Where Is Home for a Third-Culture Kid?

PARIS â€" When golden poppies blanket the hills of Northern California, it’s the annual season to dispatch my daughter â€" a summertime American â€" for home.

Home is a complex word in our stone farmhouse in the country outside Paris, where we all possess different passports. My teenage daughter has two: one, wine-red from France; the other, navy blue, from the United States. Before she learned to crawl she had mastered flying. By kindergarten, she had learned German, in Gütersloh, in the northwest of Germany. In first grade she shifted to French at a primary school by a 12th-century chapel with souvenir crucifixes left by Joan of Arc.

I think of summer as the season for nurturing her American roots, a time when her English turns a little nasal, making her sound at least temporarily as though she is from San Francisco. She falls in the expatriate category of “third-culture kids,” or TCK, a label coined in the 1950s by the sociologist Ruth Hill Useem. These children of expatriates call many places home, pausing a little too long on the fundamental question: “Where are you from?”

Before she leaves France, I probe for weak spots. I conduct a flash quiz of basic American history overlooked in her French lycée. Schooled by a French teacher who was the granddaughter of Émile Zola, she can weigh in on Molière or Victor Hugo’s opposition to the death penalty, but she prefers to read her American classics like “The Great Gatsby” in French.

I stump her on George Washington. She gazes back at me quizzically when I ask her who he was.

“He was a president.”

“But which president?”

“I don’t know, he’s on the dollar bill.”

As I prepare to buy her plane ticket, I take some solace from reading about the experiences of grownup third-culture kids.

The filmmaker Aga Alegria, who now lives in Ibiza, Spain, is finishing a full-length documentary about global children, conducting interviews in Germany, Spain, Trinidad and Canada. A third-culture kid herself, she started her project with an eight minute film, “Les Passagers: A TCK Story,” that explored her own nomadic life roaming from Poland, to Germany, to Canada and her yearning to belong somewhere.

Ms. Alegria raised part of the money to fund her project through crowd-sourcing and plans to finish the movie this year.

She has found that by the time they are grown up, some of these TCKs are unmoored and restless, associating airports, movement and a suitcase with home. Others complain about moments of feeling lost and friendless, baffled by the quest to belong.

I take comfort from a line in her short movie: “I come from here. I come from there. In truth I come from everywhere.”

When my daughter was much younger, and making the summer shuttle to her grandparents in California, she would often ask why we didn’t live there. It was enough then to declare: The French baguettes are better and we have a choice of 300 cheeses.

Now I don’t have easy answers.

One day, while on a walk near our home in the cool shadows of the Vexin forest preserve, I ask my daughter if she ever feels torn between two places.

The answer is swift, delivered in the annoyed tone of any French or American teenager:

“Why are you even asking me that?”

Are you a third-culture kid? Or a parent of one? Tell us your experiences. How do you define home?

German Brewers Warn Against Fracking

THE HAGUE - Hops, malt, yeast, water and … proprietary fracking chemicals?

German brewers are warning against fracking in their country, invoking the beer purity law of 1516 that only allows basic, and pure, ingredients in real beer. They worry that shale gas removal could lead to a contamination of the water they use to make the national drink.

The Deutscher Brauer-Bund sent an open letter to six government ministers who are drafting new fracking regulations to call for a moratorium of the practice, according to a report in the newspaper, Bild.

“The changes in the law proposed by the federal government are insufficient to guarantee the safety of the drinking water or to satisfy the requirements for the beer purity law,” said Peter Hahn, head of the brewers association, according to Bild.

The association's warning, made last week, carries weight in a country where the drink enjoys a wide following across age groups, political parties and socioeconomic lines. The letter represents another voice in a continuing dialogue in Europe about the safety of shale gas extraction.

The German coalition government has been working on legislation that would regulate the industry, but a vote on the law has been postponed several times. This month, the two coalition partners have agreed on certain provisions that could protect drinking water from contamination, according to the German media. Critics charge that the measures are too weak.

The green party sought a total temporary moratorium of the practice last year in the Bundestag, but its proposal was rejected.

“Fracking with poisonous chemicals should be forbidden. But the government wants to allow it on 86 percent of land,” Bärbel Höhn, a Green Party parliamentarian, told Bild. “That doesn't just worry brewers.”

Given the popularity of beer across the country, even members of the ruling coalition parties seemed to heed the warnings of the professional association.

”The beer purity law cannot be compromised,” Herbert Frankenhauser, a representative of the conservative Christian Social Union in the Bundestag, told the newspaper. “All measures must be taken to protect water used for brewing.”

Daniel Volk, a member of the junior coalition government party, the Free Democratic Party, told the newspaper: “When in doubt, the purity law must take precedence. We must take the concerns of brewers very seriously.”

While controversy around the extraction technique may be familiar in North America, Europeans are only beginning to deal with the expansion of the practice. As my colleague Stanley Reed wrote from an anti-fracking protest in the United Kingdom this week, Europeans are worried about contaminated groundwater and a continued reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

The biggest beer producer in Europe, Germany has 1,339 brewers that employ 26,915 people, according to the association's statistics.

At a celebration of the 497th anniversary of the beer purity law in April, the head of the association reminded audiences that the rules governing how beer is made represent the oldest food regulations on the books.

Generating fewer headlines, the German association of mineral water sources also went public with its criticism of fracking legislation last week.

With all the advancements in fracking technology, are German brewers right to be concerned about their water? If so, why isn't this an issue in other places that allow fracking?

IHT Quick Read: May 27

NEWS Two rockets crashed into southern Beirut suburbs controlled by the militant Shiite group Hezbollah on Sunday, wounding four people. The attack, the first on the group's Beirut stronghold since the hostilities in Syria broke out two years ago, raised anxieties here that the fighting next door was beginning to revive Lebanon's own sectarian conflicts. Anne Barnard reports from Beirut.

In this age of satellite imagery, digital records and the instantaneous exchange of information, most of Greece's land transaction records are still handwritten in ledgers, logged in by last names. No lot numbers. No clarity on boundaries or zoning. No obvious way to tell whether two people, or 10, have registered ownership of the same property. Suzanne Daley reports from Athens.

In an effort to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a plan on Sunday to invest as much as $4 billion to develop the economy of the West Bank. Michael R. Gordon and Jodi Rudoren report from the Dead Sea in Jordan.

Details of investigations into leaks of classified materials in the United States also hint at the personal and professional costs for those implicated. Ethan Bronner, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane report from Washington.

Computers are helping to reassemble more than 100,000 document fragments collected across 1,000 years that reveal details of Jewish life along the Mediterranean. Jodi Rudoren reports from Tel Aviv.

EDUCATION Singapore is investing in an increasing number of arts events and educational programs. Kristiano Ang reports from Singapore.

ARTS For a year and a half the artist Ai Weiwei and a sculptor friend oversaw a team of people toiling away in secret on one of his most political and personal projects: reconstructing scenes from Mr. Ai's illegal detention in 2011, when he was held for 81 days in a secret prison guarded by a paramilitary unit. What took shape this spring at an industrial space in the Chinese capital were six fiberglass dioramas that depict, at half-scale, his often banal daily existence as a captive of the vast government security apparatus. Edward Wong reports from Beijing.

Protests at the Venice Biennale in 1968 had a dramatic impact on Italian design by inspiring young designers and architects to pursue their political and social ideals. A new book, “The Italian Avant-Garde, 1968-1976,” charts the emergence of the “radical design” movement after the eruption in Venice. Alice Rawsthorn on design.

“Blue Is the Warmest Color” - an emotionally raw and sexually explicit contemporary French drama and critical favorite about a young woman's awakening - won the Palme d'Or on Sunday evening at the 66th Cannes Film Festival. Manohla Dargis writes from Cannes, France.

SPORTS With his father, Keke, watching by the side of the track, the German driver Nico Rosberg won Formula One's most prestigious race, the Monaco Grand Prix, on Sunday, 30 years after Keke Rosberg won it. It is the first time a father and son have won the race. Brad Spurgeon reports from Monaco.

Serena Williams, who was upset in the first round last year, overwhelmed Anna Tatishvili on opening day at the French Open, and gave her first interview in French. Christopher Clarey reports from Paris.

Job Hunting in Asia: Language Skills Count

HONG KONG - Asia has long exerted a magnetism for mobile Westerners in search of jobs and adventures. Tens of thousands of Europeans and Americans live in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong, which are financial and trading hubs with a long history of ties to the West.

The global financial crisis only intensified the trend, prompting more and more Western expatriates to try their luck in Asia. The French seem particularly attracted by the possibilities that Asia has to offer - with the result that Hong Kong's French population has soared.

More recently, however, I was starting to hear more and more anecdotes about Westerners who wanted to find a job in Hong Kong or Singapore, but struggled to do so. Headhunters and recruiters told me that things have indeed become harder.

The main hurdle is that language skills - good Mandarin, in particular - have become more and more of a “must” for white-collar jobs here.

Of course, the exact requirements depend on the job. A computer programmer in a back-office function may not need to speak anything other than English. But if the job is client-facing (in wealth management or retailing, for example) or involves dealing with local suppliers or partners, chances are that the employer will prefer someone who can speak the local language.

“Language skills have become more and more important since the global financial crisis,” George McFerran, managing director for Asia-Pacific at eFinancialCareers, an online jobs portal, said at a recent news conference.

At the same time, as I write in this article, more local employees have the skills and experience to fill white-collar positions than they did 10 or 20 years ago. Employers, in other words, have more people to choose from - and Westerners who don't tick the box on the language front are finding it harder to compete.

What are your experiences of the job market in Asian hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong? Have you struggled to land a job there - and what, in your eyes, have been the biggest obstacles?

Questions in London Killing Echo Boston Bombing

LONDON - The questions being raised on Thursday after the brutal killing of an off-duty soldier on a London street echoed many of the questions raised after the Boston marathon bombing just five weeks before. Were the suspects “lone wolves” or part of a wider conspiracy? Were they radicalized Islamists or disaffected locals? Were they motivated by events overseas or mouthing the rhetoric of someone else's fight?

Two suspects were hospitalized under guard after being shot by police officers in the denouement of Wednesday's attack in the Woolwich district, which was captured by bystanders on their cellphones. (The Lede blog links to the video).

After the unnamed soldier was hacked to death, one of the suspects told a 48-year-old woman who tried to reason with him, “We want to start a war in London tonight.”

One counterterrorism expert suggested to Britain's ITV that the suspects could have been aping the April 15 marathon bombings in Boston .

“It may be that this is a copycat after the Boston bombings,” said Richard Barrett, a former coordinator for the United Nations Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team. “That two individuals could cause a lot of mayhem is maybe more of an inspiration than attacking soldiers.”

As in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, the suspected authors of the Boston attack, investigators want to determine whether the Woolwich killers were acting alone or whether they took their orders from a terrorist group.

And, if they were “lone wolves,” how far had they been indoctrinated by purveyors of extremist Islamist philosophy?

The Telegraph said Wednesday's attack was “straight out of Al Qaeda's terror manual.”

Tom Whitehead, the newspaper's security reporter, said Britain faced a new generation of Islamic extremists who were virtually impossible to detect.

“They are self-starting fanatics who have radicalized themselves over the Internet and while many may be inspired by Al Qaeda they do not need any command or control from the terror group,” he wrote.

The suspects have yet to be identified. Both were black and the one who addressed bystanders - and can be seen in the videos and tabloid front pages that have spread around the world - spoke with a London accent.

That raised the possibility that, as in the case of the Americanized Tsarnaev brothers, the attack was the work of disaffected homegrown killers rather than foreign terrorist plotters.

It would not be a first for Britain. Four bombers who killed 52 people in attacks on the London transport system on July 7, 2005, were all British-born.

Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” who is serving a life sentence in the United States for a failed 2001 attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic passenger flight, was a Londoner who went to high school in the same borough where Wednesday's killing took place.

In 2007, investigators foiled a plot by a Birmingham man who wanted to emulate jihadists in Iraq by beheading a soldier on camera before circulating the film online.

As Muslim organizations joined politicians in denouncing the killing, Mayor Boris Johnson of London told the BBC that neither Islam nor British foreign policy was to blame. The crime was the responsibility of “the warped and deluded mindset of the people who did it.”

If the perpetrators wanted to provoke a race or religious war by their unprovoked attack in a multicultural corner of London, all they have started so far is a lackluster skirmish.

A hundred or so supporters of the far-right English Defense League clashed with police after rallying at a Woolwich pub but were soon dispersed. Nick Raynsford, the local member of Parliament, said they should “go home and grow up.”

Otherwise Londoners appeared to be following the “keep calm and carry on” injunction from politicians, who praised the coolheadedness of bystanders at Wednesday's attack.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday, “One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives.”

The Future of High-Tech Immigrants to the U.S.

The Times's Sean Patrick Farrell talks to foreign graduate students studying technology at the University of California, Berkeley, about the jobs they will be starting after they graduate and their lives in the United States as immigration reform looks to be gaining momentum. One Chinese student tells Sean that if she cannot get visas to stay in the U.S. - currently required each year - then she will go home to Shanghai and probably start her own business there.

IHT Quick Read: May 24

NEWS President Barack Obama on Thursday said he would impose a higher standard on the use of drone strikes, and he sought to renew his effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Peter Baker reports from Washington.

European Union officials, having won concessions from the bloc members Luxembourg and Austria over banking rules, are expected to turn their focus to Switzerland. Raphael Minder reports from Geneva.

The reaction was loud, swift and fierce this week to a proposed law that would require French universities to teach more of their courses in English, a measure that a well-known scholar had called a “suicidal project” that would lead to France's sacrificing its language to “Americanization disguised as globalization.” Maïa de la Baume reports from Paris.

With the European economy reeling from austerity and joblessness, the European Union took time last week to focus on something rather smaller in scale: it approved a measure that would ban restaurants from serving olive oil in cruets or dipping bowls. On Thursday, the European Commission announced in a hastily called news conference that the measure, meant to take effect on Jan. 1, would be rescinded. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

In the town where George Orwell wrote his first novel, “Burmese Days,” a group of locals are encouraging the authorities to restore his house and its unkempt garden. Jane Perlez reports from Katha, Myanmar.

ARTS By Thursday afternoon at the Cannes film festival, the battle lines had been firmly drawn and the Palme d'Or hypothetically awarded. The winner, amateur prognosticators huddling in the festival headquarters confidently or cautiously predicted, surely would be “Inside Llewyn Davis” or “The Great Beauty” or “Blue Is the Warmest Color” or “Nebraska.” Never mind that it was only Day 9 and that the actual awards don't take place until Sunday evening. Manohla Dargis writes from Cannes.

SPORTS Mahesh Bhupathi, the 38-year-old Indian doubles star with a strong head for business, believes Asia is underserved by high-level tennis. And though it might seem that the last thing that tennis needs is another event, on Friday in Paris he and his partners plan to introduce to the public the International Premier Tennis League, with the intention of starting play in late 2014. Christopher Clarey reports from Paris.

The Champions League anthem, an operatic choral piece that is one of the most recognizable songs in sports, was composed by Tony Britten to “class up” the soccer league. Two decades later, it is everywhere. Sam Borden writes from London.

The Art Hong Kong Really Loves: ‘Rubber Duck\'

Here is the art-related news that the average Hong Kong resident cared about most this week: The giant rubber duck has been revived.

Billionaire collectors may have arrived for the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong, the Swiss fair's first entry into Asia. Thousands of Champagne corks may have been popped as galleries and celebrities hold art-themed galas.

But Picasso sales and V.I.P. lounges feel a world away for many of the city's seven million residents, who were mostly concerned about the fate of “Spreading Joy Around the World,” a k a “Rubber Duck,” by the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. The six-story-high version of the childhood bathtub favorite was set adrift in the harbor early this month, in anticipation of what is unofficially known as Hong Kong Art Week. While the annual art fair anchors the festivities, it is also the time of year that the city puts on its best cultural works and events.

Several large-scale inflatable art pieces have shown up in public spaces, reflecting a side of Hong Kong - irreverent, eccentric, critical - that might not come across in the fair's more buttoned-up environs.

Thousands gathered around the waterfront when “Rubber Duck” made its debut May 2. Since then, countless duck-themed products have shown up at shops and restaurants. Teenagers are wearing rubber-duck outfits, and tourist kiosks are selling rubber-duck postcards. Its smiling face was even seen at the Cheung Chau bun festival, a 200-year-old tradition on an outlying island.

The South China Morning Post, the main English-language broadsheet, has published no fewer than 19 articles, opinion pieces and blog posts about it. One editorial, “Giant Rubber Duck Has United the City,” argued that it did more to inspire Hong Kongers than a recent government drive to raise morale.

Netizens had a ball using its smiling visage for political commentary. “The P.L.A.'s greatest nightmare,” one wrote under an image of the duck looming above over other vessels, referring to unpopular government plans to rezone a strip of a newly reclaimed waterfront for military use and to hand it to the People's Liberation Army. (Initially, the public thought it was going to be used for a park or promenade).

Then on May 15, to the horror of the crowds, “Rubber Duck” listed, fell on its beak and slowly capsized before deflating into a bright yellow puddle. The Standard, another Hong Kong newspaper, described the public's response as “disconsolate.”

The duck's demise reflected the city's every anxiety: One blogger pondered if it had succumbed to lung disease from the Pearl River Delta's infamous air pollution. Images of the duck, wearing one of the face masks made ubiquitous here after the 2003 SARS virus crisis, proliferated online. Others wondered if it died from the newest deadly strain of avian flu found in China, which University of Hong Kong researchers have discovered can be both airborne and transmitted to pigs, as reported in Science.

Rumors that it was killed by mainland Chinese tourists - both welcomed for their spending power and criticized for some of their manners - were so prevalent that CCTV, the state broadcaster, felt the need to issue a denial:

There have been rumors that Hong Kong's big yellow duck was “burned to death” by tourists from Shenyang, who had thrown 30 lit cigarette butts at it. Today Hong Kong has confirmed that the damage was not man-made. Organizers are doing a routine physical examination.

But on Tuesday evening, the day before the Art Basel opening - arguably the largest art event in the city's recent history - a re-inflated “Rubber Duck” made a resounding comeback as hundreds cheered from the sidelines.

Despite all the efforts of Art Basel and the local government, it took an art installation - organized by a local shopping mall - to capture people's imaginations.

Riots Dent Image of Sweden\'s Classless Social Model

LONDON - Is Sweden's version of the Scandinavian social model broken?

Five straight nights of rioting in the suburbs of Stockholm have dented the country's international image as a haven of tolerance, prosperity and tranquility.

As the unrest spread from the outlying district of Husby, where it was apparently set off on Sunday by the fatal police shooting of a local man wielding a knife, gangs of youths have torched schools and other public buildings and set alight scores of cars.

The rioting, for which the authorities have sought to blame a small group of troublemakers, has been focused in areas with a majority population of poor immigrants and asylum-seekers.

“I've seen in the international media that this is a riot between young people in some parts of Stockholm and the society,” Erik Ullenhag, Sweden's integration minister, said. “But this is not true. It's a small proportion.”

Sweden, like its Scandinavian neighbors, is proud of a social model based on cooperative labor relations and a cradle-to-grave welfare system that is credited with having pushed it to the top of international tables of life expectancy, education and standard of living.

The Swedes, with their own currency, have escaped the worst consequences of the euro zone crisis that has afflicted some of their European Union partners.

Only this week, a Swedish government Web site boasted that Sweden wanted to export a welfare model that appeared to have “stood the test of time.”

One expression of Sweden's tolerant outlook has been the welcome extended to immigrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence in countries like Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria. Around one in seven of its almost 10 million people are now foreign-born.

But many newcomers have been pushed to the margins, reliant on low-paying menial jobs and often concentrated in poor suburbs like Husby.

Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for those born in Sweden.

The policies of the center-right government of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt have been credited with supporting economic growth. But a regimen of lower taxes and reduced state benefits has also been blamed for an unprecedented rise in income inequality.

A report published last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed income equality had plummeted in recent years, challenging the government's boast that the country has become almost a single-class society.

Discontent, particularly among young people, has now manifested itself in some of the largest-ever street disturbances in Sweden.

As in the widespread youth riots in Britain in 2011, the trouble has not been confined to the immigrant population. The rioters were a “mixture of every kind of people,” according to Kjell Lindgren, the Stockholm police spokesman.

The anti-immigrant Sweden Democratic Party, which has risen to third in opinion polls ahead of a general election due next year, blamed the riots on “irresponsible” immigration policy.

For its part, the government's left-wing critics have blamed the erosion of the country's social welfare model for the unrest, with the opposition Left Party saying “cuts, reduced future opportunities, segregation and stigmatization” were at the root of the riots.

Pictures Tell the Story of Portuguese in France

PARIS - The girl in the black-and-white photograph bit shyly on her finger, concealing a slight smile.  Maria da Conceição Tina Melhorado looked at her long and hard.

“I knew it was me,” Ms. Melhorado, 54, said, recalling her first encounter with the image in 2010, when a friend called her about it. “But the date in the caption was off by a year, so I had some doubt.”

While she embarked on a mission to confirm her theory, Ms. Melhorado quickly learned that the photo wasn't just part of some obscure archive that existed deep in Internet space. It was an advertisement for an art exhibition in Portugal.  She discovered that she was, quite literally, the poster child for Portuguese immigration to France.

“Obviously, I was shocked,” Ms. Melhorado said with a brief laugh. “I didn't know what to think.”

Today, that picture is part of “Pour une Vie Meilleure” (For a Better Life), a collection of photographs dedicated to the Portuguese migration to France in the 1960s and '70s. The images, on display at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in the 12th arrondissement, belong to Gérald Bloncourt, a Haitian photojournalist who spent 20 years working, photographing and walking with Portuguese immigrants as they made their way north.

Both populations benefited from the migration, which peaked between 1969 and 1971 with the arrival of more than 350,000 immigrants. France needed cheap labor as it continued to recover from World War II, while the Portuguese who left sought to escape a poor economy and an oppressive dictatorship, and to avoid military service.

And throughout that time, Mr. Bloncourt followed Portuguese émigrés on foot, documenting their struggles.

“I was protesting against poverty,” Mr. Bloncourt said at the show's opening last week (it runs through July 31). “I wanted to use my photos as a weapon in hopes to change the world.”

Ms. Melhorado's father left for France in 1962 in hopes of finding higher wages. Two years later, she and the rest of her family walked from their hometown, Vila Nova de Foz Côa in northern Portugal, to Paris, where they reunited and resettled in St. Denis.

From roadside haircuts to mud-covered slums, Mr. Bloncourt's images capture one of the first and largest waves of immigration to France. Besides serving as a comprehensive historical record, the photos shed light on a group that, according to some, has been overlooked.

“This is a forgotten immigrant population,” said Caroline Brettell, a professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas who spent a year between the two countries studying the movement. “It was completely different from the sort of politics of race and whatever else is going on in France today with the larger Muslim populations.”

One reason why they are overlooked, Professor Brettell said, is because their transition was relatively seamless; linguistic similarities and a shared Roman-Catholic background helped to forge bonds between the two groups.

Another factor in the forgetting of that immigration story is that the immigrants themselves chose not to tell it.

“I was ashamed,” Ms. Melhorado said, motioning to the shantytown depicted in the photograph. “I didn't want my children and my co-workers to see that this is where I was from, that this is where I lived.”

But Mr. Bloncourt's work left her no choice. During a lesson on immigration in school, her son's teacher shared some photos with the class, including one of her.

“I asked him how he felt when his classmates found out the little girl in the picture was his mother,” Mrs. Melhorado recounted. “He said ‘proud.' ”

“That's when I realized how important it is for our story to be told, and when any feelings of shame I had turned to pride.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 25, 2013

An earlier version of this post and the caption with Gérald Bloncourt's photograph of a girl included inconsistent information about the girl's age and the date the photograph was taken.

America\'s Profligate Ways With Water

On a visit to Bedouins in the sands of Jordan, once upon a time, my host brought over a clay jug for washing the flatware â€" my fingers. When I started to dip a hand into it, he recoiled as if my arm were a puff adder. That jug was the camp's daily ration. He was offering just a few drops.

I recalled my stupidity on reading that piece from Kansas the other day about the hammered High Plains Aquifer. The scale and circumstances are vastly different, but nothing focuses the mind on water like the fear of it running out. Nomadic peoples figured this out long ago. But in much of the world, industrial excess, lax control and blind greed foreshadow serial calamity ahead. As water grows scarce, special interests hurry to get it while they can.

Anyone who bothered to notice could see crises building. Back in 1985, Boutros Boutros Ghali, then Egypt's foreign minister, remarked, “The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics.”
In 2000, I wrote a global series on water. I found the Sea of Galilee so low that Jesus could have walked across it by stepping on stones. In northeast Indian villages, neighbors killed neighbors over access to dwindling supplies.

In my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, where hydrologists predicted water might run out within a decade, an elderly couple stunned me to silence near a decorative fountain jetting up a geyser at their gated enclave in the foothills.

It's recycled, they told me. It wasn't, actually, I replied, and in any case the summer evaporation rate is 50 percent. They looked at each other and shrugged. “There'll be enough for our lifetime,” the man said.

Even back then, more than a decade ago, scientists warned that America's groundwater levels were dropping at alarming rates. That caused little talk and less action.

Now the science is plain. It is getting hotter and drier in water-stressed areas. Agriculture, industry, and a growing urban demand draw increasingly on fossil water deposits that can date back more than 100,000 years.

America is particularly profligate. When oil prices rose, speculators bought huge tracts to grow corn for biofuel. Corn takes three times more water than sorghum but fetches a higher price. Pivotal irrigator hoses project streams that allow farmers to squander hundreds, or thousands, of gallons per minute.

The Ogallala Aquifer, a vast but shallow component of the High Plains deposit, supplies about 30 percent of all irrigation water in the United States. It could run dry within a generation if not poisoned earlier by an oil pipeline spill.

Elsewhere, commercial farmers buy costly new pumps and work them hard to amortize them before it's too late. Industry gulps down all it can; city dwellers water lawns with little thought for tomorrow. And now the fracking that so many people embrace consumes and contaminates huge amounts of water.

When those the oases of those Bedouins in Jordan dry up they pack their camels and move. One of these days, perhaps sooner rather than later, large populations in places we call civilized will be doing the same thing. And a whole lot of others will be looking hard for their next meal.

Failing to Convince Assad

Jim Young/Reuters Diplomats pose for a group photo in Amman on May 22. Pictur ed (front L-R) Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani of Qatar, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh of Jordan, Secretary of State John Kerry, Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle of Germany, (rear L-R) Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohamed Al-Attiyah of Qatar, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France, Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr of Egypt and Foreign Minister Emma Bonino of Italy.

AMMAN, Jordan â€" As Secretary of State John Kerry and 10 European and Arab foreign ministers gathered here this week to discuss grand strategy, President Bashar al-Assad was taking decisive action. With the help of thousands of fighters from Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq, he was close to achieving some of his largest military gains in two years.

Mr. Kerry played down Mr. Assad's military advances as “very temporary.” In truth, the Syrian leader and his foreign backers are gaining the upper hand in the conflict.

The Syrian opposition is in disarray; approving a major American military intervention is politically impossible in post-Iraq Washington; and a rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar has slowed their delivery of weaponry to the rebels. Diplomatically, Washington's key interlocutor is Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, one of Mr. Assad's primary international defenders.

One key factor favors Mr. Assad's survival. His Allawite allies, Hezbollah and Iran are “all-in” inside Syria. They are hurling vast amounts of manpower, weaponry and money into the fight.

On the other side, supporters of Syria's rebels are still trying to decide just how much assistance to offer. There is a strategy, but it is incremental.

The American grand strategy is threefold. First, increase military aid to the rebels (but not American aid). Second, unite Syria's fractious opposition. Third, push for peace talks.

Last month in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia and Qatar promised additional military assistance to General Salam Idris, the military leader of moderate Syrian opposition forces. They also pledged to curtail their support to the hardline Islamist fighters who now dominate the opposition on the ground in Syria.

A senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Saudis and Qataris appear to be keeping their word. They have supplied weaponry to Gen. Idris's force and their shipments to hardline Islamists appear to be slowing.

“Indicators are good,” the official said, “but we want to see more.”

Meanwhile, American diplomats are trying to unite Syria's opposition. Since the head of the Syrian National Coalition, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, resigned last month, the group has struggled to name a leader. In Syria, the Istanbul-based coalition is still regarded as ineffectual.

The opposition council will expand this week from 60 representatives to 90 to 100. This larger group will then choose a prime minister and other leaders.

Finally, Mr. Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov will host peace talks next month in Geneva. Theoretically, the opposition will be more militarily powerful and politically united.

Russian officials have said that Syria's prime minister, Wael al-Halqi, will attend the peace talks. The United States has also quietly dropped its objections to Iran being allowed to have some role in the talks.

In a best-case scenario, increased military support for the rebels and Russian pressure will force Assad to bargain seriously. The centrifugal forces now unraveling Syria â€" sectarian tensions, jihadist fighters and foreign funding â€" will ebb.

“We don't need more proof that now is the time to act,” Mr. Kerry said in his opening statements at the talks here. “What we need to do is act.”

American officials acknowledge that their strategy depends on changing Mr. Assad's calculation. “The balance of power on the ground must change,” said the senior State Department official.

Given the massive support Mr. Assad is receiving from his allies, that appears unlikely. Hezbollah fighters are playing a crucial role in the battle to take the strategic town of Qusayr. Iranians are now advising Syrian government units in Qusayr and around Damascus. Members of Iraqi Shia militias are fighting alongside Mr. Assad's forces in several battles.

Mr. Assad and the Iranians are winning. If the Obama administration and its European and Arab allies want to defeat Mr. Assad, they must increase military aid to the rebels.

For the last two years, Washington and its allies have carried out, in essence, a half intervention. Enough aid is provided to the rebels to prolong the conflict but not enough for them to win it.

David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, former reporter for The New York Times and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East” will be published in March 2013.

IHT Quick Read: May 25

NEWS For more than a century, the Museum of Medical History in Berlin has exhibited assorted limbs, bones, tubercular lungs and fetuses, all in the name of science and enlightenment. Yet lately the curators are re-evaluating the principles that govern their displays as they confront a growing debate over what cultural organizations should be doing to preserve the dignity of the dead. Many of the world's grand museums are hearing increasing demands for the return of human remains from former colonies or conquered peoples. Some are giving back bones and skulls that were once viewed as exotic trinkets and were traded by native peoples for calico or plundered in the late 1800s by scientists exploring racial differences. Doreen Carvajal reports from Berlin.

For more than seven years a lean, chain-smoking officer named Mike at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Virginia has managed the agency's deadly campaign of armed drone strikes. As the head of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center, Mike wielded tremendous power in hundreds of decisions over who lived and died in far-off lands. But under a new plan outlined by the Obama administration this week, the Counterterrorism Center over time would cease to be the hub of America's targeted killing operations in Pakistan, Yemen and other places where presidents might choose to wage war in the future. Already, the C.I.A.'s director, John O. Brennan, has passed over Mike, an undercover officer whose full name is being withheld, for a promotion to run the agency's clandestine service. It is a sign that Mr. Brennan is trying to shift the C.I.A.'s focus back toward traditional spying and strategic analysis, but that is not an easy task. Mark Mazzetti reports from Washington.

The attacks have stunned Rio de Janiero. In one, an assailant held a gun to the head of a 30-year-old woman while raping her in front of passengers on a bus as the driver proceeded down a main avenue. In another, a 14-year-old girl from a hillside slum was raped on one of Rio's most famous stretches of beach. In yet another case, men abducted and raped a working-class woman in a transit van as it wended through densely populated areas. The police failed to investigate, and a week later the same men raped a 21-year-old American student in the same van. The recent wave of rapes in Rio - some captured on video cameras - have cast a spotlight on the unresolved contradictions of a nation that is coming of age as a world power. Brazil has a woman as president, a woman as a powerful police commander and a woman as the head of its national oil company - and yet, it was not until an American was raped that the authorities got fully involved and arrested suspects in the case. Simon Romero reports from Rio de Janiero.

Brigham Young University's animation program is not your typical film school. And that's why its graduates actually get jobs, people in the film industry say. Out of nowhere, B.Y.U. - a Mormon university owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - has become a farm team for the country's top animation studios and effects companies. Unlikely as it sounds, young Mormons are being sucked out of the middle of Utah and into the very centers of American pop-culture manufacturing. Jon Mooallem reports.

Google's rivals have again prompted antitrust investigators at the Federal Trade Commission to examine the company's business practices, and staff members have begun a preliminary look at whether Google abuses its market dominance in online display advertising, like the banner ads on Web pages. People who have been contacted in connection with the inquiry said that the F.T.C. had begun asking questions about Google's practices, specifically whether the company was bundling advertising services together in a way that prohibited rivals from competing for the business of advertisers. The F.T.C. said in December 2007 that it would monitor Google's practices in that area. At that time, the commission found that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, an online advertising company that specialized in display ads, was “unlikely to substantially lessen competition.” Edward Wyatt reports from Washington.

ARTS By Thursday afternoon at the Cannes Film Festival, over glasses of Côtes de Provence, the battle lines had been firmly drawn and the Palme d'Or hypothetically awarded. The winner, amateur prognosticators huddling in the festival headquarters confidently or cautiously predicted, surely would be “Inside Llewyn Davis” or “The Great Beauty” or “Blue Is the Warmest Color” or “Nebraska.” Never mind that it was only Day 9 and that the actual awards don't take place until Sunday evening. For many, the 66th Cannes Film Festival was leveling off toward another grand finale. Manohla Dargis reports from Cannes, France.

SPORTS Germany's strength in soccer is all around us. Whether Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund prevails on English soil this Saturday evening, no one can deny that the Bundesliga has outplayed the rest of Europe this season. The pair helped to take down the best of British this season, and each devastated a Spanish giant, Barcelona and Real Madrid, in the semifinals. Munich is the clear favorite after nine months of sustained omnipotence at home and abroad, yet Dortmund's rise from near bankruptcy to this peak in just eight years has its appeal. Seeing the order, the speed, the virility with which both play, it is hard to feel that either would not make a true champion of the Continent. Rob Hughes reports from London.

IHT Quick Read: May 20

NEWS Prime Minister David Cameron's leadership came under growing criticism in Britain on Sunday, with a senior former minister asserting that Mr. Cameron had lost control of his party over European policy, and a Cameron ally reportedly describing local activists as “swivel-eyed loons.” Stephen Castle reports from London.

The push to bring up a law that attempts to halt abuse has split the small group of Afghan women's rights advocates. Despite fears of the conservatives, some argued that quick action had to be taken before the exit of the United States, which, along with the European Union, has championed better lives and protections for Afghan women. Alissa J. Rubin reports from Kabul.

At every major stop on the long line from Peshawar, in the northwest, to the turbulent port city of Karachi, lie reminders of why Pakistan is a worry to its people, and to the wider world: natural disasters and entrenched insurgencies, abject poverty and feudal kleptocrats, and an economy near meltdown. Declan Walsh reports from Ruk, Pakistan.

The retailer H&M led the charge in agreeing to improve worker safety in Bangladesh after a factory collapse, but the company said the decision was in the works before that tragedy. Liz Alderman reports from Stockholm.

EDUCATION Concern among international students and their parents about safety on American campuses long predates the Boston Marathon bombings. Still, American schools seem to be more popular than ever. Joyce Lau, D.D. Guttenplan and Lara Farrar report.

ARTS After days and nights of rain puddling on the red carpet and grim tidings darkening the screens at the Cannes Film Festival, the Coen brothers delivered both much-needed levity and an expressive, piercing story about artistic struggle. Manohla Dargis writes from Cannes.

DESIGN Some recent design projects both give pleasure and entertain, some in surprising ways. Alice Rawsthorn writes from London.

SPORTSArsenal scored just once against Newcastle United, and edged out Tottenham Hotspur for the last available passport to Europe's top competition. Rob Hughes on soccer.

After the death of a British sailor in a training accident, Luna Rossa Challenge said it would consider not participating in the America's Cup if wind limits for the race were not lowered. Christopher Clarey reports.

Storm in a Dipping Bowl Over Europe\'s Olive Oil Rule

LONDON - Even the most fervent supporters of the European Union would acknowledge that its bureaucrats occasionally display an unrivaled talent for shooting themselves in the foot.

At a time of declining public enthusiasm for the pan-European project, Brussels has set aside time from tackling a chronic economic crisis to confront the pressing issue of how olive oil is served in the Continent's restaurants.

In a move that has been seized upon by so-called Euroskeptics as further proof of mindless interference by a faceless bureaucracy, the European Commission has announced a ban on offering olive oil in dipping bowls and refillable jugs.

From Jan. 1 next year, restaurants will only be allowed to provide the product in sealed, clearly labeled, and non-reusable containers.

The French newspaper Le Figaro said it had given Euroskeptics another issue to get their teeth into, while Reuters quoted critics of the ban as saying it would only add to the frustration of many towards a Union bureaucracy regarded as bloated and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Europeans.

The measure has a serious purpose, according to its proponents. Sealed containers will offer a better guarantee of hygiene, and labels will ensure the quality and authenticity of olive oils.

The new rule also offers suppliers an opportunity to promote brand awareness.

But the European Union nevertheless faces the accusation that, at the very least, it is guilty of bad timing.

“Suddenly, E.U. ministers have decided to wage a war on bad hygiene and sound traditions when many Europeans can't afford a bar of decent soap,” wrote Robert Bridge for Russia Today.

The austerity measures to which Mr. Bridge referred in his commentary are seen as a major factor in the decline of the popularity of the Union, as revealed in a Pew Research Center survey this month.

The olive oil rule also comes at a time when Britain's Conservative Party is seen as tearing itself apart over the issue of Europe, with some demanding an early referendum on continued membership of the Union.

Seemingly crazy “diktats” from Europe are a staple of Britain's Euroskeptic press, which has in the past railed against rules that supposedly outlawed bent bananas or feeding bones to dogs.

Danny Alexander, a pro-European Liberal Democratic minister in Britain's coalition government, conceded that the olive oil rule was “pretty silly” but was not reason enough to leave the European Union.

Other legislators, however, demanded to know why Britain had not voted against the measure rather than abstaining.

Fifteen of the Union's 27 governments supported the olive oil rule. They included the Continent's main producers of the product - Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal - which have been among the hardest hit by the crisis in the euro currency zone.

It was opposed by other governments in the non-olive-producing north, including Germany, where an agriculture ministry representative was quoted as saying it would force restaurants to needlessly discard olive oil, contradicting a separate E.U. campaign to reduce food waste.

Europe is the world's largest olive oil producer, with up to 70 percent of the global market. The United States is the biggest consumer.

It is an industry that has been widely affected by fraud, one of the targets of the new European rule.

One criticism of European Union intervention in the olive oil business is that it favors big brand suppliers rather than small farmers, who continue to suffer low prices despite a fall in production in the past year.

In Spain, producer organizations have told their members not to be intimidated by bottlers and distributors, who they accuse of holding off buying the olive crop until the last moment in order to push prices down.

Does U.S. Violence Scare Students Away?

HONG KONG - The Boston Marathon bombings last month hit America's education and research hub, a city that draws the best and the brightest from across the globe.

Its campuses were particularly affected by the violence. Lu Lingzi, a Chinese student at Boston University, was killed by the bombs. The suspects also killed an officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the suspects in the violence was a student at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, where he reportedly hung out after the attacks.

Worries about safety on American campuses long predate the Boston attack, because of numerous school shootings and other gun violence. D.D. Guttenplan, Lara Farrar and I reported from London, Shanghai and Hong Kong on whether that violence has actually had an impact on the decisions of foreign students shopping for schools. Our full article is here. For Chinese readers, the translated version is here.

On one hand, education experts and overseas education agents say that parents are worried. This is what David Qin, a co-founder of Paladin Learning in Shanghai, had to say:

“They are concerned about the safety level of universities. They don't want their kids to own guns. There are no gun shooting issues in Shanghai. They don't want their kids to buy guns in the future.”

On the other hand, there are risks everywhere, said William Lawton, director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education:

“There is anecdotal evidence that interest in studying in Britain dipped after the London riots. There is hard evidence that attacks on Indian kids in Melbourne in 2009 or 2010 hurt recruitment from India until just this year.”

Meanwhile, the number of foreign students in America continues to rise, as does the number of young people crossing national borders all over the world for education.

What do you think? Would gun violence in the United States have an impact on your choice of school?

IHT Quick Read: May 21

NEWS A giant tornado, a mile wide or more, killed at least 91 people, 20 of them children, as it tore across parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs Monday afternoon, flattening homes, flinging cars through the air and crushing at least two schools. Nick Oxford and Michael Schwirtz report.

Lebanon reeled Monday from the twin realizations that Hezbollah, the nation's most powerful military and political organization, was plunging deeper into the war in Syria, which the country has tried to stay out of, and that the group was taking unaccustomed losses.  Anne Barnard reports from Lebanon.

Throughout her rise to power and as Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel has kept her personal life strictly private. But every four years, the election cycle cracks the door open a bit, and Ms. Merkel can be found telling tales of hunting for goods in the sparsely stocked stores of Communist East Germany, where she grew up, or mixing cherry juice with vodka as a barmaid at university parties. Melissa Eddy reports from Berlin.

The Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned political insurrectionist, won municipal elections a year ago in Parma. The movement went on to win 25 percent of the vote in national elections in February, making it the most potent threat to Italy's traditional political parties in years. As the party accumulates power, Parma is now being scrutinized as a test of what it would do if given still more authority. Elisabetta Povoledo reports.

Guatemala's highest court on Monday threw out the genocide conviction and prison sentence of the former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. Elisabeth Malkin reports.

The Royal Horticultural Society‘s decision to allow garden gnomes - creatures commonly associated with the landscapes of the unrich, the unfamous and the untasteful - at the Chelsea Flower Show this year elicited a variety of responses. Sarah Lyall reports from London.

BUSINESS Yahoo, the faded Web pioneer, said Monday that it would buy the popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash, a signal that the company plans to reposition itself as the technology industry makes a headlong rush into social media. Michael J. de la Merced, Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth report. 

Even as Apple became the nation's most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday. Nelson D. Schwartz and Charles Duhigg report.

ARTS Arnaud Desplechin, whose first appearance at the Cannes festival was in 1991, is competing this year with a movie that has deep French and American roots. Shot in English, “Jimmy P., Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian” is based on a book by Georges Devereux, an early French psychotherapist, about an American Indian veteran of World War II. Joan Dupont reports from Cannes, France.

SPORTS More than a week after the death of British sailor Andrew Simpson in a training accident, none of the four America's Cup teams have withdrawn from the competition, which is still scheduled to begin in early July in San Francisco. But the teams have made significant proposals for change. Christopher Clarey reports.

Budget-Conscious Scotland Yard Moving to Smaller Home

LONDON - The legendary Scotland Yard is on the move. London's police authorities, short of cash, have announced that the city force is to leave its current headquarters and decamp to smaller premises.

Scotland Yard! The very name evokes swirling fogs, Jack the Ripper, and Sherlock Holmes outwitting the bumbling Inspector Lestrade.

As London's Metropolitan Police itself boasts, “it has featured in almost every famous policing story over the past 180 years.”

The reality is more mundane. In 1967, soon after the fog - read “smog” - was banished by a tough anti-pollution law, the “Met” moved to its present headquarters, a glass-fronted block with all the charm of an insurance company office in a suburban business park.

In the spirit of the age, as Clyde H. Farnsworth wrote for The New York Times at the time, the police hired a public relations expert to revamp the Yard's image, including designing sassy new uniforms for its women officers.

Visitors wanting to recapture a more traditional feel are best advised to press their noses to the gates of the old Scotland Yard, a fortresslike riverside Victorian pile that housed the Met from 1890, and now provides offices for legislators at the nearby Parliament.

The 1967 upgrade to what is officially known as New Scotland Yard reflected Britain's embrace of what Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister of the day, described as the “white heat of technology” in the latter half of the 20th century.

The latest move reflects more the budget-paring preoccupations of the 21st.

The police and the London mayor's office this week invited architects from around the world to submit plans for a new headquarters, to be housed at an old police station in the same Westminster neighborhood.

Stephen Greenhalgh, the deputy mayor for policing and crime, said the move was part of a strategy of selling off part of the Met's property holdings that would generate the equivalent of at least $450 million.

The money would be “plowed back into the remaining buildings so that a rundown, largely Victorian police estate is fit for the 21st century,” Mr. Greenhalgh said.

A $90 million saving in building operating costs would pay for 1,200 additional police officers on the streets of London within three years, he said.

That is potentially good news for Londoners, at least the law-abiding ones, and for members of the Met who last year took part in the largest street protest by police officers against budget cuts.

Although the London force has around 26,000 officers, in many districts the traditional “bobby on the beat” is now almost as rare as a London fog.

A recent mission statement from the mayor's office pledged to create “a Metropolitan Police Service that becomes the U.K.'s most-effective, most-efficient, most-respected; even most-loved police force.”

However, the Metropolitan Police Federation, the London police officers' union, said the mayor's plan to enhance visible, local policing was “in keeping with the reductions all round which are the hallmark of austerity Britain.”

If the Met still finds itself short of money, even after the savings promised from the Scotland Yard move, it could always consider ramping up the marketing of its world-famous brand.

Taking its lead from the New York Police Department, it already has licensing deals with toy makers to sell “Scotland Yard” forensic kits for 10-year-olds and “Scotland Yard” jigsaw puzzles.

On a dedicated Web site, the Met invites private businesses to associate themselves with a brand “legendary around the globe for strength, courage and steely determination.”

What Sir Robert Peel, who founded the Met in 1829, would have made of it is anybody's guess.

Tensions Flare in Asian Seas, Now Involving Taiwan

BEIJING - The world is growing used to reports of aggressive diplomatic and military behavior by China over ownership of the South China Sea and the East China Sea, resulting in regular standoffs mostly with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, some of the other claimants to disputed seas and islands there.

But a recent quarrel between Taiwan (which has historical claims to the same sea and land territories as China) and the Philippines has come as something of a surprise, and has led to allegations of “Han chauvinism” in a region where Taiwan is more normally viewed as a victim of China's “one China policy.” China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and in recent decades has squeezed Taiwan out of most international institutions, leading to international isolation for the state.

Others say the fracas, which turned ugly with attacks on Filipino workers in Taiwan and anti-Filipino demonstrations, as well as economic sanctions by Taiwan, is more a sign of domestic Taiwanese politics than Han chauvinism (the Han are the majority ethnic group in China and Taiwan and are closely associated with the identities of both places.)

On Tuesday, a senior Philippine official responsible for Taiwan affairs, Amadeo Perez, said that the Philippines was doing everything to protect Filipino workers in Taiwan, who number nearly 90,000, Rappler, a Filipino Web site, reported, saying the falling-out had caused “so much” damage and tension.

The facts: on May 9, a Taiwanese fishing boat, the Kuang Ta Hsing no. 28, was fired on by a Filipino coast guard vessel in disputed waters southeast of Taiwan, killing Hung Shih-cheng, a 65-year-old Taiwanese fisherman. The Filipino authorities said the boat tried to ram its Coast Guard vessel; Mr. Hung's son, who was on the boat, reportedly denies that. Investigations are under way by both sides.

Mr. Perez traveled to Taipei to meet top politicians and convey his “deep regret and apology over the unfortunate and unintended loss of life,” according to multiple media reports, but Taiwan refused to accept an apology “to the people of Taiwan” from the envoy of President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines. Other reports said Taiwanese leaders wanted a state-to-state apology, something the Philippines said it could not do because it followed the “one China policy” and does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Writing in the South China Morning Post, the respected commentator Philip Bowring said, “Now it's Taiwan's turn to show some nationalist anger, and its target is the Philippines.”

“Taipei's reaction seems more than just local political pressures on a weak President Ma Ying-jeou but linked to the desire to show that the island's Kuomintang government is at least as eager to pursue Chinese maritime claims as Beijing,” Mr. Bowring wrote. “The same has been seen in respect of the Diaoyu islands,” he wrote, referring to the islands in the East China Sea claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.

“Taiwan's consequent higher profile in the South China Sea issues makes peaceful accommodation in the region more difficult and shows the Taipei government placing more emphasis on old nationalist doctrines than strengthening relations with its non-Chinese neighbors,” Mr. Bowring wrote. “For the Han chauvinists, an apology from the president of the Philippines is not enough. The Filipinos must grovel, be reminded that they, like Malays generally, are the serfs of the region.”

Writing in The Diplomat, J. Michael Cole, an equally respected commentator, disagreed, saying that Taiwan had mishandled the incident.

The principal reason for the standoff was that “Taipei allowed itself to be carried away by the domestic indignation over the slaying of an unarmed Taiwanese (we should furthermore note that a similar incident in 2006 remains unresolved),” Mr. Cole wrote, saying that Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, who has low popularity ratings, was seeking to “ride the wave of nationalism that, almost spontaneously, had taken over the whole of Taiwan.”

However, Mr. Cole wrote, Taiwanese official intransigence “is unlikely the product, as some commentators have suggested, of ‘Han chauvinism.' It is instead the result of something much more granular, such as local legislators' political ambitions in fishermen's constituencies, as well as by opposition parties' efforts to criticize Ma no matter what he does, especially at a time when he is vulnerable.”

Mr. Cole concluded: “A lack of worldliness, of understanding Taiwan's position within the international community, and of how its actions will be interpreted abroad, better explain what happened. Depicting Taiwan's actions as a plan by a secret cabal of ‘Han Chinese' chauvinists to take over the region simply doesn't help us understand what ultimately went wrong with Taiwan's handling of the situation.”

Some grass-roots efforts are under way in Taiwan to reduce the tensions, which have led to military exercises in the region.

 

IHT Quick Read: May 22

NEWS Hezb-i-Islami, a powerful and feared player in the fight against the Soviets and later in Afghanistan's civil war, is now widely seen as a spent insurgent force that poses little military threat. Instead, on the eve of the American troop withdrawal, Hezb-i-Islami's real strength now lies with its political party. Matthew Rosenberg reports from Kabul.

Despite growing public opposition to the practice, the Chinese government is not prepared to end the lucrative trade in ursodeoxycholic acid, the active ingredient found in bear gallbladders. Although scientists have engineered a synthetic alternative, traditionalists claim it lacks the therapeutic punch of raw bile. Andrew Jacobs reports from Chengdu, China.

In a case of alleged forgeries that roiled the New York art market and led to a host of civil lawsuits, the U.S. authorities on Tuesday declared a series of works sold as Modernist masterpieces to be fake and charged a little-known Long Island dealer at the center of the scandal with tax fraud. Graham Bowley, Wiliam K. Rashbaum and Patricia Cohen report.

President Barack Obama embraced drone strikes in his first term, and the targeted killing of terrorism suspects has come to define his presidency. But lost in the contentious debate over the legality, morality and effectiveness of a novel weapon is the fact that the number of strikes has actually been in decline. Scott Shane reports.

BUSINESS Ireland came under sharp criticism Tuesday for its attractiveness as a pied-à-terre for American companies doing business in Europe. At the eye of that storm is a special corporate tax rate of only 2 percent that U.S. Senate investigators say Apple worked out with the Irish tax authorities. Landon Thomas Jr. and Eric Pfanner report. 

David Karp neither finished high school nor enrolled in college. Instead, he played a significant role in several technology start-ups before founding Tumblr, the popular blogging service that agreed to be sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion this week. He joins a tiny circle of hoodie-wearing characters like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who have struck it rich before turning 30. Jenna Wortham and Nick Bilton report.

ARTS Ai Weiwei plans to release his first heavy-metal music video, one with detailed re-creations of scenes from his 81 days of detention by paramilitary guards in 2011. He also portrays fantasies he imagines flitting through the guards' minds. Edward Wong reports from Beijing. 

The Cannes festival celebrated 100 years of Indian cinema last weekend with a digitally restored screening of Satyajit Ray's 1964 film “Charulata,” and many new films from India were on the schedule. Joan Dupont reports from Cannes.

Cecilia Bartoldi lights up the Salzburg Whitsun Festival with the power of Bellini's “Norma,” writes George Loomis.

SPORTS After years of poor play, management changes and bankruptcy, Bradford City A.F.C. finally shines, writes Rob Hughes. 

Vote Allegations Rattle Eurovision Song Contest

LONDON - Tension has been rising between Russia and neighboring Azerbaijan since the weekend over an alleged vote-rigging scandal whose reverberations are being felt across Europe.

Even Sergey V. Lavrov, the formidable Russian foreign minister, has stepped in, threatening that an “outrageous action” committed in Baku will not go unanswered. The Azerbaijani authorities have offered a full-scale fraud investigation.

The origin of the diplomatic spat involving Moscow and the former Soviet satellite is the annual festival of kitsch and glamour known as the Eurovision Song Contest.

Russia claims its entry at the finals of the televised songfest in Malmö, Sweden last Saturday was pushed into a desultory fifth place as a consequence of vote-stealing in Azerbaijan.

Results in the contest, watched by an estimated 125 million viewers across Europe, are determined by a mix of votes from official national juries in participating states and those phoned in by the public.

The result announced from Azerbaijan on Saturday awarded zero points to the Russian entrant, Dina Garipova, rather than the 10 points indicated by data from cellphone operators.

It has prompted allegations of both jury-rigging and illicit “power-voting” via text and telephone.

“We can't be happy with the fact that 10 points were stolen from our participant,” Mr. Lavrov warned on Tuesday.

“We will discuss joint measures to ensure that this outrageous action will not go unanswered,” he said after talks in Moscow with Elmar Mammadyarov, his Azerbaijani counterpart.

The European Broadcasting Union, the pan-national authority that organizes the contest, is so far standing by Saturday's independently audited results.

However, Eurovision officials have tried to calm the troubled waters by promising to look into the accusations on behalf of millions of viewers and the contestants, “who have put heart and soul into their performances.”

Camil Guliyev, the head of Azerbaijan's state broadcaster, said he hoped the incident “possibly initiated by certain interest groups, will not cast a shadow over the brotherly relations of the Russian and Azerbaijani peoples.”

Among evidence to be examined is an undercover video, shot hours before the final and said to show how two individuals approached people to cast large numbers of votes in favor of one particular entry.

Jon Ola Sand, the contest's executive supervisor, emphasized that no link had been established between the individuals in question and Azerbaijani officials.

This year's diplomatic spillover was the latest example of politics intruding into the contest, challenging Mr. Sand's assurance that “the Song Contest's apolitical spirit is a cornerstone of its enduring success.”

As Rendezvous reported a year ago, when Azerbaijan hosted the finals, local political activists took advantage of the presence of more than 1,000 visiting journalists to highlight corruption and rights abuses by the regime of President Ilhem Aliyev.

An Irish academic study in 2010 noted that, “even though the contest professes itself to be apolitical…the political alliances and divisions that mark Europe often become too readily evident with the contest.”

The paper by Adrian Kavanagh of National University found that countries tended to vote for their friends and not for their enemies, regardless of the quality of the songs.

In recent years, the annual lineup has been bolstered by entrants from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the contest is taken more seriously than in some of the Western European states where it has been running since 1956.

In countries like Britain, a five-time winner, it is now widely regarded as a once-a-year celebration of televised kitsch, more watchable for its spangles and sparkle that for its instantly forgettable songs.

Eastern Europe has dominated the winner's podium in the past decade, although Saturday's crown went to Emmelie de Forest of Denmark, with “Only Teardrops.” Azerbaijan came in second.

But, even in Western Europe, the contest maintains its ability to provoke a political reaction.

In Germany this week, there was speculation that the country's miserable 21st place at Malmö was Europe's payback for Chancellor Angela Merkel's tough stance on the euro zone financial crisis.

Overseas Chinese: A Foreigner at Home

BEIJING “Your Chinese is terrible! Aren't you ashamed as a Chinese?''

‘‘Oh, you've come home! That's wonderful! You can see how the motherland is developing.''

‘‘I've always wanted to know - how do Australians view us Chinese?''

As a second-generation Chinese-Australian now living in Beijing, I've become used to such questions - from taxi drivers to distant Chinese relatives and tourists asking me for directions.

Cities like Beijing and Shanghai are increasingly home to overseas Chinese, as those of us of Chinese descent who are not citizens of China are known. By some estimates, more than 30 percent of the American citizens living in China are of Chinese ethnicity.

For hyphenated Chinese like me, living here presents challenges as well as attractions. The chance to explore our's roots and discover a country radically different from the one left behind by our parents or grandparents can be as powerful a lure as the job opportunities offered by a rising China.

Yet expectations of some Chinese toward ethnically Chinese foreigners can be disconcerting. There are assumptions that someone who looks Chinese must speak fluent Mandarin and instinctively understand cultural norms that may be peculiar to the contemporary mainland. Both locals and foreigners can be unsure how to categorize us.

Last summer, a Chinese-American friend, Holly Zhao, was squished in a sweltering Beijing subway car and talking distractedly on her cellphone in English when she accidentally stepped on another passenger's foot. Her apology did little to quell his anger. ‘‘This is China,'' the man snarled. ‘‘Learn Chinese and then apologize.''

Li Jinzhao, a specialist in diaspora studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, says overseas Chinese are often ‘‘blamed directly or indirectly if they look the Chinese language but don't speak the language. They are seen as a failure of Chinese culture.''

Overseas Chinese also find they are a part of the complicated racial landscape of China where ‘‘you get five stars if you are a white foreigner, three stars if you're an overseas Chinese and two stars if you are local Chinese,'' said Jason Zheng, a Chinese-American who has lived in China for eight years, first as an English teacher, and who now runs several bars and restaurants in Beijing.

‘‘Even though I had two years' experience teaching English in China,'' Mr. Zheng said, ‘‘I was told I wasn't white enough when I went for an interview at Crazy English,'' referring to a popular language program.

Classified ads in expatriate magazines are filled with advertisements for ‘‘foreign-looking'' foreigners who can pose as chief executives to enhance the aura of Chinese companies in crucial negotiations, ‘‘white'' English teachers, and men marketing themselves as a ‘‘Caucasian boyfriend-slash-husband-to-be.''

Last year, Ross Tan was refused entry to a Beijing club because he could not produce a Chinese identity card, he said. He explained he didn't have a Chinese identity card because he was born and raised in Australia. But he did have an Australian passport he could present as proof of identity. The bouncer refused him entry but let his five Caucasian friends in without even a glance at their papers.

Two weeks later, during a police crackdown on foreigners without valid paperwork, Mr. Tan was asked to produce his passport, his visa and his residence permit at the very same club. ‘‘So basically, I'm too Chinese to be foreign and too foreign to be Chinese,'' he said with a sigh.

But this confusion over identity might also be one of China's attractions to many overseas Chinese. Steven Tao, another Chinese-Australian, sees the advantages of playing to stereotypes.

‘‘You have to know how to use it in different situations depending on who you are interacting with,'' he said. ‘‘Sometimes, I'll exaggerate my foreign accent when I speak Chinese. Sometimes, when I'm asked where I'm from, I'll say ‘I'm Australian, with a Chinese heart.' ''

Mr. Zheng, who has investments in several of Beijing's trendiest restaurants and bars, agrees with the importance of embracing the contradictions. ‘‘In China, I found the American Dream. But I wouldn't have come or stayed if I wasn't ethnically Chinese.''

Sometimes Beijing's air pollution and food safety scares make me want to pack up and go home. But the dynamism of a rapidly changing China, coupled with curiosity over what my life might have been if my grandparents hadn't left, searching for better opportunities, keeps me here.

Chinese friends often confess that if I were white, we probably wouldn't be so close. Foreigners who are not ethnically Chinese frequently complain about the difficulty of making Chinese friends who aren't simply interested in practicing English.

The divide between locals and foreigners can be stark. While there are a lucky few who comfortably navigate the two worlds, the chasm is evident in the passport-based lunch circles at multinational companies in Beijing and in the awkwardness of foreigners at karaoke evenings or of Chinese at house parties hosted by foreigners. The segregation extends to the different apartment complexes, supermarkets and bars that cater to Chinese versus foreign tastes.

Growing up, I used to ask my parents why I didn't have blond hair like my classmates. At my university, I took a class on diasporas in which the professor said everyone should spend some time living in a society where they look different from the mainstream. In China, although I look like that mainstream, I've discovered just how Australian I am.

I often find I have much in common with overseas Chinese from countries as diverse as Panama, Mauritius, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, Myanmar, Japan, Singapore and Canada. We get together and laugh about our encounters with Beijing taxi drivers. We argue about what it means to be Chinese and the connection between language and identity. We speculate about why it probably is different for a second-generation Irish-American in Ireland than it is for us in China.

But we seem to agree on one thing: There needs to be an evolution of Chinese identity to include overseas Chinese.

Holly Zhao summed it up when she reflected on her encounter in the Beijing subway, ‘‘You don't have to be Chinese the way they want you to be.''

Are you, like the author of this post, “Overseas Chinese” or “hyphenated Chinese”? Share your experiences in the comment space here.

Beyond the Obvious

My colleague Mark Bulik offered these thoughts on caption writing, with examples, bad and good.

Every day Times editors conduct dozens of weddings, uniting words and images, in print and online. Many of these unions are things of grace and beauty, others come closer to an ugly brawl, and more than a few just seem silly. As in any marriage, the two parties should not just speak to each other, but seem as though they belong together. And so, in the service of a more perfect union, let us start with the advice of The Times's stylebook: “A caption should normally explain what readers cannot see for themselves in the picture and should omit the obvious.”

Consider what can happen when we ignore that admonition and fill a caption with whatever basic information came with the photo.

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US Attorney's Office Eastern District of New York

Published caption: A photo shows about $20,000 sitting on cans of beer following a series of thefts from A.T.M.'s in New York in February.

We can assume that it's a photo and that it shows something - no need to say so. And yes, it's pretty clear that those are cans of beer. Instead of telling readers what they could already see, we could have tried for a bigger point - for example, did the suspects take this picture themselves?

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Angelos Tzortzinis for The International Herald Tribune

Published caption: Michalis Petrakis, who is jobless and whose son Pantelis has been going to school hungry, opened his nearly empty refrigerator.

In case you thought he was closing it. Perhaps instead of telling readers that Mr. Petrakis was opening his refrigerator, we could have told them that he has trouble filling it.

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Saul Martinez/European Pressphoto Agency

Published caption: Courtroom spectators applauded after the trial judge refused to accept a ruling annulling the case.

Yes, that's what they are doing with their hands - applauding. A better use of the space might have been to note that the spectators included a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Rigoberta Menchu (center, with beads).

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Josh Haner/The New York Times

Published caption: Pallbearers carried Krystle Campbell's coffin at her funeral Monday in Melford, Mass. “I'll miss her, that's for sure,” her grandmother said. “She was my baby girl.”

Instead of reporting the obvious - that pallbearers were carrying a coffin - we could have noted that this was the first of the funerals for the Boston bombing victims.

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Now consider what a cutline can add to the presentation of a story when we give the reader some additional context:

Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency

Published caption: The remains of the plant. The authorities say there is no indication of criminal activity in the explosion, which followed a fire.

With this caption out of West, Tex., we avoided belaboring the obvious and used the space to address a key question in readers' minds: Was the explosion foul play?

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Boyd Norton

Published caption: Anna Merz with Samia. The rhino would follow her around like a dog even after she was grown.

After a caption like that, who wouldn't want to read more?

 
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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A pristine 12-room sponsor unit at 535 West End Avenue, a 1920 brick building reinvented, expanded and marketed as a luxury destination by the Extell Development Company, sold for $16.295 million and was the most expensive residential sale of the week, according to city records.

From the stylebook:

When mentioning an address on a major thoroughfare in New York City, ordinarily specify the nearest cross street.

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The revelations had been published by The New York Times, The A.P. and in several books.

With the switch of prepositions, this doesn't work as a three-element series. Make it “by The New York Times and The A.P. and in several books.”

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Both Mr. Sharif and Mr. Khan have been measured in their criticism of the Taliban, and neither have suffered attack, although the caretaker government says they are also at risk.

“Suffered attack” is an odd phrasing, and in any case, “neither” is singular. Make it “neither has been attacked.”

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To many, they remain the afterthoughts of the New York City mayoral race: outsider candidates, polling in the single digits, whom the political establishment assumed would at some point quietly go away.

The establishment assumed that they, not them, would go away; replace “they” with “who,” not “whom.”

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It conjures up the old adage that ships are safest on shore, but that is not why they are built.

As the stylebook notes, an adage is an old saying; “old adage” is redundant.

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His game, redolent of crisp iron play and clutch putting, has resurfaced.

Redolent means smelling (of) or, by extension, evocative (of). We needed a different word.

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Len Johnson, who lives in the Jefferson Houses, another public housing complex in East Harlem, explained it this way: “It's like, ‘What I done to your door, I'm going to do to you,' ” he said, “It's a powerful message. It's all about saying something without them saying it out of their mouth.”

This sentence attributes the same quotation twice. Why not drop the “he said”?

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An affadavit sworn out by Douglas J. Kunze, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the authorities had found the parts of a pipe bomb, including potassium nitrate powder, which is used in fertilizers and gunpowder.

Though Mr. Reed was not in possession of the materials, he admitted to having possessed them, according to the affadavit.

It's spelled “affidavit.”

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A witness also said Mr. Scarcella told him who to choose in a lineup.

“Whom,” not “who.”

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[Caption] Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner after her debut as the nation's first female anchorwoman.

Redundant; of course an anchorwoman is female. In any case, the stylebook prefers “anchor.”

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The family has also been troubled by what they say is a lack of communication from the authorities.

Singular or plural? Make it singular throughout.

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But it does offer a reminder that how patience on both sides is wearing thin as the war grinds on, and that thoughtless acts can lead to international incidents.

Perhaps we were changing “of how” to “that,” but didn't finish the editing?

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The glasseslike device, which allows users to access the Internet, take photos and film short snippets, has been pre-emptively banned by a Seattle bar.

Avoid this jargony verb use of “access” if possible. Here, we could simply say “go online.”