In Hong Kong, a Rain-Soaked Celebration of Democracy

BEIJING â€" There aren’t many, if any, places in China where a group of people can shout “down with the Communist Party” in public and not be punished for it. But in Hong Kong, which since 1997 has been part of China but is largely self-governing, they can, and do.

They did it again last night, when tens of thousands of people - including some from mainland China, as my colleagues Gerry Mullany and Chris Buckley reported - gathered in a park in the city’s Causeway Bay district to light candles, listen to speeches and chant slogans in support of democracy in China, on this anniversary of the crushing of the 1989 democracy movement.

Though yesterday’s rally was interrupted by heavy rain, organizers estimated 150,000 people attended; the police put the figure at 54,000 (such large discrepancies in counting have become increasingly common at political rallies in Hong Kong in recent years, perhaps reflecting what many political commentators say is a growing polarization of opinion in the city.)

Here’s what one person who attended wrote on House News, a Hong Kong news Web site:

As Gerry and Chris reported, participants also shouted slogans calling for free elections in Hong Kong, a widespread demand that Beijing appears to be resisting.

“The protesters pressed a variety of agendas,” they wrote.

“A 17-year-old student named Zheng from Guangdong Province was among several holding a flag of the Republic of China, whose leaders fled to Taiwan as the Communists took over the mainland in 1949,” they reported.

“Wan Yun, 47, a Hong Kong resident formerly from the Chinese province of Hubei, laid out documents about a land dispute that she said had brought her a year in a labor camp.”

Here’s a photograph of a young woman lighting her candle at the event:

And this one below shows the heavy rain as it swept over the large crowd, who sheltered under a colorful mosaic of umbrellas:

The rally was held as news reports said that a person long identified in the public eye as bearing guilt for the massacre, the former mayor of Beijing, Chen Xitong, died Sunday in Beijing of cancer.

The parents of Wang Nan, a 19-year-old shot dead that day, said Mr. Chen’s death wouldn’t change anything, the South China Morning Post reported. Mr. Chen, who later was tried and jailed for corruption, was only a small player in the tragedy, said Wang Fandi, a well-known pipa player.

“Wang Fandi, whose 19-year-old son Wang Nan was killed while taking photos on Changan Avenue on June 4, 1989, said that from an historical perspective, Chen had been only a tragic bit player in the crackdown,” the newspaper wrote. It quoted Mr. Wang: “He was just a small potato and a tool manipulated by others.”

“He just said and did what he was instructed to by people in the top echelon,” it quoted Mr. Wang as saying.

In recent years, Mr. Chen had sought to distance himself from the 1989 events, telling the scholar Yao Jianfu, in interviews published in a book, that the crackdown was “a regrettable tragedy,” the Post reported.

When Spell-Check Can’t Help

Add these sound-alikes to your list of words to check twice.

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At the end of the novel, the villain, U Po Kyin, an exceptionally rotund magistrate, moves to another district for a plumb job.

This was fixed between editions; the job was a “plum,” of course.

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[Headline] One Man Disperses Charity After Tragedy in Boston

A common confusion. We meant “disburse” or pay out â€" not “disperse,” which means scatter.

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“In the broadest sense, we want to use our knowledge and our network and our relationships to try to affect the greatest amount of good,” Ms. Powell Jobs said in one of a series of interviews with The New York Times.

A perennial challenge. “Affect” as a verb means “influence.” The verb we wanted here was “effect,” meaning “accomplish.” (This, too, was later fixed, but not before a sharp-eyed reader spotted the problem.)

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[Caption] Former President Suharto resigned 15 years ago Tuesday as Indonesia was wracked by rioting.

“Rack” and “wrack” cause confusion both as nouns and as verbs. For the verb meaning to torment, The Times’s stylebook calls for “rack,” which would have worked here. “Wrack,” as a verb meaning to ruin or destroy, is considered archaic; if that’s the meaning we want, use a modern synonym.

 
In a Word

This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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Mr. Obama’s approval rating in a CNN poll published on Sunday was 53 percent, little different from 51 percent in their April survey.

The plural pronoun “their” can’t refer to the singular CNN (and sticklers might argue that CNN, used here as a modifier, isn’t a proper antecedent in any case). Rephrase.

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BERLIN â€" Throughout her rise to power and as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel has kept her personal life strictly private, to an extent that is hard to achieve in the age of social media.

This long story about Merkel’s personal life never answers one of the most obvious questions: How old is she?

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During hearings in the British Parliament last week, Margaret Hodge, a member of the opposition Labour Party and chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, which oversees taxation, upbraided Matt Brittin, Google’s vice president for North and Central Europe, that the company’s tax practices were “devious, calculated and, in my view, unethical.”

You upbraid someone “for” something; the verb doesn’t work with “that.”

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The worry is less about the newcomers’ origins, they say, than about their tranquility-shattering behavior. …

Eventually came the nouveau riche with their mega-mansions, corporate planes and over-the-top tent parties.

The first choice of the stylebook and the dictionary is “tranquillity” with two L’s. Also, “nouveau riche” is singular; the plural is “nouveaux riches.”

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The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

The plural of “swath” is “swaths.”

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Proponents for a new station said they found this provision troubling.

“Proponents” implies “for”; make it “proponents of.”

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The collection of phone records in this manner is known as pretexting. Clearly a violation of privacy, the law was clarified in 2007 to formally make pretexting illegal.

Dangler. Pretexting, not the law, is clearly a violation of privacy.

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It’s “Rashomon” on steroids: As each episode tracks one member of the hyper-dysfunctional Bluth family over roughly the same stretch of time, the story constantly circles back on itself, and information is rationed like methadone in the rehab center that first appears in Episode 3.

We have done better recently in avoiding this tired cliché; let’s remain vigilant.

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But he acknowledged that teachers could probably find cheaper prices elsewhere.

The product is cheaper; the price is lower.

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Based on the comments we received, this is a common challenge â€" and one that is not easily resolved.

You don’t “resolve” a challenge. Make it “problem” or pick a different verb, perhaps “met.”

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Just weeks ago, for instance, Mr. Karzai demanded that American Special Operations forces leave Wardak Province over allegations that coalition troops had been responsible for the torture and murder of civilians.

A colleague notes that this phrase, along with “just days,” is increasingly common and frustratingly vague. Two weeks? Ten weeks? Why not just say how long ago?

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Mr. Cook is also expected to argue that some of Apple’s largest subsidiaries do not reduce Apple’s tax liability, and to press for a sweeping overhaul of the United States corporate tax code â€" in particular, by lowering rates on companies moving foreign overseas earnings back to the United States.

A (different) colleague points out that “sweeping overhaul” and “major overhaul” are overused and usually redundant, since “overhaul” means an extensive or thorough revision. There’s no such thing as a minor overhaul.

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By escaping American shores, Actavis expects to reduce its effective tax rate from about 28 percent to 17 percent, a potential savings of tens of millions of dollars per year for the company and a still larger hit to the United States Treasury.

Saving, not savings. As the stylebook says:

savings. Do not use it as a singular noun: The cuts produced a savings of $50,000. Delete a or make it saving. Also: daylight saving time.

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When the company was born in 1909, its designers Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst and Nicholas Roerich combined hues with an intensity hitherto unknown on Western stages.

What we meant was “theretofore,” but what we really wanted was “till then.” From the stylebook:

heretofore, hitherto. Both words mean until now. Do not confuse them with theretofore, meaning until then. All three words have their place, but it is in an old-fashioned legal brief. News writing calls for the simple phrases.

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Much like Mr. Bush did in 2006 when he acknowledged and emptied secret overseas C.I.A. prisons, Mr. Obama appears intent on countering criticism of his most controversial policies by reorienting them to meet changing conditions.

Avoid using “like” as a conjunction, introducing a full clause. Make it “much as” or “just as.” (We fixed it in time for later editions.)

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Evidence from crude data sets like these are prone to confirmation bias.

Agreement problem. Evidence is singular; make it “is prone,” not “are prone.”

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Gene Munster, one of the lead analysts on the survey, said that if anything, the results showed that the taste and interest of Web users, particularly younger ones, was fickle and fleeting.

And another one. Make it “were,” to agree with the compound subject.

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Rescuers hoped to finish their search for survivors just more than 24 hours after the Oklahoma City area was hit by a storm nearly two miles across.

The perfectly acceptable idiom is “just over,” not “just more than.”

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Instead, it can both be true that population density matters immensely to suicide rates and true that depressed people are more at risk of suicide on average regardless of where they live â€" that it may be better to be depressed in Alabama than in Montana, but it’s also better not to be depressed at all.

This wasn’t parallel; rephrase. For example: “it can be true both that … and that …”

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Her role in the 25 minutes that comprise “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” may not have been as prominent as those of Mr. Shatner or Mr. Cravat.

The whole comprises the parts, not the other way around. Here, we could simply say “the 25 minutes of ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.’”

Latvia Is Ready to Jump Aboard Euro Zone

LONDON â€" Joining the euro zone in its current state of economic turbulence may appear about as sensible as jumping aboard a sinking ship.

But the small Baltic state of Latvia is about to do just that, after waiting in line for approval from its European neighbors to join the single currency from the start of next year.

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, is expected to report on Wednesday that Latvia meets all the criteria to jump aboard as the 18th member of the currency union.

The former Soviet republic, barely larger than West Virginia and with a population of little more than two million, is the poster child for proponents of tough austerity measures to cure the Continent’s debt-fueled financial ills.

The Latvians have succeeded in meeting the criteria for euro zone membership with an economic performance that other members of the euro zone might envy.

The country’s budget deficit, at 1.2 percent of gross domestic product, is well below the required European ceiling of 3 percent, and public debt amounts to a little more than 40 percent of G.D.P., compared with almost 82 percent in even fiscally prudent Germany.

It has even managed to pay off a €7.5 billion, or $10 billion, international loan, secured during the depths of an economic slump after the 2008 financial crisis in order to cope with a bank collapse.

However, success has come at a price. In response to the 2008 collapse, when the economy shrank by 20 percent and unemployment spiraled, a new coalition headed by Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis imposed a ruthless regime of austerity.

Government programs were slashed, a third of state employees were fired, and those who survived the cull had their wages cut by a third. Latvia also opted to endure the pain of keeping its currency, the lats, pegged to the euro rather than devaluing.

As my colleague Andrew Higgins wrote during a trip to Riga, the Latvian capital, “In just four years, the country has gone from the European Union’s worst economic disaster zone to a model of what the International Monetary Fund hails as the healing properties of deep budget cuts.”

Christine Lagarde, the head of the I.M.F, has referred to the Latvian experiment as “an inspiration for European leaders grappling with the euro crisis.”

However, critics have said that is to ignore the heavy price paid by ordinary Latvians for the economic turnaround.

Mark Weisbrot, a Washington-based economist, noted a year ago that about one in 10 workers in the labor force had left the country, perhaps never to return. Unemployment was still brutally high, he wrote, and the I.M.F. itself acknowledged it would take another decade to restore economic activity to its pre-crisis levels.

The Latvian austerity program has not provoked the kind of unrest seen in struggling euro zone countries like Greece and Spain.

But there are indications that, when it comes to embracing the euro, ordinary people are less enthusiastic than either their government or euro zone policy makers, who see Latvian membership as a signal to markets that the currency zone is growing rather than disintegrating.

On many levels it makes sense to join the euro. According to David Moore, the I.M.F.’s country representative, the financial system is already highly “euroized.” People earn wages and pay day-to-day bills in lats but save, borrow and pay for mortgages in euros. “The economic case for euro adoption is strong,” he wrote in January.

However, an opinion poll last month indicated that almost two-thirds of Latvians opposed abandoning the lats, rejecting the government’s argument that joining the euro zone would help the economy by easing trade and boosting investor confidence.

David Cronin, writing for New Europe, a Brussels-based newspaper that reports on the European Union, lamented the fact that the austerity-battered Latvians would have no say in a decision to join the euro in the absence of a referendum.

He noted that only two electorates in Europe had ever been offered a referendum on whether to adopt the single currency. “Those polls were conducted in Denmark and Sweden. In both cases, a majority rejected the euro,” he wrote. “History has shown they were right to do so.”

Words to Watch

We should be careful about casual uses of words associated with mental illness. Here’s what The Times’s stylebook says about one:

schizophrenia is a mental illness often characterized by episodic disorientation, delusions and hallucinations. It is not characterized by a split personality, and the word schizophrenic does not mean two-faced, of two minds or self-contradictory.

Outside the specific context of mental illness, “schizophrenic” is usually a good word to avoid. Besides the misconception that it suggests a split personality, using the word lightly or metaphorically can seem insensitive. But as a reader noted recently, we still do it occasionally:

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A recipe from the restaurant in Greenwich Village seems schizophrenic but tastes terrific.

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Conducting Ives’s symphony, with its vast forces often subdivided into groups playing in different meters and keys, requires courage. In fact, the Philharmonic brought in a second conductor, Case Scaglione, to lead certain sections in some of the work’s more schizophrenic moments, a strategy common in performances of this piece.

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But the Nation piece, which was written by Eric Alterman and went online in late March, also raised the specter of an almost schizophrenic political pragmatist whose progressive agenda stands in stark contrast to his low opinion of new taxes, which Mr. Alterman said made Mr. Cuomo “the soul brother to Grover Norquist.”

 
And Another One

We should also take care with “bipolar.” Given its primary sense of “having two poles or charges,” it can legitimately be used to mean “having two opposite or contradictory ideas or natures,” as the American Heritage Dictionary says. But avoid using it as a jocular or figurative description of someone’s mental state. Here’s one we should have thought twice about:

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The Sundance Film Festival has long had a dual personality. The atmosphere is typically fun and fizzy â€" Stars! Swag! Hot tub hopping! â€" while the films are dark and depressing, sometimes to the point of self-parody. This year, however, Sundance is looking a lot less bipolar.

 
In a Word

This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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“Some were able to survive,” said Lidia Fischer, 38, a blonde-haired descendant of a family that was among Nueva Germania’s first settlers. …

While there are still a few blond-haired children running around, after generations of intermarriage, many of the town’s 4,300 residents have German surnames but are indiscernible from other Paraguayans.

As the stylebook says, use “blonde” only as a noun, referring to a woman or a girl. The adjective is always “blond.” And “blond-haired” is redundant.

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[Caption] Mary McCartney, a daughter of Sir Paul and the author of a vegetarian cookbook called “Food,” preparing an eggplant wrap during a visit to New York.

As the stylebook notes, we don’t generally use “Sir” or “Lord” for people already well known as pop stars, business leaders, etc.

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Even as the speeches ground on in a huge meeting hall, thousands of members were downstairs, where acre-upon-acre of kiosks displayed the latest in hunting and camping equipment, and weaponry, from futuristic black-matte rifles to six-shooters to knives that would have made Jim Bowie envious.

Why the hyphens?

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But as productivity has slowed substantially in recent years, doubts have re-emerged about whether information technology can power economic growth like the steam engine and the internal combustion engine did in the past.

Avoid this use of “like” as a conjunction. Here, make it “as” or “the way.”

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Ms. van Doten said later that while she appreciated the mayor’s recognition of her son, she did not want her son to be “part of a political battle, a pawn,” in the debate over stop-and-frisk tactics, which she generally supports through she believes there needs to be adjustments.

“Though,” of course, not “through.” Also, make it “there need to be adjustments”; the plural “adjustments” is the subject of “need.”

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Under the agreement, once the Malkins achieve the 80 percent approval, anyone who voted against it has 10 days to switch, or they could receive only $100 for their share.

The plural “they” doesn’t go with the singular “anyone.” One simple fix: “investors who voted against it have 10 days … or they could receive …”

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Mark Williams-Thomas, a former detective who amassed much of the evidence against Mr. Savile in a documentary that touched off the scandal and police investigation last year, said that he has been continuing to help the police in coaxing people who might have been victimized years ago to come forward.

After the past-tense “said,” sequence-of-tense rules require “had been continuing” or “was continuing.”

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The investigators also referenced an April 2011 e-mail in which Ms. Masters ordered a “rewrite” of an internal document that raised questions about whether the bank had run afoul of the law.

Avoid this jargony use of “reference” as a verb. Make it something like “cited.”

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The library’s budget for the year has declined to $598.4 million, a 4 percent cut that is likely to slow its digitalization effort and has already caused copyright applications to back up.

Make it “digitization,” formed from the verb “digitize.” (“Digitalization” is formed from “digitalize,” which actually means to administer digitalis drugs to a heart patient. Really.)

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As the malicious Abigaille, her diva act was as delicious as it was in the role at the Met recently, and on Saturday she was in even better voice, some passages worn but others â€" including many of the high notes and softer, gentler lines â€" secure.

Dangler; her diva act wasn’t the malicious Abigaille.

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And Apple itself provided an opening for competitors when it changed the way its phones connect to other devices, aggravating both its business partners and consumers.

As the stylebook notes, in precise usage, “aggravate” means to make worse, not anger or irritate.

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At this point, the transition from public disgrace to college lectern is so familiar that when Mr. Galliano merely stepped foot on the campus of Central Saint Martins, an art and design school in London, speculation rippled around the world â€" incorrectly â€" that he would soon be teaching there.

Make it either “set foot” or “stepped.”

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The move to appeal the court ruling came just a day after the F.D.A. staked out a new position, setting the age restriction on nonprescription access to the most well-known brand of emergency contraception â€" Plan B One-Step â€" at 15 years old and telling pharmacies to stock the product on display shelves rather than behind the counter.

A common mistake; make it “best-known.”

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During an interview, he proudly declared that “I am a good capitalist.”

“That” is not needed to introduce a full clause in a direct quote. Omit it and put a comma after “declared.”

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Before the new edition is in anyone’s hands, however, we have pre-emptive strikes against it in the form of two industrious and perfervid new books, Gary Greenberg’s “Book of Woe” and Dr. Allen Frances’s “Saving Normal.”

An often-overlooked rule from the stylebook. After two sibilant sounds, form the possessive with just the apostrophe, not yet another “s”: Frances’.

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The city has been particularly hard hit by the shrinking of the financial services industry, which, much like in Midtown Manhattan, had been a primary driver of growth.

“Like” is a preposition that should be followed by a noun or pronoun. Here, make it “as in Midtown Manhattan.”

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Americans are exhibiting an isolationist streak, with majorities across party lines decidedly opposed to American intervention in North Korea or Syria, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The description seems overblown. An “isolationist” opposes all foreign intervention; these questions just related to policies on North Korea and Syria.

Beyond the Obvious

My colleague Mark Bulik offered these thoughts on caption writing, with examples, bad and good.

Every day Times editors conduct dozens of weddings, uniting words and images, in print and online. Many of these unions are things of grace and beauty, others come closer to an ugly brawl, and more than a few just seem silly. As in any marriage, the two parties should not just speak to each other, but seem as though they belong together. And so, in the service of a more perfect union, let us start with the advice of The Times’s stylebook: “A caption should normally explain what readers cannot see for themselves in the picture and should omit the obvious.”

Consider what can happen when we ignore that admonition and fill a caption with whatever basic information came with the photo.

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US Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York

Published caption: A photo shows about $20,000 sitting on cans of beer following a series of thefts from A.T.M.’s in New York in February.

We can assume that it’s a photo and that it shows something â€" no need to say so. And yes, it’s pretty clear that those are cans of beer. Instead of telling readers what they could already see, we could have tried for a bigger point â€" for example, did the suspects take this picture themselves?

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Angelos Tzortzinis for The International Herald Tribune

Published caption: Michalis Petrakis, who is jobless and whose son Pantelis has been going to school hungry, opened his nearly empty refrigerator.

In case you thought he was closing it. Perhaps instead of telling readers that Mr. Petrakis was opening his refrigerator, we could have told them that he has trouble filling it.

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Saul Martinez/European Pressphoto Agency

Published caption: Courtroom spectators applauded after the trial judge refused to accept a ruling annulling the case.

Yes, that’s what they are doing with their hands â€" applauding. A better use of the space might have been to note that the spectators included a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Rigoberta Menchu (center, with beads).

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Josh Haner/The New York Times

Published caption: Pallbearers carried Krystle Campbell’s coffin at her funeral Monday in Melford, Mass. “I’ll miss her, that’s for sure,” her grandmother said. “She was my baby girl.”

Instead of reporting the obvious â€" that pallbearers were carrying a coffin â€" we could have noted that this was the first of the funerals for the Boston bombing victims.

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Now consider what a cutline can add to the presentation of a story when we give the reader some additional context:

Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency

Published caption: The remains of the plant. The authorities say there is no indication of criminal activity in the explosion, which followed a fire.

With this caption out of West, Tex., we avoided belaboring the obvious and used the space to address a key question in readers’ minds: Was the explosion foul play?

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Boyd Norton

Published caption: Anna Merz with Samia. The rhino would follow her around like a dog even after she was grown.

After a caption like that, who wouldn’t want to read more?

 
In a Word

This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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A pristine 12-room sponsor unit at 535 West End Avenue, a 1920 brick building reinvented, expanded and marketed as a luxury destination by the Extell Development Company, sold for $16.295 million and was the most expensive residential sale of the week, according to city records.

From the stylebook:

When mentioning an address on a major thoroughfare in New York City, ordinarily specify the nearest cross street.

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The revelations had been published by The New York Times, The A.P. and in several books.

With the switch of prepositions, this doesn’t work as a three-element series. Make it “by The New York Times and The A.P. and in several books.”

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Both Mr. Sharif and Mr. Khan have been measured in their criticism of the Taliban, and neither have suffered attack, although the caretaker government says they are also at risk.

“Suffered attack” is an odd phrasing, and in any case, “neither” is singular. Make it “neither has been attacked.”

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To many, they remain the afterthoughts of the New York City mayoral race: outsider candidates, polling in the single digits, whom the political establishment assumed would at some point quietly go away.

The establishment assumed that they, not them, would go away; replace “they” with “who,” not “whom.”

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It conjures up the old adage that ships are safest on shore, but that is not why they are built.

As the stylebook notes, an adage is an old saying; “old adage” is redundant.

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His game, redolent of crisp iron play and clutch putting, has resurfaced.

Redolent means smelling (of) or, by extension, evocative (of). We needed a different word.

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Len Johnson, who lives in the Jefferson Houses, another public housing complex in East Harlem, explained it this way: “It’s like, ‘What I done to your door, I’m going to do to you,’ ” he said, “It’s a powerful message. It’s all about saying something without them saying it out of their mouth.”

This sentence attributes the same quotation twice. Why not drop the “he said”?

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An affadavit sworn out by Douglas J. Kunze, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the authorities had found the parts of a pipe bomb, including potassium nitrate powder, which is used in fertilizers and gunpowder.

Though Mr. Reed was not in possession of the materials, he admitted to having possessed them, according to the affadavit.

It’s spelled “affidavit.”

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A witness also said Mr. Scarcella told him who to choose in a lineup.

“Whom,” not “who.”

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[Caption] Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner after her debut as the nation’s first female anchorwoman.

Redundant; of course an anchorwoman is female. In any case, the stylebook prefers “anchor.”

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The family has also been troubled by what they say is a lack of communication from the authorities.

Singular or plural? Make it singular throughout.

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But it does offer a reminder that how patience on both sides is wearing thin as the war grinds on, and that thoughtless acts can lead to international incidents.

Perhaps we were changing “of how” to “that,” but didn’t finish the editing?

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The glasseslike device, which allows users to access the Internet, take photos and film short snippets, has been pre-emptively banned by a Seattle bar.

Avoid this jargony verb use of “access” if possible. Here, we could simply say “go online.”

IHT Quick Read: June 4

NEWS The immersion of today’s leaders of China in the political experimentation that preceded the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 raises the question of whether they will be open to new ideas and discussion. Andrew Jacobs reports from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is facing his worst political crisis in more than a decade of power, and he seems little inclined to change his approach. Tim Arango reports from Istanbul.

President François Hollande’s Socialist government came into office a year ago promising a better deal for the Roma, an end to the shantytowns and the rehousing and integration of those displaced. But like other promises, including a return to economic growth, reality has been a recalcitrant political partner. Steven Erlanger reports from Paris.

Rami Hamdallah, the Palestinian Authority’s new prime minister, is a respected academician who lacks political experience and an international profile, and is known for his work expanding his university. Jodi Rudoren reports from Jerusalem.

The court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, whose secret release of a vast archive of military and diplomatic materials put WikiLeaks into an international spotlight, opened Monday with dueling portrayals of a traitor who endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers and of a principled protester motivated by a desire to help society who carefully selected which documents to release. Charlie Savage reports from Fort Meade, Maryland.

Explosions and fire tore through parts of a poultry processing plant in northeast China on Monday, killing at least 120 people in one of the country’s worst factory disasters in years. Chris Buckley reports from Hong Kong.

FASHION The Italian fashion house Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld, its legendary designer, have pledged 2.2 million euros for the Trevi Fountain and other sites in the Eternal City. Suzy Menkes writes.

ARTS Sea levels may be rising and economies shrinking but the expansion of the Venice Biennale goes on regardless. Twenty years ago, 53 countries were represented at the Venice event. This year there are 88 national pavilions, with Angola, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Kuwait, the Maldives, Paraguay, Tuvalu and the Vatican officially appearing for the first time. Roderick Conway Morris writes from Venice.

SPORTS An expensive new requirement has led to a dearth of contestants at the America’s Cup, and San Fransisco leaders are raising doubts about the race’s benefits for the city amid lagging interest. Norimitsu Onishi reports from San Francisco.

For a French Open that has yet to have a major upset, it has surely been a tournament full of big surprises and big swings of emotion. Christopher Clarey writes from Paris.