IHT Quick Read: Jan. 3

NEWS With the resolution of the U.S. fiscal crisis barely a day old, the next confrontation is already taking shape as Washington braces for a fight in February over raising the nation's borrowing limit. But it is a debate President Barack Obama says he will have nothing more to do with. Michael D. Shear and Jackie Calmes report from Washington.

Thailand's favorite topic of conversation is probably food. But a close second is the underground lottery, an illegal yet tolerated black market numbers game played by nearly one third of the population. And the search for lucky numbers to play can be confusing to outsiders - calamity can beget good fortune; tragedy can give rise to powerful ghosts who offer guidance on winning numbers. There is nothing too horrible to be a source of good luck: plane crashes, massacres or murders . Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

President Vladimir V. Putin has ordered a major change in the rules for parliamentary elections, a move that could help solidify his power and influence toward the end of his current term and insulate him from dwindling public support for United Russia, the party that nominated him and currently holds a majority in Parliament. David M. Herszenhorn reports from Moscow.

A commission that has been pursuing the assets of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos should be abolished, despite the fact that much of his allegedly ill-gotten wealth has not been recovered, the panel's chairman said on Wednesday. Floyd Whaley reports from Manila.

Many of Spain's 170,000 Chinese immigrants have managed not only to weather a tough economy but indeed to thrive, buoyed by an intense work ethic and a strong Confucian model of family loyalty, even as joblessness and cuts to government services have left other Spaniards struggling. Dan Bilefsky reports from Barcelona.

ARTS Between 1964 and 1968, Henry Grossman took more than 7,000 photos of the Beatles, though only a few dozen - whatever magazine editors needed for the articles at hand - were published at the time. His new book, “Places I Remember,” goes a long way toward remedying that; a boxed, 528-page, silver-edged brick of a volume, it weighs 15 pounds, includes about 1,000 photographs and costs $495. Allan Kozinn reports.

SPORTS After Stanford's first Rose Bowl win since 1972 - and Wisconsin's third Rose Bowl loss in three years - the grass was worn, marked with fresh divots, and the ground was lumpy, somewhat like Play-Doh. For Stanford, at least, it had been fun. Tim Rohan reports from Pasadena, California.

Seen From China: Fiscal Cliff Shows Democracy\'s Weakness

With warnings â€" and mixed metaphors â€" about tripping over cans kicked down roads and bungee jumping into abysses, reactions from China to the just-struck United States' “fiscal cliff” budget deal have been colorful â€" and critical.

Get it together, is the message: American democracy isn't working if politicians can't pass national budgets on time. And the mess reduces the attractiveness of the American Model to the world.

One story by Xinhua, the state news agency, compared U.S. politicians to bungee jumpers, pointing out that the term “fiscal cliff” wasn't actually right since the country did fall off a cliff, as 2012 turned into 2013 without a deal, but bounced back when agreement came on Wednesday, Asia time.

Such a fall should have been deadly, Xinhua said. “So describing this finance crisis as ‘bungee jumping' may be more appropriate.”

“Still, to other countries, the United States's increasingly serious decision-making problems reduces the attractiveness of the American Model and trust in the American economy,” Xinhua said.

China's views matter for all sorts of reasons, including geo-politics, but also because it one of the biggest creditors of the U.S. government via its huge U.S. treasury purchases. This makes China vulnerable â€" and concerned.

America is in decline, implied Xinhua in a commentary.

“The American people were once better known for their ability to make tough choices on difficult issues,” ran a separate Xinhua story â€" this one a commentary â€" by a person named Ming Jinwei. (Such commentaries are not official statements by the government but are belie ved to reflect high-level government opinion.)

“The Americans may be proud of their mature Democracy, but the political gridlock in Washington really looks ugly from an outsider's view,” the commentary ran.

Americans may regard the cliff-hanger deal as their own private business, but, “As the world' s sole superpower, U.S. domestic failures to reach deals on critical issues have implications for the whole world,” it ran.

“For the Americans, their government has been in the red for too long. Since 2002, Uncle Sam has not tasted any government surplus in over a decade as it borrows heavily to support costly wars in the Middle East and to stimulate the economy out of a recession in the wake of the global financial crisis,” ran the commentary.

The theme continued in another Xinhua story: “In a democracy like the United States, tax increases and spending cuts, the exact dose of medicine needed to cure its chronic debt disease, have long proved hugely unpopular among voters. So the politicians have chosen to kick the can down the road again and again,” it said, reflecting a widespread horror in China at the size of the United States' $16 trillion debt â€" which will continue to grow even with this week's deal.

“But as we all know, the can will never disappear. Sometime and somewhere, you might trip over it and fall hard on the ground, or in the U.S. case, into an abyss you can never come out of,” Xinhua warned.

Still, China has its own challenges, as this Bloomberg story today makes clear, chiefly the threat of its own domestic debt and “cotton candy” growth.

Some of the factors that plunged the U.S. into economic crisis in 2008, adding to debt and shrinking the space within which to solve fiscal problems, are shared by China, warned David Loevinger, a former senior coordinator for China affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department.

“The U.S. got into trouble because institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were too big to fail and had a toxic mix of private shareholders and implicit government guarantees. China's financial system is full of Freddies and Fannies,” said Mr. Loevinger, now an Asia analyst in Los Angeles at TCW Group.

China's risk is mostly domestic, carried by the Ministry of Finance and the state banks it runs, unlike the U.S.'s debt, which is held by parties around the world.

But China's new leader, Xi Jinping, has inherited an economy with much more debt than the one President Hu Jintao took over in 2003, Bloomberg wrote, with government, corporate and consumer debt at an estimated 206 percent of gross domestic product, it said, citing a report by Standard Chartered Bank. In March 2003, when Mr. Hu became president, it st ood at 150 percent, Bloomberg reported.

Hoping to End Decades-long Kurdish Conflict, Turkey Calls on Archenemy

LONDON - Turkish intelligence agents have been making the short hop from Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara to the prison Island of Imrali in recent weeks for talks with a jailed Kurdish separatist leader who was once Turkey's most wanted man.

Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the P.K.K., has been languishing on Imrali since he was captured in Nairobi, Kenya in 1999 while on the run. He is serving a life term after a death sentence was commuted.

Now the Turkish government wants his help to end a resurgent war with P.K.K. rebels that has claimed around 900 lives in the last year and a half.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, revealed the dialog last week when he told state-run TRT television, “I cannot hold such meetings myself as a politician but the state has agents and they do.”

In an acknowledgement that the latest escalation in a three-decade battle against the Kurdish insurgents was probably unwinnable, Yalcin Akdogan, a senior adviser to Mr. Erdogan, said this week that the talks were aimed at persuading the P.K.K. to disarm.

“The government supports any dialog to this end that could result in a halt to violence,” Mr. Akdogan said in a television interview. “You cannot get results and abolish an organization only with armed struggle.”

The strategy of seeking a deal with the P.K.K. has implications for Turkey's policy in neighboring Syria, where Kurdish militants lin ked to the organization have taken over territory vacated by retreating government forces.

Turkey “fears that an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would become a haven for Kurdish militants to carry out cross-border attacks in the Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey,” my colleague Tim Arango wrote recently in a report from the border region.

Tensions over Syria and the Kurdish issue have also led to a souring of Turkey's relations with Iran and the Iraqi government in Baghdad, as Ankara struggled to cope with the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring.

There is a question mark over how much authority the jailed Mr. Ocalan has over the P.K.K. leadership, which is based in the Qandil mountains in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. “He remains a figure of symbolic importance,” Mr. Akdogan said of the P.K.K. founder. “But we st ill have to wait and see how Qandil will react.”

Mr. Ocalan's capture in 1999 was a cause of national celebration among Turks after the worst years of a war that has cost 40,000 lives, including those of Turkish and Kurdish civilians. The P.K.K. is regarded as a terrorist organization by, among others, the United States and the European Union.

However, the Turkish authorities have not shrunk from dealing with Mr. Ocalan in the past to intervene in Kurdish matters.

In November, he saved the authorities from an escalating crisis that threatened to worsen tensions with the Kurds by calling on hundreds of his imprisoned supporters to halt a two-month hunger strike. The protesters had been demanding an end to Mr. Ocalan's isolation and improved rights for Turkey's Kurdish minority, which makes up 20 percent of its population.

Andrew Finkel wrote in the IHT's Global Views opinion section that the intervention signaled the resumption of Mr. Ocalan's career.

Mr. Ocalan is now reportedly demanding direct contact with the P.K.K.'s leadership and improved prison conditions as the price for his cooperation in persuading the militants to lay down their arms.

Some observers have cast doubt on the government's strategy of dealing with Mr. Ocalan while failing to carry out reforms in favor of the country's Kurdish minority.

David Rohde wrote in a Rendezvous article at the weekend that more than 10,000 Kurds were imprisoned in Turkey on various terrorism charges.

According to Hugh Pope, project director of the International C risis Group in Turkey, the government of Mr. Erdogan is putting the cart before the horse. “They need to find a Kurdish settlement first before cutting a deal with the P.K.K.,” he told Rendezvous from Istanbul.

That would include instituting promised reforms that would give equality to Turkey's Kurdish citizens, including the right to a Kurdish-language education.

“The P.K.K. wants to do a deal and obviously Ocalan is desperate to get out of jail,” Mr. Pope said. “He may be an essential ingredient but he's not the magic key.”

Indian Women Need a Political Party

NEW DELHI - In my latest column, I use urban India's extraordinary reaction to the rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi to argue that the nation's most ferocious battle is that between modernity and the powerful hold of the Indian village over society.

The aftermath of the rape has, naturally, included much talk about how to make the country a better place for women. I do not believe that much progress can be made in this area without women coming in full conflict with Indian society. Such a conflict, if it has to be meaningful or effective, is possible only through electoral politics. What I am suggesting, more specifically, is that women should be directly represented in Indian politics - in the form of a political party that is entirely concerned with what matters to women.

In my previous Letter From India, I had argued that what saves India is its politics, because all kinds of sections of the society find representation in Indian politics. More than 300 political parties contested the last general elections, representing various concerns, biases, cries for justice and pressure groups. But women are not directly represented, which is baffling.

The presence of a few powerful female politicians does give a sense that women are not insignificant to Indian politics, but this is deceptive. Beyond a point, female politicians in mainstream parties cannot afford to antagonize the men and the elders among their voters - the chief adversaries of Indian women. There has been much talk in India about reserving electoral seats for women, but such a reservation, if it ever were to be enacted, would still be controlled by male politicians through their wives, daughters and even mothers. Also, such a reservation is a condescension by the system that would not be required if women were to organize as a political force.

Only a political party whose fate is tied to how women perceive it can begin to influence the system in a deep way. Women make up more than half the country's population, and they have a slate of grievances about how the nation treats them. These are issues that unite both highly educated urban women and rural women, who historically have not had enough opportunities to do what they please.

Over the years several groups in India have been empowered through political representation. For instance, the Dalit community, formerly considered the untouchable caste, has been transformed through aggressive political representation - not by the willful reformation of the upper castes. Also, the reality of Indian politics today is that even political parties with just a few seats in Parliament influence the government to get their way. Women must begin to twist some arms to make India a better place. They must understand that the fundamental instinct of men, even of decent men, is not to concede too much power.

IHT Quick Read: Jan. 2

NEWS Ending a climactic showdown in the final hours of the 112th Congress, the House sent to President Obama legislation to avert big income tax increases on most Americans. Jennifer Steinhauer reports from Washington.

Latvia, feted by fans of austerity as the country-that-can and an example for countries like Greece that can't, has provided a rare boost to champions of the proposition that pain pays. Andrew Higgins reports from Riga.

China wants a railroad linking it to Thailand and on to the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar, but some international groups warn that it may put a big burden on Laos. Jane Perlez and Bree Feng report from Oudom Xai, Laos.

At least 60 people were killed in Ivory Coast's economic capital, Abidjan, as a New Year's fireworks celebration turned into a deadly stampede early on Tuesday. Officials said that they were baffled as to what set off the stampede but that it was being investigated. Adam Nossiter reports.

The success of the “Gangnam Style” video, by a midlevel star who goes by Psy, has fueled grand ambitions by a district that wants to be known as a center of conspicuous consumption. Martin Fackler reports from Seoul, South Korea.

ARTS “Paul Klee and Italy,” an exhibition of 45 of the artist's works at th e National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, examines the influence of his visits to Italy on his painting. Roderick Conway Morris reviews the show in Rome.

Emmanuelle Riva, revered for her role in “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” is getting prizes for her work in Michael Haneke's “Amour,” but says she never wanted to be a star. Maïa de la Baume writes from Paris.

SPORTS The new year opened without Gareth Bale in the lineup for Tottenham Hotspur. The winger was banned and, in effect, branded a cheat. Rob Hughes on soccer.