IHT Quick Read: Dec. 6

NEWS Rescuers sought to reach isolated villages Wednesday after a typhoon struck the Philippines, killing at least 325 people and leaving thousands homeless. Floyd Whaley reports from Manila.

Greece's economic troubles are often attributed to a public sector packed full of redundant workers, a lavish pension system and uncompetitive industries hampered by overpaid workers with lifetime employment guarantees. Often overlooked, however, is the role played by a handful of wealthy families, politicians and the news media that make up the Greek power structure. Rachel Donadio and Liz Alderman report.

Britons, many already weary of government austerity budgets that some economists say are impeding the country's recovery, are going to have to wait even longer for relief. Julia Werdigier and Stephen Castle report from London.

Four of the five largest oil and gas discoveries in the world this year have been made off Mozambique, including three earlier finds by the Italian company Eni. These discoveries have the potential to put Mozambique, which previously had little oil and gas production, in the gas-exporting big leagues with countries like Qatar and Australia. Stanley Reed reports.

European Aeronautic Defense and Space, the parent company of Airbus, will dissolve a decade-old arrangement that gave the governments of France and Germany a veto over strategic management decisions. Nicola Clark reports from Paris.

ARTS Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellite fairs highlight how important social media and the Internet are for Asian artists seeking a wider audience. Ella Delany reports.

“Cartooning for Peace,” an exhibition of recent political cartoons on the state of affairs in Mediterranean countries, is showing at the Maison des Métallos in Paris. Olivia Snaije talks to the cartoonists.

SPORTS Two of soccer's financial giants are taking different approaches: Manchester City is now focusing all its effort on the English Premier League, while Paris Saint-Germain, which is struggling in Ligue 1, dreams of Champions League glory. Rob Hughes writes from London.

Four medalists from the Athens Games will lose their medals because officials found evidence of doping in retested urine samples. Mary Pilon reports.

Typhoon Bopha: Hurricane Sandy Times Two

HONG KONG - The official death toll from Typhoon Bopha climbed to 322 by Thursday morning, and with nearly 400 Filipinos still unaccounted for, the typhoon appeared as if it would be twice as deadly as Hurricane Sandy, the storm that thrashed the Caribbean and the eastern United States six weeks ago.

Sandy killed at least 253 people, including 132 in the United States. President Obama is expected to ask Congress this week for about $50 billion to help states in their post-Sandy recovery efforts.

Typhoon Bopha, known as Pablo in the Philippines, arrived on Tuesday, packing winds up to 100 miles per hour. It washed away entire villages and hamlets; wiped out roads and bridges; flattened cornfield s and banana plantations; wrecked fishing fleets; and buried homes under landslides and walls of mud.

In some towns, dead bodies were gathered together in rows, their faces covered by tarpaulins, sodden blankets or palm fronds.

“Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives,” The Associated Press reported. “Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging floodwaters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.”

In one village, the mud-caked body of a child lay under a sheet with a note attached. It read: “4 yrs. old, male.”

One survivor, Julius Julian Rebucas, told Reuters that his mother and brother had been swept away in a flash flood. “I no longer have a family,” he said.

He can be seen being carried to an ambulance in a BBC video here.

Bopha struck most heavily in the southern Philippines, which typically dodges the 20 or so typhoons that slam the country every year. My colleague Floyd Whaley spoke to a military official who said most of the fatalities were in the province of Compostela Valley, a mountainous gold mining area, and the adjoining province of Davao Oriental.

The Philippine news site Rappler had a live blog going, tracking the progress of the storm and giving government information on deaths, damage and where people could donate food or supplies.

The national weather agency of the Philippine s was sending regular updates on its Twitter feed here. Its Web site is located here.

Twitter also assembled the addresses of accounts offering information on relief efforts, and the service recommended using the hashtag #pabloPH for storm-related tweets and searches.

A New York Times slide show of the storm's aftermath is here.

When floods hit Manila in the summer, a quarter-million people in the capital were made homeless. But as we reported on Rendezvous, “on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, and through text messages, Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of evacuation centers and dropoff points for donations of emergency supplies.

“They praised rescue teams, and they encouraged each other. They pleaded for calm - and there were few reported signs of panic, even from those who were stranded. And they prayed.”

Gwen Garcia, the governor of the Philippine province of Cebu, endorsed practical preparations - and prayer - in a tweet on Tuesday:

In his article, Floyd also noted that “last December, Tropical Storm Washi - another out-of-season storm that hit south of the usual Philippine typhoon belt - killed more than 1,200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

“This year, officials put out strong warnings days in advance and carried out mandatory early evacuations of vulnerable communities.”

India Is Not a Secular Republic

On Dec. 6, 1992, the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque by Hindu extremists killed hundreds of Hindus and Muslims. In a truly secular nation, what happened next would have been different.

Pointed Pens

PARIS - When it comes to political commentaries about corruption, election fraud, human rights abuses or Islamic fundamentalism, few mediums are more effective than cartoons. Often without language barriers, understood cross-culturally, a cartoon can sum up a political situation in an instant.

“Cartooning for Peace,” an exhibition of recent political cartoons on the state of affairs in Mediterranean countries is showing at the Maison des Métallos, a culture center in Paris in the 11th Arrondissement. The cartoon artists are all members of an association founded in 2006 by the French cartoonist Plantu after a two-day conference at the United Nations that brought together 12 of the world's best-known political cartoonists to promote tolerance.

“I thought it would be a one-off in New York, but we haven't stopped exhibiting since,” said Plantu, a cart oonist for the French daily Le Monde.

Plantu said he realized how powerful cartoons could be in a now-famous incident when he met Yasir Arafat in Tunis in 1991 and Arafat penned the Israeli flag on one of Plantu's drawings, then added a heart to another cartoon of an Israeli soldier facing off with a caricature of himself, two years before the Oslo Accords.

More than 100 cartoonists are now part of Cartooning for Peace, including Jeff Danziger, Oliphant, Patrick Chapatte (who draws for the IHT, among other publications) and Ed Hall.

For the current exhibition, the association invited cartoonists from Mediterranean countries to show their interpretations of postrevolution freedom of expression, feminism, political upheavals and impasses.

Cartoonists from Tunisia, Israel, Algeria and Spain who were present at the opening discussed topics from the importance of political cartoons in the Middle East because of the high illiteracy rate there, to the diff iculty of finding right-wing cartoonists, to the novelty of freedom of expression in Tunisia.

“Humor is a great way to get beyond stupidity,” said Nadia Khiari, known as Willis from Tunis. She began drawing political cartoons with cats as the protagonists - “because they symbolize independence,” she said - in 2011 when Ben Ali “promised us freedom of expression. At first I drew for my family, and all of a sudden I had 900 people following me on Facebook.”

Like many Tunisians since the revolution, Ms. Khiari expresses herself mainly on social media and also publishes her work on Yaka Yaka, a satirical webzine.

“The absurd and the grotesque inspire me. We must show it,” she said.

A cartoon in the exhibit by Z, also a Tunisian, shows a woman in a delivery room with the caption “Imminent birth of the first Arab Democracy.”

The husband asks, “So, doctor, will it be bearded or veiled?”

Miguel Villalba Sánchez, known as ElChicoTriste depicts Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 with black oil spouting from the back of his soldier's uniform and blood streaming from the front.

The Turkish cartoonist Ramize Erer has been portraying relationships between men and women in Turkish society for the past 30 years, first in Turkey and now from Paris. One of her signature cartoons displayed here shows a naked woman in several panels assiduously shaving under her armpits and plucking hair from her legs before getting into bed with the hairiest of men.

A veritable star at home in Algeria, the cartoon artist Ali Dilem has been sued by the government and threatened by Islamists. In one of his drawings at La Maison des Métallos titled “The Libyans celebrate their liberation,” an Islamist watches the festivities and is asked by his wife standing next to him wearing a niqab if he can describe what he sees to her.

At the back of the exhibition hall a series of interviews with cartoon artists by the documentary filmmaker Vanessa Rousselot are shown on a loop, including a short of Ali Ferzat, Syria's pre-eminent political cartoonist whose hands were broken by government militia in 2011.

This is serious business, as Kap, a Spanish cartoonist shows in his chilling drawing of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, as a constrictor squeezing his people.

Plantu, whose drawing for the show is a ship in the Mediterranean with two pencils sticking up as smokestacks, said of his association: “We try to invent places where we can have a dialogue, and drawing is the pretext. We want to push past social and political constraints.”

Drugs and Politics Stoke Ireland Gang War

LONDON - The gangland killing of a prominent Dublin crime boss on Tuesday marked the latest escalation in an underworld war involving drug dealers, disaffected Irish Republicans and contract killers.

The Irish police, the Garda Síochána, were questioning on Wednesday a man reported to be linked to the dissident Republican movement after Eamon Kelly, a 65-year-old career criminal, was shot dead outside his Dublin home by a lone gunman.

The murder of a man referred to by the Dublin press as “The Godfather” was the 15th gang-related killing this year.

The Irish broadcaster RTE said detectives believed the latest murder was linked to tensions between dissident Republicans and criminal gangs, which led to the murder of a member of the so-called Real I.R.A. three months ago.

A wave of killings over recent years has been linked to conflict over the proceeds of the illegal drug trade. The gangland phenomenon has even spawned a popular television drama series, Love/Hate, which began its third season in November.

The Irish Independent wrote at the time that the real-life gangland story was starker than the fiction. Martin Callinan, the head of the Irish police, told the newspaper that Ireland hosted 25 organized crime gangs, whose bosses were forging links with Russian mobsters.

Recent killings have been linked to a war between drug gangs and disaffected elements of the Irish Republican Army who rejected the peace process in Northern Ireland that ended three decades of violence in the British-ruled province.

The Real I.R.A., banned in Britain and the Irish Republic and regarded by the United States as a terrorist organization, has carried out bomb and gun attacks on both sides of the Irish border in the past decade, ostensibly in support of its campaign for a united Ireland.

In the Irish Republic, however, the dissidents are now regarded as just another criminal gang, bent on extorting the drug profits of crime bosses in Dublin and other cities.

The Real I.R.A. this year linked up with a Northern Ireland vigilante group - Republican Action Against Drugs - which has been behind a campaign of shootings and forcible exile of teenagers and men accused of involvement in drug dealing in the northern city of Derry.

“They have persuaded some parents to hand over their children - some as young as 18 - to be shot by appointment in a non-lethal way to spare them more serious injuries,” the BBC reported.

The alliance was proclaimed as part of a politically inspired unity effort among dissidents to strengthen the armed struggle against the British presence in the province. However, the Derry vigilantes have been branded by Northern Ireland police as vicious thugs who are running their own extortion rackets linked to their self-proclaimed war on drugs.

South of the border in September, Alan Ryan, a murdered member of the Real I.R.A. linked to the Dublin drug war, was buried at a ceremony in which masked mourners in paramilitary uniform put on what was the dissidents' biggest show of strength to date in the Irish Republic.

Mr. Ryan was described at the graveside as “a brave Irish republican and fearless I.R.A. volunteer.”

Irish police, however, believe he was himself directly responsible for two murders and was involved in extorting drug gangs in Dublin as well as innocent pub owners, according to The Belfast Telegraph.

“Sources say that a north Dublin drugs gang hired a professional assassin to kill Ryan after he robbed them of a large amount of cash earlier this summer,” the newspaper wrote.

The favored theory in Tuesday's murder of Eamon Kelly is that it was revenge for the Ryan killing.

The Louvre Branches Out

Pool photo by Michel Spingler President François Hollande at the museum's opening on Tuesday.

President François Hollande of France inaugurated the first regional branch of the Louvre on Tuesday, a museum set atop a former coal mining yard in the depressed, postindustrial city of Lens.

The Louvre-Lens, a $195 million project, is scheduled to open its doors to the public on Dec. 12. It will house a rotating collection of 205 works, mostly from the Louvre in Paris.

It is part of a recent push by France's major museums to bring more culture to outlying areas of the country and to “open the doors of art while helping to revitalize a territory,” Mr. Hollan de said in a speech at the museum on Tuesday.

In 2010 the Pompidou Center â€" home to France's National Museum of Modern Arts â€" opened its first provincial branch in Metz, another postindustrial city in the north of France.

“Lens has been ravaged by all forms of crises,” Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre in Paris, said in a speech on Tuesday. “It's also exactly the type of population we wanted to reach out to.”

The Japanese architectural firm Sanaa designed the new museum, an airy space of more than 300,000 square feet clad in glass and aluminum. Major works that will be on view for the next five years include Leonardo's “Virgin and Child With St. Anne” (painted around 1508); Eugene Delacroix's 1831 “Liberty Leading the People,” a widely recognized patriotic work in France; and Raphaël's “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione.”

The Louvre-Lens is expected to attract 700,000 visitors in its first year. The Louvre has also contracted to open a new museum in Abu Dhabi.

Memo From Miami: What to Do at the Fair

Courtesy of i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine Gallery, New YorkA scene from Ragnar Kjartansson's “Bliss,” a 12-hour re-creation of the final scene of “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Jet-set snowbirds, unite: it's that time again, the week that promises to occupy every inch of Miami - well, a few relatively small affluent neighborhoods, at least - with steroidal event planning, loco brand collaborations and a bona fide smorgasbord of art. It's Art Basel Miami Beach, and anticipation for 2012's slate of trade fairs and revelry may only be matched by a universal desire not to hear the question “are you go ing to Miami?” again until this time next year.

Though there are 19 art fairs in total by popular count, “the fair” refers to only one: Art Basel Miami Beach, the 11th edition of which previews on Wednesday at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Then, a day later, the most consistent alternative to ABMB, the NADA Art Fair, will celebrate its 10th anniversary, at the Deauville Hotel. Shaking up the margins is Untitled, and like an errant 2008 presidential primary cutting ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire, this tent-based upstart on the beach at 13th Street held its V.I.P. vernissage yesterday. With names like Pulse, Seven, Scope, Aqua, Pool and Ink, taken together, some of the remaining fairs could be confused for nightclub listings, and maybe this is fitting given that velvet rope law is absolute in Miami Beach.

Of course there a re also parties on the docket. While he may not have much to celebrate as of late, Jeffrey Deitch's Wednesday shindig, co-hosted by Vanity Fair at the Raleigh (an event that predates his tenure as director of LA MOCA), will happen again, with music provided by the Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li, among others. Having made a splash last year in the dunes behind Soho Beach House, with a barbecue fit not only for royalty but for venture capitalists, Art.sy will host its sophomore party that same night, this year presented by Chanel. While invites to Visionaire's Thursday bash at the new SLS Hotel, with Net-a-Porter, should be as hard to come by as ever, the core entertainment will suspend the restrictions of capitalism; it's a “Free Store” organized by the artist Jonathan Horowitz, where guests can donate and/or pick up personal objects at will. Rounding off the week, MoMA PS1 and Volkswagen may have come up with an ingenious solution to crow ding as well as to karma - their event on Friday at the Delano, with D.J. sets by Chromeo and Animal Collective, is a benefit for those affected by Hurricane Sandy, with $100 tickets and $1,000 V.I.P. passes benefiting the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance. (With the exception of the Sandy benefit, all of these happenings are strictly invite only.)

Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New YorkQuotes overhead: Plane Text delivers artist-authored aphorisms, such as this one by Jack Pierson, over Miami Beach.

If you bemoan a lack of commerce-free substance during the Miami art fairs, well, don't. Area museums are opening a new season of exhibitions: Bill Viola at MOCA North Miami; Josiah McElheny at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens; and six solo projects at the Bass Museum of Art. Today in the Design District, the artist-run nonprofit Bas Fisher Invitational inaugurates a show touting the cyber chic work of (mostly European) young artists like Simon Denny, Timur Si-Qin, Anne de Vries and Absolute Vitality Inc. (Keller/Kosmas). The fifth and final “It Ain't Fair,” organized by the Los Angeles gallery OHWOW, moves to a warehouse on the beach; from Thursday evening on it will be filled with art made by flashy bad boys and girls: Nate Lowman, Laurel Nakadate, Terry Richardson and James Franco, to nam e a few. In addition, the gallery's pirate radio station Know Wave Radio will be enlisting special guests, from Mykki Blanco to Cat Power. Then there is ABMB's roster of extra-curatorial programming, which includes ample talks, films and performances, among them “Bliss,” an outdoor dusk-to-dawn screening (beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday) of the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson's 12-hour re-creation of the final scene of “The Marriage of Figaro.” And overhead all week will be Plane Text, a collaboration between Morgans Hotel Group and Van Wagner Communications to fly artist-authored aphorisms - by the likes of Jenny Holzer, Ed Ruscha, Sol LeWitt and a dozen others - over the beach, dragged by the sorts of small planes that typically advertise bottle service and cruises.

While Jennifer Rubell's popular breakfast installation held at her family's collection in the Design District seems to have gone AWOL this year, the kooky cul inary collaborative outfit Kreëmart will be on hand at the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation collection Saturday morning, presenting Carlos Garaicoa's “Sweet and Safe”: a trenchant, chocolate-fueled pantomime of banking (open to the public with limited capacity). As ever, excess as entertainment is expected.

IHT Quick Read: Dec. 5

NEWS Riot police officers fired tear gas on Tuesday night at tens of thousands of demonstrators in Cairo protesting the Islamist-backed draft constitution. It was the clearest evidence yet that the new charter has only widened the divisions that have plagued Egypt since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago. David D. Kirkpatrick reports from Cairo.

For all the talk about Germany's financial exposure to Greece, it turns out that some German banks have a problem of more titanic proportions: their vulnerability to the global shipping trade. Jack Ewing reports from Frankfurt.

Goaded on by entrenched gender discrimination in politics and elsewhere , a growing band of young Chinese are staging playful, but pointed, public protests for greater rights for women, Didi Kirsten Tatlow writes from Beijing.

ARTS Islamic art, ancient and modern, is getting its due in Paris. Besides the Louvre's lavish new galleries, the Arab World Institute has a striking exhibition of contemporary Arab art on view. Daphne Angles writes from Paris.

The Staatstheater in Stuttgart puts a spin on the Soviet-era opera “L'Écume des Jours” by Edison Denisov. George Loomis reviews.

SPORTS The Elite Football League of India, a curious venture aimed at introducing the American sport to South Asia, has a low level of play but a large potenti al audience. Vikas Bajaj and Ken Belson report.

The International Olympic Committee has suspended the Indian Olympic Association for chronic violations of their charter, creating one of the most embarrassing episodes in Indian sports history. Gardiner Harris reports from New Delhi.

Australia, England and Wales were placed in the same pool at the 2015 World Cup, which means one of the traditional powers will not make it to the knockout round. Emma Stoney reports from Wellington on rugby.

Josep Guardiola, the former coach of Barcelona, is proving a miserable failure in his attempt to be the forgotten man of sports. Rob Hughes on soccer.

IHT Quick Read: Dec. 5

NEWS Riot police officers fired tear gas on Tuesday night at tens of thousands of demonstrators in Cairo protesting the Islamist-backed draft constitution. It was the clearest evidence yet that the new charter has only widened the divisions that have plagued Egypt since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago. David D. Kirkpatrick reports from Cairo.

For all the talk about Germany's financial exposure to Greece, it turns out that some German banks have a problem of more titanic proportions: their vulnerability to the global shipping trade. Jack Ewing reports from Frankfurt.

Goaded on by entrenched gender discrimination in politics and elsewhere , a growing band of young Chinese are staging playful, but pointed, public protests for greater rights for women, Didi Kirsten Tatlow writes from Beijing.

ARTS Islamic art, ancient and modern, is getting its due in Paris. Besides the Louvre's lavish new galleries, the Arab World Institute has a striking exhibition of contemporary Arab art on view. Daphne Angles writes from Paris.

The Staatstheater in Stuttgart puts a spin on the Soviet-era opera “L'Écume des Jours” by Edison Denisov. George Loomis reviews.

SPORTS The Elite Football League of India, a curious venture aimed at introducing the American sport to South Asia, has a low level of play but a large potenti al audience. Vikas Bajaj and Ken Belson report.

The International Olympic Committee has suspended the Indian Olympic Association for chronic violations of their charter, creating one of the most embarrassing episodes in Indian sports history. Gardiner Harris reports from New Delhi.

Australia, England and Wales were placed in the same pool at the 2015 World Cup, which means one of the traditional powers will not make it to the knockout round. Emma Stoney reports from Wellington on rugby.

Josep Guardiola, the former coach of Barcelona, is proving a miserable failure in his attempt to be the forgotten man of sports. Rob Hughes on soccer.