IHT Quick Read: Jan. 5

NEWS With the passage of a bill that does little to address the country's long-term debt issues, military and diplomatic experts wonder whether the United States is at risk of squandering its global influence, David E. Sanger reports from Washington.

Google's agreement with American authorities about antitrust laws is unlikely to sway European regulators, who are pursuing assertions that the company rigs results to favor its own businesses, David Jolly reports from Paris.

Interviews with a 22-year-old Afghan man who opened fire on Americans reveal the rage that officials worry may disrupt the training mission at the core of the United States' withdrawal plan, Matthew Rosenberg reports from Kabul, Afghanistan.

The tightening of controls at North Korea's border with China has led to a steep decline in the number of North Koreans defecting to South Korea in 2012, Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

José Mujica, a former guerrilla who took office as president of Uruguay in 2010, shuns opulence, donates most of his salary and lives modestly, as he says a leader of a proper democracy should, Simon Romero reports from Montevideo, Uruguay.

SPORTS Lance Armstrong, who this fall was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, has told associates he may admit to doping in his cycling career, Juliet Macur reports from New York.

ARTS Ursula Meier, director of “Sister,” Switzerland's foreign-language Oscar entry, explains why she chose to work with the same child actor, Kacey Mottet Klein, for both her films, Larry Rohter reports from New York.

Vatican Goes \'Cash Only\' Because of Lack of Money Laundering Controls

LONDON - If you're planning a trip to the Vatican, be sure you take cash.

Since Wednesday, museums and businesses in the Holy See have been declining credit card and debit card purchases following a decision by the Bank of Italy that is reportedly linked to concerns over inadequate money-laundering controls.

ATMs have also been shut down after the Italian central bank refused authorization for Deutsche Bank's Italian unit to continue operating services it provided within the Vatican's walls.

An Italian Treasury official said last month that the Vatican could no longer use the services of Italian-based banks in the light of new anti-money laundering rules, according to Vatican Radio.

“The Bank of Italy could not give the authorization because the Vatican, apart from not respecting money laun dering regulation, did not have the legal prerequisites,” Reuters reporting, quoting a source close to the Bank of Italy.

The banking freeze, which has prompted the move to cash-only transactions, and which Vatican officials have tersely dismissed as a technical problem, has prompted speculation in the Italian press that a fresh scandal is about to erupt involving the mini-state's still shadowy finances.

Pope Benedict XVI has pledged to throw light on the Holy See's finances and on its ultra-secretive Institute for Works of Religion, otherwise known as the Vatican Bank. He has even hired a Swiss anti-money-laundering expert, René Brülhart, to oversee the process.

A report by Moneyval, an official European financial watchdog, repor ted last year that the Vatican was failing in almost half the criteria required to meet standards of financial transparency. The Holy See had come a long way in a short time, the report said. However, the Vatican Bank continued to lack independent supervision.

Mr. Brülhart's brief involves getting the Vatican included in a “white list” of territories judged to comply with international standards on combating financial crime.

The Vatican's efforts to shake off a reputation for shadowy finances date back to 1982 and the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Vatican Bank was a major shareholder.

At the height of that scandal, the body of Roberto Calvi, the Ambrosiano chairman known as “God's Banker” for his Vatican ties, was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London.

The Ambrosiano affair was not the last of the Vatican's troubles, however.

Just last May, the Vatican Bank fired Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, its chairman, after a three-year tenure marred by financial scandal. In 2010, Italian prosecutors had seized the equivalent of $29 million from a Rome bank account registered to the Vatican Bank, amid suspicions of money-laundering violations.

As the current ban on credit cards suggests, the Vatican's efforts to clean up its finances have only been partially successful.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said contacts were under way with other operators to resume normal banking services and the suspension would be “short-lived.”

In the meantime, at the Vatican's museums and souvenir stores, it's cash only, please.

Kayaker Aborts Solo Pacific Voyage

For much of last year, kayaking enthusiasts around the world were keeping tabs on Wave Vidmar, who said he was planning to kayak from California to Hawaii â€" totally alone and unsupported. The 48-year-old Mr. Vidmar expected the journey over the rolling Pacific Ocean would take between 45 and 65 days. And the 3,100-mile odyssey would rank among the longest of its kind, if successful.

When I interviewed Mr. Vidmar by phone in July for this Global Athlete column, I was safely grounded, sipping a cool drink at my hotel's swimming pool overlooking the Singapore marina, way over on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. From my vantage point, the seas looked calm, but I was well aware that the waters between Mr. Vidmar and myself were anything but. And that turned out to be just the case.

Mr. Vidmar said this week via Facebook that, after much delay, he had discreetly launched his voyage o n Dec. 24, only to make an emergency call some 24 hours later for a rescue after storms began flooding his kayak.

A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, Lieutenant Junior Grade Mark Leahey, wouldn't name names but confirmed that the Guard had rescued a sleep-deprived, Hawaii-bound kayaker on Christmas evening some 15 nautical miles off Bodega Bay. That's the town north of San Francisco that film buffs will remember as the setting of Alfred Hitchock's 1963 film, The Birds. Mr. Vidmar said that the $10,000 kayak, along with all its supplies, sank as it was towed back to shore. (For a look at the boat, check out this newscast).

Mr. Vidmar told me by phone this week that he still plans to make the journey in the spring or summer, but he'll have to do it without the help of his sponsor, Seaward Kayaks. The two have gone their separate ways. “The final chapter of the 2012 Seaward Pacific Expedition with Wave Vidmar has now been written, albeit with an ending we didn't foresee,” the company said in this statement.

When I first spoke to Mr. Vidmar last year, my most pressing question was: Are you afraid? “I'm definitely scared,” Mr. Vidmar told me. “There are times that I realize this is not a small undertaking.”

He later blogged on the Huffington Post under the headline, “I'm Kayaking from San Fran to Hawaii and Yeah, I'm Scared.” “When it comes to fear, it's all relative,” he wrote. “What one person may be afraid of, another may find satisfying or enjoyable, and vice versa. Me, I've been afraid to have children, I'd much rather do battle with a polar bear. Most people aren't a fraid of having children; who's more brave?”

Mr. Vidmar was supposed to launch the weekend my article initially appeared. I touched base with him regularly for an update on that and subsequent delays. Each time he spoke of equipment or electrical problems. Then he popped up in my Facebook news feed tagged in a photo at a class reunion when I thought he would be at sea. I wondered if he had chickened out.

I would certainly understand if he had. One of the last big attempted kayak ocean crosses ended in failure. In 2007, the Australian Andrew McAuley set out to cross the Tasman Sea from Tasmania to New Zealand, but died in the undertaking. I'm personally haunted by a scene in the video documentary “Solo: Lost at Sea” as Mr. McAuley paddles out to ocean, weeping as he left behind his wife and young son.

About 25 years ago, Ed Gillet completed a slightly shorter version of the solo California-to-Hawaii trip, the only person known to have succeeded. Mr. Gillet has since retreated from the public eye.

A reader, Heidi Tiura, got in touch with me with the following e-mail (slightly edited for clarity) that perhaps gives some insight into the psychology of people like Mr. Vidmar and Mr. Gillet:

My husband, Steph Dutton, paddled a sea kayak from Canada to Mexico. Every day, he broke out through the surf, and at the end of an average of 30 nautical miles, surfed in to shore. The punishment was in those launchings and landings; sea kayaks are not really designed for surf. Imagine the misery! Most people can't sit in a kayak for an hour, much less all day.

Steph knows Ed Gillet and they share traits. Solo paddlers take on these expeditions for all kinds of reasons, many quite personal. It's not real surprising Ed has turned inward. For Steph, the expeditions gave him great insights to himself, and set him apart in a way that leaves little in common with most folks.

What makes adventurers tick? Do they take unnecessary risk?

School Rankings: What\'s in a Number?

HONG KONG - If I had a dollar every time I heard someone say that a university was ranked in the top something-or-other, I'd have a lot of dollars.

The rather grandiose statement is often followed by a certain fuzziness about the details. It's easy for prospective students (or their parents) to take a quick glance at a Web site that says a school is among the top 10, or 20, or 100 in the world. But according to whom? And by what measure?

There are scores of different rankings, some more reputable than others. Some are based on quantifiable measures like research output or admissions standards. Others try to gauge more the nebulous aspects of an institution, like “academic reputation.” Yet others look only at individual degrees or a specific criteria, like post-graduate employability.

Many students and parents will only consider schools that appea r in various top 400 or top 500 lists. (Pity the decent, but small, college that comes in at number 501.)

But the reality is that most people don't read the fine print: who publishes these listings, what they measure exactly, how their data are compiled, and whether they are trustworthy.

D.D. Guttenplan takes a closer look at the QS World University Rankings, one of the three major rating systems compiled outside the United States. (The other two are published by Times Higher Education and Shanghai Jiaotong University.)

He reports that QS has been charging universities to be assessed to receive a coveted star rating.

The Irish Examiner reported in 2011 that the cost of University College Cork's evaluation - which resulted in a top five-star QS ranking - came to "22,000, or almost $36,000. That is pocket change when one considers the international clout attached to QS, and the fact that that U.C.C.'s 3,000 international students bring in about "19 million a year.

It is a sweet deal for the university. But can prospective students trust rankings if some schools are paying for them and others are not?

Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence Unit, said in an interview with D.D. that the fees had no influence on rankings or star ratings.

“Just because accreditation agencies charge the universities, that doesn't mean they are biased,” he said, adding that, “If people were buying stars we wouldn't have so many zero-, one- and two-star institutions that have been through the process.”

Academics hav e long sniffed at university rankings, which they feel cannot encompass the complexities of higher education. That may be true. But the lists published in the mass media are the only practical, easy way for the general public to compare a large number of schools. Rankings are pored over by millions of prospective students and their parents. They have a huge impact on everything from where students apply, whether they get scholarships from foreign governments, or whether an employer recognizes a degree.

While academics may scoff, university publicity and recruitment offices know how important - and potentially lucrative - good rankings are. Movements up and down the ladders are watched as closely as Michelin stars are in fine dining.

Today's students are growing up with easy, online lists for top trends, top holiday destinations, etc. They will naturally want their education information packaged the same way. However, they are also aware that the Internet is fill ed with paid (and possibly biased) book reviews and online reviews.

Granted, the university rankings published by QS, T.H.E. and Shanghai Jiaotong are backed by far more legitimate research than your average online blogger review.

But still - do you trust university rankings? Do you use them in your decision-making? Are you disturbed that some rankings charge universities? Or do you think that is simply business as usual?

IHT Quick Read: Jan. 4

NEWS The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday handed Google a big victory in its ongoing battle with regulators, finding that the U.S. Internet giant does not violate antitrust or anti-competition statutes in the way it structures its Web searches. Edward Wyatt reports from Washington.

Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has long tried to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister. With its deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore, it has just bought itself 40 million more chances to make its case. Brian Stelter reports from New York.

Rape, murder and other charges were filed on Th ursday against five men suspected of carrying out the gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who later died of her injuries, in a case that has prompted outrage and protests across India. Gardiner Harris reports from New Delhi.

The Kremlin announced Thursday that President Vladimir V. Putin had signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Gérard Depardieu, the French actor who has been feuding publicly with French officials over the country's high tax rates on the wealthy. David M. Herszenhorn reports from Moscow.

Community organizations in China are slowly facing less resistance from government officials as they offer services to H.I.V.-infected people, many of them gay, a population that is often st igmatized. Dan Levin reports from Guangzhou, China.

As much as Americans, the Swiss love their guns, seeing them as integral to their national traditions of self-reliance, independence and international neutrality. Those views are unlikely to change soon, even after a mentally imbalanced man shot and killed three women and wounded two men in the southern Swiss village of Daillon on Wednesday evening. Steven Erlanger reports from Paris.

ARTS The actress Emmanuelle Riva, a symbol of the French New Wave and now an octogenarian, wasn't giving much thought to success or even finding a lead role in a film after her last one some 20 years ago. But when the Austrian director Michael Haneke, whose work she h ad long admired, offered her a starring part in “Amour,” a poignant tale of love and death set in a book-filled Paris apartment, she said yes instantly. Maïa de la Baume reports from Paris.

SPORTS The Newcastle striker Demba Ba's career has taken him from France to Belgium to Germany to England, and now it seems he will head to Chelsea, even if his new coach won't say so. Rob Hughes on soccer.

IHT Quick Read: Jan. 4

NEWS The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday handed Google a big victory in its ongoing battle with regulators, finding that the U.S. Internet giant does not violate antitrust or anti-competition statutes in the way it structures its Web searches. Edward Wyatt reports from Washington.

Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has long tried to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister. With its deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore, it has just bought itself 40 million more chances to make its case. Brian Stelter reports from New York.

Rape, murder and other charges were filed on Th ursday against five men suspected of carrying out the gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who later died of her injuries, in a case that has prompted outrage and protests across India. Gardiner Harris reports from New Delhi.

The Kremlin announced Thursday that President Vladimir V. Putin had signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Gérard Depardieu, the French actor who has been feuding publicly with French officials over the country's high tax rates on the wealthy. David M. Herszenhorn reports from Moscow.

Community organizations in China are slowly facing less resistance from government officials as they offer services to H.I.V.-infected people, many of them gay, a population that is often st igmatized. Dan Levin reports from Guangzhou, China.

As much as Americans, the Swiss love their guns, seeing them as integral to their national traditions of self-reliance, independence and international neutrality. Those views are unlikely to change soon, even after a mentally imbalanced man shot and killed three women and wounded two men in the southern Swiss village of Daillon on Wednesday evening. Steven Erlanger reports from Paris.

ARTS The actress Emmanuelle Riva, a symbol of the French New Wave and now an octogenarian, wasn't giving much thought to success or even finding a lead role in a film after her last one some 20 years ago. But when the Austrian director Michael Haneke, whose work she h ad long admired, offered her a starring part in “Amour,” a poignant tale of love and death set in a book-filled Paris apartment, she said yes instantly. Maïa de la Baume reports from Paris.

SPORTS The Newcastle striker Demba Ba's career has taken him from France to Belgium to Germany to England, and now it seems he will head to Chelsea, even if his new coach won't say so. Rob Hughes on soccer.