vision is for a school in a relatively affluent area with the majority of students paying full tuition, and about a quarter on scholarship.

While young women may be achieving equality in the classroom, there is another fight going in the upper echelons of academia, where women compete with men for research positions, professorships and executive posts.

As Liz Gooch reports, more than one-third of the higher educ ation institutions in the Philippines are headed by women. Thailand is also a surprising bright spot in this regard. But they are exceptions. In Asia, only 18 percent of university researchers are women, compared to 29 percent worldwide.

Fanny M. Cheung of the Chinese University of Hong Kong was blunt in her assessment of the social realities that might hold women back. She called the child-bearing years the “golden age” for academics. She also said that, in China in particular, women may hesitate before pursuing a Ph.D. because it might frighten off potential husbands.

“It takes a very confident man to be able to accept a wife who is in a so-called superior position because, by virtue of a higher degree, you will be considered more superior,” she said. “In Asia that is still a fairly strong barrier.”

Didi Kirsten Tatlow attended a training session in Bangkok that turned the issue of women's rights on its head.

Instead of educating women, the session focused on educating men. The idea is that no amount of progress by women- and no number of well-meaning projects- would be enough if men themselves did not change. According to the United Nations' Partners in Prevention, more than half of men interviewed in Bangladesh said they had been violent against women. One in five men in Cambodia admitted to committing rape. The list of reasons - sexual entitlement, alcohol, fun, anger and punishment - were just as alarming as the statistics.

Somsouk Sananikone, an activist in Laos, said that it was important to education young men, in particular, before they engaged in these behaviors.

“We're looking at how every man may become violence, not just those who are already violent,” he said.

Samsung\'s Biggest Phone, or Smallest Tablet

If you are the kind of person who likes to pore over a good owner's manual (or in this case, owner's Web page) you will love the Samsung Galaxy Note II.

The basic operation of the phone is as easy to grasp as with any Android phone, but the Note II is so loaded with trick features that you'll be using only a fraction of what it can do unless you spend a goodly amount of time reading how to operate it.

First, the basics. The most obvious feature of the Note II is its size. At nearly 6 inches by 3 inches by 1 ⁄ 3 inch, it is larger than the common phone, and smaller than a minitablet. Call it a tablette.

Thanks to the sizable Amoled screen, video looks particularly good, and even people not used to typing on a glass keyboard will quickly get the hang of it.

The processor is a 1.6-gigahertz quad core, whose ample processing power helps keep those big-screen videos smooth. It comes with two gigabytes of internal memory and can take an additional 64-gi gabyte MicroSD card.

The phone runs on Android's 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, which of course means it syncs nicely with Google's suite of products, like contacts, Gmail, Google's maps and the like.

One thing that sets the phone apart is its stylus. It's not just a pointer; it has a button that allows you to do graphic editing as you would with a Wacom pen and tablet. Of course it also lets you write notes by hand, make illustrations and annotate PowerPoint documents.

It has both NFC and Wi-Fi direct, which means files can be shared with nearby phones, and purchases may be made from the phone at some special cash registers.

That just scratches the surface. The feature list is deep, but it comes with a steep learning curve. The phone can be set so that tapping it or holding it a certain way activates a command; there is a setting for one-handed operation; and customized vibrations can be created to let you know who is calling even when the ringer i s shut off.

To learn all of the tricks, prepare to cozy up with the Note II microsite; a printed user guide would be the size of an encyclopedia. Your contract will probably run out before you learn to use all of the features.

The Note II is $300 from AT&T, Verizon or Sprint and $370 from T-Mobile, with a two-year contract.