IHT Quick Read: March 23

NEWS Lawmakers in Cyprus took steps late Friday to revise a formula for obtaining a bailout of the country’s banks but faced strong signals that the plan would not pass muster with international lenders. The Parliament put off until later this weekend a vote on a crucial new proposal that would confiscate 22 to 25 percent of uninsured deposits above €100,000 through a new tax on account holders in one of the nation’s most troubled banks. Liz Alderman reports from Nicosia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday apologized in a personal phone call to Turkey’s prime minister for a deadly commando raid on a Turkish ship in 2010, in a sudden reconciliation between the two countries that was partly brokered by President Obama during his visit to Israel this week, according to Israeli, Turkish and American officials. Mark Landler and Jodi Rudoren report from Amman.

As a picture of chaos and anarchy emerged from a city in central Myanmar on Friday, President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in the area and ordered the military to assist in quelling rioting that residents say has left at least 20 people dead. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author and towering man of letters whose internationally acclaimed fiction sought to revive African literature and rewrite the story of the continent that had long been told by Western voices, died on Thursday in Boston. Jonathan Kandell reports.

The increase in sexual assaults over the last two years and the ensuing battle over who is to blame has become a stark and painful illustration of the convulsions racking Egypt as it tries to reinvent itself after the toppling of the police state. Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick report from Cairo.

President Xi Jinping of China arrived in Moscow on Friday for his first trip abroad as his country’s top leader, using talks with his counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, to promote deeper cooperation with Russia while the United States has been shoring up ties with its own allies across the Asia-Pacific region. David M. Herszenhorn reports from Moscow, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy fought back hard on Friday through his lawyer and his political allies after he was formally placed under investigation on charges of exploiting the frailty of France’s richest woman to secure financing for his 2007 campaign. Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare report from Paris.

A month after national elections failed to yield a clear result, President Giorgio Napolitano of Italy on Friday asked the leader of the Democratic Party to try to form a government, but only if he meets the challenge of mustering a strong enough majority to govern. Rachel Donadio reports from Rome.

A glut of ships, and slack demand for shipping in the weak global economy, have reduced the value of cargo ships. According to some estimates, as many as half the cargo carriers on the high seas today may no longer be worth as much as the debt they carry â€" putting them underwater, in financial jargon. Jack Ewing reports from Frankfurt.

ARTS If any event gives some idea of where the art market is heading, it is the European Fine Art Fair, which closes Sunday in Maastricht. Souren Melikian reports from Maastricht, The Netherlands.

SPORTS The Malaysian Grand Prix outside Kuala Lumpur on Sunday may only be the second race of the 2013 season, but much of the technical talk in the paddock during the winter and at the first race in Australia last week concerned the 2014 season. That’s because a major overhaul of the technical regulations next year will radically change the Formula One cars. Brad Spurgeon reports.

David Douglas Duncan, 97, is one of the world’s most influential photographers and photojournalists. He’s also a longtime fan of Formula One racing and has completed a book about the Monaco Grand Prix, based on photographs of a television broadcast of the race that he took while recovering from a broken hip. Brad Spurgeon reports.

What Are You Doing for World Water Day

When you open your tap today and, as if by miracle (and thanks to a good deal of engineering), a stream of clean and drinkable water starts flowing, think of the millions of people for whom such basic access is not so simple.

Today is World Water Day.

Clean water, of course, is not just for drinking and hygiene. The United Nations estimates that up to 90 percent of the water humans use goes to growing food. And with a projected 9 billion people on this planet by the year 2050, even more clean water will have to go into food production.

Already, the problem of water scarcity and water pollution seems to touch almost every corner of the globe.

Earlier this year, my colleague Didi Kirsten Tatlow wrote about the dwindling water in China’s north. Gerry Mullany wrote about extreme water pollution in China’s cities. Others have written about the need to rebuild the United States’ water infrastructure.

Environmentalists have been lobbying multinationals to use water more sustainably.

Since the first World Water Day was celebrated twenty years ago, some progress has been made in ensuring access to water in many countries, UN-Water, the consortium of U.N. agencies and partners concerned with water issues, reported last year.

Still, by 2025, 1.8 billion of the word’s inhabitants will live in regions with absolute water scarcity, according to UN-Water.

Join the sustainability conversation. Do you think of clean water as a precious resource What do you do to ensure water is not wasted

New Chief of Royal Opera Is a Manager, Not an Artist

LONDONâ€"When it was announced in November that Tony Hall, the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, would leave in April to run the BBC, speculation about who would replace him was immediately rife. Mr. Hall is a hard act to follow. In the 12 years that he has run the opera house, he has transformed it from an institution beset by a succession of artistic directors, funding problems and a reputation for elitest money-wasting, to a model of balanced budgets, expanded access and artistic stability.

Who might follow in his footsteps Various names were suggested. Ruth Mackenzie, who had run the Scottish Opera and worked with Mr. Hall on the cultural Olympiad during the Olympics last year, was considered a strong contender. Nicholas Kenyon, the managing director of the Barbican Center, Jude Kelly, the artistic director of the Southbank Center, and Alistair Spalding, the chief executive and artistic director of Sadler’s Wells, were all discussed as strong possibilities.

But this week, the Royal Opera House announced their choice, and it was none of the above. The new chief executive of the venerable institution is Alex Beard, the deputy director of Tate (the collective name for the four Tate museums in the U.K.), whose background is not in the performing arts.

The media reaction was one of polite surprise.

“Five stars for unpredictability anyway,” wrote Richard Morrison in “The Times,” echoed by Rupert Christiansen in “The Telegraph.” “A bolt from the blue: I was wrong in my predictions, and all I can say in my defense is that all the other pundits were wrong, too,” he wrote.

“His lack of experience in the performing arts may raise eyebrows in the opera and ballet worlds,” wrote Charlotte Higgins carefully in The Guardian.

But both Mr. Christiansen and Ms. Higgins, in detailed analyses of the pros and cons of Mr. Beard’s appointment, made the point that the job doesn’t really require creativity or a background in opera and ballet. “What it does demand,” wrote Mr. Christiansen, is “someone with steely nerve, well-oiled diplomatic skills and an eye for a balance sheet, as well as someone who understands the complexity of the fundraising climate and the Royal Opera House’s sensitive public image.”

What seems clear, wrote Ms. Higgins, “is that the trustees of the Royal Opera House, led by chair Simon Robey, have opted to appoint an experienced administrator to support, rather than supplant, the artistic plans of its music director Sir Antonio Pappano, head of opera Kasper Holten and head of ballet Kevin O’Hare.”

Some were more enthusiastic. “Mr Beard will be seen as having the strategic management experience for one of Britain’s most prestigious arts posts, combined with a genuine personal passion for opera,” wrote Louise Jury in The Evening Standard.

Mr. Beard “brings a rare mix of financial and cultural acumen to his new role at the Opera House,” suggested Opera Now magazine suggested that adding that his business experience, financial skills and links to the Arts Council (which decides upon levels of state funding to institutions) would be “especially valuable at a time when the Royal Opera House’s annual grant has been cut by more than 6 per cent.”

But Mr. Christiansen sounded a cautionary note. “What always gives cause for concern when appointments such as these are made outside the mainstream is the steepness of the learning curve,” he wrote. “The Royal Opera House is a Byzantine organization, with a working culture quite unlike that of Tate. Mounting a nightly performance is nothing like mounting an exhibition: the imponderables are quite different, and the process pitted with potholes.”

On Twitter, the atmosphere was more tolerant. “Loving all the music journos that are embarrassed that Alex Beard hasn’ t got a music/performance background,” tweeted @OperaCreep. “How narrow-minded is that”

Russia Resists Savior Role in Cyprus

LONDON - Reports that the Russian bear was about to take tiny Cyprus into its crushing embrace, exploiting a banking crisis to strengthen the Kremlin’s foothold in the Mediterranean, may have been premature.

As Michalis Sarris, the Cypriot finance minister, flew home empty-handed from a money-raising trip to Moscow on Friday, Anton Siluanov, his Russian counterpart, said Russian investors had “demonstrated no interest” in his proposals.

Mr. Sarris had offered stakes in the island’s banks and natural gas projects in return for financial aid to fund a bailout.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, assured the Cypriots Moscow “has not closed the door” on possible future assistance. But, he added, “this will only come after there is a final plan of support for Cyprus from the European countries.”

The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted analysts as saying Cypriot offshore gas projects were likely to be a hard sell in light of possible opposition from Turkey.

Turkish officials, quoted by Reuters, had warned that Ankara might challenge any unilateral move to speed up offshore exploration that ignored the rights of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which only Turkey recognizes.

A Russian stake in the $80 billion worth of reserves would tighten Russia’s grip on gas supplies to the European Union.

But that was just one potential geopolitical spillover of the Cyprus financial crisis, which has brought a chill to Russian-European Union relations.

Russia was furious that it was not told in advance about a now-defunct plan to seize the equivalent of $7.5 billion from Cypriot bank deposits - many of them held by Russian nationals.

“So far the E.U. together with the Cyprus parliament have unfortunately acted like a bull in a china shop,” Mr. Medvedev said this week. “ I think all possible mistakes which could’ve been made in this situation have been made.”

There were suggestions, however, that the Kremlin might use the crisis to burnish its image as “an anchor of stability in the crisis and as a financial safe harbor,” in the words of Germany’s Der Spiegel.

Max Keiser, a Russia Today presenter, posted on Twitter:

A poll this week suggested that two-thirds of Cypriots favored their country’s exit from the euro zone and a strengthening of relations with Russia.

Noting that Russia had ambitious plans for its Mediterranean fleet, presently confined to one small naval base in Syria, Der Spiegel wrote, “The possibility that Russia might demand tighter military cooperation in exchange for financial aid cannot be ruled out.”

The Financial Times reported the concerns of Western diplomats, “some of whom wonder whether the Kremlin could use the island to challenge their security interests in the eastern Mediterranean.”

The business daily wrote on Thursday, “If Russia were to provide a large rescue package, or if Cyprus was to plunge out of the euro zone, diplomats would certainly begin to ponder the diplomatic consequences.”

As Mr. Sarris headed home on Friday, perhaps they can relax.

IHT Quick Read: March 22

NEWS As the European Central Bank threatened to shut off crucial financing for banks in Cyprus without a rapid accord on an international bailout, members of Parliament put off a vote on Thursday on yet another revamped formula. The vote was rescheduled for Friday. Liz Alderman reports from Nicosia, Cyprus.

The jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan on Thursday called for a cease-fire and ordered all his fighters off Turkish soil, in a landmark moment for a newly energized effort to end three decades of armed conflict with the Turkish government. Sebnem Arsu reports from Diyarbakir, Turkey.

A large explosion killed at least 42 people inside a central Damascus mosque on Thursday, including the top Sunni cleric in Syria, one of the major remaining Sunni supporters of President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled government in the civil war. Hania Mourtada reports from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

At least five people have been killed in fighting between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar, residents and a hospital official said Thursday, in another sign of a resurgence of communal violence that is testing the country’s fledgling democracy. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok, and Wai Moe from Yangon, Myanmar.

President Obama, appealing to very disparate audiences to solve one of the world’s thorniest problems, moved closer on Thursday to the Israeli government’s position on resuming long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, even as he passionately implored young Israelis to get ahead of their own leaders in the push for peace. Mark Landler reports from Jerusalem.

A Jesuit priest whose kidnapping by the Argentine military raised questions about the actions of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, during that country’s so-called Dirty War said in a statement this week that Father Bergoglio did not initiate the detention by reporting him and another priest to the authorities. William Neuman reports from Caracas, Venezuela.

So severe are China’s environmental woes, especially the noxious air, that top government officials have been forced to openly acknowledge them. What the leaders neglect to say is that infighting within the government bureaucracy is one of the biggest obstacles to enacting stronger environmental policies. Edward Wong reports from Beijing.

European Union regulators are examining the contracts Apple strikes with cellphone carriers that sell its iPhone for possible antitrust violations after several carriers complained that the deals throttled competition. Brian X. Chen, Nick Wingfield and Kevin J. O’Brien report.

In one year, 18 textile factories in Bangladesh saved 1.2 million cubic meters of water, 16 million cubic meters of gas and 10 million kilowatt hours of electricity. The factories upgraded equipment as part of a program backed by the aid agencies of Britain and Norway and the International Finance Corp., the World Bank unit serving the private sector. Amy Yee reports from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

ARTS A world congress of Art Deco experts are uncovering gems in Havana ripe for restoration. Victoria Burnett reports from Havana.

SPORTS A day after the U.S. Open tennis tournament announced it was increasing its payouts, an official with the French Open said it is prepared to increase its prize money “spectacularly” over the next four seasons. Christopher Clarey reports.

Now that the dust has settled on another Six Nations rugby championship, discussion about who will be selected for the British and Irish Lions will begin in earnest. Emma Stoney reports from Wellington.

In cricket, Australia is hoping to avoid a series sweep on Friday when it takes on India, which was led in the third test by Shikhar Dhawan, who had a century in his debut. Huw Richards reports.