Hillary and the 2016 Presidential Election. Yes, 2016.

By THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Rendezvous’s editor, Marcus Mabry, speaks with Jim Rutenberg, a Times political correspondent, on the rampant speculation over Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions â€" and the evidence that suggests “she is.”

Easter in Asia Marked by Baptisms and Crucifixions

BEIJING â€" If past years are anything to go by, thousands of Chinese were to be baptized Catholic on Easter Sunday, in a reflection of an increasingly intense search for spirituality in an officially atheist nation.

Last year, more than 22,000 Chinese were baptized on this most important day of the Christian calendar, according to Fides, a Catholic news agency, citing figures collected by the Study Center of Faith in Hebei Province, which borders Beijing.

China may have about 12 million Catholics, about half of whom attend the government’s “patriotic” church, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, while the others follow the Pope, whom the Chinese state doesn’t recognize as head of the China’s Catholics, and worship in unofficial churches. Mainland China cut ties with the Vatican shortly after the 1949 Communist revolution but the Vatican has maintained diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the island to where the Chinese Nationalists fled, for more than seventy years.

Making for an even more complicated picture, on the Chinese mainland, many Catholics, including priests, “look both ways,” listening to the state church and to the Pope.

The numbers of Chinese being baptized on Easter Sunday appears to be growing, according to reports by Catholic organizations such as this one in 2010 on Clerical Whispers, a blog, and another report from 2008, also by Fides, which said nearly 14,000 people were baptized that year.

But as every year, high drama was supplied this Easter weekend by the Philippines, where real crucifixions took place on Good Friday in villages and towns in Pampanga Province, north of the capital, Manila, in gory re-enactments of the biblical story of Jesus’s death. The Philippines is Asia’s biggest Catholic-majority nation.

Volunteers had five-inch nails driven through their hands and feet, according to media reports, before being hung up on crosses. The health authorities called on them to make sure they had tetanus shots to prevent infection and to only use stainless steel nails, UCA News, a Catholic news agency, reported. As usual the dramatic and painful events drew a crowd, about 50,000 this year, according to media reports.

On Twitter, some expressed astonishment:

The bloody ritual has been carried out in the Philippines every Easter since 1955, the Philippine Star reported. About 2,000 flagellants also took part in the Good Friday dramas, using bamboo sticks to beat themselves as they walked a mock “via Crucis,” or Stations of the Cross, the newspaper wrote.

The Philippine Star wrote that one man, a house painter, Ruben Enaje, has been crucified every year for the last 27 years, “as an act of penitential thanksgiving” after surviving a fall from a scaffolding, it said.

The church does not approve of the crucifixions, calling them “folk religion,” as The Christian Post reported on Saturday.

“The ritual started in the province about six decades ago as a form of religious vow by poor people seeking forgiveness, a cure for illness and the fulfillment of other wishes,” it wrote. But the church says it can’t stop it.

“We are in no position to suppress them,” The Christian Post quoted an auxiliary bishop, Pablo Virgilio David, as saying. “I do not think it is right to close our doors to them just because they are more attracted to these folk practices than to our Roman liturgy which they may find too foreign or cerebral.”

Archbishop Jose Palma of Cebu, president of the Philippine Bishops’ Conference, said that the real spirit of the observance of the Holy Week is “conversion of oneself. Let us concentrate more on the prayers. These are the wonderful ways of celebrating the Holy Week,” The Christian Post wrote, citing Catholic Herald.

And Bishop Joel Baylon of Legazpi, chairman of the bishops’ commission on youth, said there are “other forms of sacrifice and suffering that would lead to real conversion.” “The Lord appreciates all these forms of sacrifices, but sometimes the kind of sacrifice that we impose on ourselves is not what the Lord wants us to do,” he said.

After Cyprus, Euro Concerns Over Slovenia, a Former Euro Star

LONDON - Will Slovenia be the next Cyprus

So intense has been the speculation that the small Alpine state will be the next euro zone member to need a bailout that its top officials have been prompted to put out statements saying everything is fine.

“We will need no bailout this year,” Uros Cufer, the finance minister, said on Friday. “I am calm.”

That followed an assurance by Alenka Bratusek, the new prime minister, that Slovenia would not need international aid and was “capable of sorting things out itself.”

The statements were in response to a sharp rise this week in Slovenia’s potential borrowing costs as bond investors priced in the high risk of a default.

Analysts have been on the lookout for the next domino likely to fall since Cyprus was forced to accept the stringent conditions of its European partners for a €10-billion, or $12.8-billion, bailout last weekend.

My colleague Landon Thomas Jr. identified the risk in early February, when he wrote that Slovenia was one of two small euro zone economies, along with Malta, that should be causing international investors to lose sleep.

It has been a familiar tale of real estate bubble and bad property loans that have forced the government to prop up Slovenia’s struggling banking sector and other ailing companies.

The country’s banks are burdened with about €7 billion of bad loans, the equivalent of 20 percent of Slovenia’s gross domestic product.

The International Monetary Fund has said Slovenia will need to raise at least €3 billion this year to fund the budget, debt repayments and an overhaul of the banking sector. That will involve the state raising more money by June, when €1 billion of government debt comes up for renewal.

Slovenia, wedged between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, was described as the poster child of the new Europe when it joined the European Union in 2004, 13 years after declaring its independence from a disintegrating Yugoslavia.

Famed for its picture-postcard scenery, the high standard of living and education of its two million inhabitants, and its modern infrastructure, Slovenia was regarded at the time as the most promising of 10 new European Union entrants.

“As nation-states go, Slovenia is the equivalent of a quiet but comfortable middle-class suburb,” Samuel Loewenberg wrote for Slate.

From 2009, two years after it adopted the euro, the country entered a downturn marked by a stalled construction boom, a spate of ill-advised takeovers, and the accumulation of billions of euros of bad debts by the country’s banks.

“Slovenia’s fall from grace has cast doubt on an economic transition that was once the envy of Central and Eastern Europe,” my colleague Stephen Castle wrote from Ljubljana, the capital, last September.

Ms. Bratusek, whose center-left coalition government took office only on March 20, faces the prospect of the economy shrinking by two percent this year.

The government put off issuing more bonds on international markets as its borrowing rate tripled last week. Mr. Cufer said it could afford to wait.

“We do not have to go to the markets in these overheated times due to Cyprus,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “We can wait for the markets to calm down, for the investors to feel comfortable about our action and then we will tap the market.”

Slovenia could not be compared to Cyprus, he said. It was a view echoed by Petra Lesjak, a Ljubljana asset manager, in a Financial Times guest blog this week.

“Its banking sector - equal to about 130 percent of G.D.P. - is relatively small and its depositor base is mostly domestic or from within the E.U.,” she wrote.

“But the level of public debt is rising and a rescue of the banking sector could increase it to 59 percent of G.D.P. in 2013,” Ms. Lesjak added. “After years of delay and dithering, time is running out.”

IHT Quick Read: March 30

NEWS Sven Olaf Kamphuis calls himself the “minister of telecommunications and foreign affairs for the Republic of CyberBunker.” Others see him as the Prince of Spam. Mr. Kamphuis, who is actually Dutch, is at the heart of an international investigation into one of the biggest cyberattacks identified by authorities. Because of his outspoken position in a loose federation of hackers, authorities in the Netherlands and several other countries are examining what role he or the Internet companies he runs played in snarling traffic on the Web this week. Eric Pfanner and Kevin J. O’Brien report.

More than 143,000 home mortgages are in arrears in Ireland, but forced repossessions have been politically and legally difficult. That is about to change. Under pressure from the international lenders who agreed to a €85 billion bailout of the Irish economy in 2010, a law that has been restricting banks’ right to repossess property is being amended to allow them to repossess delinquent properties. As Ireland’s fellow euro zone member Cyprus may be about to learn, bailouts come with strings that can bind for years to come. Stephen Castle reports from Dublin.

One of the most senior employees of the SAC capital has been ensnared in the government’s multiyear insider trading investigation of the prominent hedge fund. F.B.I. agents showed up at the apartment of Michael S. Steinberg on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and arrested him in the pre-dawn hours Friday. Just the day before, Mr. Steinberg had returned from a vacation in Florida, where he and his family visited relatives and took a trip to Disney World. Peter Lattman reports from New York.

American Express customers trying to gain access to their online accounts this week were met with blank screens or an ominous ancient type face. The company confirmed that its Web site had come under attack. The assault, which took American Express offline for two hours, was the latest in an intensifying campaign of unusually powerful attacks on American financial institutions that began last September and have taken dozens of them offline intermittently, costing millions of dollars. Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger report.

SPORTS If Robbie Rogers returns to professional soccer, he would become the first openly gay male athlete to compete in a major American team sport. In an interview with The New York Times, he opens up about his decision to come out of the closet. Letters and e-mails and texts have flowed in from North America, Europe and Asia, and Rogers has been grateful for the support. But there has also been a growing wonder about whether Rogers will consider continuing his career, making him the first openly gay male athlete to play in a major American team sport. Sam Borden reports.

ARTS The spiraling inflation that is pushing the art of the past to ever more dizzying heights has auction house bosses rolling their eyes in ecstasy. Reports recently released sing to high heaven world auction records and gigantic sales, but refrain from noting that these are in danger of driving the market into a brick wall. Souren Melikian reports.

Raids in Russia Target ‘Foreign Agents’

LONDON - It has been a nerve-jangling week for civil society groups in Russia as they awaited a knock on the door by state officials on the hunt for “foreign agents.”

Amid concerns among international advocacy organizations about what has been described as the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the collapse of the Soviet Union, authorities have raided scores of offices of rights groups, foreign cultural bodies and other nongovernmental organizations.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Transparency International, the corruption watchdog, were among those targeted, as well as Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights organization.

The Russian Justice Ministry said the checks by judicial and tax officials were to investigate if the real activities of these organizations matched the declared ones.

Responding to Western criticism that the raids amounted to harassment and intimidation, President Vladimir V. Putin described them on Thursday as “legal and routine.”

The raids follow adoption last year of a law requiring NGOs that receive foreign funding to declare themselves foreign agents, a term that, to Russians, evokes Cold War-era espionage.

The day before the law came into force in November, unidentified people painted the words “Foreign Agent. Love U.S.A.” on the wall of Memorial’s Moscow offices.

Although non-compliance carries large fines, possible jail terms, and potential closure, no organization has so far registered.

The law remained on the statute book for several months while the Justice Ministry argued that it was unenforceable. But, in February, Mr. Putin told officers of the F.S.B. intelligence service that it must be executed.

“Any direct or indirect interference in our internal affairs” was unacceptable, he said.

Reacting to the wave of raids that began on March 21, High Williamson, Human Rights Watch’s Europe director, said the scale of the operations was “unprecedented and only serves to reinforce the menacing atmosphere for civil society.”

“The Russian authorities should end, rather than intensify, the crackdown that’s been under way for the past year,” he said.

The U.S. State Department expressed deep concern at what looked like a witch hunt, while German and French officials warned that the inspections could damage their countries’ relations with Moscow.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s policy chief, said this week, “The ongoing raids, taken together with the recent package of legislation that curtails the civil freedoms of the Russian population … constitute a trend that is deeply troubling.”

The Economist this week reported a broader fear among civil society groups that other newly passed laws will be reanimated. These include a treason law that targets anyone who offers information or assistance to a foreign state or international group.

Sean Roberts, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, wrote last month that the N.G.O law was part of a wider strategy to prevent the resurgence of a protest movement against Mr. Putin’s rule.

However, he suggested the Russian leader’s hardline tactics were potentially undermining his efforts to isolate the opposition and maintain a national consensus.

“The Putin administration’s tough line has altered the regime’s delicate balance,” he wrote, “marginalizing the sizeable liberal-leaning elite who view Russia’s prosperity and security tied to political modernization.”

IHT Quick Read: March 29

NEWS A mortar strike at Damascus University, which the government blamed on insurgents, subverted the aura of normalcy that President Bashar al-Assad has sought to cultivate. Anne Barnard reports from Damascus.

Tight limits on cash withdrawals and other transactions were in effect when Cypriot banks, closed since March 16, reopened around midday on Thursday. Andrew Higgins reports from Akaki, Cyprus, and Liz Alderman from Nicosia.

The grab for influence and power in Karachi shows that the Taliban have been able to extend their reach across Pakistan, and not just in the frontier regions. Declan Walsh and Zia ur-Rehman report from Karachi.

President Thein Sein of Myanmar said Thursday that he was prepared to use force to quell the religious rioting that has shaken his country, answering calls even from longtime democracy advocates for more forceful security measures. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

The disturbing details of Adam Lanza’s possessions were disclosed on Thursday for the first time since he carried out the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. N.R. Kleinfield, Ray Rivera and Serge F. Kovaleski report.

A decade after severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, swept through Hong Kong and then around the world, the city is among the first to become worried about the emergence and spread of another, genetically related virus in the Middle East. Keith Bradsher reports from Hong Kong.

The leader of Italy’s center-left coalition acknowledged on Thursday that he had been unable to cobble together a governing majority in nearly a week of “dramatic” and difficult talks with representatives of the political parties in Parliament. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome.

New research posits that the reddish barren spots, known as fairy circles, that dot a narrow belt of African desert could be the work of industrious sand termites. John Noble Wilford reports.

BP and three other oil giants said Thursday that they would begin a new round of drilling in a remote area about 75 kilometers west of the Shetland Islands, an archipelago north of Scotland. Stanley Reed reports from London.

ARTS In London, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench have opened in new West End plays within three weeks of each other. Matt Wolf writes from London.

SPORTS Only 12 ultrarunners have completed the 100-mile Barkley Marathons, and those connected to this ultrasecret race hope a coming documentary does not alter its counterculture charm. Dave Seminara reports from Wartburg, Tennessee.

London’s Dynamic Duo of Theatrical Dames

LONDON â€" Is that a theatrical dame you see before you Very likely this season in London, where the twin titans that are Helen Mirren and Judi Dench have opened in new West End plays within three weeks of each other.

Time was it seemed as if every London theater season would offer up one or another of this country’s thespian grandees on an ever-rotating basis, be it Diana Rigg, Eileen Atkins, or Maggie Smith - dames of the realm, all.

Ms. Atkins, in fact, was on stage late last year, winning kudos for a rarely staged piece by Samuel Beckett, “All That Fall.” But Ms. Rigg hasn’t done a London play since a supporting turn in “Pygmalion” in 2011, and Ms. Smith has said in interviews that she doesn’t expect to return to the theater even though “Downtown Abbey” has brought her supreme timing to a newly aware public.

So there’s a genuine excitement that comes from finding Ms. Mirren and Ms. Dench back on stage in quick succession, both taking chances on new plays when they could easily be brought in for yet another go-round in Shakespeare, Chekhov, or the canonical dramatist of choice.

One could argue that Ms. Mirren is revisiting familiar terrain. After all, Peter Morgan’s play “The Audience” at the Gielgud Theatre casts its star as Elizabeth II, the very monarch for whom this actress won an Oscar in the film “The Queen,” written, as it happens, by Mr. Morgan. In fact, that 2006 film focused on a very particular moment following the death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the attendant shock waves as they rippled not least across a royal household that was deemed to be out of touch with the sentiments of the British public.

“The Audience,” very much by contrast, takes a prismatic view of the Queen’s 61 years on the throne, as refracted through the weekly meetings that have been and continue to be held, apparently without fail, between the monarch and whichever of 12 prime ministers happens to be in office at that particular time. (The play shows us eight of these politicians in varying degrees of discourse with Her Majesty, the real letdown being the synthetic-seeming encounter with Haydn Gwynne’s Margaret Thatcher.)

The task, therefore, requires Ms. Mirren to make quicksilver adjustments in costume and voice and levels of confidence, as befits both a newly enthroned 20something and a seasoned octogenarian who has seen so many elected leaders come and go that she can function as both inquisitor and adviser, counselor and confidante: The actress handles the various points on that ever-shifting spectrum with the same easeful elegance communicated by Stephen Daldry’s production, which manages to be properly weighty but also rather puckish. Here’s one history lesson, however fictionalized, that has about it a sense of fun.

“The Audience” this week was nominated for five Olivier Awards, London’s equivalent of the Tony, having squeaked in just under the wire: the play opened on the final day of eligibility for the 2013 trophies, to be awarded April 28.

What better time for this production than in the year following the diamond jubilee and an Olympics opening ceremony in which HRH cut an unforgettably comic figure Elizabeth II seems of late both to walk among us and to remain somehow indefinably remote - which makes “The Audience” about as near as most of us are ever likely to get to the real thing.

Ms. Dench won her own Oscar for playing a queen - Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love.” That accolade followed on from the actress’s first Oscar nod for “Mrs. Brown,” in which this quintessential creature of the British stage transferred her indelible capacity for both asperity and pathos to the part of Queen Victoria on screen.

But the actress has also long displayed a knack for anatomizing those ordinary, quotidian existences that don’t make the headlines. “Peter and Alice,” John Logan’s knotty play at the Noel Coward Theatre through June 1, chronicles a kind of limbo - that’s to say, what happens when fame by association takes over a life that can’t compete with the renown that nonetheless happens to be yours.

It’s a matter of record that in June, 1932, Alice Liddell Hargreaves met Peter Llewelyn Davies in a London bookshop. What we don’t know is what the inspirations for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, respectively, actually said to one another, any more than we can be fully sure of the content of those private audiences between Elizabeth II and her country’s political leaders.

As directed by Michael Grandage, who staged the same author’s Tony-winning “Red,” Mr. Logan’s fantasia posits across 85 minutes a joint fall through the separate rabbit holes of memory and creation. The real-life characters are seen ricocheting between the authors who alighted on them, perhaps inordinately so, way back when â€" as well as the literary figures that were the result. And whose takeover of our collective imaginations risked damaging their progenitors for good.

Sound tricky It is, and the result, however ravishingly designed by Christopher Oram, feels both needlessly thorny and insufficiently rich thematically. Far too many lines are given over to the unexceptional realization that life is no wonderland. Whoever said it was

On the other hand, the presence of Ms. Dench as she heads towards 80 late next year constitutes its own, entirely separate wonderland, whether she is seen tossing off mots justes like a latter-day Lady Bracknell or surrendering to the grief of which the play makes a near-fetish by the time of its rather thudding final line. (Surely the material demands a more poetic or metaphor-laden close.)

A corresponding next generation of talent is on offer in the eminently capable Ben Whishaw, Ms. Dench’s “Skyfall” colleague who, in fact, has the largest, most demanding role as a Davies seen trying to sublimate the psychic agitation that will do him in. But listen to his distaff colleague speak, as Hargreaves, of being “an old lady not much loved by anyone,” and you can all but hear an entire playhouse shaking its head, with reference to the actress on view: Not true. No!

Spring Delayed, Europe Shivers

LONDON â€" “When will this winter ever end”

Thursday’s plaintive headline in Britain’s Daily Telegraph was prompted by forecasts that the big freeze gripping much of Europe is likely to last well into April.

From Ireland to Romania, unseasonable snowfalls have caused travel chaos, power outages and serious losses to livestock farmers during the coldest March in almost half a century.

Sun-starved Germans have endured their gloomiest winter in at least 43 years, while northern France is shivering in near-freezing temperatures more than a week after the official arrival of spring.

The cold weather phenomenon, which has also affected the parts of the United States, is being blamed on a slowing of the Atlantic jet stream that scientists say is paradoxically linked to global warming.

This time last year, northern Europe and the eastern United States were basking in a mini-heat wave that brought the warmest March on record in some areas.

It was one of the many examples of climate phenomena that made 2012 a record year for extreme weather events in some regions, as my colleague Christopher F. Schuetze reported in January.

Last year saw the start of an unusually harsh winter in China, record-breaking temperatures in Australia, summer floods in Britain, drought in the American Midwest, and Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of New Jersey and New York in late October.

As my colleague Sarah Lyall has written, quoting Omar Baddour of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, extreme weather events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency.

They are signs that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds, according to Mr. Baddour.

Europe’s freezing spring, far from reinforcing the arguments of climate change skeptics, is actually one of the consequences of man-made global warming, according to climate experts.

Scientists in the United States and elsewhere have explained that the loss of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming is disrupting the course and strength of the westerly jet stream, resulting in longer winters in some years.

“The sea ice is going rapidly. It’s 80 percent less than it was just 30 years ago,” Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science, told The Guardian. “This is a symptom of global warming and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic.”

Ms. Francis warned back in September that the phenomenon might bring a harsh winter to northern Europe.

Shivering Europeans can only hope it will not last much longer.

As Michael Leapman writes in his Daily Telegraph lament, “This time next week I’ll be scurrying around the house putting the clocks forward an hour to prepare for the start of…British Summer Time: another cruel meteorological joke.”

IHT Quick Read: March 28

NEWS President Xi Jinping of China has imposed a form of austerity on the country’s free-spending elite officials, warning that graft and gluttony threaten to bring down the Communist Party. Andrew Jacobs reports from Beijing.

The Cypriot government on Wednesday announced severe restrictions on access to funds held in the country’s banks, hoping to control a rush to withdraw money when the banks open Thursday for the first time in nearly two weeks. Liz Alderman reports from Nicosia.

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared ready on Wednesday to strike down a central part of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as a majority of the justices expressed reservations about the Defense of Marriage Act. Adam Liptak and Peter Baker report from Washington.

North Korea cut off the last remaining military hot lines with South Korea on Wednesday, accusing President Park Geun-hye of South Korea of pursuing the same hard-line policy of her predecessor that the North blamed for a prolonged chill in inter-Korean relations. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

Myanmar’s military asserted its role in the country’s politics at a ceremony on Wednesday that featured a prominent guest, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate, whose presence among the generals would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

Aflamnah, based on the wildly successful Kickstarter, is one of the first Internet crowdfunding platforms to cater to entrepreneurs for creative projects specifically in the Arab world. Sara Hamdan reports from Dubai.

Years of efforts by the government of President Benigno S. Aquino III paid off Wednesday, when the Philippines received, for the first time, an investment-grade credit rating from one of the world’s major ratings agencies. Bettina Wassener and Floyd Whaley report.

In what appears to be a calculation that he can convince a skeptical nation to give up the zloty, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has opened the door to a referendum on joining the euro zone. Dan Bilefsky reports.

ARTS The opera-house performing arts are undergoing a quiet transformation, in large part in response to the same forces that are transforming everyday lives in urban societies: a demand for instant access, ever-improving multimedia and technological possibilities, live screening and streaming, social media and shorter attention spans. Roslyn Sulcas reports from London.

An exhibition in Rome examines how Japan’s artists responded to a flood of Western works. Roderick Conway Morris reviews from Rome.

SPORTS By dominating almost 75 percent of its World Cup qualifier against France, Spain reminded us that possession is nine-tenths of the law on the soccer field. Rob Hughes writes from London.

IHT Quick Read: March 28

NEWS President Xi Jinping of China has imposed a form of austerity on the country’s free-spending elite officials, warning that graft and gluttony threaten to bring down the Communist Party. Andrew Jacobs reports from Beijing.

The Cypriot government on Wednesday announced severe restrictions on access to funds held in the country’s banks, hoping to control a rush to withdraw money when the banks open Thursday for the first time in nearly two weeks. Liz Alderman reports from Nicosia.

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared ready on Wednesday to strike down a central part of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as a majority of the justices expressed reservations about the Defense of Marriage Act. Adam Liptak and Peter Baker report from Washington.

North Korea cut off the last remaining military hot lines with South Korea on Wednesday, accusing President Park Geun-hye of South Korea of pursuing the same hard-line policy of her predecessor that the North blamed for a prolonged chill in inter-Korean relations. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

Myanmar’s military asserted its role in the country’s politics at a ceremony on Wednesday that featured a prominent guest, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate, whose presence among the generals would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

Aflamnah, based on the wildly successful Kickstarter, is one of the first Internet crowdfunding platforms to cater to entrepreneurs for creative projects specifically in the Arab world. Sara Hamdan reports from Dubai.

Years of efforts by the government of President Benigno S. Aquino III paid off Wednesday, when the Philippines received, for the first time, an investment-grade credit rating from one of the world’s major ratings agencies. Bettina Wassener and Floyd Whaley report.

In what appears to be a calculation that he can convince a skeptical nation to give up the zloty, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has opened the door to a referendum on joining the euro zone. Dan Bilefsky reports.

ARTS The opera-house performing arts are undergoing a quiet transformation, in large part in response to the same forces that are transforming everyday lives in urban societies: a demand for instant access, ever-improving multimedia and technological possibilities, live screening and streaming, social media and shorter attention spans. Roslyn Sulcas reports from London.

An exhibition in Rome examines how Japan’s artists responded to a flood of Western works. Roderick Conway Morris reviews from Rome.

SPORTS By dominating almost 75 percent of its World Cup qualifier against France, Spain reminded us that possession is nine-tenths of the law on the soccer field. Rob Hughes writes from London.

BRIC, BRICS, BRICSI The World Financial Order’s Growing Challenge

BEIJING â€" First it was called BRIC, a group of emerging economies thought up in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O’Neill, made up of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Then it acquired an “s” for South Africa and become BRICS. Now there’s talk of Indonesia, which has a strongly growing economy, maybe wanting in: BRICSI, anyone

As the leaders of the BRICS nations met in South Africa this week and announced plans to set up a development bank, five-year infrastructure investment sums, plans for a financial reserve and a string of councils to add business and intellectual heft to the group, some are wondering if Indonesia should be in.

“You can add it as a sixth BRICS, perhaps, making it BRICSI,” PK Basu, regional head of Maybank in Singapore, told the BBC.

Here’s the argument, from the Jakarta Post: Indonesia is the strongest Southeast Asian economy.

“McKinsey & Co. predicts that Indonesia will be the seventh-largest economy in the world and will add 90 million people to its middle class by 2030. There are 45 million middle-class Indonesians today, and the country ranks as the 16th largest economy in the world,” the newspaper wrote.

For now, though, it’s called BRICS, known in Chinese as “Gold Bricks” (and China is a major, perhaps the major, driving force behind it, some commentators say.) The concept of BRICS has been viewed skeptically by some who are asking what these nations actually have in common. But there is a sense it may be strengthening as a group - and growing as a challenge to the established world financial order, crafted principally by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

That sense of change was on view in South Africa this week when the group held its fifth summit in Durban and agreed to some key things, even naming figures.

Infrastructure investment over the next five years: about $4.5 trillion would be needed, as Xinhua, the Chinese state-run news agency reported from Durban.

A figure for the financial reserves, called a Contingent Reserve Arrangement, would initially be $100 billion, Xinhua reported.

Also in the works are a BRICS Business Council, to provide business-to-business links within the group; a BRICS think-tanks council, to get ideas rolling; a BRICS academic forum as a way to promote specialist dialogue. (India seemed especially keen on this, with its president, Manmohan Singh, urging it at the meeting, according to Xinhua.)

How much of this is a vehicle for Chinese ambitions China has long complained that the current world financial architecture is too American and European-focused, and said it wants a bigger voice.

Apple Daily, a Hong Kong and Taiwan-based Chinese-language newspaper, reported that the currency reserve would be heavily financed by China - to the tune of 41 percent of its assets, or $410 million. That has its own logic - China is after all the world’s second-largest economy.

The report quoted a Peking University economics, Xia Yeliang, as saying that China is putting up the money to win influence.

“China is doing it to increase its say, it’s playing the part of investor in many international organizations in the hope of being able to formulate things, even rewrite the rules of the game,” Mr. Ye was quoted as saying.

In another sign of change, China and Brazil agreed in Durban to a $30 billion currency swap, a kind of an insurance policy, to be used to finance trade in case of another global financial crisis such as the one that saw dollar liquidity dry up starting in 2008.

Meanwhile, Indonesia

In January, its trade minister, Gita Wirjawan, noted that Indonesia did not want a status that it did not deserve, the Jakarta Post reported. But the country had reached the same economic standards as the BRICS countries, Mr. Wirjawan told a panel discussion at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the newspaper wrote.

Spies and Big Business Fight Cyberattacks

LONDON - Britain’s intelligence services, working alongside security experts from private companies, are setting up a secret control center in London to combat what the head of the country’s domestic spy agency has described as “astonishing” levels of cyberattacks.

The existence of the so-called Fusion Cell was due to be confirmed on Wednesday in a statement on the government’s strategy to boost information sharing in an expanding cyberwar against online attackers.

A team of security analysts at an undisclosed location will monitor attacks on large screens and provide details in real-time of who is being targeted, according to the BBC.

The British initiative, which also includes the creation of a social network-style web portal to facilitate information exchange, is the latest in a series of international measures to combat what is seen as the growing threat of cyberattacks to both business and government networks.

President Obama last month signed an executive order to increase information sharing about cyberthreats between the government and private companies.

“We have seen a steady ramping up of cybersecurity threats,” Mr. Obama said in a recent interview. “Some are state sponsored, some are just sponsored by criminals.”

Jonathan Evans, the outgoing head of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, made a similar point ahead of last year’s London Olympic Games.

“Vulnerabilities in the internet are being exploited aggressively not just by criminals but also by states,” he said in a rare interview. “The extent of what is going on is astonishing.”

The victims are said to include big companies. The BBC said one major London listed company had lost the equivalent of $1.2 billion as a result of a cyberattack from a hostile state.

Some 160 companies â€" from the financial, defense, energy, telecommunications and pharmaceutical sector â€" have signed up to a pilot program for the British government’s information sharing initiative since it was launched last year.

The European Union, meanwhile, is studying proposals for greater information sharing among the 27-member alliance following a series of high-profile cyberattacks directed at eBay, PayPal and Diginotar, a Dutch Internet certificate company.

Despite increased international attention to a growing cyberwar, some skeptics believe the threat is being hyped by governments and by companies involved in an increasingly lucrative and pervasive security industry.

“Anything that uses ‘cyber’ in its title is a con and should be laughed out of the room,” according to Glynn Moody, blogging at ComputerWorld UK this week.

“Yes, attacks take place, but the fact that they take place across the Internet is no different from those using any other technology,” wrote Mr. Moody, an “open source” expert.

“Trying to claim that the ‘cyberthreat’ is somehow qualitatively different is merely a demonstration of the abiding ignorance and fear that afflicts our rulers when it comes to the digital realm.”

In the United States and elsewhere, plans to combat the threat have raised privacy concerns and accusations that governments are overreacting.

“A reminder is in order,” Thomas Rid wrote at Foreign Policy this month. “The world has yet to witness a single casualty, let alone fatality, as a result of a computer attack.”

Mr. Rid, a London University war studies expert, said private computer security companies were keen to pocket government money earmarked for cybersecurity. “And hype is the means to that end.”

The cybertrend has already been spotted by investors. The U.S.-based Investment U Web site said this week it had spotted “a great investment opportunity” back in 2011.

“Fast forward to the present,” Investment U’s Jason Jenkins wrote. “Cyber stocks are finally starting to move. And the cybercrime issue has exploded - not just in terms of domestic fraud, but it has now been elevated to national security problem No. 1.”

The potential opportunities were spotted by the British government as it prepared to announce its new Fusion Cell.

“Businesses that take cybersecurity seriously can gain commercial advantages from doing so,” James Brokenshire, the British minister for security, said earlier this month, adding, “The UK can export expertise through the growth of a vibrant UK security industry.”

A Museum With a View: Exploring Hong Kong’s World of Water

HONG KONGâ€"If you arrive at Hong Kong’s international airport on Lantau island and take a cab or bus into the central district on Hong Kong island, you can’t help but notice the sheer number of ships and boats in the water. The seas around Hong Kong draw vessels from all over the world and thousands arrive every year.

The newly reopened Hong Kong Maritime Museum explores East Asia’s inextricable link to the water, putting Hong Kong’s maritime story into context regionally and internationally, as the museum puts it.

The museum officially reopened last month on Central Ferry Pier 8 in the heart of Victoria Harbor.

It first opened in 2004 in Murray House, a 19th-century building that was moved to Stanley, an area along the southern coast of Hong Kong island somewhat removed from other cultural attractions found in the Central and Kowloon districts.

Now, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has provided the space on the central pier and some funding for staff salaries for the first several years. The rest of the museum’s costs are covered mainly by donations, including those of prominent shipping companies. Each of the galleries in the museum is supported by a shipping company or a person connected to shipping, according to Robert Trio, one of the principal consultants who worked on the reopening.

The galleries are divided onto three well-organized levels. Starting on the lower floor, visitors receive an introduction to ancient Chinese culture with the oldest item on display, a ceramic model boat that dates from the Han Dynasty. Other galleries include everything from depictions of maritime culture in fine art across the centuries (including loans from other museums) to 19th- and 20th-century technology used in diving and sailing to hands-on displays that allow visitors to sound bells and horns from ships. (A tip to visitors: avoid standing directly in front of them while sounding!).

The museum’s collection has over 5,000 items, an array that can be overwhelming but also leave a visitor wanting to know more. Who, for example, was Philo McGiffin, a few of whose belongings are on display He was an American naval captain, Philo McGiffin, who lived in China in the late 19th century, but his significance remains unexplained.

But as a general overview of maritime culture, it’s hard to imagine a more engaging and appealing space. Its staff is knowledgeable and its resource center is open to both scholars and the public, according to Kitty But, a librarian at the center.

On the main floor large windows, directly over the harbor, are framed by a beautiful figurehead above and a reproduction of a map on the carpet below. It’s a spectacular view and a good reminder of just how close to the sea you are in Hong Kong.

A highlight of the collection is a painted scroll known as “Pacifying the South China Sea” (its original name has been lost, along with that of the artist). Painted in the 19th century, its colorful images tell the story of piracy and its decline in southern China after the arrival of a governor general, Bailing. An interactive wall display allows visitors to zoom in digitally on particular areas of the scroll and read sections of a related Chinese text. In another room of the museum, a 360-degree screen animates parts of the scroll, to an audio accompaniment.

There are more than 50 interactive touch screens, in both English and Chinese, in the museum that allow visitors to learn more about specific items in the collection. The building includes a gift shop and eventually will also have a cafe.

IHT Quick Read: March 27

NEWS A squabble between a group fighting spam and a Dutch company that hosts Web sites that are said to be sending spam has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world. John Markoff and Nicole Perlroth report.

As the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday weighed the momentous question of whether gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry, six justices questioned whether the case, arising from a California ban on same-sex marriages, was properly before the court and indicated that they might vote to dismiss it. Adam Liptak reports from Washington.

Italy’s highest court on Tuesday ordered a new trial in the sensational case of Amanda Knox, an American student accused of murdering her 21-year-old roommate, Meredith Kercher of Britain, in 2007. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome.

With time running out until Cyprus’s devastated banks must reopen their doors to the public, Cypriot and European officials are scrambling to put in place a set of measures that would allow jittery depositors access to their savings while preventing many billions of euros from fleeing the country. Landon Thomas Jr. reports from Nicosia.

A group of five emerging world economic powers met in Africa for the first time Tuesday, gathering in South Africa for a summit meeting at which they plan to announce the creation of a new development bank, a direct challenge to the dominance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Lydia Polgreen reports from Johannesburg.

European Union antitrust regulators have expanded their investigation into whether a small network of big banks unfairly controls the derivatives market. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

EDUCATION A growing number of graduate-level management courses are teaching sustainability, in and out of the classroom. Christopher F. Schuetze reports from The Hague.

With finance based on the principles of the Koran booming, its growth has pushed more educational institutions into creating degree programs in the field. Kristiano Ang reports from Kuala Lumpur.

ARTS The Berlin Philharmonic, which in May 2011 announced that after 45 years its 2012 Easter Festival in Salzburg would be its last, has duly taken up residence in the Festspielhaus of this idyllic spa town that lured it away. In Salzburg, meanwhile, quick action to engage the Dresden Staatskapelle orchestra and its conductor, Christian Thielemann, has allowed its Easter Festival to proceed apace. George Loomis reviews from Baden-Baden, Germany.

SPORTS In cricket, England hung on to draw with New Zealand in Auckland, ending a three-match series in a 0-0 stalemate. Huw Richards reports.

For all the goals that Michael Owen scored as a professional, his most spectacular came against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. He was 18. Rob Hughes writes from London.

As Media Deal in Taiwan Collapses, Political Fallout Lingers

HONG KONG â€" Today was the deadline for two liberal publications in Taiwan to be sold off to investors who favor stronger ties with mainland China, a deal that alarmed many Taiwanese suspicious of the current government’s warming ties with Beijing.

But the deal is apparently is dead, as my colleagues Neil Gough and Lin Yang reported. Mark Simon, a spokesman for the papers’ owner, Jimmy Lai of Next Media, said on Tuesday that the prospective buyers “pulled out.”

The reasons for the deal’s collapse remain somewhat of a mystery, and speculation is rife in Taiwan about why it fell apart. Some media outlets reported that Tsai Eng-meng, a pro-China Taiwan billionaire whose son was to buy the publications, became concerned that the purchase would lead to unwelcome antitrust scrutiny. Mr. Tsai’s son, Tsai Shao-chung, already controls a leading newspaper and several Web sites in Taiwan as president of the Want Want China Times group.

The deal, which involved the sale of the Taiwan editions of Apple Daily and Next magazine, had in fact already drawn the attention of antitrust regulators in Taiwan. And more worrying for pro-Beijing elements, it helped energize protests in January against Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou, who has made closer ties with mainland China a hallmark of his stewardship. Among the demands of the protesters was that the government block the Next Media deal.

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party has also been pushing for new legislation to prevent media monopolies, and their leaders signaled that their fight is not likely to end with the collapse of the deal.

Government media regulators, who had been looking at the transaction for months, “moved very slow on this deal because the public opposition to this is strong,” said Hsieh Kuai-Hueh, a spokewoman for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. “The DPP will continue to push for a law that bans media monopolies in Taiwan.”

But some see the collapse of the deal as only a partial loss for Beijing, given that public opposition had made the sale of Mr. Lai’s Taiwan publications politically problematic for the island’s governing, China-friendly Kuomintang party.

“Beijing didn’t want a cashed up Jimmy Lai,’’ said Mark Simon, a spokesperson for Mr. Lai’s Next Media group in Hong Kong. He suggested that perhaps “mainland China sent a message out that this is not a necessary fight to have.”

And the furor over the Next Media deal is emblematic of wider concerns about the media’s ability to play a watchdog role in Asia. Radio Television Hong Kong has been the target of criticism over perceived censorship by the outlet’s broadcasting director, Roy Tang Yun-kwong, who was appointed to his post by the government. And accusations of political interference come in many forms: in Malaysia, Clare Rewcastle Brown, the founder of Radio Free Malaysia, told The Wall Street Journal that the Malaysian government was behind cyberattacks that disrupted the Monday debut of her show.

A Doll Helps Disabled Women Find Their Voices

NEWCASTLE, England â€" Josephine, a life-size doll, sat on a chair in the middle of a community center in this city in northeast England.

Jackie Hudson, a facilitator in the Josephine Project, a sex education program for women that uses theater to deliver its messages, put her hands on the shoulders of the doll. “How do we know when Josephine can trust someone” she asked a group of women, all with learning disabilities.

“They’re nice to you,” replied Joan, a participant in the program.

“That’s good. But Josephine cannot always trust people who are nice to her,” said Ms. Hudson, who began putting pictures on the blue walls: a woman crying, two people holding hands and a man hitting a woman. Pointing to one picture of a man touching a woman’s chest, Ms. Hudson askéd the group: “Do we think Josephine can trust someone who touches her like this”

This time the response was mixed.

“There are times when Josephine may want to be touched and there times when she won’t. Josephine needs to know that she decides this,’’ Ms. Hudson said.

Josephine’s message, that sex is wrong when it is forced upon them, was news to many of the women in the class.

Women with learning disabilities are especially vulnerable to sex abuse, and there is little support available for disabled people on issues concerning relationships, abuse and sexual health.

A 2012 report ‘Behind closed doors’ carried out by Mencap, a British advocacy group for the disabled, found that a mentally disabled woman is four times more likely to be abused than someone without those challenges. They rarely tell anyone what has happened, let alone report the incident to the police.

The Josephine Project was founded in 2004 by a Newcastle arts organization called Them Wifies, after their work showed how unaware the women were of their own bodies. The series of workshops has since been adopted by a range of other organizations in other parts of Britain.

The group learned that acting out emotions and experiences through Josephine can help women with even profound learning disabilities communicate something they may not have the words to say.

“Often individuals with serious disabilities will completely turn off when a question is directed at them as they may find it intrusive or intimidating,” Ms. Hudson said. “We have found the women are able to connect to Josephine and learn more about themselves from seeing experiences through her.”

Sometimes the class may be asked what they feel about an experience and will use Josephine to voice this by rubbing her cloth hands together to show she is nervous or put her head down to show she is upset. According to the workshop facilitator, this rare opportunity of expression has exposed that many of the women have already experienced abuse.

One woman in the class said she had a new boyfriend, who visits her, has sex with her and leaves immediately afterward. “How does that make you feel” Ms. Hudson asked. The woman shrugged her shoulders. Ms. Hudson put her ear next to Josephine’s mouth. “Josephine tells me she is having the same problem. She says sometimes being treated like that makes her upset. What should Josephine do about this”

The lack of availability of such counseling for disabled people was brought to public attention in Britain in 1975, when the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation published a report that said that it is not the impairment that is the problem but society’s failure to take into account the special needs of the disabled population.

Almost 40 years later the issue is still a problem worldwide. Audrey Simpson, chief executive of the Family Planning Association in Britain, remembers taking a recent class for disabled women over 70 who believed that menopause only happened to women with disabilities. “Overwhelming evidence shows that society is still failing to meet their sexual health needs,” Dr. Simpson said.

According to Dr. Simpson, many women die or become ill needlessly because illnesses such as sexually transmitted diseases and cervical and breast cancer have not been diagnosed, contributing to a recent statistic claiming early deaths. Disabled people die on average 16 years earlier than they should, a Mencap report said.

Health education is one aspect of the program; besides learning how to use protection and go for regular checkups, the classes learn that there are circumstances when behavior is not appropriate.

A corollary to understanding consent is being able to pursue and enjoy intimacy. According to Claire Morgan, a leader of the project, many caregivers and parents often prevent disabled people from having intimate partners, thinking they are protecting them. But that prevention can lead to depression and loneliness, making them more vulnerable to abuse.

“Having a disability is not a reason to assume that an individual does not possess the same emotional and physical needs as any other human being,” said Ms. Morgan. She added that it is also essential to consider the wide spectrum of learning disabilities and people with profound learning disabilities will have very different needs to those with moderate disabilities.

When Joan was asked what she thought of Josephine, she put her arms around the cloth woman and stroked her wool head. “She’s like a really good friend I can trust,” she said.

The Josephine Project’s success has led Them Wifies to set up workshops in London, Milton Keynes and Glasgow. The group has recently begun classes for girls under 16. The group has also started the Jack Project, a similar concept aimed at helping men with disabilities.

In recent months the city of Newcastle has been threatened with cuts of 100 percent of funding for the arts, but the Josephine Project has secured funding through a number of sources including charities, trusts, foundations and the local council.

“The women in this class are all over 30, and a lot of what they learn in our class is new to them,” Ms. Hudson said. “What we’re teaching now needs to be a compulsory stage of education for everyone from the very beginning. But at present it is far from that,”

China’s New-style First Lady and Old-style Fears

BEIJING â€" When Peng Liyuan, China’s glamorous, new first lady, stepped out of the Air China airplane in Moscow next to her husband on his inaugural trip abroad, an old fear stepped out too: as a woman close to power might she bring disaster on the country

It sounds far-fetched, but China has traditionally viewed women and power as mixing badly, a sign of deeply patriarchal traditions that hold that only men can handle it.

“Chinese tradition is just too fierce,” sighed Li Huiying, a feminist scholar at the Central Party School in Beijing, when I asked her about the issue. “Let’s judge her at face value.”

Indeed. But the topic is hard to avoid entirely. Last Friday, the very day Mr. Xi and Ms. Peng (Chinese women do not change their surname when they marry) landed in Moscow, an online discussion sprang up on a forum called Hupu, asking: “Is it true that when the harem meddles in politics it’s a sign of chaos for the nation” (The site is in Chinese.)

The post went on to list what it said were examples of mixing empresses or concubines and power that had ended badly for China, including that of Cixi, the dowager empress during the Qing dynasty (China’s last imperial dynasty that ended in 1911), and women in the Han and Tang dynasties, about 2,200 and about 1,400 years ago.

It seemed a pointed question to be posing on that day. Commentators picked up on it.

“Looking at the news headlines these two days, what are the evil intentions of the person who started this thread” asked a person with the online name Yangliu Dongfengshu.

“What is the initiator trying to do” asked Lushan631980.

Others pooh-poohed the comparison, saying the women in question had handled power pretty well.

As I explore in my Female Factor column this week, Ms. Peng’s greater role as a first lady is connected to China’s concerns that it has a poor international image. A glamorous, kind-seeming wife at the side of its new leader, exercising soft power with a smile, will help, advisers believe. It seems like a safe bet. But knowing about these old patriarchal fears underscores what a profound cultural shift it is for China to engage in “first ladyism;” that is, to have a first lady behaving pretty much like a first lady anywhere else.

Cyprus Deal Sparks Anti-German Mood — and Defenders

LONDON â€" In the overheated atmosphere of the Cyprus bailout crisis, Germany has once more been portrayed as a bullying villain wielding its economic power to dominate a struggling Europe.

Deutsche Welle said Chancellor Angela Merkel must be growing weary of being portrayed in an SS uniform and sporting a Hitler mustache.

“Since the start of the euro zone crisis, opponents of austerity measures have relied on Nazi comparisons to get their message across,” according to the German broadcaster.

Germanophobia has become a persistent leitmotiv in the crises that have enveloped the most vulnerable, and predominantly southern, economies of the 17-member currency zone.

As Rendezvous wrote last June, “All the old stereotypes about the Germans are rising to the surface as frustration grows over their refusal to sign what they regard as a blank check to their less disciplined European neighbors.”

The German-bashing resurfaced with a vengeance during the Cyprus crisis.

Juan Torres López, a Spanish economist, caused a furor with a guest column in Spain’s El País in which he wrote, “Angela Merkel, like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent, this time to guarantee Germany its vital economic space.”

The newspaper responded to protests by withdrawing the article from its Web site. Mr. Torres López said he had no intention of comparing Ms. Merkel with Hitler (although he stood by his references to war and Lebensraum.)

“The drama over Cyprus has made clear that the euro zone crisis is developing into a struggle over German hegemony in Europe,” Jakob Augstein acknowledged in Germany’s Der Spiegel.

In a column that was highly critical of Germany’s role in the Cyprus settlement, he wrote:

Just like twice before in our recent history, the Germans are falling deeper and deeper into conflict with their neighbors - regardless of the cost. It’s a path that could easily lead to fear of German political hegemony on the Continent. Indeed, Merkel’s idea of European integration is simply that Europe should bend to Germany’s political will.

The deal eventually reached with Cyprus on a €10-billion bailout looked unlikely to soften the outlook of those who blame Germany for their economic ills.

German officials were peppered with questions on Monday about whether the deal would aggravate long-simmering resentment within Europe, Reuters reported from Berlin, “and perhaps even convince some states that Merkel’s cure is worse than their disease.”

Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times, argued that the latest wave of Germanophobia provoked by the Cyprus crisis was unfair.

“Behind all the shouting and the wrangling, German taxpayers will once again be funding the biggest single share of yet another euro zone bailout,” he wrote.

“It seems a bit harsh that Germany is extending loans of hundreds of billions of euros to its neighbors - only to be accused of neo-Nazism in return.”

Mr. Rachman believed the phenomenon was as much to do with the weakness of Germany’s European partners as with that country’s strength.

He highlighted the diminished role of France, where President François Hollande “has let it be known that he disapproves of Germany’s insistence of austerity but he has not proposed a coherent alternative.”

Brendan Simms, a Cambridge University history professor, wrote earlier this month that a surge of political and popular Germanophobia was not surprising.

Writing in Britain’s New Statesman, he said that Germany was both too strong and too weak. There were many who worried that Germany was not using its power actively enough, due to the country’s historically based discomfort with exercising military force.

“It sits uneasily at the heart of an E.U. that was conceived largely to constrain German power but which has served instead to increase it,” he wrote.

Professor Simms said there had been widespread calls over the past three years for Germany to take the lead in resolving the escalating euro crisis.

“That is the dilemma of German power today,” he wrote. “Germany is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.”

Cyprus Deal Sparks Anti-German Mood — and Defenders

LONDON â€" In the overheated atmosphere of the Cyprus bailout crisis, Germany has once more been portrayed as a bullying villain wielding its economic power to dominate a struggling Europe.

Deutsche Welle said Chancellor Angela Merkel must be growing weary of being portrayed in an SS uniform and sporting a Hitler mustache.

“Since the start of the euro zone crisis, opponents of austerity measures have relied on Nazi comparisons to get their message across,” according to the German broadcaster.

Germanophobia has become a persistent leitmotiv in the crises that have enveloped the most vulnerable, and predominantly southern, economies of the 17-member currency zone.

As Rendezvous wrote last June, “All the old stereotypes about the Germans are rising to the surface as frustration grows over their refusal to sign what they regard as a blank check to their less disciplined European neighbors.”

The German-bashing resurfaced with a vengeance during the Cyprus crisis.

Juan Torres López, a Spanish economist, caused a furor with a guest column in Spain’s El País in which he wrote, “Angela Merkel, like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent, this time to guarantee Germany its vital economic space.”

The newspaper responded to protests by withdrawing the article from its Web site. Mr. Torres López said he had no intention of comparing Ms. Merkel with Hitler (although he stood by his references to war and Lebensraum.)

“The drama over Cyprus has made clear that the euro zone crisis is developing into a struggle over German hegemony in Europe,” Jakob Augstein acknowledged in Germany’s Der Spiegel.

In a column that was highly critical of Germany’s role in the Cyprus settlement, he wrote:

Just like twice before in our recent history, the Germans are falling deeper and deeper into conflict with their neighbors - regardless of the cost. It’s a path that could easily lead to fear of German political hegemony on the Continent. Indeed, Merkel’s idea of European integration is simply that Europe should bend to Germany’s political will.

The deal eventually reached with Cyprus on a €10-billion bailout looked unlikely to soften the outlook of those who blame Germany for their economic ills.

German officials were peppered with questions on Monday about whether the deal would aggravate long-simmering resentment within Europe, Reuters reported from Berlin, “and perhaps even convince some states that Merkel’s cure is worse than their disease.”

Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times, argued that the latest wave of Germanophobia provoked by the Cyprus crisis was unfair.

“Behind all the shouting and the wrangling, German taxpayers will once again be funding the biggest single share of yet another euro zone bailout,” he wrote.

“It seems a bit harsh that Germany is extending loans of hundreds of billions of euros to its neighbors - only to be accused of neo-Nazism in return.”

Mr. Rachman believed the phenomenon was as much to do with the weakness of Germany’s European partners as with that country’s strength.

He highlighted the diminished role of France, where President François Hollande “has let it be known that he disapproves of Germany’s insistence of austerity but he has not proposed a coherent alternative.”

Brendan Simms, a Cambridge University history professor, wrote earlier this month that a surge of political and popular Germanophobia was not surprising.

Writing in Britain’s New Statesman, he said that Germany was both too strong and too weak. There were many who worried that Germany was not using its power actively enough, due to the country’s historically based discomfort with exercising military force.

“It sits uneasily at the heart of an E.U. that was conceived largely to constrain German power but which has served instead to increase it,” he wrote.

Professor Simms said there had been widespread calls over the past three years for Germany to take the lead in resolving the escalating euro crisis.

“That is the dilemma of German power today,” he wrote. “Germany is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.”

Bright Passages

Don’t worry: the fault-finding proceeds as usual in the “In a Word” section below. But first, a small and subjective sampling of sparkling prose from recent editions. Nominations are always welcome.

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Metro, 3/12:

As Rats Persist, Transit Agency Hopes to Curb Their Births

They have thwarted the poisons. They have evaded the traps. And on Monday, the rats of the New York City subway system received another shot across the bow from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. …

One challenge, the authority said, was offering the rats a bait that they might prefer to the subway system’s daily treasures â€" half-eaten gyros and chicken fried rice, stale pizza and discarded churros.

Pure garbage poetry, from Matt Flegenheimer’s report on the M.T.A.’s latest rodent strategy.

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Science, 3/15:

Some Primitive Birds Flew With 4 Wings, Study Says

At the time, these “basal bird” species appeared to be replacing their hind-limb feathers with scales and developing more birdlike feet. The researchers suggested that the four-winged creatures were already getting ready to use their hind limbs for terrestrial locomotion, like the robin pursuing worms on a lawn or the disputatious crow strutting around an overturned trash can.

And another trash-inspired verbal gem, a vivid image from John Noble Wilford’s account of early birds and their limbs.

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Foreign, 3/12:

In China, Cinematic Flops Suggest Fading of an Icon

National celebrations of “Learn From Lei Feng Day,” which was observed last Tuesday, turned into something of a public relations debacle after the party icon’s celluloid resurrection in not one but three films about his life was thwarted by a distinctly capitalist weapon: the box office bomb.

Plays on words can be perilous unless they are truly clever. This one â€" from Dan Levin’s story about the fading popularity of a Communist hero â€" fit the bill.

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Metro, 2/12:

Why Buy a Condo You Seldom Use Because You Can

Some residents, like Mr. Attias and Ms. Cutler of the Plaza, say the sparse population means extra privacy, lots of attention from the staff and very little noise. Mr. Stewart said he always pointed it out at Time Warner as a selling point.

Others, however, describe living in a deserted piggy bank as something else: lonely.

Liz Harris came up with this arresting description for high-priced condo buildings left empty by owners who use their units only for rare New York visits.

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Obituaries, 2/23:

Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at 83

The son of Irving Westin and the former Etta Furman, Alan Furman Westin was born in Manhattan on Oct. 11, 1929; received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida in 1948, followed by a law degree from Harvard in 1951; was admitted to the bar in 1952; married Bea Shapoff, a teacher, in 1954 in a ceremony in which the bride wore a waltz-length white gown; joined the Columbia faculty in 1959; earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1965 (his dissertation topic was “Privacy in Western Political History”); lived for many years in Teaneck, N.J.; edited a string of books, including “Freedom Now! The Civil-Rights Struggle in America” (1964), “Information Technology in a Democracy” (1971) and “Getting Angry Six Times a Week: A Portfolio of Political Cartoons” (1979); once made a sound recording titled “I Wonder Who’s Bugging You Now”; was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the AmericanJewish Congress; had a Social Security number obtained in Massachusetts; and was a registered Democrat who last voted in 2011 â€" all public information, obtainable online at the touch of a button or two.

Margo Fox’s final paragraph gave plenty of information and a vivid illustration of the theme of this obit â€" the issue of privacy in the computer age. The obit also included this memorable sentence: Since the first hominid grunted gossip about the hominid next door, every new communications medium has entailed new impingements on privacy.

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Metro, 12/28:

Rare Choreography of Cooperation for Riders Caught Between an F and an M

They toil in a city of haggard indifference and missed connections, where the simplest task can devolve into a competitive sport.

But consider the altruists of the Sixth Avenue line on the Lower East Side, keepers of perhaps the most collaborative corner of the subway system.

Another memorable note from underground by Matt Flegenheimer, this time about the subway station where commuters actually share information with fellow riders.

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National, 12/27:

Summoned Back to Work, Senators Chafe at Inaction

“Members of the House of Representatives are out watching movies and watching their kids play soccer and basketball and doing all kinds of things,” said Mr. Reid, in a ferocious floor attack on the House that he returned to periodically throughout the day Thursday, like an angry father-in-law revisiting a grudge he’s been nursing all year. “They should be here.”

A very recognizable image enlivened this Congressional scene story by Jennifer Steinhauer.

 
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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The theft, including works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet and Degas, were valued at $500 million. It remains the largest property crime in American history.

Agreement problem; make it “The theft … was valued at.”

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In his ruling, Justice Tingling concurred with much of the beverage industry’s legal arguments.

“Many,” not “much,” with the plural “arguments.”

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Lacking substance, the optics of the president’s visit will loom all the larger.

Dangler; it was the visit, not the “optics,” that was lacking substance. Rephrase.

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Ground is scheduled to be broken this year on an $800 million, 39-story hotel and retail complex at 701 Seventh Avenue, at the northern edge of Times Square, and plans for a $140 million renovation of the retail beneath the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square are also under way.

Avoid this jargony use of “retail”; make it “retail space” or just “stores.”

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But the question of his past has never been far below the surface, rekindling accusations relating to a conflict in which as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.

This transitive or passive use of “disappear” became prominent at the time, but is likely to be jarring and unfamiliar to many readers now. If we use it, put it in quotes or otherwise explain it.

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The son of a conservative-leaning Episcopalian father from Texas and a more liberal Jewish mother from New York, Mr. Rhodes grew up in a home where even sports loyalties were divided: he and his mother are ardent Mets fans; his father and his older brother, David, root for the Yankees.

“Episcopal” is the modifier.

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But the fact that he did not spend anything else on the familiar trappings of a campaign, like a campaign staff, suggest that he is either waiting until the last minute to decide or dropping the idea.

Another agreement problem; once again, we were thrown off by the intervening words. Make it “the fact … suggests.”

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His opponents said his emphasis on growth, along with the salaries and perks for a few top employees, were more appropriate to a corporation than a nonprofit institution.

The subject of the sentence is the singular “emphasis.” The prepositional phrase “along with the salaries and perks” does not create a compound, plural subject. Make it “said his emphasis on growth … was more appropriate,” or use “and” in place of “along with.”

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Their combined showings illustrate the emergence of a younger generation on the right, both among elected officials and the base.

Words like “both” and “neither” must be followed by parallel pairs. Make it “among both elected officials and the base,” or “both among elected officials and with the base.”

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The bills have become more prolific in part, he and others say, because conservatives control both the governorships and legislatures in 24 states.

“Prolific” means producing something in abundance. The bills are not prolific, though their authors may be.

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But for fans of sinkholes, of which there are more than one might think, this is a very good time, indeed.

The context suggests that the relative clause was meant to describe “fans,” in which case we needed “whom.”

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BOSTON â€" The Boston School Committee, once synonymous with fierce resistance to racial integration, took a historic step Wednesday night and threw off the last remnants of forced busing first imposed in 1974 under a federal court desegregation order.

From The Times’s stylebook:

The expression forced busing is polemical; use court-ordered busing.

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It appears to be one of those apps that overshares, but it isn’t.

Recorded announcement from the stylebook:

[N]ote the plural verb in a construction like She is one of the people who love the Yankees. The test is to reverse the sentence: Of the people who love the Yankees, she is one.

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Radiation treatment for breast cancer would increase that risk to between 2.4 percent to 3.4 percent, depending on how much radiation hits the heart.

Make it “between 2.4 percent and 3.4 percent” (it was later fixed).

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They found that collapsing bird populations were more strongly correlated with insecticide use than with habitat alteration â€" that, in fact, pesticides were four times more likely to be linked with bird losses than any other cause.

From the stylebook:

times less, times more. Writers who speak of three times more or three times faster often mean “multiplied by 3,” but precise readers are likely to understand the meaning as “multiplied by 4″: the original quantity or speed, plus three more times. For clarity, avoid times more, times faster, times bigger, etc. Write four times as much (or as fast, etc.). And do not write times less or times smaller (or things like times as thin or times as short). A quantity can decrease only one time before disappearing, and then there is nothing left to decrease further. Make it one-third as much (or as tall, or as fast).

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Democrats said the Republican budget was further proof that Republicans were out-of-touch with ordinary Americans, who already delivered their verdict on the Ryan plan.

No hyphens needed.

Bright Passages

Don’t worry: the fault-finding proceeds as usual in the “In a Word” section below. But first, a small and subjective sampling of sparkling prose from recent editions. Nominations are always welcome.

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Metro, 3/12:

As Rats Persist, Transit Agency Hopes to Curb Their Births

They have thwarted the poisons. They have evaded the traps. And on Monday, the rats of the New York City subway system received another shot across the bow from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. …

One challenge, the authority said, was offering the rats a bait that they might prefer to the subway system’s daily treasures â€" half-eaten gyros and chicken fried rice, stale pizza and discarded churros.

Pure garbage poetry, from Matt Flegenheimer’s report on the M.T.A.’s latest rodent strategy.

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Science, 3/15:

Some Primitive Birds Flew With 4 Wings, Study Says

At the time, these “basal bird” species appeared to be replacing their hind-limb feathers with scales and developing more birdlike feet. The researchers suggested that the four-winged creatures were already getting ready to use their hind limbs for terrestrial locomotion, like the robin pursuing worms on a lawn or the disputatious crow strutting around an overturned trash can.

And another trash-inspired verbal gem, a vivid image from John Noble Wilford’s account of early birds and their limbs.

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Foreign, 3/12:

In China, Cinematic Flops Suggest Fading of an Icon

National celebrations of “Learn From Lei Feng Day,” which was observed last Tuesday, turned into something of a public relations debacle after the party icon’s celluloid resurrection in not one but three films about his life was thwarted by a distinctly capitalist weapon: the box office bomb.

Plays on words can be perilous unless they are truly clever. This one â€" from Dan Levin’s story about the fading popularity of a Communist hero â€" fit the bill.

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Metro, 2/12:

Why Buy a Condo You Seldom Use Because You Can

Some residents, like Mr. Attias and Ms. Cutler of the Plaza, say the sparse population means extra privacy, lots of attention from the staff and very little noise. Mr. Stewart said he always pointed it out at Time Warner as a selling point.

Others, however, describe living in a deserted piggy bank as something else: lonely.

Liz Harris came up with this arresting description for high-priced condo buildings left empty by owners who use their units only for rare New York visits.

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Obituaries, 2/23:

Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at 83

The son of Irving Westin and the former Etta Furman, Alan Furman Westin was born in Manhattan on Oct. 11, 1929; received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida in 1948, followed by a law degree from Harvard in 1951; was admitted to the bar in 1952; married Bea Shapoff, a teacher, in 1954 in a ceremony in which the bride wore a waltz-length white gown; joined the Columbia faculty in 1959; earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1965 (his dissertation topic was “Privacy in Western Political History”); lived for many years in Teaneck, N.J.; edited a string of books, including “Freedom Now! The Civil-Rights Struggle in America” (1964), “Information Technology in a Democracy” (1971) and “Getting Angry Six Times a Week: A Portfolio of Political Cartoons” (1979); once made a sound recording titled “I Wonder Who’s Bugging You Now”; was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the AmericanJewish Congress; had a Social Security number obtained in Massachusetts; and was a registered Democrat who last voted in 2011 â€" all public information, obtainable online at the touch of a button or two.

Margo Fox’s final paragraph gave plenty of information and a vivid illustration of the theme of this obit â€" the issue of privacy in the computer age. The obit also included this memorable sentence: Since the first hominid grunted gossip about the hominid next door, every new communications medium has entailed new impingements on privacy.

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Metro, 12/28:

Rare Choreography of Cooperation for Riders Caught Between an F and an M

They toil in a city of haggard indifference and missed connections, where the simplest task can devolve into a competitive sport.

But consider the altruists of the Sixth Avenue line on the Lower East Side, keepers of perhaps the most collaborative corner of the subway system.

Another memorable note from underground by Matt Flegenheimer, this time about the subway station where commuters actually share information with fellow riders.

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National, 12/27:

Summoned Back to Work, Senators Chafe at Inaction

“Members of the House of Representatives are out watching movies and watching their kids play soccer and basketball and doing all kinds of things,” said Mr. Reid, in a ferocious floor attack on the House that he returned to periodically throughout the day Thursday, like an angry father-in-law revisiting a grudge he’s been nursing all year. “They should be here.”

A very recognizable image enlivened this Congressional scene story by Jennifer Steinhauer.

 
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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The theft, including works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet and Degas, were valued at $500 million. It remains the largest property crime in American history.

Agreement problem; make it “The theft … was valued at.”

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In his ruling, Justice Tingling concurred with much of the beverage industry’s legal arguments.

“Many,” not “much,” with the plural “arguments.”

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Lacking substance, the optics of the president’s visit will loom all the larger.

Dangler; it was the visit, not the “optics,” that was lacking substance. Rephrase.

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Ground is scheduled to be broken this year on an $800 million, 39-story hotel and retail complex at 701 Seventh Avenue, at the northern edge of Times Square, and plans for a $140 million renovation of the retail beneath the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square are also under way.

Avoid this jargony use of “retail”; make it “retail space” or just “stores.”

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But the question of his past has never been far below the surface, rekindling accusations relating to a conflict in which as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.

This transitive or passive use of “disappear” became prominent at the time, but is likely to be jarring and unfamiliar to many readers now. If we use it, put it in quotes or otherwise explain it.

---

The son of a conservative-leaning Episcopalian father from Texas and a more liberal Jewish mother from New York, Mr. Rhodes grew up in a home where even sports loyalties were divided: he and his mother are ardent Mets fans; his father and his older brother, David, root for the Yankees.

“Episcopal” is the modifier.

---

But the fact that he did not spend anything else on the familiar trappings of a campaign, like a campaign staff, suggest that he is either waiting until the last minute to decide or dropping the idea.

Another agreement problem; once again, we were thrown off by the intervening words. Make it “the fact … suggests.”

---

His opponents said his emphasis on growth, along with the salaries and perks for a few top employees, were more appropriate to a corporation than a nonprofit institution.

The subject of the sentence is the singular “emphasis.” The prepositional phrase “along with the salaries and perks” does not create a compound, plural subject. Make it “said his emphasis on growth … was more appropriate,” or use “and” in place of “along with.”

---

Their combined showings illustrate the emergence of a younger generation on the right, both among elected officials and the base.

Words like “both” and “neither” must be followed by parallel pairs. Make it “among both elected officials and the base,” or “both among elected officials and with the base.”

---

The bills have become more prolific in part, he and others say, because conservatives control both the governorships and legislatures in 24 states.

“Prolific” means producing something in abundance. The bills are not prolific, though their authors may be.

---

But for fans of sinkholes, of which there are more than one might think, this is a very good time, indeed.

The context suggests that the relative clause was meant to describe “fans,” in which case we needed “whom.”

---

BOSTON â€" The Boston School Committee, once synonymous with fierce resistance to racial integration, took a historic step Wednesday night and threw off the last remnants of forced busing first imposed in 1974 under a federal court desegregation order.

From The Times’s stylebook:

The expression forced busing is polemical; use court-ordered busing.

---

It appears to be one of those apps that overshares, but it isn’t.

Recorded announcement from the stylebook:

[N]ote the plural verb in a construction like She is one of the people who love the Yankees. The test is to reverse the sentence: Of the people who love the Yankees, she is one.

---

Radiation treatment for breast cancer would increase that risk to between 2.4 percent to 3.4 percent, depending on how much radiation hits the heart.

Make it “between 2.4 percent and 3.4 percent” (it was later fixed).

---

They found that collapsing bird populations were more strongly correlated with insecticide use than with habitat alteration â€" that, in fact, pesticides were four times more likely to be linked with bird losses than any other cause.

From the stylebook:

times less, times more. Writers who speak of three times more or three times faster often mean “multiplied by 3,” but precise readers are likely to understand the meaning as “multiplied by 4″: the original quantity or speed, plus three more times. For clarity, avoid times more, times faster, times bigger, etc. Write four times as much (or as fast, etc.). And do not write times less or times smaller (or things like times as thin or times as short). A quantity can decrease only one time before disappearing, and then there is nothing left to decrease further. Make it one-third as much (or as tall, or as fast).

---

Democrats said the Republican budget was further proof that Republicans were out-of-touch with ordinary Americans, who already delivered their verdict on the Ryan plan.

No hyphens needed.