IHT Quick Read: Feb. 12

NEWS North Korea appeared to conduct its third, and probably largest, nuclear test on Tuesday, according to American and Asian officials, posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power. David E. Sanger reports from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul.

Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise announcement on Monday that he will resign on Feb. 28 sets the stage for a succession battle that is likely to determine the future course of a church troubled by scandal and declining faith in its traditional strongholds around the world. Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo reort from Vatican City.

Flying is becoming safer: It will be four years on Tuesday since the last fatal crash in the United States, a record unmatched since propeller planes gave way to the jet more than half a century ago. Jad Mouawad and Christopher Drew report.

Thousands of Afghans have built homes and careers on an influx of foreign money and are fearful that their lives could implode as Western forces disappear. Graham Bowley reports from Kabul.

There are many ways of striking it rich in Brazil, but one strategy may come as a particular surprise in today’s economic climate: securing a government job. Simon Romero reports from São Paulo.

Critics in France say a proposal to add school classes on Wednesdays fails to address concerns that French students are trailing those of other European countries. Nicola Clark reports from Paris.

Concern over the euro moved to the forefront Monday as finance ministers of the countries using the currency held their monthly meeting. But this time, with the European Union’s recession continuing, the topic was the strength of the euro rather than its many weaknesses. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

The troubled Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant in Finland will probably not start operating before 2016, the power utility behind the plant said Monday, another delay to a project that is already four years overdue. David Jolly reports.

FASHION As the Metropolitan Museum of Art announces “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” the story fits neatly with the winter 2013 season. Suzy Menkes writes from New York.

ARTS “No,” the Chilean entry in this year’s foreign-film race of the Academy Awards, has received praise but also criticism in its home nation. Larry Rohter reports.

SPORTS Women tennis players, with a few exceptions, have not transitioned successfully from the top of the college game to the top levels of the WTA Tour. Ben Rothenberg reports from Charlottesville, Virginia.

In China, Shock and Acceptance over Pope\'s Resignation

BEIJING â€" In China, where official relations with the Vatican are a “never-ending crisis,” as the Vatican Insider put it recently, the news of the resignation of Pope Benedict has been slow to spread. The Chinese state doesn’t recognize the Pope as the leader of China’s Catholics and has had its own “patriotic” church since the Communist Revolution in 1949.

But by noon Tuesday the news that rocked the world was arriving here, too. One priest’s reaction was accepting - even approving.

“I’m open-minded. You can retire as Pope,” said Father Yan, in a telephone interview from a Chinese province. (He can only be identified by his last name since speaking out about Roman Catholicism is politically sensitive in China.)

“When God makes us old, he doesn’t want us to work,” Father Yan said.

“People haven’t really talked about it here. It’s a sensitive issue because of relations, but it won’t impat on relations. The state church will accept it. You change a Pope and things go on for the state church,” he said. “But I think it’s very good to retire. It’s OK. He’s old.”

Another priest I called for reaction was stunned - he was hearing the news for the first time.

“I’m shocked. I don’t think I quite believe it,” said Father Dang in a telephone interview. (He too could only be identified by one name.)

“I think the reaction here won’t be too big,” was his immediate response. “But then again maybe it will be. I’m totally shocked.”

Many of China’s Catholics, who number about 12 million, “look two ways,” acknowledging the Pope’s spiritual leadership but the government’s de facto authority and, by extension the authority of the state church. In this slideshow, my colleague Sim Chi Yin presents beautiful images of a baptism at an official church,! part of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Many Chinese people also worship in unofficial “underground” churches.

I explored this ongoing, modern-day “schism” in a column, finding that “many ordinary Catholics dislike the strife between Beijing and Rome and seem comfortable with a pragmatic blend of the two.”

Another reason the news of the Pope’s resignation, announced by him in Latin during what was supposed to be a routine meeting in Rome on Monday, has been slow to seep into China was because of the slowing effect of the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday, which began last Saturday. For days, Chinese, including Catholics, have been paying more attention to homegrown customs and family members than to world news.

“I haven’t actually checked the news in to days,” Father Dang said.

Chinacath.org, a Chinese language Web site for Catholics that is within the Great Firewall that blocks unwanted overseas Internet content, indicating it is officially approved, carried the news of the Pope Benedict’s pending departure on its homepage, with the text of his speech announcing his resignation, in English.

Mainlander Shoppers Met With Protests in Hong Kong

HONG KONGâ€"There is little to distinguish Sheung Shui from the many suburbs studded with high-rises and elevated walkways that dot the northern parts of Hong Kong, except for one thing: It is the first stop on the local train link that comes in from the nearby border with mainland China.

That phenomenon has made Sheung Shui an especially popular stop for the many mainlanders who flock to Hong Kong to shop. And that, in turn, has made this otherwise unremarkable neighborhood the site of several angry protests and clashes between residents and visitors in recent months.

Visit the local train station, and you will see many, many shoppers carrying and wheeling bags, suitcases and parcels bulging with candies, toiletries, diapers or baby food.

Chan Sui-Hong, a 39-year-old woman from Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, was getting onto the train heading back toward China recently, pulling a trolley laden with pistachio nuts and sweets - presents for the Lunar New Year holiday. Anther woman had stocked up on shampoo and rice. Scores of others were lugging diapers and tins of milk powder for infants.

Nearly everyone said they had shopped in Sheung Shui not because items were cheaper there, but because of a belief that anything purchased on the Hong Kong side of the border was more likely to be genuine - and safe.

“It’s a safety guarantee,” said one man, who declined to give his name and said he operated a shop in Shenzhen re-selling items he purchased on frequent visits to Hong Kong.

“There is no melamine,” he added - a reference to a scandal that shook nationwide confidence in China’s food safety in 2008, when thousands of children were sickened by melamine-tainted milk powder.

In Hong Kong however, the mass buying of milk powder has struck a raw nerve. As my colleague Gerry Mullany wrote, the issue has even generated a petition to the White House requesting “international support and assistance as babies in Hong Kong will face malnutrition very soon.”

In fact, it was only certain popular brands of milk powder that were selling out. Less popular brands were easy to find, and one pharmacist in Sheung Shui told me that he expected supplies to normalize after the Lunar New Year holiday this week.

Still, such was the degree of concern that the Hong Kong authorities recently imposed restrictions on the number of cans that can be taken across the border.

In part, the tensions between mainlanders and Hong Kong residents - generating the occasional waving of colonial-era Union Jack flags by protesters in Sheung Shui and elsewhere - comes fromthe sheer number of mainland visitors. In 2001, 4.4 million Chinese visited the city, which has been a special administrative region within China since its handover from British colonial rule in 1997. Last year, the number was nearly 35 million.

No wonder that people rub up against each other more than they did just a few years ago, and that noodles spilled by a young mainland Chinese girl could generate bouts of vitriol, as they did last year.

But analysts say that there is more to it â€" that concerns over shortages of milk powder (or maternity- ward beds or kindergarten spaces) are a symptom of a wider malaise because of Beijing’s growing influence over Hong Kong’s political develop! ment. The! fact that Leung Chun-Ying, the current leader of Hong Kong, is widely seen as a pro-Beijing yes-man hardly helps.

Michael Chugani, a well-known columnist, warned in this recent piece in the South China Morning Post  that the flareups will only get worse, and that politically-correct “band-aids” like the milk-powder restrictions just delay a potential “explosion.”

Still, not everyone in Hong Kong - even in Sheung Shui - sees the flood of mainland Chinese spenders as a bad thing.

Ling Ying, an 88-year-old Sheung Shui resident, was listening to Chinese opera on a pink portable radio in a tiny park amid the skyscrapers recently. He was not remotely bothered by the mainlanders who were packing up goods nearby. “It’s great that they are buying things,” he said. Without their money, he added, “Hong Kong would be dirt poor.”

Mary Hui contributd reporting.

6 Centuries Ago, a Precedent for This Pope

LONDON - All but the most informed Vatican-watchers were scrambling for the references books on Monday to find a precedent for the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, whose decision to step down stunned the Roman Catholic world.

The tradition has been for pontiffs to reign for their natural life span. And, not since 1415, when Gregory XII stood down, has a pope surrendered the keys of St Peter.

It was an era when the role of the papacy was as temporal as it was spiritual. Gregory’s departure helped end the Great Schism in the Catholic Church that had divided it for four decades and saw the emergence of rival popes and anti-popes in Rome and Avignon

Gregory XII was one of three rival claimants by the time the conflict was resolved and unity restored.

In a schism that had nothing to do with theology, rival European monarchs supported rival popes for their own temporal reasons.

“The greater number of the Italian and German states, England, and Flanders supported the pope of Rome,” as the Catholic Encyclopedia described it. “On the other hand France, Spain, Scotland, and all the nations in the orbit of France were for the pope of Avignon.”

The cooperative Gregory only stepped down when his powerful temporal sponsors had safeguarded their interests in the unified papacy that followed.

Gregory’s resignation did not, of course, mark the end of the political centrality of the papacy in European affairs, even into the last century.

The last pope who might have resigned for political reasons (but didn’t) was Pius XII. Documents quoted from the Vatican archives revealed that the wartime pontiff told sen! ior bishops that, should he be arrested by the Nazis, his resignation would become effective immediately.

It has been suggested that Adolf Hitler had ordered the kidnapping of Pius because he feared he would further criticize the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. The Nazi leader is said to have feared that Pius could inspire resistance to the Germans in Italy and other Catholic countries.

Others have challenged this analysis on the grounds that it reflects an attempt by the Vatican to defend Pius XII against charges that he did not do enough to defend persecuted Jews.

Either version serves to underline the continued weight given to the status of the papacy, even in relatively recent European politics.

Benedict himself came to the defense of his predecessor in 2010, describing hi in a lengthy interview as “one of the great righteous men,” who saved more Jews than anyone.

In that same interview, in retrospect, he might have prepared the church for his premature departure.

“If a pope realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically or spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office,” he said, “then he has a right, and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”

The Pope Resigns: Catholics React With Shock, Sympathy and Muted Criticism

Catholics React With Shock, Sympathy and Muted Criticism

BERLIN â€" From his native Bavaria to the farthest corners of the earth he touched during his papacy, the Roman Catholic world greeted the news of Pope Benedict XVI’s departure Monday with surprise, concern for his health and more than a little understanding that an 85-year-old man no longer had the strength to lead a global flock of one billion faithful.

Pilgrims prayed in front of Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on Monday. The news that Pope Benedict XVI would resign drew an immediate outpouring of tributes.

The Resignation of Pope Benedict XVI Close Video See More Videos Â'

Pope Benedict XVI blessing members of the Order of the Knights of Malta at the Vatican on Saturday.

The news that the pontiff would step down earned an immediate outpouring of tributes matched only by speculation about his health, about his future and that of a church in transition. Perhaps nowhere outside of the Vatican was it bigger news than Germany, where even non-Catholics took inordinate pride in their countryman’s leading the Roman Catholic Church.

The Web site of the newspaper Bild, which famously declared “We Are Pope” nearly eight years ago when Benedict was elected, ran an enormous headline that read “Our German Pope Benedict Steps Down,” followed by his entire statement in German on a slightly mottled brown background, as if it were old parchment.

Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled the pride that Germans felt to see one of their own elected by his fellow cardinals but also expressed understanding that he could not continue. “In our age of ever longer lives, many people will also be able to understand how the Pope must deal with the burdens of aging,” Ms. Merkel said.

Relatives, friends, church colleagues and lay Catholics around the world were shocked by the suddenness of the decision to hand over the reins of the Vatican to a successor while he was still alive. “It came as a bolt out of the blue,” said Tadeusz Goclowski, the archbishop emeritus of Gdansk in northern Poland, speaking on Polsat News television.

At first blush the criticism was muted for a pope with a controversial term, marred by child-abuse scandals and growing discord over conservative stances on issues like divorce and women in the clergy. Hans Küng, a leading critic of the pope, called his decision to step down “understandable for many reasons,” according to the German news agency DPA, but added that so many conservative cardinals had been named during his tenure it would be difficult to find someone “who could lead the church out of its multifaceted crisis.”

“No pope before him made more strides to improve the relationship with the Jews â€" on so many levels,” said Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress who met with Benedict on three occasions at the Vatican, in a statement on Monday. Though they did not agree on everything, Mr. Lauder said, “He always had an outstretched hand and an open ear for Jewish leaders.”

The Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, released a statement calling Benedict “a witness to the universal scope of the gospel and a messenger of hope at a time when Christian faith is being called into question.”

The strongest criticism came from the victims of clerical sexual abuse, who faulted him for failing to take stronger steps or, in some eyes, any steps at all.

“This pope had a great opportunity to finally address the decades of abuse in the church but at the end of the day he did nothing but promise everything and in the end he ultimately delivered nothing,” John Kelly, of the Survivors of Child Abuse support group, told Agence France-Presse.

The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said in an interview with RTE, Ireland’s national broadcaster, that the pope would be mainly remembered for his writings on theology. He said the pope had a very clear understanding of some of the moral problems confronting the church and he had addressed them “head on.”

“I have a great personal affection for the pope, I have known him for many, many years, and I’m not surprised that he would take a decision of this kind if he felt that the burden he was under was too much,” the archbishop said.

Speaking to a reporter from the German news agency DPA in Regensburg, his brother, Georg Ratzinger, said Benedict was having increasing difficulty walking, and that his doctor had advised against any more transatlantic journeys. “My brother wants more peace in old age,” said Mr. Ratzinger, also a priest and for decades the head of the famous Regensburg choir the Domspatzen, who admitted he had known for months that his brother planned to step down.

A former student of the pope,the Rev. Vincent Twomey, now a top theologian based in the Catholic seminary in Maynooth, Ireland, said the pontiff did not look well last summer. “We all felt he looked gray and tired, and shriveled, to a certain extent. Then he came the following day and said Mass for us and then joined us for breakfast.”

Antonio María Rouco Varela, the archbishop of Madrid and president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, said that he and fellow members of the Spanish clergy felt “like orphans because of this decision, which fills us with us with sorrow because we felt secure and enlightened thanks to his delightful teaching and fatherly proximity.”

In Poland, the information about Pope Benedict’s resignation â€" in Polish, “abdication” â€" dominated the news entirely. Benedict, who was the closest adviser to the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, is seen as a friend to the country and, more than anything, an heir to the Polish pope.

Appreciation for Benedict’s contributions was heard in the Philippines as well, where his years coincided with extreme election violence and a string of natural disasters. “We recall, in particular, with fond gratitude, the many prayers and comforting words Pope Benedict XVI has dedicated to Filipinos in times of calamity and challenge, and his words of encouragement and witness in the many Catholic events that have brought Catholics together,” said Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for the president.

“He’s a thoughtful person and he will have given this decision a lot of consideration,” said Rupert Hofbauer, a longtime neighbor of Benedict near the Bavarian city of Regensburg. “If he’s not healthy and doesn’t have the strength he needs anymore, then it was the right choice. He must know.”

Reporting was contributed by Melissa Eddy and Victor Homola from Berlin; Hanna Kozlowska from Warsaw; Douglas Dalby from Dublin; Raphael Minder from Madrid; and Floyd Whaley from Manila.

The Idea of America Is Also Drones\' Collateral Damage

In Washington, drones in dark suits continue to insist that remote-control murder and “enhanced interrogation” abroad are essential because they keep Americans safer at home. This is not evident on the receiving end.

However one looks at the morality issues, the effect of drone strikes and torture is dead clear to anyone who has witnessed the aftermath: Both create endless enemies, and any tactical gain pales against greater strategic loss.

Writing from Arizona, where these issues are a distant abstraction, I keep thinking of “A Clockwork Orange.” A murderous young thug is strapped to a chair, eyes propped open, and forced to watch a replay of the violence he wrought. Perhaps Americans could use a little of Stanley Kubrick’s “aversion therapy.”

Much has been made of the torture depicted in “Zero Dark Thirty.” Compared to real “enhanced interrogation,” what happens in the film smacks of campus fraternity hazing. It rarely produces useful intelligence. But it almost ivariably leaves lifelong bitter hatred.

Torture, at least, is not usually fatal. Done out of sight, its true extent remains a dirty little secret. Drone strikes are exponentially different. Their very principle redefines America for a world that once expected something better.

As Barack Obama ramped up George W. Bush’s use of unmanned mayhem, I asked for opinions from thoughtful people I met on various travels across five continents. Mostly, they differ only in their degree of outrage.

Some are particularly incensed at the distinction made over targeting American citizens. Does that mean everyone else is fair game, on the suspicion of a suspicion according to long-distance evidence and shadowy criteria

War has always been hell, and some civilian “collateral damage” is factored in as unavoidable. That, to a world beyond America, is different from workaday technicians plotting premeditated murder continents away.

When America executes mass murderers, due process can ! take years and cost in the millions. For suspected terrorists, long-range death comes by robotic killing machines that also eliminate innocents who happen to be in the way.

Reporters and Congressional investigators pry ugly details out of the White House, which invokes national interest. This equates to France’s raison d’etat, which has shielded official depredation since Cardinal Richelieu. But only roughly.

The French are less hypocritical about their hypocrisy. When they have to bend a principle, they just do it. Americans also cut corners for expediency but see themselves in their historic role, as inhabitants of that Shining City on a Hill.

True enough, drone strikes score significant hits and reduce the danger to U.S. troops who might otherwise have to wage war in person. But few people back home have even an inkling of the enormous price they are paying.

Mission Creep in Mali

LONDONâ€"When a mysterious explosion rocked the northern Mali city of Gao early on Monday, the reverberations echoed in Paris, raising anew the question of whether the French troops who claimed initial successes in evicting Islamist militants from the desert region would be able to meet their government’s deadline to withdraw in March.

Ever since France intervened in its former colony in early January to repulse Islamists advancing southward, the deployment has shown every sign of mission creep.

French leaders initially promised that the maximum number of soldiers would be 2,500. Now the figure is put at 4,000. And while the initial French military action seemed to claim dramatic successes, enabling Malian forces to retake the key northern cities, a resurgence of fighting in Gao on Sunday, followed by Monday’s explosion, deepened suspicions that the rebels were far from beaten.

As I discuss in mylatest column on Page Two of The International Herald Tribune, France’s role in its former African colonies has long been founded on a combination of political and economic interests and readiness to take muscular action to defend them.

But, as former Prime Minister Alain Juppé said on a French radio station on Sunday, “it is not yet the time for triumph” in Mali.

“We have to fight, terrorism, propaganda, trafficking. But the terrorists are not annihilated. They fled and may well reorganize,” he said.

And a big issue, he said, is “how we are going to bring this mission to a close” - a question that bedeviled Western interventions from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Is Europe\'s New Budget Really 20 Percent Green Opinions Differ.

The European Union’s proposed budget for 2014-2020, fiercely negotiated in Brussels until Friday, is smaller than its predecessors â€" a first for a European budget and the surest sign that continent-wide austerity has seeped into one of the most important documents of the union.

Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, insists that there is another guiding principle to the new Multiannual Financial Framework:

“European Heads of State and Government have taken on the Commission’s suggestion to commit at least 20 percent of the ENTIRE E.U. budget from 2014-2020 to climate related spending,” she wrote in a statement to reporters. (Emphasis hers.)

My colleagues James Kanter and Andrew Higgins reported on the many different needs that make writing the budget framework so challenging, and on the perceived winnrs and losers of the most recent summit meeting:

The colossal effort that was required to agree to a sum of about €960 billion ($1.3 trillion), a mere 1 percent of the bloc’s gross domestic product, exposed once again the stubborn attachment to national priorities that has made reaching agreements on how to save the euro so painful in recent years.

Given the importance of the problem it is supposed to address, climate-related spending is to be an integral aspect of the new budget.

“Rather than being parked in a corner of the E.U. budget, climate action will now be integrated into all main spending areas â€" cohesion, innovation, infrastructure, agriculture etc,” said Commissioner Hedegaard in the statement, noting that European Union leaders want to lead the transition to a low-carbon economy.

But some environmentalists are a lot less enthusiastic. They say that cuts to the LIFE program and! international development funds, as well as some of the union’s agricultural spending, make the budget less climate-friendly than it should be.

“Instead of tackling issues that matter to the European public like the creation of green jobs, sustainable farming, environment or overseas development funding, they have agreed on a backward looking budget,” Tony Long, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature European Policy Office, said in a statement.

The LIFE fund for environment and climate projects was supposed to get €3.6 billion, or $4.8 billion, to replace the current LIFE+ program. Though precise figures have not yet been determined, the category cuts suggest that any proposed funding boost will end up being cut, Sébastien Godinot, an economist with the WWF, said in a telephone interview.

The program funds everything from recycling drives in France to the enlargement of the Natura 2000, the network of protected ecological areas, to technological process for the molecular inactivation of fly ash.

One of critics’ biggest concerns is cuts to one of the biggest slices of the budget: the Common Agricultural Policy. In addition to subsidizing farming across the Union, the policy is supposed to make farming practices greener. Environmentalists charge that such development funding is being cut disproportionately to save direct payments to farmers, a policy that is seen to encourage large agri-businesses regardless of their environmental record.

According to Mr. Godinot, only about two or three percent of the C.A.P. funding goes to climate change measures.

“It doesn’t match the challenges of climate change in Europe,” he said of the program.

Oxfam, meanwhile, criticized the cuts in international development aid.

“It is grossly unfair to balance the books on the backs of the world’s poor who are being worst hit by financial and e! conomic c! rises they did not cause,” said Natalia Alonso, head of Oxfam’s E.U. office.

Though destined for countries outside the Union, the aid is often tied to climate mitigation projects or contingent on climate-aware policy, said Mr. Godinot.

“They have cut the funds that were the most climate friendly,” said Mr. Godinot.

What do you think Is the proposed E.U. budget framework green enough Or too green Is austerity to blame for it not being greener