IHT Quick Read: May 2

NEWS As workers around the world observed the international Labor Day holiday with demonstrations and rallies, thousands of Greeks walked off their jobs on Wednesday in the second general strike against government austerity measures this year, shutting down tax offices, leaving state hospitals to operate with emergency employees and disrupting public transportation. The Greek protest came as workers in Asia, including Bangladeshis infuriated by the lethal collapse of a garment factory, demonstrated in cities including the capitals of Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Istanbul, riot police officers sprayed throngs of people with water and tear gas as they gathered for a rally, defying an official ban. Niki Kitsantonis and Alan Cowell report.

The Irish government has proposed legislation to allow abortion in cases where a threat exists to a woman’s life, including from suicide. Douglas Dalby reports from Dublin.

Two Kazakhs were charged on Wednesday with destroying evidence to obstruct the federal inquiry into the Boston Marathon bombings, and an American was charged with lying to impede the investigation. Michael Wines and Katharine Q. Seelye report.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, apparently seeking to counter the impression of a leader in hiding after consecutive days of suspected insurgent bombings in his power base, Damascus, made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, visiting workers at an electric station. Hwaida Saad and Rick Gladstone report.

The government of President François Hollande has expressed its objections to plans by Yahoo to buy a controlling stake in the video-sharing site DailyMotion, which is owned by France Télécom, in an effort to keep one of the country’s most successful technology start-ups out of foreign hands. Eric Pfanner reports.

The suspects include a flamboyant pop star, a sharp-tongued comedian, a disc jockey known as “the hairy cornflake” and a quirky Australian-born entertainer. Most are in their 70s or 80s. All have been caught up in one of the more ambitious, and possibly quixotic, law enforcement investigations in Britain in recent years: a nationwide inquiry into sexual offenses that may or may not have been committed decades ago. Sarah Lyall reports from London.

ARTS Called the Mariinsky II and connected to the original, ornate 19th-century Mariinsky Theater by a pedestrian bridge over a canal, the first new Russian opera house to aspire to international significance since the time of the czars opens on Thursday. It has been the object of tremendous scrutiny, particularly after more than 10 years of development, three architects â€" or four, depending on how you count â€" and a government-financed budget that exploded to nearly 10 times the initial estimate. Zachary Woolfe reports from St. Petersburg, Russia.

Teatro alla Scala raised eyebrows in December when it opened its season with “Lohengrin” in observance of Wagner’s bicentennial rather than an opera by Verdi, who was also born in 1813. In the months since, however, the theater has redressed the balance with new productions of four Verdi operas, most recently his very first opera, “Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio.” George Loomis writes from Milan.

SPORTS Real Madrid had the most dazzling individuals over the two legs of its Champions League semifinal with Dortmund, but the German club had the greater will. Rob Hughes on soccer.

Warren Gatland is confident he has selected the right men for the British and Irish Lions to win a series for the first time in 16 years. The challenge now for the head coach will be getting those men from the four countries that make up the Home Unions â€" England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales â€" to gel, and gel quickly. Emma Stoney on rugby.

For North Korea, Another Bargaining Chip?

BEIJING â€" Has North Korea got another American “hostage”? And will a former president have to pack his bags and head to Pyongyang to plead for the hostage’s release?

That’s the obvious question as reports come in Thursday morning that Kenneth Bae, an American citizen born in South Korea, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea for “hostile acts.”

Obvious, because that’s what has happened twice in recent years, as my colleague in Seoul, Choe Sang-hun, recently reported: an American is arrested, charged with “hostile acts,” then released after a former president travels to North Korea to request the person’s release.

“North Korea, a police state, has often used the plight of detained Americans as a bargaining chip in its dealings with Washington,” Sang-hun wrote last week.

In 2009, North Korean authorities arrested two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two women were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor but were released five months later after former President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang and met with Kim Jong-il, the leader at the time.

In 2010, another American, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, was arrested and sentenced to eight years of hard labor. He was freed when former President Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang, Sang-hun wrote.

Mr. Bae, also known as Pae Jun-Ho, was arrested in November as he entered the northeastern port city of Rason, Agence-France Presse reported from Seoul. “The Supreme Court sentenced him to 15 years of compulsory labor for this crime,” it cited KCNA, the North Korean news agency, as saying. Mr. Bae was tried on April 30, two days ago, according to the BBC.

According to The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper, North Korea has used Americans in the past in an attempt to make them “messengers for talks.”

“However, it is difficult to be certain that the conventional pattern, in which high-ranking officials visit the North, the North releases detainees, and talks are held, will be repeated in this case as well. At the moment, North Korea is not even responding to the U.S. conditional proposal for talks,” it said, in an article written before Mr. Bae’s sentencing and referring to other talks. The comment highlights the fact that Mr. Bae’s sentencing comes amid a very tense time in North Korea’s relations with the outside world, following a third nuclear test by the state in February and military threats.

South Korean human rights advocates have described Mr. Bae as a devout Christian who not only ran tours to North Korea, but was also interested in helping orphans in the Communist country. They said security officials in the North may have been offended by pictures of orphans that Mr. Bae had taken and stored in his computer, Sang-hun wrote.

In Amsterdam, the Golden Age of Museum Renovation

As Queen Beatrix handed the title of monarch of the Netherlands to her son, Willem-Alexander, the country’s first king in 123 years on Tuesday, art lovers in Amsterdam had another reason to celebrate. For the first time in a decade, the city’s great museums are all open.

The longest wait was for that great treasure house of the Dutch Golden Age, the Rijksmuseum, which reopened on April 13 after a 10-year renovation.

Today, May 1, the Van Gogh Museum reopened after seven months. Nina Siegal writes about the opening exhibition, which highlights findings of research into the artist’s palette. Those blues you see in Van Gogh’s painting “The Bedroom”? They may have been more purple when the canvas was new. Fresh insight into the troubled artist’s psyche? Perhaps.

The show features the most famous works of the Van Gogh Museum’s permanent collection as well as loans from institutions around the world. Among them are van Gogh’s only known extant palette and his three surviving tubes of paint, borrowed from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It also brings together two of van Gogh’s five “Sunflower” paintings - one from its own collection and the other from London’s National Gallery â€" to hang, as the artist intended, on either side of a portrait of his “Portrait of Augustine Roulin, ‘La Berceuse’” (1889).

The museum’s van Goghs remained on view during the renovation, but in borrowed space: at the Hermitage Amsterdam, the branch of the St. Petersburg museum. The renovation of the Hermitage’s building, a 17th-century nursing home, was finished in 2009.

And for those seeking modern art, there’s another stop on the Museumplein, the grand plaza where you’ll find the other two. The Stedelijk Museum reopened late last year after an expansion into a new structure that not everyone applauded.

Have you visited any of the refurbished museums? What did you think?

Dying Long Distance

PARIS â€" The last conversation I had with my father was by Skype. He was in a sunny room in southeastern Pennsylvania; I was in Paris, where I live and work. He was surrounded by my siblings and their spouses; my mother had visited earlier that day.

At that moment I was relieved to be able to see him and talk to him. I was also filled with gratitude that my sister-in-law, in the midst of the sadness and chaos of the day, had the brilliant thought to get me there on screen and took her laptop along to make it happen.

Dad and I had a little visit, but he was having a rough time breathing. He marveled briefly at the technology that let him see me, but tired quickly and drifted off into a nap.

The call came in the middle of the night that he had died. I don’t remember anything at all about that conversation, not even which of my five siblings was on the other end of the phone.

People who live across an ocean from their families â€" students, adults on work assignments, those in the military, people who’ve chosen to make a life in a different country, whatever the reason â€" miss, at some point, a life event: major, or less so; sad or celebratory. The decline and death of a loved one thousands of miles away may be the most difficult part of expat life.

Friends and colleagues with frail, aging parents make lots of phone calls and trans-Atlantic trips. Some have raced out of the office, jumped on a plane and made it to their relatives’ side before death arrived.

I’d been visiting Dad whenever I was in the United States, and we’d been talking every Sunday, as we had when I was in college. He’d pulled through one health emergency after another, seemingly miraculously. I had rushed from New York, where I lived with my family, to Pennsylvania for many of those.

Should I have jumped on a plane this time? I wouldn’t have made it. Should I have chosen to stay nearer my parents, as my siblings had?

A year later I still wonder.

Is yours a bicontinental family? What happens when there is a health crisis and or approaching death? Tell us your stories.

In New Chinese Campaign, Concerns Over Morals and Corruption

BEIJING â€" An early glimpse of a political campaign expected to launch in China soon, the homely-sounding “check the mirror, fix your clothes, take a bath, see the doctor,” which aims to improve the morals of Communist Party members and combat corruption, came last December.

As I write in this week’s Letter from China, such policies or campaigns may actually be about something else â€" stamping the authority of the person to whom they are credited over party members, from top to bottom, to ensure loyalty.

In a commentary on the party Web site, cpc.people.com.cn, a writer with the poetic pen name “Listening to Cicadas at Midnight” expanded on the idea, which he said was discussed by Liu Yunshan, the powerful former propaganda czar of the party who is now a member of the standing committee of the Politburo at a party construction and organization meeting on Dec. 23. in Beijing.

The new campaign was formally announced after a Politburo meeting in mid-April, as I write in my Letter from China today, and is credited to the new leadership of Xi Jinping.

Corruption and other “morals” problems may threaten the survival of the party, Mr. Xi has warned in the past, as have other leaders before him. The campaign appears to be an attempt to deal with the problem.

Back in December, “Listening to Cicadas at Midnight” offered more detail of why the campaign was necessary, quoting “the ancients.”

“The ancients said, ‘Using copper as a mirror you can adjust correctly your clothes and hat. Using ancient times as a mirror you can know the rise and fall of power. Using people as a mirror you can know success and failure,” the person wrote.

It’s all about invigorating and cleansing the ranks for a new leadership era, said the commentator (the person’s real identity was not revealed, but the presence of the article on the site lends authority.)

Like Mr. Xi, Listening to Cicadas at Midnight appears to see the party’s moral failings as a real risk to its power, though he continued to credit the idea to Mr. Liu.

“A proverb says, ‘Huge damage can result to the dike from an ant hole,’ and Liu Yunshan’s warning is timely and necessary,” the person wrote.

“As a party member in the new era, especially as a leading cadre, you ought even more to ‘check the mirror, fix your clothes,’ and examine your conscience whether your ability is sufficient, your attitudes new, your style honest, your achievements excellent; thereby knowing that if not you must struggle forward, using your power conscientiously for the people and do your job well,” Listening to Cicadas at Midnight wrote.

As the editor of the South China Morning Post, Wang Xiangwei, wrote in a recent column: “Such advice might strike the ears of most people as plain and harmless.” But corruption in China runs deep, as leaders have acknowledged, and “that kind of order coming from the president and party chief surely sends shivers down the spines of many of the Communist Party’s 80 million members.”

The message is: “Clean up your act. Or we’ll clean it up for you,” Mr. Wang wrote. But the question remains: is this really a morals campaign, or a way for Mr. Xi to stamp his authority on the party? Or both?

Echoes of Saddam’s War in Dilemma Over Syria’s Chemical Weapons

ERBIL, Iraq â€" A team of United Nations experts was still waiting in Cyprus on Wednesday to hear whether Syria will grant it unfettered access to investigate reports that chemical weapons have been used in the country’s civil war.

The mission has been stalled by disagreements about the scope of the inquiry, which the Damascus government wants to limit to a single alleged incident in Aleppo.

The government and the rebels have each accused the other of using the banned weapons, and President Obama said proof of their systematic use by the Syrian military would be a “game changer” in U.S. involvement in the conflict.

The reports from Syria have a particular resonance in this Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which suffered the worst ever slaughter by chemical and nerve agents, 25 years ago at the town of Halabja, in which more than 5,000 people died.

At that time, a brutal 8-year war between Iraq and Iran was nearing its end and there was little appetite in the West for assigning blame to the perpetrator â€" the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

The U.S. and its allies proclaimed a neutral stance in the conflict, but by the end had effectively tilted toward Iraq, having acknowledged that President Saddam’s invasion of his neighbor at least had the merit of curtailing Iran’s ability to export its Islamic revolution.

Throughout the war no international action was taken on Iraq’s chemical weapons, despite evidence they had been used long before Halabja.

In 1988, amid unlikely claims in Western capitals that Iran might have been responsible for the Halabja attack, a U.N. Security Council resolution was passed, which failed to single out Iraq or to impose sanctions on Baghdad.

Once a cease-fire was called that year, and as Western companies eyed contracts for post-war Iraqi construction, there was even less motive to take action on the government’s use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces and its own Kurdish population.

Attitudes changed, of course, when Mr. Hussein occupied Kuwait in 1990 until being forced out by a U.S.-led coalition.

The motive for the second U.S.-led war against him in 2003 was his alleged possession of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be based on flimsier evidence than that which was largely ignored at the time of the Halabja massacre.

Some commentators have now identified a new reluctance by Western leaders to make a definitive judgment about Syria’s alleged chemical weapons use, for fear it would force them into tougher action against Damascus.

Mr. Obama said on Tuesday, “What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them.”

Before taking decisions about further action, he said, “I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts.”

The U.S. and other governments have been collecting evidence to try to establish the facts.

But, as Gordon Corera, the BBC’s security correspondent noted this week, politicians are being cautious about over-selling their level of certainty in the light of the 2003 Iraq war “when too much was based on too little hard information and all the caveats and cautions surrounding intelligence were lost.”

“This time political leaders â€" especially in Washington â€" seem much more reluctant to intervene,” Mr Corera wrote this week, “and so the emphasis is precisely on the caveats and cautions.”

Wladimir van Wilgenburg, writing for Rudaw, a Kurdish news Web site, asked what had happened to President Obama’s red line that he had drawn for any regime that dared to use poison gas against its people.

“If this were a playground dare, the only face-saving gesture would have been for Obama to punch the bully in the nose,” Mr van Wilgenburg wrote this week. “But because politics is based on interests, not principles, the debate now is over whether the bully crossed the whole line, or just stepped over with his toe.”

He quoted Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the British Army’s chemical weapons unit, as saying he believed the Assad government would limit use of chemical weapons to gaining local tactical advantages against the rebels. “The regime’s posture is that they think the red line is quite wide, and hope it is very wide,” he said.

Mr. de Bretton-Gordon said he believed only an attack on the scale of Halabja would provoke international intervention.

In 1988, even reports and pictures of the slaughter at Halabja proved insufficient for the international community to set aside political expediency and take action against the Saddam Hussein regime.

After the cease-fire, the Iraqi regime launched a wide-scale offensive against its own Kurdish population, deemed to have supported Iran during the 8-year war.

The response from Western governments was more forthright than after Halabja. George Schultz, the U.S. secretary of state, told the Iraqis he had conclusive proof that they had used chemical weapons.

But, once again, the Security Council failed to take action against the offending regime.