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IN THIS ISSUENo. 40,764

Books 11Business 14Crossword 13Culture 10Opinion 8Sports 12

ARTISANAL FOODFARM-TO-TABLEPIZZA IN VIETNAMINSIDE | SPECIAL REPORT

VAMPIRE KISSESJIM JARMUSCH’SLATEST MOVIEPAGE 10 CULTURE

ROGER COHENON BEING NOTQUITE HOMEPAGE 9 | OPINION

ONLINE AT INYT.COMINSIDE TODAY’S PAPER

U.S. to publish employment dataAfter weak readings for December andJanuary, and then a slightly betterreport for February, experts expect tosee a more robust picture for March inthe jobs data to be released by the LaborDepartment on Friday. inyt.com/business

A portable overdose treatmentU.S. regulators approved an emergencydrug overdose treatment for use inhomes and other community settingsoutside hospitals. nytimes.com/health

Giving bees a leg (or 6) upIn California’s Central Valley,researchers are trying to findassortments of bee-friendly plants thatlocal farmers and ranchers can easilygrow. nytimes.com/science

App Smart: Conversions on the flyApps are available to tackle the mostcommon calculations and the mostunusual. nytimes.com/tech

E.C.B. weighs bond purchasesWhile the European Central Bank keptinterest rates steady on Thursday, itgave a signal that it was mullingunprecedented action to stimulate theeuro zone’s economy. BUSINESS, 14

The campaigns for KabulThe odd alliances formed in the Afghanpresidential race show how a flawedpolitical system undermines democracy,Matthieu Aikins writes. OPINION, 8

Gunman treated for depressionAn Army official said that the suspectin the Fort Hood shooting, SpecialistIvan Lopez, was being evaluated forpost-traumatic stress. WORLD NEWS, 7

Battle rages for French mobile firmA $20 billion contest for control of SFRis testing the limits of PresidentFrançois Hollande’s willingness to letmarket economics work. BUSINESS, 14

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MICHAEL BENSON/KINETIKON PICTURES

WATER ON SATURN MOON Inside Enceladus, beneath its icy veneer and above its rocky core,is a sea of water the size of Lake Superior, scientists announced on Thursday. WORLD NEWS, 4

Smash and grab in heart of ParisA wave of thefts targeting ostentatiouswealth has provoked more satire thansympathy. WORLD NEWS, 3

Turkey ends blockage of TwitterThe government unblocked the site onThursday, a day after the highest courtruled against the ban. WORLD NEWS, 3

ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A portrait of President Hamid Karzai at the Defense Ministry in Kabul. When Afghans vote for a new president on Saturday, they will be taking part in a process Mr. Karzai has shaped.

AKOS STILLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s country house sits adjacent to a new soccer stadium inFelcsut, his hometown. For businesses, being on the wrong side of his party can be costly.

Ex-leaderof Ukraineis implicatedin shootingsKIEV, UKRAINE

BY ANDREW ROTH

The Ukrainian authorities said on Thurs-day that former President Viktor F. Ya-nukovych had been involved in plans forelite police units to open fire on antigov-ernment protesters in February, inwhich they killed more than 100 people inthe days immediately before the down-fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government.

The police have already arrested sev-eral members of one elite riot police unitresponsible for the killings, said ArsenAvakov, the country’s interim interiorminister, but some others under investi-gation have fled to Crimea, which wasannexed by Russia last month.

The findings of the inquiry, whichwere presented by Mr. Avakov as well asby the country’s new general prosecutorand the head of the security services, arethe first attempt by the government inKiev to give a comprehensive answer tothe shootings that caused the over-whelming majority of deaths that tookplace on the Ukrainian capital’s mainsquare, the Maidan, in mid-February.

‘‘An enormous number of people wereharmed in this meat grinder,’’ Mr.Avakov said.

Valentyn Nalivaichenko, the newhead of the Ukrainian Security Service,the country’s successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., also said that Russia hadsupplied the Ukrainian special serviceswith training, explosives, weapons andequipment during the street protests,which lasted for several months beforeMr. Yanukovych fled to Russia in Febru-ary. He did not immediately provide ev-idence to support the charge.

Mr. Nalivaichenko said Mr. Ya-nukovich was actively and personallyinvolved in suppressing the demonstra-tions. ‘‘Presented as a counterterroristoperation, the actual organization of themass murder of people took place underthe direct leadership of former presi-dent Yanukovych,’’ Mr. Nalivaichenkosaid.

Russia’s security service, known asthe F.S.B., said that it had not been in-volved in the Ukrainian crackdown, ac-cording to RIA Novosti, the Russianstate news agency. ‘‘Let those state-ments remain on the conscience of theUkrainian Security Services,’’ the secu-

Health lawhits a mark,but victory isstill elusiveWASHINGTON

BY BRIAN KNOWLTON,ROBERT PEARAND MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Even as President Obama declared vic-tory this week in the government’s ag-gressive push to enroll seven millionpeople in private health insurance plansunder his signature Affordable CareAct, there seems no end in sight to thedebate over the law’s ability to tame anAmerican health system marked byhigh costs, an awkwardly hybrid natureand patchwork coverage.

By American standards, backers say,the law has been transformative, bring-ing protection to uncovered millionsand beginning to bend downward thesharp curve of rising health care costs.But it falls well short of the coveragestandard set by many wealthy Euro-pean and Asian countries, and still facesdaunting practical and political hurdles.

The Affordable Care Act employs asystem of mandates, subsidies and in-surance exchanges to help cover mil-lions of uninsured Americans — requir-ing nearly all to carry insurance, or paya penalty — while seeking to improvethe quality of care and reduce costs.

But even if the health law were fullyimplemented, said Jonathan B. Ober-lander, a professor at University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill who stud-ies health care politics, ‘‘we still projectthat we’re going to have 30 millionpeople without coverage, and thatwould be unthinkable in Europe, or in aplace like Japan.’’

Still, considering the nightmarishrollout in October of the government’shealth care website, the seven millionenrollment mark, reached by a Mondaydeadline, provided an unexpected mo-ment of relief to the president’s Demo-cratic Party after months of witheringRepublican criticism.

In Hungary, the chief’s word is golden

Officials say Yanukovychwas involved in plans foroperation that killed 100

After vote, Karzai won’t just fade awayKABUL, AFGHANISTAN

BY MATTHEW ROSENBERG

American officials have been ignoringhim, and Afghanistan’s presidentialcontenders have been trying to per-suade voters that they will be different.But those hoping to see President Ham-

id Karzai slip into a quiet retirementmay be sorely disappointed in themonths to come.

When Afghans vote for a new presi-dent on Saturday, they will be taking partin a process that Mr. Karzai has shapedat every stage. He narrowed the field,dissuading potential candidates from en-tering the race and forcing his brotherQayum to leave it. He handpicked the of-ficials who will preside over any electiondisputes. Then he blessed two of thethree leading contenders with the help ofslush funds his office controls — hedginghis bets that at least one candidate open

to his influence will make it to a runoff,according to senior Afghan officials.

And Mr. Karzai will remain presidentthrough what is expected to be monthsof contested election results after Satur-day’s voting.

Few who know Mr. Karzai personally,including some of his critics, see a nakedpower grab in the president’s maneu-vering. But they say that Mr. Karzai is

being driven by a deep-seated beliefthat he has become Afghanistan’s indis-pensable man, uniquely suited to guidethe country through the tumultuousyears of transition. That starts with theelection, but Mr. Karzai’s ultimate aim,the officials say, is to retain influencewith the new Afghan administration.

Mr. Karzai ‘‘is being pulled andpushed by two sides of his personality,’’said Daud Muradian, a former foreignpolicy adviser who now teaches at theAmerican University of Afghanistan.

One side ‘‘wants to leave a legacy and

Even out of office,Afghan president islikely to retain influence

FELCSUT, HUNGARY

BY DANNY HAKIM

Something strange is going on hereamong the humble Soviet-era cottages.

Construction cranes loom over whatwill soon be a nearly 4,000-seat sportsstadium named after the Hungariansoccer legend Ferenc Puskas. The pricetag? Upward of $17 million.

This blink-and-you-missed-it village,about 24 miles west of Budapest, mightseem an odd place for such an extrava-

gance. After all, only about 1,800 peoplelive here.

But Felcsut is also the hometown ofPrime Minister Viktor Orban. And Mr.Orban, an ardent soccer fan, will havethe best seat in town: His country housesits about 20 feet from the stadium.

‘‘The whole town is working here,’’said Laszlo Molnar, a constructionworker. ‘‘It’s like a cathedral.’’

What is happening in Felcsut is part ofthe changes that have washed over Hun-gary since Mr. Orban and his party,Fidesz, swept to power in 2010. His gov-ernment has rewritten the Constitutionand passed hundreds of laws, including atax code that allows deductions for busi-ness investment in sports. It has come todominate all branches of governmentand lifted up a class of oligarchs. Mr.

Orban is expected to consolidate powerin parliamentary elections Sunday.

While the European Union has beenalarmed by the rise of autocratic leadersin countries outside its borders, somesee Mr. Orban as a strongman within itsborders. After recently fast-tracking anuclear energy agreement with Russia,Mr. Orban, a onetime anti-Communistactivist, is pulling close to PresidentVladimir V. Putin.

Here in Felcsut, the new stadium hasmeant good jobs for many villagers. Butsome have benefited more than others.The mayor, Lorinc Meszaros, who is afriend of the prime minister’s, has gonefrom being a pipe fitter to one of Hun-gary’s wealthiest men. His constructioncompany is one of the main firms build-

Prime minister continuesconsolidating grip, andhis allies are beneficiaries

SERGEY DOLZHENKO/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Valentyn Nalivaichenko, Ukraine’s securi-ty chief, at a briefing in Kiev on Thursday.

AN ELECTION FILLED WITH EMPTY HOPEDespite the presence of security forces,violence in rural areas means the votethere matters little to many. PAGE 4

Americans are dividedand skirmishes persisteven as 7 million enroll

HEALTH, PAGE 7 KARZAI, PAGE 4

HUNGARY, PAGE 17

UKRAINE, PAGE 3

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1939 Chamberlain’s ‘Peace’ BlocLONDON Prime Minister Neville Cham-berlain, speaking before a House of Com-mons united on the issue of foreign policyas it has seldom been since the WorldWar, appealed to all countries of good willto join in his prospective bloc of ‘‘peacepowers,’’ determined to prevent AdolfHitler from carrying out any intention hemight have to dominate the world. Thenew policy of collective security was nec-essary, Mr. Chamberlain said, becausethe assurances which had been given bythe German government, that it had nowish ‘‘to dominate other races,’’ has nowbeen ‘‘thrown to the winds absolutely.’’

1964 Purge of Leftists BeginsRIO DE JANEIRO A mass purge waslaunched today against leftist support-ers of João Goulart’s regime, ousted yes-terday in a military-led revolt. Hundredsof prominent leftists were reported tohave been arrested by troops and statepolice. Among those rounded up by theGuanabara state police were fourChinese, alleged to have been carrying alist of Brazilian generals earmarked forassassination. The Guanabara state gov-ernment said the Chinese had ‘‘con-fessed they were training guerrillas inthe area of Santo de Jubuiba in Rio deJaneiro state.’’

29 million people, and more than half theforeigners are in the country illegally.

Coming from Indonesia, the Philip-pines and other Asian nations, these il-legal workers toil in homes and at palmoil plantations and construction sites.Ms. Fernandez unearthed evidence oftheir being beaten and nearly starved.In an interview with The New YorkTimes in 2012, she characterized the situ-ation as ‘‘slavery days coming back.’’

As much as their labors are needed,the illegal workers irritate many Malay-sians, as their counterparts do in manycountries. Some Malaysians join gov-ernment-sanctioned volunteer groupsto seek them out.

In September, the government begana campaign to arrest and deport 500,000of these workers; it said their collectiveconsumption of social services like edu-cation was expensive and went againstits policy of relying less on unskilledlabor.

Ms. Fernandez condemned the depor-tation drive, partly because it failed todistinguish refugees from other foreignworkers, she said.

She achieved her greatest prominence

BY DOUGLAS MARTIN

Irene Fernandez, a champion of the op-pressed in Malaysia whose indefatig-able advocacy for better treatment offoreign migrant workers prompted hergovernment to denounce her as a traitorand human rights groups to shower her

with awards, died on March 25 in Serd-ang, Malaysia. She was 67.

The cause was heart failure, HumanRights Watch said.

Ms. Fernandez abandoned a career asa teacher in her early 20s to fight for so-cial causes. She helped organize thefirst textile workers union in Malaysiaand campaigned for women’s rights, im-proved consumer education and saferpesticides.

Her signature crusade was for therights of the poorest, most marginalizedpeople in her relatively rich country: themigrant workers who do the dirty, ill-pay-ing jobs many native Malaysians snub.Foreigners account for more than 16 per-cent of the work force in a population of

in 1995 when she interviewed more than300 migrant workers being detained bythe government. They told her of rapes,beatings and inadequate medical care,food and water. After a newspaper prin-ted a memo she provided detailing herfindings, Malaysia’s government, inMarch 1996, charged her with ‘‘mali-ciously publishing false news.’’

Her criminal trial dragged on for sev-en years, one of the longest in Malaysi-an history. Stanley Augustin, the prose-cutor, accused her of blackening hercountry’s reputation.

‘‘The court must take into account theinterests of the nation,’’ he said. ‘‘Free-dom of the press is not freedom to sayanything you like. It must be confinedand cannot hurt the public or nationalinterest.’’

She was convicted and sentenced to ayear in prison, then released pendingappeal. In 2008, an appellate judge re-versed her conviction.

In 2012, Ms. Fernandez again out-raged her government by telling an In-donesian newspaper that Malaysia wasnot safe for foreign workers because itdid not have a legal framework or spe-

cific laws to protect them.‘‘When she says something like that,

doesn’t she realize that her actions donot help the country or the Malaysianpeople?’’ Deputy Prime Minister Tan SriMuhyiddin Yassin said in an interviewwith The New Straits Times, an English-language Malaysian newspaper.

Ms. Fernandez’s parents were Indi-ans who moved to Malaysia to work on arubber plantation when the country was

under British rule. She was born thereon April 18, 1946.

She traced her awareness of socialand political issues to her childhood,when, as the daughter of a plantation su-pervisor, she was told not to play withlaborers’ children.

She became a teacher, but at 23 leftthe security of a government job for theuncertain life of an activist, working forvarious labor and rights groups.

In 1991, she formed the organizationTenaganita (the name means women’sforce in Malay), which ran shelters formigrants and victims of human traffick-ing. It eventually expanded its efforts toinclude men.

Ms. Fernandez’s many awards in-clude the Amnesty International Awardin 1998, the International PEN Award in2000, the Jonathan Mann Award in 2004and the Right Livelihood Award in 2005.

She never lost her taste for battle.During her trial, she told The LosAngeles Times that she was ready forjail.

‘‘It will give me an opportunity to writea report on jail conditions and see whatchanges need to be made,’’ she said.

RAHMAN ROSLAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Irene Fernandez in 2012. She condemneda drive to deport migrant workers.

Mideast peace talks in jeopardyThe Palestinians have every right to pursuerecognition of statehood through U.N.agencies. It’s a legitimate and peacefulavenue. Israel’s attempt to thwart thateffort amounts to dirty dealing, andsuggests insincerity in achieving a two-state solution.CAROLYN, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA.

No easy answers here. You really can’tblame Abbas, as all he’s had from Israel areempty promises and more settlements.There will be no peace until Israel stopsbuilding settlements in occupiedterritories. At the same time, thePalestinians and others in the Muslimworld have to stop denying Israel’s right toexist in peace and be treated with a fairhand by the United States and othercountries. Finally, Pollard should staywhere he is. He is, first, last and always, aspy who did harm to this country.J. W. MATHEWS, CINCINNATI

I support the quest for a Palestinian statewholeheartedly. I believe the never-endingbuilding of Israeli housing in the West Bankis an effort to create facts on the groundthat will justify the establishment ofGreater Israel. That said, the Abbasdecision not to inform Secretary Kerry inadvance of the announcement to join 15international agencies is a very bad move.It indicates an insincerity on the part of thePalestinians. This obviously was in theworks for weeks. My problem is not thestrategy, but the surprise 180 turn.TARRY DAVIS, NORFOLK, VA.

Fake meat that tastes like chickenBeyond issues such as taste and texture,what many people are disregarding is thatthese ‘‘mock meat’’ products (as they aresometimes called) represent one of themost highly processed and chemicallytreated forms of soy foods and, as such,are not particularly healthy.ROB SINGER, MEXICO

AlanCowell

LETTER FROM EUROPE

LONDON At the height of the Cold War,Turkey’s great landmass cemented itsplace in the Western alliance, its hugeconscript army deployed across thesweeping expanse of Anatolia to safe-guard NATO’s southeastern flank.

Even now, with crisis just across theBlack Sea in Crimea and Ukraine, thatsame geography offers Westernstrategists an anchor in a troubled re-gion stretching from the borders ofIran, Syria and Iraq to the far-flungoutposts of the European Union.

A generation ago, it was Ankara’s as-sumption that its central role in the re-gion’s geopolitics would translate intoacceptance as a member of the pros-perous European Union, now number-ing 28 countries.

But that assumption has frayed. Aftermonths of increasingly authoritarianrule by an embattled Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdogan, the portals ofthe club seem more than ever to be clos-ing on Turkey. And paradoxically, Tur-key’s most recent elections may deepen

its estrangement,raising questions notonly about Europeanreadiness to embraceTurkey but also aboutMr. Erdogan’s in-terest in pursuing it.

‘‘It is becomingclear that Erdogan’sTurkey does not be-

long to Europe,’’ a prominent Germanpolitician, Andreas Scheuer, said afterthe Turkish leader accepted his party’svictory in the municipal ballot on Sun-day not just as a personal vindicationbut also a mandate for what an oppo-nent called a ‘‘witch hunt’’ against hisadversaries. ‘‘A country in which thegovernment threatens its critics andtramples democratic values cannot be-long to Europe,’’ Mr. Scheuer said.

‘‘What happens next will worry manyTurks as they hear Erdogan vowing toget even with his critics and opponents,’’the columnist Simon Tisdall said in TheGuardian. ‘‘That Turkey is now a deeplydivided nation is only too clear. That Er-dogan’s future actions may serve todeepen those divisions is the great fear.’’

Since the creation of the modernstate in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,Turkey has been caught in the overlap-ping dilemmas thrown into sharp reliefby its geography. While it straddlesEurope and Asia, only a small fractionof its soil lies west of the Bosporus thatdivides the two continents. For all theboutiques and businesses of Istanbulthat look west to Frankfurt and Milan,the country’s distant east surveys amuch rougher neighborhood.

The effort to accede to the EuropeanUnion — haltingly underway since 2005— pulls at one set of reflexes, while Mr.Erdogan’s style tugs at another. Lastyear, he deployed the police againstprotesters in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. InDecember a major corruption scandalbroke over his aides and his family.Just in recent weeks, his governmenthas moved to block Twitter and You-Tube — depicted as his enemies’ toolsin a campaign to besmirch him withfaked evidence of malfeasance.

But the elections on Sunday showedsomething else. While Western-looking,secular, middle-class Turks are fre-quently hostile to him, Mr. Erdogan andhis Islamist-rooted Justice and Devel-opment Party still command the politic-al bedrock among the working classand in the countryside where Islam —Turkey’s dominant faith — is strong.

The question of identity is not limitedto Turkey. Divided among themselvesover the very idea of Turkish member-ship of their largely Christian club, theEuropeans find themselves caught be-tween the Western values they demandof Turkish society and the realpolitik ofa volatile region.

‘‘We need Turkey as an importantally,’’ said a German government for-eign policy specialist, ‘‘but we can’t ob-serve with indifference developmentsin the country.’’

In an interview before the election,Fadi Hakura, a specialist in Turkish af-fairs at Chatham House, the policy re-search body in London, said thereseemed to be little appetite in Turkeyfor the kind of reforms the EuropeanUnion is demanding to create a moreliberal, transparent and inclusive soci-ety. ‘‘The main concern now,’’ he said,‘‘seems to be to consolidate power, notpromote reform.’’

Mr. Erdogan’s uncompromising tonesince the vote, Mr. Hakura said later,had merely strengthened that convic-tion.

EMAIL: pagetwo@nytimes.com

Turkey turnsits backon the E.U.

IN OUR PAGES

IN YOUR WORDS

Irene Fernandez, 67, champion of oppressed in Malaysia

An evolving view of animals

O B I T UA RY

‘‘It is becom-ing clear thatErdogan’sTurkey doesnot belongto Europe.’’

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIM FLACH

THE HUMAN FACTOR

Tim Flach, a Lon-don-based photo-grapher, has beendocumenting exoticanimals for two de-cades. Most of hisintimate portraits ofanimals are inten-ded to be jarring intheir simplicity —concentrating onsubtle details thatimpart a humanisticfeel. He wantspeople to engage indebates about ourrelationships to an-imals, with the be-lief that ‘‘how we

treat animals is of-ten dependent onhow they displaycharacteristics wethink are human.’’ Acollection of hiswork was recentlypublished in thebook ‘‘Evolution,’’which highlights thespectrum of livingspecies. Clockwisefrom top left:‘‘Grace,’’ ‘‘Axolotl,’’‘‘Running Chicken,’’‘‘Flying Mop,’’‘‘Jambo Head’’ and‘‘Silver Tabby.’’lens.blogs.nytimes.com

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 3INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

World News europe africa

Paris robberies inspire a satirical wink

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAPUCINE GRANIER-DEFERRE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Place Vendôme in Paris, which has seen a wave of robberies — three since March 15 — that have targeted wealth in an otherwise weak economy, provoking more satire than sympathy.

PARIS

BY DOREEN CARVAJAL

Since the reign of the Sun King, thePlace Vendôme has served as this city’scenter of luxury, home to high-end fash-ion boutiques and diamond stores, CocoChanel’s mansion and the palatial HotelRitz Paris. Lately, though, this quartersnug in the heart of Paris has turned in-to the hub of a decidedly more low-rentform of plunder: smash and grab rob-beries.

Common crime is an indiscreet topichere among merchants in the Vendômequarter of stone streets and graceful ar-cades. But many are clearly jittery froma wave of robberies, three since March15, that have targeted ostentatiouswealth in an otherwise weak economy,provoking more satire than sympathy.

The culprits have mostly hit jewelrystores. But the most recent break-in,early on Saturday, by masked robbersarmed with a pump-action gun and anax, struck the city’s temple of hip,Colette. The eclectic three-story shopordinarily attracts the likes of KateMoss, Jay Z, and Kanye West with itsmix of limited-edition clothing, books,dishes, jewelry and a water bar wheresparkling water is pricier than wine.

But shortly before the store opened,two thieves stormed the entrance andbarked orders at seven employees, ac-cording to the police. They smashed adisplay case of watches on the first floorand then fled within minutes on a mo-torcycle with more than 600,000 euros,or $825,000, in luxury watches.

‘‘They didn’t want to steal clothes,’’said Colette Roussaux, the owner.‘‘They came for the opportunity and thebeautiful watches here. And we don’tsell Swatches.’’

With its high-fashion profile, theColette caper quickly provoked blackhumor about the low concept of fashioncrime. A satirical French televisionshow, Le Petit Journal, re-enacted therobbery with air kissing thieves in mus-taches. Leafing through their wardrobe,they bickered over mix-and-match ac-cessories. What to wear to a heist?Louis Vuitton gloves? A Jacquemusax?

In one frantic day, a group of ambi-tious business and communications stu-dents created an instant shop on a web-site offering T-shirts emblazoned with,‘‘I Robbed Colette.’’ Twitter usersscoffed too, remarking that ¤600,000 atthe pricey store equaled two white T-shirts and a pair of shoes.

But it was no laughing matter in theVendôme quarter where many storeemployees and the local merchantgroup, the Vendôme committee, saidthey preferred not to comment aboutthe matter.

Since the latest robbery, the policestepped up their presence in the com-mercial area, increasing foot patrols, ac-cording to Xavier Castaing, a policespokesman in Paris, who added that theoverall trend in robberies is actuallydown in the city, led by banks that havereduced their cash on hand and adoptednew security measures.

Now, he added, the police are workingwith merchants to improve security inthe Vendôme district, which is alreadycovered by extensive surveillance cam-eras that have helped crack earlier rob-beries in the area with little notice. Typ-ically, the private security men in suitsthat are now ubiquitous outside the jew-elry stores are forbidden to bear arms.But in the south of France some ownersof small jewelry stores have fired guns

at fleeing robbers, killings that haveprovoked soul-searching debates abouthow to prosecute such cases.

Among the more exotic security alter-natives under discussion is a specialpowder or fluid that is invisible to theeye and can be sprayed on valuableitems. If a thief touches a sprayed ob-ject, the fluid leaves a DNA trace thatcan be read over a period of six weekswith an ultraviolet light. But the exotic

approach still has not been accepted aslegal evidence in France.

Jacques Morel, a security adviser tothe French association of jewelers, UF-BJOP, said stolen jewelry loses 80 per-cent of its value when resold, but thereis a thriving trade among wealthy buy-ers from Eastern Europe and thievesfrom that region. The number of attackson jewelers fell last year, he added, butwhat has changed is the audacity of for-eign thieves coming to Paris who createhigh dramas by barging in and out in amatter of minutes.

‘‘They are using new techniques ofsmash and grab, using weapons tosmash glass,’’ he said, adding that thethieves sometimes strike in large num-bers. ‘‘Passive security doesn’t work ef-fectively, so there is reflection nowamong law enforcement about how toimprove.’’

In October, about 15 men demon-strated that brute force, attacking thejewelry store, Vacheron Constantin,near the Place Vendôme, with axes.They snatched 20 watche and streamedaway on foot, an odd scene captured in ashaky video by a witness.

Some suspects were captured by po-lice on the same day. Others werepicked up a few months later in a secondheist turned slapstick.

In January, eight men were arrestedon the Champs Élysées after they at-tacked a door of a jewelry store withsledge hammers and axes. In a form of

poetic street justice, they were trappedin an air space as they tried unsuccess-fully to force through a second door.

In such cases, it’s difficult to resist thecomic possibilities of crime. AfterColette was robbed, a group of universi-ty students in technology, business andmarketing decided to exploit the head-lines.

David, 20 — who declined to disclosehis last name to ‘‘remain discreet’’ —dreamed up the idea with four otherfriends to create ‘‘I robbed Colette’’ T-shirts. They quickly sold about 1,000over two days and then closed up shop.Spring exams beckoned.

‘‘We did it to be creative and funnyand to have a good time doing it,’’ hesaid Tuesday. ‘‘Colette is so expensive.Every time we run past it we see thoseChanel backpacks for about ¤2,500. Thatwas the aim of the project to react topeople wanting to buy so much stuffthere. It’s so expensive.’’

In contrast to Colette’s ¤135 designerKenzo T-shirts — ‘‘No Fish. No Noth-ing’’ — the student collection was itselfa real steal: ¤25.

Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting.

rity agency said, according to the newsagency.

The Ukrainian authorities havecharged Mr. Yanukovych with massmurder in connection with the deaths ofdemonstrators and declared himwanted as a fugitive on those charges.

In an interview on Thursday with TheAssociated Press and the Russian statetelevision channel NTV, Mr. Ya-nukovych said that he had ‘‘never givenany kinds of order for any shooting.’’

Yet the police authorities, which in-clude the country’s new prosecutor, thesecurity services head and Mr. Avakov,said that the order to open fire on pro-testers had been disseminated throughthe police chain of command, includingby the former interior minister, VitalyZakharchenko. The officials did not givemore information on how Mr. Ya-nukovych was involved, but againcalled for his arrest.

Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreignminister, has suggested that the killingsmay have been carried out by Right Sec-tor, an armed ultranationalist groupthat took part in the protests against Mr.Yanukovych.

At a news conference with the Kazakhforeign minister on Thursday, Mr. Lav-rov lashed out at both Ukraine and theWest for ‘‘exaggerating the issue’’ ofthe presence of Russian military troopstraining near the Ukrainian border,which Western officials have warnedmay be a guise for mobilizing an inva-sion force.

Mr. Lavrov also demanded more in-formation about possible plans byNATO to strengthen the defenses ofmember countries in Eastern EuropeNATO foreign ministers, meeting inBrussels earlier this week, ordered thealliance’s military commanders to draw

up such plans.In Moscow, Gazprom on Thursday an-

nounced for the second time in a weekthat it would raise the price it chargesUkraine for natural gas, tightening eco-nomic screws on the new pro-Westerngovernment in Kiev.

The chief executive, Aleksei B. Miller,said Gazprom stepped up the price byan additional $100 per 1,000 cubic me-ters, to a total of $485 for that volume ofgas. That is far more than Gazpromcharges utilities in other countries.

Gazprom holds a legal monopoly onexporting natural gas from Russia, andsets prices as its sees fit. This time,however, United States and EuropeanUnion taxpayers will in all likelihood befooting a part of Ukraine’s gas bill givenaide packages being offered to the new

LONDON

BY ALAN COWELL

In an apparent blow to international ef-forts to bolster peacekeeping forces inthe Central African Republic, Chad saidThursday that it was withdrawing froman African Union force confronting awave of sectarian bloodletting that hasdriven hundreds of thousands of peoplefrom their homes.

The Chadian announcement came asBan Ki-moon, the United Nations secre-tary general, sought to persuade a gath-ering of African and European leaders inBrussels to expand peacekeeping efforts.They now consist of 6,000 African troops,2,000 French soldiers and a promisedforce of 1,000 from the European Union.

In a statement, the Chadian govern-ment said its 850 soldiers had been ac-cused of siding with Muslim militias insectarian clashes with Christian fight-ers that have swept the Central AfricanRepublic for months.

‘‘Despite the sacrifices we havemade, Chad and Chadians have beentargeted in a gratuitous and maliciouscampaign that blamed them for all thesuffering’’ in the Central African Re-public, the Chadian Foreign Ministrysaid in a statement, according to newsreports.

The forces will remain until the logis-tics of their withdrawal can be ar-ranged, the statement said.

The surprise announcement cameafter an episode last weekend whenChadian troops were reported to havekilled dozens of people. On Monday, Af-rican peacekeeping troops defendedtheir action, saying the Chadians had

been acting in self-defense after an at-tack by Christian militants.

The latest accounts of violence in theCentral African Republic came onThursday in a report by Human RightsWatch that described more killings inremote areas by Christian and Muslimmilitias. In the southwest of the country,the report said, Christian militiasknown as anti-balaka killed 72 Muslimmen and boys, some as young as 9, intwo attacks in February in the village ofGuen. Days later, fighters from theSeleka, whose chaotic rule in the Cen-tral African Republic collapsed in Janu-ary, joined with cattle herders toslaughter 19 people in the village ofYakongo, 20 miles away.

‘‘These horrendous killings show thatthe French and African Union peace-keeping deployment is not protectingvillages from these deadly attacks,’’said Lewis Mudge, a researcher for Hu-man Rights Watch. ‘‘The Security Coun-cil shouldn’t waste another minute inauthorizing a United Nations peace-keeping mission with the troops and ca-pacity to protect the country’s vulner-able people.’’

He added, ‘‘Peacekeepers are provid-ing security in the main towns, butsmaller communities in the southwestare left exposed.’’

The Human Rights Watch report fol-lowed an assessment by the United Na-tions on Tuesday that the fighting hadkilled 60 people and injured more than100 in the previous 10 days.

The violence has forced almost 640,000people to flee their homes, includingmore than 200,000 in Bangui, the capital.More than 80,000, mostly Muslims, havefled to neighboring countries.

The Colette store near Place Vendôme in Paris. Two thieves stormed the entrance on a re-cent morning and then fled on a motorcycle with watches worth more than ¤600,000.

A group of students created aninstant shop on a websiteoffering T-shirts emblazonedwith ‘‘I Robbed Colette.’’

UKRAINE, FROM PAGE 1

Turkey endsblockage ofTwitter after2-week banISTANBUL

BY CEYLAN YEGINSU

The Turkish government unblockedTwitter on Thursday, a day after Tur-key’s highest court ruled that the two-week ban on the social media site violat-ed freedom of expression.

Twitter had been blocked in Turkeysince March 21, after Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to ‘‘erad-icate’’ the site following the circulationof leaked recordings that implicatedhim and members of his inner circle insweeping corruption allegations. Therecordings emerged in the run-up to lo-cal elections, which were held on Sun-day and resulted in a resounding victo-ry for Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-rootedJustice and Development Party.

Although the Constitutional Court is-sued the ruling on Wednesday, the gov-ernment did not move to lift the ban onTwitter until Thursday evening, a timelag that generated a great deal of specu-lation about whether the governmentwould abide by the ruling. If it had not, itwould have set up a confrontation be-tween the executive and judicialbranches of the government, and wouldhave likely emboldened Mr. Erdogan’smany critics who say he has become in-creasingly authoritarian.

The lifting of the ban is likely to takeheat off Mr. Erdogan in internationalcircles, where he has faced criticism for aseries of measures he has taken to pushback against the corruption investiga-tion. But with a ban still in place on You-Tube, and many other seemingly irre-versible steps taken by the government— such as purges of the police and judi-ciary and a law giving the governmentgreater control over the courts — thebroad narrative of Turkey under Mr. Er-dogan that has taken hold among his do-mestic and foreign critics is unchanged.

In its ruling, the court called the Twit-ter ban ‘‘illegal, arbitrary and a seriousrestriction on the right to obtain infor-mation.’’ An earlier ruling against theban by an administrative court in Anka-ra, the capital, had not been recognizedby the government authorities.

While many users flocked to Twitter tocelebrate its return, some said they stillcould not gain access to the site withoutusing measures to circumvent the ban.The government later issued a statementsaying restrictions would be lifted aftercertain technical steps had been taken.

‘‘This is a major victory for democracyand freedom of expression in Turkey,’’said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor atIstanbul Bilgi University who submittedthe petition to the Constitutional Court.‘‘We didn’t expect this today.’’

The main opposition RepublicanPeople’s Party, or C.H.P., which alsosubmitted an appeal to the Constitution-al Court, welcomed the decision.

‘‘This ruling by Turkey’s top Consti-tutional Court is a legal response to thePrime Minister’s denial of law and free-dom of speech,’’ said Sezgin Tanrikulu, amember of the C.H.P.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

Some see fodderfor humor as thievesshock Vendôme area,

Chad to quit peace effortin central African country

Kiev implicates Yanukovych in shooting of protesters

pro-Western government in Kiev.Gas pricing policies could be used to

siphon off some of that aide. The newprice announced Tuesday, Mr. Millersaid, reflected the cancellation of aBlack Sea base lease agreement on theCrimean Peninsula, struck in 2010 be-tween Russia and Ukraine. Under thatarrangement, called the Kharkiv Ac-cord, Russia reduced the gas price by$100 in exchange for an extension of thelease from 2017, when it was to expire,until 2042.

The Russian Parliament annulledthat deal this week, and officials madeclear that the gas price discount was nolonger warranted because Russia con-siders the entire Crimean Peninsula, in-cluding the base, to be its territory.

Prime Minister Dmitri A Medvedev

of Russia, who met with Mr. Miller ofGazprom on Thursday for a televiseddiscussion of gas pricing, has main-tained that Ukraine must now repay the$100 per 1,000 cubic meter price reduc-tion retroactively back to 2010. That isbecause, under the Kharkiv Accord, thereduction was an advance payment forleasing the base starting in 2017 — butas Russia has annexed Crimea, Ukrainewill be unable to deliver its side of theaccord after that date and thus must re-turn the entire sum, or $11 billion.

For comparison, the InternationalMonetary Fund aid package to Ukraineis $18 billion.

David M. Herszenhorn and Andrew E.Kramer contributed reporting fromMoscow.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Kiev’s main square in February. ‘‘An enormous number of people were harmed in this meat grinder,’’ one senior official said.

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES4 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

CORRECT IONS• An article on March 28 about Presi-dent Obama’s efforts to bolster theNATO alliance after Russia’s takeoverof Crimea misstated the number ofAmerican soldiers buried at FlandersField Cemetery in Belgium, where Mr.Obama, in a speech, evoked the clash ofgreat powers that set off World War I,the conflict in which the Americansdied, and defined the Cold War. Thereare 368 American soldiers buried atFlanders Field, not ‘‘thousands.’’•An article on Tuesday about the poten-tial ricochet effect on London of sanc-tions against Russia because of its an-nexation of Crimea misstated the posi-tion of the Channel Islands in regard tothe sanctions against Russia for its an-nexation of Crimea. While the islandsare independent from Britain and theEuropean Union, they have chosen tomirror the sanctions. It is not the casethat Russian assets there are ‘‘beyondthe reach of the sanctions.’’

world news asia americas

BY KENNETH CHANG

Inside a moon of Saturn, beneath its icyveneer and above its rocky core, is a seaof water the size of Lake Superior, scien-tists announced on Thursday.

The findings, published in the journalScience, confirm what planetary scien-tists have suspected about the moon,Enceladus, ever since they were aston-ished in 2005 by photographs showinggeysers of ice crystals shooting out of itssouth pole.

‘‘What we’ve done is put forth a strongcase for an ocean,’’ said David J. Steven-son, a professor of planetary science atthe California Institute of Technologyand an author of the Science paper.

For many researchers, this tiny, shinycueball of a moon, just over 300 mileswide, is now the most promising place tolook for life elsewhere in the solar sys-tem, even more than Mars.

‘‘Definitely Enceladus,’’ said LarryW. Esposito, a professor of astrophysic-al and planetary sciences, who was notinvolved in the research. ‘‘Becausethere’s warm water right there now.’’

Enceladus is caught in a gravitationaltug of war between Saturn and anothermoon, Dione, which bends its icy outerlayer, creating friction and heat. In theyears since discovering the geysers, theNASA spacecraft Cassini has made re-peated flybys of Enceladus, photograph-ing the fissures (nicknamed tigerstripes) where the geysers originate,measuring temperatures and identify-ing carbon-based organic molecules thatcould serve as building blocks for life.

Cassini has no instruments that candirectly detect water beneath the sur-face, but three flybys in the years 2010-12 were devoted to producing a map ofthe gravity field, noting where the pullwas stronger or weaker. During theflybys, lasting just a few minutes, radiotelescopes that are part of the DeepSpace Network broadcast a signal to thespacecraft, which echoed it back toEarth. As the pull of Enceladus’ gravitysped and then slowed the spacecraft,the frequency of the radio signal shifted,just as the pitch of a train whistle risesand falls depending whether the train iscoming or going.

Using atomic clocks on Earth, the sci-entists measured the radio frequencywith enough precision that they coulddiscern changes in the velocity of Cas-sini, hundreds of millions of miles away,as minuscule as 14 inches an hour.

They found that the moon’s gravitywas weaker at the south pole. At firstglance, that is not so surprising; there isa depression at the pole, and lower massmeans less gravity. But the depressionis so large that the gravity should actu-ally have been much weaker.

‘‘Then you say, ‘Aha, there must becompensation,’ ’’ Dr. Stevenson said.‘‘Something more dense under the ice.The natural candidate is water.’’

Liquid water is 8 percent denser thanice, so the presence of a sea 20 to 25miles below the surface fits the gravitymeasurements. ‘‘It’s an ocean that ex-tends in all directions from the southpole to about halfway the equator,’’ Dr.Stevenson said.

The underground sea is up to sixmiles thick, much deeper than a lake.‘‘It’s a lot more water than Lake Super-ior,’’ Dr. Stevenson said. ‘‘It may evenbe bigger. The ocean could extend allthe way to the north pole.’’

The conclusion was not a surprise, saidChristopher P. McKay, a planetary scien-tist at NASA Ames Research Center inMountain View, Calif., who studies thepossibility of life on other worlds.

It also makes Enceladus a more at-tractive destination for a future mission,especially one that would collectsamples from the plumes and returnthem to Earth to see if they contain anymicrobes.

TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Afghan Army has deployed troops in the Charkh district, in the eastern Afghan province of Logar, but the expectation is that no one is going to vote in the district on Saturday.

cided to support the Russian annexationof Crimea in a fit of pique after seeing re-ports that the United States might givePakistan some of the military equip-ment being shipped out of Afghanistan.

Senior Afghan officials said Mr. Kar-zai saw in the reports fresh evidence ofduplicity on the part of an ally who he be-lieves has sought for years to underminehis government. He was against thesurge, he felt betrayed by the bunglingAmerican attempt to unseat him in the2009 election, and, more recently, he hascome to believe that the United States,intentionally or not, is in league with Pa-kistan and, by extension, the Taliban.

The ill-will is shared by many Ameri-can officials, who see Mr. Karzai as anunreliable ingrate. But as much as theywould prefer to see Mr. Karzai’s presi-dency end, the Americans are stillcounting on him in one respect: Somehope his influence can help mediatewhat is expected to be a messy after-math to an election that has alreadyseen candidates accuse each other ofplanning to commit fraud and pledgingnot to accept the results if they lose.

Even Mr. Karzai’s fiercest criticscredit him with keeping Afghanistan’sethnic and regional rivalries in checkover the past 12 years, using cash, fa-vors and acute psychology to assemblethe unruly collection of ambitious politi-cians and old warlords that has definedthe Afghan government.

His ideal post-presidential role, theAfghan officials said, would be doingwhat he does best: presiding over meet-ings with elders, villagers and powerbrokers of all stripes, helping his suc-cessor keep the country together. Hecould also focus on trying to persuadethe Taliban to talk peace.

The things Mr. Karzai is said to hatedealing with — war strategy, navigatingrelationships with Western nations, thedaily briefing outlining the day’s casual-ties — would be the problem of the actu-al president.

Mr. Karzai has certainly not shiedaway from shaping the field of candi-dates hoping to fill that job. Even seem-ingly casual asides had telling effects oncandidacies as early as last year.

After Farooq Wardak, the educationminister and an early favorite to be-come an eventual front-runner, hurt hisleg during a trip to the provinces lastspring, Mr. Karzai told him in front ofthe entire cabinet, ‘‘That’s what you getwhen you run too fast to be president,’’according to a senior Afghan officialwho heard the remark. Mr. Wardakchose to stay out of the race.

Even those who had Mr. Karzai’s impli-cit blessing found they had to tread care-fully. When Zalmay Rassoul, his foreignminister at the time, began trying to sellhimself to potential backers by distan-cing himself from Mr. Karzai, the presi-dent responded by luring away some of

Mr. Rassoul’s potential running mates.He promised to make one of them a

cabinet minister. And he directed anoth-er, Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnicUzbek warlord who could potentially de-liver hundreds of thousands of votes, tothe join the camp of a rival presidentialcandidate, Ashraf Ghani, a technocratwho holds a doctorate from Columbia.

‘‘What are you doing going with thatold man?’’ — meaning Dr. Rassoul — Mr.Karzai told Mr. Dostum, according to thesenior Afghan official. Mr. Ghani ‘‘can getyou out of that human rights problem.’’

Mr. Karzai then gave Mr. Ghani$40,000 in cash to seed his campaign warchest and did the same for Dr. Rassoul,with whom he had made peace, two se-nior Afghan officials said. Both candi-dates are now considered leading con-tenders going into Saturday’s election.

Mr. Karzai offered no such deal to hiselder brother, Qayum, fearing that theelection of another Karzai would tarnishhis legacy. Instead, he engaged in a bitof classic Karzai maneuvering to end hisbrother’s candidacy, orchestrating ameeting of ethnic Pashtun elders, who,after some initial drama, dutifully re-commended that the president’s broth-er join the Rassoul camp.

One official close to Mr. Karzai saidthat decision and the rejection of Amer-ican demands to sign the security dealwere the ones that have most set Mr.Karzai at ease in recent weeks.

‘‘There are things he has decided inhis mind,’’ said Umar Daudzai, the in-terior minister and Mr. Karzai’s formerchief of staff. ‘‘When you are not sure,you are not relaxed.’’

Though American officials worry thathis continued influence will be used toobstruct them at every turn, they arestill counting on him in one respect:Some hope he can help mediate what isexpected to be a messy aftermath to anelection that has already seen candi-dates accuse each other of planning tocommit fraud and pledging not to acceptthe results if they lose.

Mr. Karzai, in a speech broadcastThursday night, urged candidates to notgo down that path after the election.

‘‘Expressing different and opposingviews during the election campaign isone of the principles of democracy,’’ hesaid. ‘‘But I am sure that once the elec-tion campaign is over, the candidateswill respect people’s votes, prioritizethe national interest and will accept thelegitimate results of the election.’’

BR IEFLY

Asia

TOKYO

Japan cancels whale huntbut leaves door open for 2015Japan has canceled this year’s whalehunt off Antarctica, days after an inter-national court ruled against the killings,which had drawn worldwide criticism.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said hewould comply, although the ministry incharge of the hunt, which canceled it onWednesday, appeared to leave Japansome flexibility for the future. The ac-tion leaves open the possibility that Ja-pan will try to revive the program un-der different legal reasoning next year.

The hunt had taken advantage of aprovision in a 1986 international com-mercial-whaling moratorium that al-lowed killings for research purposes, areason rejected on Monday in a rulingby the International Court of Justice.

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

Government frees prisoners,but Taliban status is disputedThe Pakistani Interior Ministry saidThursday that the government had re-leased 16 noncombatant members ofthe Taliban. But Prime Minister NawazSharif’s office said those freed hadbeen involved in petty crimes and werenot insurgents.

Islam Zeb, the highest governmentofficial in South Waziristan, said the 16were among 800 prisoners whose re-lease the Pakistani Taliban had deman-ded on the ground that they were inno-cent family members. He said anadditional 100 prisoners on theTaliban’s list would be released in thenext few days. (REUTERS)

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTANBomb goes off near Musharraf convoyA bomb apparently directed at PervezMusharraf, the former Pakistani mili-tary ruler charged with treason, ex-ploded on Thursday in an intersectionin Islamabad minutes after his convoypassed by, the police said, but no onewas hurt. The convoy was moving Mr.Musharraf from a military hospital inRawalpindi to his farmhouse on theoutskirts of Islamabad.

For some Afghans, vote is empty promiseCHARKH, AFGHANISTAN

BY AZAM AHMED

One of the few polling centers in this partof Logar Province is the government’sdistrict headquarters, a building so dev-astated by rocket attacks and Talibangunfire that it looks more like a bombshelter than an administrative office.

As the body count for security forcemembers has risen over the past fewdays in this district, a stretch of dustyfarmland surrounded by mountains, ithas become clear that no one here is go-ing to vote on Saturday, for president orfor provincial council delegates.

So far, that has not stopped securityofficials from proclaiming the districtopen for voting: It is not among theroughly 10 percent of 7,500 total nationalsites shut down as too dangerous to pro-tect. The Charkh district center hasbeen pumped full of security force mem-bers to keep the vote a nominal possibil-ity, but residents know that within a dayor two after the elections, the guards willbe gone and the Taliban will remain.

‘‘The government has no meaninghere,’’ said Khalilullah Kamal, the dis-trict governor, who was shot two timesin the stomach a few months ago whilespeaking in a mosque. ‘‘If there is no ex-pectation that we will arrest people whobreak the law, then how do we expectthe people to come and vote?’’

Security is the cornerstone of theAfghan government’s promise to deliv-er a free and fair election, and this timearound the entire operation rests on thecountry’s security forces. They are fac-ing a Taliban campaign of violent disrup-tion that has repeatedly struck at West-ern and government targets, includingon Wednesday, when a suicide bomberkilled six police officers at the gate of theInterior Ministry in Kabul, the capital.

Despite that, many early reports havebeen favorable. Afghan and Western of-ficials alike believe that more peoplewill vote on Saturday than in the 2009elections. The violence in Kabul stillgrabs headlines, but officials say thatelsewhere, attacks are down since thelast election. And generally, Afghans inKabul and other major population cen-ters have been enthusiastically en-gaged in the campaign.

But the reality in some rural and con-tested parts of Afghanistan is far differ-ent. In Charkh and similar districts inpockets of the south and east, theTaliban’s threat is more real than thegovernment’s promise. Their allottedballots will not add to any Kabul admin-istration’s credibility, and worse, thereis real fear that the government’s pres-ence will be completely driven out after

Western troops are gone. For now,Afghan forces are struggling to keepthese districts on the electoral map.

Officials say security in major popula-tion centers has improved to the pointthat some districts where no real votingwas possible in 2009, particularlyaround the southern city of Kandahar,are more likely to count this time. TheAfghan Army has deployed an extra60,000 soldiers across the country in re-cent weeks, focusing heavily on theareas that sit on the bubble of insecureand just secure enough.

That technically includes Charkh. Butthe truth is that the insurgents haveheld sway here for years, includingwhen American forces were present.

Then, the dirt road leading into thedistrict was riddled with explosives, thevillages armed with machine guns, theresidents determined to expel foreign-ers from their midst. When Afghanforces took over, the assumption wasthat the district would quickly fall to the

Taliban. But the security forces provedresilient, willing to go after the insur-gents or at least hold their ground.

Still, before a recent surge of opera-tions that began two weeks before theelection, the road was deadly, laced withbombs. Large mud compounds flank thestreet, offering ample cover for Talibanfighters. When soldiers venture into thecommunities to find the shooters, theyfind women and unarmed farmers.

The administrative building sits at thecenter of the main road’s path throughthe district — itself a link in a majorthoroughfare of insurgent traffic acrossa broader region of the country’s east.Every surface within the battered mazeof Hesco barriers and concrete wallsused to secure the building has beengouged by repeated fire, leaving the im-pression that the entire compound issuffering a lethal bout of chickenpox.

More than 550 security force mem-bers, soldiers and police officers havebeen operating in Charkh over the last

few weeks, trying to shore up securityenough for civilians to get out and vote ifthey choose to. After the elections,however, their numbers here will dwin-dle to about 150, the majority from thearmy. Even the most optimistic securityofficials acknowledge that the road willagain become impassable.

Residents say they feel besieged — bythe Taliban, who rule with an iron fist,and the government, which has shown aheavy hand in the last few weeks as ithassles drivers in an effort to ferret outsuicide bombers.

‘‘The villagers are fed up with thegovernment and the Taliban,’’ said Mo-hammad Nafi, a teacher, as he wassearched for the fifth time in an hour. ‘‘I

don’t think a single person will come outand vote.’’

His friend Mohammad Isa put it morebluntly, ‘‘We will be very, very happy tosee the Afghan forces leave this area.’’

Other villagers who are more enthusi-astic about the government acknowl-edge that there is nothing it can doabout Taliban control. Abdul Malik, atribal elder in the district, said no matterhow much security the governmentprovided, it meant nothing if officialscould not govern.

‘‘The Taliban have a district center,’’Mr. Malik said, sitting in a circle of mil-itary commanders he had come to visitWednesday morning. ‘‘We have a gov-ernment district center, too, but nobodycares about it, and they definitely don’twant to be seen there. So they go to theTaliban district center instead.’’

Haris Kakar contributed reporting fromCharkh, and Taimoor Shah from Kanda-har, Afghanistan.

Sea of wateris discoveredunder ice onSaturn moon

Violence in rural areasis expected to preventmeaningful participation

‘‘The villagers are fed upwith the government and theTaliban. I don’t think a singleperson will come out and vote.’’

be judged as a true statesman who trans-ferred power peacefully for the first timein Afghanistan,’’ Mr. Muradian said. ‘‘Atthe same time, he his being pulled by hisMachiavellian side, and he wants to re-main relevant in Afghan politics and bethe power behind the next president.’’

That may be bad news for Obama ad-ministration officials who had basicallygiven up working with Mr. Karzai afterhe refused to sign a long-term securitydeal that would allow American troopsto stay. The leading candidates to suc-ceed him have all promised to sign thedeal once inaugurated, but that day islikely to be months away. Mr. Karzai willremain president in that time, and hispublic frustration with American policyhas only been hardening in recentmonths, Afghan officials say.

The president’s advisers insist,however, that Mr. Karzai is taking painsto avoid any appearance of overt influ-ence in the election. A wide array ofAfghan and Western officials concedethat he has allowed a real presidentialrace to develop once he helped set thefield. And he has let the competing fac-tions within his government supportwhomever they preferred.

The new first vice president he just ap-pointed, for example, supports the onecandidate whom Mr. Karzai is said to bemost opposed to seeing elected: Abdul-lah Abdullah, the president’s chief polit-ical opponent. Mr. Karzai has said he be-lieves Dr. Abdullah relies too narrowlyon his appeal to his Tajik ethnic politicalbase and might tip the country back intocivil war if elected, but the president stillhas not publicly spoken against him, ac-cording to some of his aides.

The aides, along with several other of-ficials interviewed about Mr. Karzai,spoke on condition of anonymity toavoid angering the president.

Yet upsetting Mr. Karzai might betougher to do these days. The president,officials close to him say, has suddenlyrelaxed in the past month. After com-mitting to his course by rejecting theObama administration’s pressure tosign a security deal, he was said to beimmensely pleased when the flow ofAmerican officials into his office slowedto a trickle as a result.

Still, the relationship is not over justyet. And if he is more relaxed, Mr. Kar-zai has still shown no tendency to softenhis criticism of the Americans.

Late last month, for instance, he de-

WAKIL KOHSAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Hamid Karzai arriving to deliver his final address as president in the Afghan Parliamentin March. Officials close to Mr. Karzai say he has suddenly relaxed in the past month.

After Afghan elections, Karzai won’t just fade awayKARZAI, FROM PAGE 1

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 5INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES6 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

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Panama City capitalizes on glimmers of a resurgencePANAMA

BY KEVIN BRASS

At the tip of Punta Pacífica, a neighbor-hood in Panama covered with sky-scrapers, a narrow bridge leads to a new25-acre artificial island.

The island, which covers 10 hectares,is the first part of a residential and mar-ina development called Ocean Reef,originally announced in 1998 by Empre-sas ICA, a Mexican conglomerate.Today, Grupo Los Pueblos, a Panamani-an company hired by Empresas ICA todevelop the project, is handing over thefirst lots to buyers planning to buildhomes there.

The project, with a marina and resort-style amenities, has all the elements of adevelopment designed for internationalbuyers seeking a second home. But ofthe 63 buyers so far, 56 are fromPanama, said Alfredo Alemán, execu-tive vice president of Grupo LosPueblos.

Sales to foreign buyers dried up hereafter the 2008 global economic crisis.But developers like Mr. Alemán are re-viving their global marketing effortsamid signs of renewed interest from in-ternational buyers in a city that is oftencalled the Miami of Latin America.

Such optimism in the residential mar-ket is fueled by the continued strengthof the local economy, analysts say. The$5.2 billion expansion of the PanamaCanal is scheduled for completion in2015, although it has been mired in dis-pute and work suspensions. And FirstQuantum Minerals, a Canadian com-pany, is planning a $6 billion coppermining operation in western Panama.

In the residential market, ‘‘a lot of thegrowth will come from existing multina-tionals that already have moved here,’’said Justin Boyar, who tracks the mar-ket for Jones Lang LaSalle, a propertyconsulting firm.

There is no central source of reliablereal estate data in Panama. But agentssay that prices increased 10 percent ormore in the last year, with a jump in buy-ers from Venezuela, Colombia andNorth America.

For example, apartments selling for$186 a square foot six months ago noware selling for $205 to $214 a square foot,

said Duncan McGowan president ofPunta Pacifica Realty, a local estateagent (Panama real estate is typicallytransacted in dollars.)

The price increase is a contrast to thesteady declines of recent years. After abuilding boom in which dozens of resid-ential towers were completed, prices inmany projects dropped 30 percent to 50percent from 2008 to 2012, according toindustry estimates. At the time, morethan 300 towers were in the planningstages, under construction or recentlycompleted in the city.

More than 50 percent of the buyers in

Trump Ocean Club — which opened in2011 as the tallest building in CentralAmerica at 932 feet — forfeited their de-posits rather than complete the pur-chase of units that had significantlydropped in value.

Even as the global economy re-covered, prices in the city were slow torebound. And projects completed afterthe downturn have added more than4,000 apartments to the market over thepast three years, according to datatracked by Panama Equity, a local es-tate agency.

Yet many say that they believe that

the canal and mining projects will at-tract more buyers.

‘‘I think there will be two Panamas:the Panama before the expansion of thecanal and the Panama afterward,’’ saidJosé Bern, president of Empresas Bern,one of the most prolific residential build-ers in the city along Avenida Balboa, themain road on the central city’s water-front.

Industry supporters and local resi-dents also hope that the completion of along list of infrastructure projects willhelp ease the city’s longstanding prob-lems with sewage and traffic. A citywide

RODRIGO ARANGUA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The Punta Pacífica neighborhood in Panama. Optimism in the city’s residential market is generated by the continued strength of the local economy, analysts say.

After economic slump,developers see renewedinterest from foreigners

subway system, the first in CentralAmerica, is scheduled to open thisspring.

‘‘The biggest hope is that it will re-lease us from the massive amount ofcars on the road here,’’ said Sandie Dav-is, a Seattle native who invested in realestate even before she moved to the cityfive years ago.

In 2006, Ms. Davis paid a preconstruc-tion price of $117,000 for a three-bed-room, 1,100-square-foot apartment inthe Costa del Este, a fast-growing mas-ter-planned, 310-acre development afew miles outside the city center. She

rented it out for $1,800 to $2,000 a month,finally selling it in 2012 for $180,000.

Ms. Davis now lives in a 2,368-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in anolder building in Obarrio, the city’sbanking district, about a block from anew metro station. She paid $240,000 forthe apartment, including the furniture,in 2009.

With the market in decline at the time,‘‘it was a little bit of an emotional play,’’she said, adding, ‘‘I’d seen the apart-ment a year before and fell in love withit.’’

Most of the new residential activity inthe city has come from Costa del Este.Empresas Bern is shifting its emphasisto the newer area, said Mr. Bern, thecompany president.

‘‘We’ve completed delivery of our lastbuilding on Avenida Balboa,’’ he said.

Development is also increasing inPanamá Pacífico, a 3,450-acre project at

the former Howard Air Force Base, onthe west side of the Panama Canal. De-veloped by the British company London& Regional Properties, the project plansfor more than 20,000 residential units aswell as office and commercial space.

So far, about 800 homes have beensold, most in the past two years, saidMarco Ruiz, London & Regional’s direc-tor of residential development. As forconstruction, 270 homes were built in2013, with 600 scheduled for completionthis year, he said.

Eric Carrasco, a Panamanian whoruns a tour company, recently pur-chased a four-bedroom, 3,330-square-foot home being built in Panamá Pací-fico. He says the new house will give hisfamily a different life than what theynow have in a congested Panama neigh-borhood.

‘‘Now I drive my kids to school and ittakes 45 minutes,’’ Mr. Carrasco said.‘‘There, they will be able to ride theirbicycles to school.’’

About 80 percent of the buyers inPanamá Pacífico are Panamanian, butthe developers expects internationalsales to account for a larger percentagein the future.

‘‘We know it’s going to turn around,’’Mr. Ruiz said. ‘‘The demographics arethere. They’ve always been there.’’

‘‘I think there will be twoPanamas: the Panama beforethe expansion of the canal andthe Panama afterward.’’

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 7INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

americas world news

LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS

President Obama said in Chicago that officials were ‘‘going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. We’re heartbroken something like this might have happened again.’’

KILLEEN, TEX.

BY DAVID MONTGOMERY,MANNY FERNANDEZAND ASHLEY SOUTHALL

Military officials testifying at a hearingon Thursday in Washington providedsome detail about the soldier at FortHood accused of killing three people andwounding 16 others at the post on Wed-nesday before taking his own life.

The secretary of the Army, John M.McHugh, said at a Senate Armed Ser-vices Committee that the suspect, an Iraqwar veteran identified as Specialist IvanLopez, was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder at the time ofthe shooting. Army officials said thatSpecialist Lopez had been prescribedAmbien, a sleep aid, and other medica-tions to treat anxiety and depression.

Specialist Lopez was examined by apsychiatrist within the last month, theArmy secretary said, but showed nosigns that he might commit a violent act.‘‘The plan forward was just to continueto monitor and treat him as deemed ap-propriate,’’ Mr. McHugh said.

He also said that the suspect had had‘‘no involvement with extremist organi-zations of any kind,’’ and that ‘‘he had aclean record.’’

Fort Hood’s weapons rules for sol-diers who are not police officers rely inlarge part on the honor system. Soldiersmust register their firearms, whichArmy officials said Specialist Lopez hadfailed to do. Regardless of registration,most of the vehicles of the soldiers en-tering the base are not given a thoroughscreening for firearms.

The base’s rules prohibit soldiersfrom storing weapons in their vehicles,require firearms to be kept in certainstorage areas and mandate that all per-sonnel bringing a privately owned fire-

arm onto base in a vehicle must declarethat they are doing so and state the rea-son why. Violators face judicial or ad-ministrative penalties.

On Nov. 5, 2009, inside a medical pro-cessing building at Fort Hood, MajorNidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 12 sol-diers and one civilian while wounding orshooting at 30 other soldiers and two po-lice officers. He drove onto the base thatday with an FN Five-seven semi-auto-matic handgun and a .357-caliber re-volver in his vehicle.

The security procedures put in placefollowing the 2009 shooting were butone of several avenues of inquiry forArmy officials and federal investigatorson Thursday.

The soldier had been a member of thePuerto Rico National Guard for nineyears before joining the Army in 2008,the military said. In addition to servingas a truck driver in Iraq in 2011 from Au-gust to December, Mr. Lopez had beendeployed to the Sinai Peninsula for aboutone year while in the National Guard.

‘‘He was a very experienced soldier,’’said Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, theArmy’s chief of staff.

According to media reports, the gun-man’s wife had been interviewed andwas cooperating with law enforcementofficials.

On Thursday morning, the base an-nounced that it was making counselorsavailable and that a number of activi-ties, including physical training, hadbeen canceled for the day.

Nine of the 16 injured were taken toScott & White Healthcare, a hospital innearby Temple, Tex., for treatment, theauthorities said. Three of the woundedwere in critical condition on Thursday.Hospital officials said doctors had oper-ated on two patients — a man and awoman — who had suffered gunshotwounds to the abdomen and neck. Thethird person in critical condition has anabdominal injury.

Fort Hood’s commanding general saidWednesday that the gunman had died ofa self-inflicted gunshot wound. The com-mander, Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, told re-

porters that the soldier’s motive re-mained unclear, but that the shooting didnot appear to be related to terrorism.

General Milley said that while thegunman was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, no diagnosishad been made. There were indicationsthat he had reported a traumatic braininjury when he returned from Iraq, Gen-eral Milley said.

Reports of the shooting sent dozens oflocal, state and federal law enforcementofficials rushing to the base as they hadin November 2009. In Chicago, Presi-dent Obama said that White House andPentagon officials were following theevents closely.

‘‘We are going to get to the bottom ofexactly what happened,’’ Mr. Obama

said. ‘‘We’re heartbroken somethinglike this might have happened again.’’

The episode appeared to have unfol-ded around 4:30 p.m. at a medical sup-port building. Witnesses describedchaos as gunshots rang out.

The base was put on lockdown, asArmy officials took to Twitter and Face-book to alert soldiers there to shelter inplace and stay away from windows. Theinjured were transported to Fort Hood’smedical center and other area hospitals.

The authorities said Specialist Lopezappeared to have walked into one build-ing, then gone inside a vehicle and firedshots from the vehicle with a .45-caliberSmith & Wesson semiautomatic pistolthat had recently been bought in theKilleen area. He got out of the vehicle,walked into another building andopened fire again, and then engagedwith a military police officer beforeshooting himself.

He put his hands up, General Milleysaid, then reached under his jacket. Theofficer pulled out her weapon, and then

Specialist Lopez put his weapon to hishead and fired. General Milley de-scribed the police officer’s actions as‘‘clearly heroic,’’ adding: ‘‘She did herjob. She did exactly what we would ex-pect of U.S. Army military police.’’

Major Hasan, who carried out the at-tack in 2009, was found guilty and sen-tenced to death after a military trial heldat Fort Hood last year under tight secu-rity. He was transferred after the trial toFort Leavenworth in Kansas, home ofthe military’s death row and deathchamber.

In addition to the 2009 attack and theone on Wednesday, Fort Hood was thesite of a planned attack that was foiledby the authorities.

A 22-year-old Army private, NaserJason Abdo, was arrested in July 2011and charged with trying to detonate anexplosive device at a restaurant fre-quented by Fort Hood soldiers. PrivateAbdo was found at a hotel room near thebase with a .40-caliber semiautomaticpistol, bomb-making materials and anarticle describing how to make a bombin a kitchen. He had been involved indisputes with the military over hisMuslim beliefs and his coming deploy-ment to Afghanistan. He was convictedby a federal jury of attempted use of aweapon of mass destruction, amongother charges.

Representative Michael McCaul, Re-publican of Texas and chairman of theHomeland Security Committee, said thethree episodes had given him concernthat the base was ‘‘becoming a targetfor potential jihadists.’’

In Washington, intelligence officialssaid Thursday that they were investi-gating potential terrorist connections tothe shooting, but so far had no evidenceto suggest any.

Dave Montgomery reported from Killeen,Tex., Manny Fernandez from Houstonand Ashley Southall from New York.Timothy Williams and Emma G. Fitzsim-mons contributed reporting from NewYork, Andrew McLemore from Temple,Tex., and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

WASHINGTON

BY MARK LANDLER

Each year, just before Passover, Mal-colm Hoenlein sends a letter to the pres-ident, requesting that he grant clem-ency to Jonathan J. Pollard, anAmerican sentenced to life in prison in1987 for passing suitcases stuffed withclassified documents to Israel.

This week, with his goal suddenlywithin reach, Mr. Hoenlein, the leader ofan umbrella group of American Jewishorganizations, has put a hold on the let-ter. He is waiting to see whether Presi-dent Obama will release Mr. Pollard aspart of a prisoner exchange with Israelthat would extend peace negotiationsbetween the Israelis and Palestinians.

Even now, nearly three decades later,Mr. Pollard’s case bedevils AmericanJews. While more and more of them be-lieve that the time to release him is longpast — he spied for an ally, not an enemy,they say, and has expressed remorse —they are deeply, often viscerally, dividedover whether he should be used as a chitin a diplomatic transaction with Israel.

For those directly involved in tryingto broker Middle East peace, the talk offreeing a Reagan-era spy has roused an-other ghost from the past: the dark sug-gestion that American Jews, like Mr.Pollard, inevitably hold divided loyaltiesand cannot be trusted in sensitive posts.

American Jews worry that if Mr. Pol-lard receives a hero’s welcome in Israel— a likely scenario, given the Israeli gov-ernment’s long campaign on his behalf— it would cause a backlash in theUnited States, where Mr. Pollard is stillviewed by many, especially in the nation-al-security establishment, as a traitor

who sold his country’s secrets for cash.‘‘Pollard represents the ultimate be-

trayal,’’ said Aaron David Miller, one ofa circle of American Jewish diplomatswho came of age at the time of Mr. Pol-lard’s arrest. ‘‘He is also a poster childfor one of the darker tropes in Americansociety: that Jews simply cannot have asingle loyalty.’’

Born in Galveston, Texas, to a Jewishfamily shadowed by the Holocaust, Mr.Pollard grew up with Zionist ideals and afascination with the world of spying.With a degree from Stanford University,he was hired as Navy intelligence ana-lyst and soon began selling classified in-formation to an Israeli handler, who paidhim $1,500 a month, bought his wife adiamond and sapphire ring, and sent thecouple on expensive trips to Europe.

In 1985, Mr. Pollard sought asylum inthe Israeli Embassy in Washington butwas disavowed by the Israelis. In 1987,after a reading a memo from the de-fense secretary at the time, Caspar W.Weinberger, detailing the damage hehad done, a judge sentenced Mr. Pollardto a life term. Since 1993, he has been in afederal prison in North Carolina.

Mr. Hoenlein, who has visited Mr. Pol-lard in prison, said he should be re-leased purely on humanitarian grounds.But he said he was resigned that itwould probably be linked to Middle Eastpolitics, particularly since Mr. Pollard iseligible for parole in November 2015,

which makes him a diminishing asset asa bargaining chip.

‘‘All along, many of us felt his releasewould be part of a larger context,’’ saidMr. Hoenlein, the executive vice chair-man of the Conference of Presidents ofMajor Jewish Organizations.

For some Jewish leaders, however,the prospect that Mr. Pollard would bereleased reflects the desperation of Sec-retary of State John Kerry to keep thepeace talks alive.

Mr. Kerry, in Algiers on Thursday for asecurity conference, pointedly warnedIsraeli and Palestinian leaders that timewas running short to salvage the peacetalks. He canceled a trip on Wednesday tothe region when a seemingly imminentdeal to extend the talks — reportedly in-cluding Mr. Pollard’s release — fell apart.But in Washington, the White Housespokesman, Jay Carney, said that the dia-logue remained open and that both sideswanted ‘‘to find a way to move forward.’’

The potential release of Mr. Pollardalso muddies the moral issue, since aspart of the deal, Israel would agree to re-lease 400 prisoners, including Arab-Is-raelis, some of whom are guilty of killingJews.

‘‘If everything the secretary of statehas achieved hangs on the thread of ex-changing Jonathan Pollard for Palestin-ian murderers of women and children,than there wasn’t much there to beginwith,’’ said Abraham H. Foxman, the na-tional director of the Anti-DefamationLeague.

At the time of Mr. Pollard’s arrest,American Jews were uniformly ap-palled by his crimes, Mr. Foxman said,and worried that it might reverberateon them. He recalled rejecting a requestthat the Anti-Defamation League de-clare the life sentence anti-Semitic.

Nowhere was the anxiety more acutethan among Jews working in sensitivejobs involving the Middle East — jobsthat were just opening up to Jews dur-ing the Reagan administration.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassa-dor to Egypt and Israel, said he knew ofJews who were removed from projectsinvolving Israel after Mr. Pollard’s ar-rest. Even now, he said, Americans withrelatives living in Israel are sometimesdenied high-level security clearances.

Dennis B. Ross, a senior adviser on theMiddle East to both President Bill Clin-ton and Mr. Obama, recalled fearing thathis loyalty as a Pentagon policy analystwould be questioned after Mr. Pollard’sarrest. ‘‘Initially, there was a kind of ab-horrence,’’ he said. ‘‘But the longer he’sbeen in, the more people ask questions.’’

Among those who have publiclycalled for Mr. Pollard’s release are twoformer secretaries of state, Henry A.Kissinger and George P. Shultz, and aformer director of the C.I.A., R. JamesWoolsey. For the Israelis, who grantedMr. Pollard citizenship in 1995 and ad-mitted he had spied for them in 1998, hisrelease is now an article of faith.

‘‘He is the embodiment of a nationalnarrative of the Jew who sacrificed him-self for his people,’’ said Michael B.Oren, an American-born historian whorenounced his United States citizenshipin 2009 to become Israel’s ambassadorto Washington.

While Mr. Pollard remains a reviledfigure for many American Jews, sup-

port for his release crosses politicalboundaries.

‘‘This is someone whose politics I de-test, and whose role in public sphere willto be support reactionary Israeli policy,’’said Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, aprogressive Jewish magazine in Berke-ley, Calif. ‘‘Nevertheless, his continuedimprisonment is unconscionable.’’

Still, Mr. Lerner noted that the issueof dual loyalties had faded for AmericanJews, along with Mr. Pollard’s case. Ifone asked young Jews about JonathanPollard, he said, ‘‘the answer would be‘Pollard who?’’’

‘‘He’s not an issue,’’ Mr. Lerner said,‘‘he’s not in people’s consciousness.’’

‘‘Armageddon has not arrived,’’ Mr.Obama said on Tuesday at the WhiteHouse, embracing the news as an exon-eration.

‘‘Instead, this law is helping millionsof Americans, and in the coming years itwill help millions more.’’

The questions now are how many mil-lions more, how much help and at whatcost.

The Congressional Budget Office esti-mates that enrollment in the federal andstate-run exchanges set up to help indi-viduals find affordable insurance willgrow to 22 million in 2016. The Congres-sional Budget Office has predicted thatexpansions of the Medicaid programwill cover nine million people this year.

But for now it is difficult to say pre-cisely how many Americans — of the 48million estimated by the Census Bureauto have lacked insurance in 2012 — re-main uncovered.

White House officials said they didnot yet have a tally of those enrolleeswho had previously been insured underplans that were canceled, nor of how

many people who signed up have paidtheir initial premiums.

‘‘The reality is that a very, very highproportion of them already had insur-ance, or would have had insurance with-out enactment of the A.C.A.,’’ saidJoseph R. Antos of the American Enter-prise Institute, a former CongressionalBudget Office analyst who specializes inhealth-policy economics.

The actual cost to the government pernewly covered individual, Mr. Antossaid, might prove ‘‘pretty astronomic-al.’’

Key questions linger: whether con-sumers continue to pay their share ofmonthly premiums, whether they haveaccess to the doctors and hospitals theyneed and those they want — and wheth-er insurance companies might have toraise premiums because too fewhealthy, young people have enrolled.

Assessing how the law, so far, has af-fected health care costs is difficult.While those costs have generally beenrising at a slower pace in the past fewyears, part of that slowing preceded thelaw’s passage and part is attributed to

post-recession economic weakness.Administration officials say that the

law’s emphasis on preventive care andcost containment has helped. Indicatorssuch as a decline in hospital readmis-sion rates suggest that the law’s incen-tives have encouraged providers to holddown spending. Mr. Obama said in July

that health care costs were growing attheir slowest rate in 50 years.

United States spending on health careremains far above world standards. TheFrench system, for example, providesuniversal coverage and a highly ratedquality of care at roughly half the cost,per capita, of the American system.

The government there negotiatesprices for hospitals, doctors and pre-scription drugs; because the medical-industrial complex in France carries

less clout than its American counter-part, stronger cost controls result.France has fewer private health in-surers and lower administrative costs.

A typical specialist in France makesnearly $100,000 less a year than his orher American counterpart, according to2010 figures from the Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Develop-ment, though Americans generallyleave medical school with far higher in-debtedness. And the United States has asubstantially higher ratio of specialiststo generalists.

American hospitals, medical-devicemakers, specialists and other providerscan sometimes set prices that are dras-tically higher than those prevailing inother countries. Controlling a healthcare system that layers governmentregulation and oversight above aprivate insurance system and profit-driven health care economy is likely tochallenge presidents long after Mr.Obama leaves office.

And the political battles over healthcare are far from over. Administrationofficials say that Democratic candidates

must be prepared for a fierce fight in themonths leading up to November elec-tions to convince Americans that Re-publicans — with their call to repeal andreplace the health law — want to take in-surance away from millions of people.

Those who call for a return to thestatus quo ante, said Jay Carney, theWhite House spokesman, are ‘‘going tohave some explaining to do to those mil-lions of Americans who now have the se-curity of affordable health insurance.’’

Robert J. Blendon, a professor ofhealth policy at Harvard University,said several dynamics would keep theissue alive at least through Novemberand the midterm elections: Many keyelectoral fights will be in Republican-leaning states where the law is unpopu-lar; further bumps on the road to imple-mentation seem inevitable; and a rela-tively small number of Americans haveso far visibly benefited from the newlaw.

‘‘There will not be a single Republi-can running for office that I can find,’’Mr. Blendon said, ‘‘who will do anythingbut talk about repealing or scaling back

this bill.’’Mr. Antos agreed: ‘‘Republicans will

continue to scream ‘repeal and replace’even though that hasn’t made any sensefor a long, long time.’’

Mr. Obama on Tuesday proclaimedhimself mystified by the continuing as-saults on the law, and said the enroll-ment figures should finally put an end toRepublicans’ repeated repeal attempts.

‘‘I’ve got to admit, I don’t get it,’’ hesaid. ‘‘Why are folks working so hardfor people not to have health insur-ance?’’

As if on cue, Mr. Obama’s Republicanadversaries dismissed the enrollmentdata as flawed and irrelevant. SenatorMitch McConnell of Kentucky, theminority leader, called the health carelaw ‘‘a catastrophe for the country.’’

While some officials described the en-rollments as the end of a marathon, Mr.Blendon of Harvard said, the reality forthe administration is that it is ‘‘the endof the first stretch of the marathon. Theygot through the first stretch, and all youcan say is that it’s not as bad as wouldhave been expected.’’

U.S. health law hits a mark, but critics persist and political battles loomHEALTH, FROM PAGE 1

Middle East talksfocus on jailed spy

‘‘We’re going to have30 million people withoutcoverage, and that would beunthinkable in Europe.’’

KARL DEBLAKER/ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1998

Jonathan J. Pollard is eligible for parolenext year, reducing his bargaining value.

Iraq war veteran accusedof killing 3 had beenevaluated at Fort Hood

‘‘The plan forward wasjust to continue to monitorand treat him as deemedappropriate.’’

Gunman was treated for depression

Israel wants U.S. to freeformer Navy analyst,but case remains divisive

‘‘He is also a poster child forone of the darker tropes.’’

8 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

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Ghazi Stadium, where every event in-vites comparisons by Western journa-lists to the public executions the Talibanonce held here. In a voice hoarse fromcampaigning, Mr. Ghani spoke to thecrowd about politics, religion, ethnicharmony and social welfare, promisinga brighter future and a new style of gov-ernance. The stadium was only half-full,but the attendees, mostly young men,were excited.

Polls show that Mr. Ghani is one ofthe three most popular candidates,

along with AbdullahAbdullah, a northern-er who placed secondin 2009, and ZalmayRassoul, an unas-suming bureaucratwidely considered tobe Mr. Karzai’s favor-ite. All three regu-larly draw crowds oftens of thousands of

people — whether attracted by the poli-tics or the prospect of a free meal. InKabul and other cities, a messy demo-cratic process, skewed by violence andcorruption, and fed as much by cyn-icism as enthusiasm, is underway.

But this belies the reality of life in thewar-torn countryside, where neitherdemocracy nor development has foundmuch success. Across the city fromGhazi Stadium, I visited the refugee

Undaunted by China’s aggressive rhetoric and expansionist

claims to nearly all of the South China Sea, the Philippines

has filed a legal case against Beijing with an international

arbitration tribunal in The Hague. This is an appropriate

venue to resolve a major dispute peacefully and in accord

with global norms. The strategy of the Philippines has

implications for others with similar claims against China —

Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan — and thus

deserves support from the international community.

The rivalry between China and the Philippines is bitter

and potentially dangerous, with frequent face-offs at sea

over the disputed islands and rocks. It is not hard to imagine

incidents spiraling out of control. In the latest episode, on

Saturday a Philippine vessel outmaneuvered the Chinese

Coast Guard and resupplied a ship that has been stranded

for 15 years on a tiny reef called the Second Thomas Shoal.

The Philippines intentionally grounded the vessel in 1999 to

stake claim to the reef, and it has since served as, effectively,

a military outpost. The Chinese ships were trying to block a

delivery of fresh food and troops from reaching it.

The Second Thomas Shoal is at the heart of the legal

brief filed with the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It

argues that the shoal, known as Ayungin in the Philippines

and Ren’ai Reef in China, is 105 nautical miles from the

Philippines, well inside the 200 nautical miles of an

exclusive economic zone that allows the Philippines to

control and exploit the waters around the shoal under the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A ruling

is expected sometime next year.

China is a signatory to the 1982 Convention on the Law of

the Sea, though it has opted out of international jurisdiction

over some territorial issues. Its proposed remedy in this

case — bilateral talks — has been on offer for years and

clearly has not led to a settlement. Given all the tension, it is

time for a legal proceeding allowing both sides to present

their best arguments and obtain a judgment. The United

States has not taken sides on the claims but has argued for

a peaceful resolution and backed the right of the Philippines

to use the tribunal’s dispute mechanism. Other countries

should take a similar stand or risk sending China a message

that it can keep trying to bully its rivals into submission.

Clemens WerginContributing Writer

BERLIN Remember America’s pivot toAsia? Just over three years ago, Presi-dent Obama announced that Washing-ton would rebalance its resources to apart of the world where, it was believed,the decisive battles of the 21st centurywould be fought.

It seemed to make sense. China wasthe big story. The United States wastired of the Middle East. And Europe, fi-nally pacified after the Cold War andthe Balkan conflicts, didn’t seem topose much of a security challenge.

Today, though, the pivot to Asia ap-pears to have been largely called off.The Middle East, with its revolutionsand power vacuums, is sucking Americaback in. Meanwhile, the European Un-ion’s failure to stop the Russian invasionof Crimea means that the United Stateshas again been drawn into continentalpolitics, with the looming possibility ofanother Cold War. And both Europe andthe United States are now making aquietly revolutionary attempt to rewritethe rules of trans-Atlantic trade.

This is a remarkable comeback forAmerica. In Europe’s last crisis, overthe euro, the United States was largelyabsent — partly for a lack of financialresources, and partly, it seems, out offrustration with the muddled way that

the union went about saving itself.In the midst of that crisis, European

leaders, with American backing, putforward the idea of a trans-Atlantic freetrade zone as a way to jump-startgrowth without more stimulus spend-ing. ‘‘With the crisis we thought thatwas the right moment to get somethingdone,’’ recalled William Kennard, theAmerican ambassador to the EuropeanUnion at the time. Official negotiations

for the resulting plan,the TransatlanticTrade and Invest-ment Partnership,started in mid-2013.

But what was seenin the beginning aspredominantly aneconomic issue hasnow morphed into amajor strategic en-

deavor. A resurgent Russia means thatthe West needs to find ways to coordi-nate and consolidate its interests. Inthat vein, the partnership is the mostambitious project to date to bind bothsides of the Atlantic into a more perfectWestern union, and to add an economicpillar to the longstanding military onerepresented by NATO.

Still, the process has been slow going,and fraught with tension. In mid-March,while the fourth round of negotiationswas taking place in Brussels, I took aState Department-funded trip to Brus-sels and Washington to see the talks

Matthieu Aikins

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN Most politi-cians’ homes I have visited here areheavy on fake gilt and rococo furniture,but Ashraf Ghani, one of the leadingcandidates in Saturday’s presidentialelection, is known as a technocrat and asophisticate. ‘‘It’s a beautiful house,’’ Isaid, looking around at the exquisiteNuristani carved chests and Persianminiature paintings that decorated hisliving room. ‘‘It is,’’ replied NaseemSharifi, one of Mr. Ghani’s campaignmanagers, beaming. Then he frowned.‘‘The other day, they collected three orfour kilos of human flesh off the roof.’’

Mr. Ghani’s house is next door to abranch office belonging to the electioncommission, which was assailed by sui-cide bombers last week, one of manyTaliban attacks in the capital recently.Like the other seven candidates, Mr.Ghani has been conducting a campaignin the midst of war, a fraught exercisethat has come to typify the country’sstruggling democracy.

This will be Afghanistan’s fifth elec-tion since the fall of the Taliban in 2001,the third for the presidency. HamidKarzai, who has led the country sincethen, won’t be running this time; he has

reached the constitutional two-termlimit. His departure, combined withthat of international combat forces atthe end of the year, means that thestakes of the upcoming transfer ofpower are extraordinarily high.

If you believe the candidates’ rhetoric,this is a momentous occasion for politic-al change and democratic renewal. Butit is hard to imagine that this electionwill be any less marred by controversyand fraud than previous ones. With aclear winner unlikely to emerge on Sat-urday, a protracted vote count and run-off election seem all but certain. And thepeculiar alliances formed during thecampaign have already exposed how Af-ghanistan’s deeply flawed political sys-tem has undermined democracy by en-couraging elites to bargain for power atthe expense of public accountability.

Mr. Ghani arrived, and the entourageof us journalists and aides who had beenwaiting to accompany him to a rally inthe city center piled into the armoredSUVs parked outside. A motley array ofgunmen surrounded the vehicles — notonly guards from the police and intelli-gence services, but also tough-lookingKandaharis from the south with tricked-out M4 rifles and platoons of camo-cladUzbeks sent by Mr. Ghani’s runningmate, Abdul Rashid Dostum, the contro-versial strongman from the north.

We sped off to the rally. It was held in

camp at Charahi Qambar. Here, severalthousand people live under mud hutsand tarps on a plateau of packed mudcrossed by refuse-clogged rivulets, al-most all of them internally displacedrefugees fleeing violence in the south.The camp has been in place for years,with Kabul expanding around it.

There was little enthusiasm for theelection there. I asked a group of menat the camp’s mosque if they planned tovote. ‘‘What difference does it make?’’Mohammed Fatih, a refugee from Hel-mand, replied. ‘‘We voted in 2004 and2009, and we’re worse off than ever.Politics is for the rich and importantpeople, not the landless and unfortu-nate.’’ The others nodded in agreement.

These men are representatives of thevast swaths of Afghanistan that havehardly benefited from the internationalintervention and the new democraticorder it established. The rural-urban di-vide is stark: While the cities are vi-brant, there is a full-blown and worsen-ing humanitarian crisis in manyconflict-affected areas. The United Na-tions reports, for example, that cases ofsevere malnutrition among childrenhave increased by 50 percent since2012. The number of internally dis-placed Afghans has been rising as well.

This gap between urban democracyand rural misery is the product not onlyof the country’s conflict with the Talibanbut also of a political system that disen-franchises its constituents. Given that in2001 development experts treated Af-ghanistan as a tabula rasa, it is perversejust how much the system they put inplace now contributes to, rather than al-leviates, the country’s difficulties.

Afghanistan has a winner-take-allsystem, where the president appointsall positions in government, down tothe district level. His office is barelychecked by the judiciary or Parliament,both of which are weak on paper andweaker in practice. But then the all-powerful executive is itself a fiction.Given how fragmented the country is,and how feeble its institutions are, thepresident must co-opt local power-brokers, in an informal and corrupt pro-cess of favor-swapping that takes placebehind the scenes.

Much of Mr. Karzai’s most frustratingbehavior — his propensity to divide-and-rule, his tolerance of corrupt allies,his strategically erratic behavior — canbe understood as a response to the de-mands this system places on its nominalleader. It is a system that will remain un-changed by this latest election: Even aneducated technocrat like Mr. Ghani wascompelled to partner with a man like Mr.Dostum, whom he himself once called,well before this race, a ‘‘known killer.’’

International donors have spentaround $1 billion on elections and re-lated development projects here since2001, and the current round will cost an-other $126 million, according to Ziaul-haq Amarkhil, the chief electoral officer.Despite the expense, the fundamentalflaws that make fraud easy have notbeen fixed. Most glaringly, there is thelack of a proper census and voter rolls,meaning that there is no way of match-ing voters against a database. Some 21million voter ID cards have been is-sued, even though there are only 12 mil-lion eligible voters. If Afghanistan’snext president wishes to be seen as le-gitimate by his people, he will have todo more than simply win.

MATTHIEU AIKINS is a magazine writerliving in Kabul.

firsthand. I got the impression thatthere is a lot of good will on both sides,but that the devil lies in the details.

The partnership is not your usualtrade agreement. It is much bigger. Itsaim is to align rules and regulations tolower market-access hurdles, espe-cially for small and medium-size busi-nesses that provide most of the jobs inthe United States and Europe.

More important, it will provide aframework of common standards forfuture negotiations worldwide. ‘‘We arethe global rule makers, and that is atthe heart of T.T.I.P.,’’ said the economistAndré Sapir, a senior fellow at Bruegel,a think tank in Brussels. Mr. Sapir esti-mated that the two sides are respon-sible for 80 percent of global rules andregulations.

The immensity of the task of coordi-nating all those rules and regulations,and the importance of getting it right, iswhat makes it so hard to move ahead.

But the challenges go beyond themere complexity of the agreement.Both sides were used to dealing withless-powerful trade-negotiation part-ners, who usually would adapt to thebigger partner’s standard.

Both sides are trying to carve out pro-tections — the United States wants to ex-clude financial services because it fearsa watering down of the Dodd-Frank re-forms, while Europe has excluded audi-ovisual media to protect its film industry.And talks have stalled on the investment

chapter because of German oppositionto rules governing dispute settlements.There may be good reasons behind eachposition, but this sort of approach is theperfect way to downsize a big and boldproject to an inconsequential size.

In other fields, though, the Ukrainecrisis has helped focus the talks.Europe now wants an energy chapterthat would lift restrictions on Americanoil and gas exports, so that the Conti-nent will be less dependent on Russianexports — a step that President Obamahas come to endorse.

The trade deal has its critics on bothsides of the Atlantic. But it is not just agood idea; it is necessary for the futureof the West.

Yes, it will boost growth and lowercosts of trans-Atlantic business. Butperhaps more important, it will counterthe belief that the West is on the decline.

The power of states and alliances isnot only about numbers, but also percep-tions, and a successful deal is one impor-tant way to tell the world that the West isalive and ready to shape the global order,and that it stands united in that effort.

The economic crises of recent years,and the return of a belligerent Russia,have forced the West to refocus its ob-jectives. It is a chance that Europe andthe United States should not waste.

CLEMENS WERGIN is the foreign editor ofthe German newspaper group Die Weltand the author of the blog Flatworld.

Pope Fran-cis rightlyseeks torestrainlavish andhypocriticalspendingby hisprelates.

Any Roman Catholic prelate who missed the message from

Pope Francis that he wanted ‘‘a church which is poor and

for the poor’’ certainly had to pay attention last month

when the Vatican forced the resignation of the bishop of

Limburg, Germany, because of his taste for opulent

housing worthy of the Holy Roman Empire.

Scandal arose when Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van

Elst was discovered spending at least 31 million euros, or

nearly $43 million, to renovate his princely home, right

down to a new ¤15,000 bathtub. The Vatican found that the

bishop had tried to hide the true costs from his flock, and

he was unceremoniously forced to resign for some

humbler station.

Though the verdict is still out on Francis’ impact on the

hidebound Vatican bureaucracy, which he hopes to reform,

he is obviously galvanizing the church laity to complain

about the double standards and hypocrisy in the lush

lifestyles of their shepherds. In the United States, Wilton

Gregory, the archbishop of Atlanta, apologetically

announced this week that he would not be moving in to a

new $2.2 million, 6,000-square-foot mansion he had custom

built. Archbishop Gregory conceded that he had second

thoughts after being rebuked by lay Catholics ‘‘struggling

to pay their mortgages’’ even as they faithfully heeded his

pleas for church donations.

Leaders of a half-dozen other American dioceses have

moved to plainer surroundings as Francis keeps up the

pressure, urging simple runabouts, not limousines, as

preferable transportation for priests and nuns.

How far will the pope go in his refreshing demand for an

unpretentious lifestyle for the global church? By

coincidence, the centuries-old church of St. Francis at

Ripa, in a less elegant part of Rome, is in a state of

impoverished disrepair, forced to appeal for support on the

crowdfunding website Kickstarter as tourists begin

showing up by the busloads because the new pope chose

the name of Francis. The saint stayed there in a cell that

contains a stone he is said to have used as his sleeping

pillow.

No word yet on whether Pope Francis thinks it is time to

prescribe stone sleeping pillows for dedicated church

workers.

RISKY GAMES IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

WHEN SHEPHERDS GO DELUXE

The campaigns for Kabul

America needs a pivot to Europe

The Philip-pines asksa court torule onChina’saggressiveterritorialmoves.

Peculiar alli-ances have ex-posed how theflawed politic-al systemunderminesdemocracy.

A trade pactcould bindboth sides ofthe Atlanticinto a moreperfect West-ern union.

Opinion

MITCH BLUNT

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 9INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

RogerCohen

LONDON In a fascinating recent essayin The London Review of Books, called‘‘On Not Going Home,’’ James Woodrelates how he ‘‘asked ChristopherHitchens, long before he was termin-ally ill, where he would go if he had onlya few weeks to live. Would he stay inAmerica? ‘No, I’d go to Dartmoor, with-out a doubt,’ he told me. It was the land-scape of his childhood.’’

It was the landscape, in other words,of unfiltered experience, of things feltrather than thought through, of theworld in its beauty absorbed before it isunderstood, of patterns and sounds thatlodge themselves in some indelibleplace in the psyche and call out acrossthe years.

That question is worth repeating: If Ihad only a few weeks to live, wherewould I go? It is a good way of gettingrid of the clutter that distracts or blinds.I will get to that in a moment.

In the essay, Wood, who grew up inEngland but has lived in the UnitedStates for 18 years, explores a certainform of contemporary homelessness —lives lived without the finality of exile,but also without the familiarity of home.

He speaks of existences ‘‘marked by acertain provisionality, a structure of de-parture and return that may not end.’’

This is a widespread modern condi-tion; perhaps it is the modern condition.

Out of it, often, comes anxiety. Wooddoes not focus on the psychological ef-fects of what he calls ‘‘a certain out-sider-dom,’’ but if you dig into peoplewho are depressed you often find thattheir distress at some level is linked to asense of not fitting in, an anxiety aboutbelonging: displacement anguish.

Wood describes looking at the famili-ar life of his Boston street, ‘‘the heavymaple trees, the unkempt willow downat the end, an old white Cadillac withthe bumper sticker ‘Ted Kennedy haskilled more people than my gun,’ and Ifeel . . . nothing: some recognition, butno comprehension, no real connection,no past, despite all the years I havelived there — just a tugging distancefrom it all. A panic suddenly overtakesme, and I wonder: How did I get here?’’

Having spent my infancy in SouthAfrica, grown up and been educated inEngland, and then, after a peripateticlife as a foreign correspondent, foundmy home in New York, I understandthat how-did-I-get-here panic. ButWood and I differ. He has no desire tobecome an American citizen.

He quotes an immigration officertelling him, ‘‘ ‘A Green Card is usuallyconsidered a path to citizenship,’ andcontinues: ‘‘He was generously saying,‘Would you like to be an American cit-izen?’ along with the less generous:‘Why don’t you want to be an Americancitizen?’ Can we imagine either senti-ment being expressed at Heathrow air-port?’’

No, we can’t. And it’s that essentialopenness of America, as well as the(linked) greater ease of living as a Jewin the United States compared with lifein the land of Lewis Namier’s ‘‘trem-bling Israelites,’’ that made me becomean American citizen and elect NewYork as my home. It’s the place thattakes me in.

But it is not the place of my deepestconnections. So, what if I had a fewweeks to live? I would go to CapeTown, to my grandfather’s house,Duxbury, looking out over the railwayline near Kalk Bay station to the oceanand the Cape of Good Hope. During mychildhood, there was the scent of saltand pine and, in certain winds, a pun-gent waft from the fish processingplant in Fish Hoek. I would dangle alittle net in rock pools and find myselfhypnotized by the silky water and quiv-

ering life in it. Theheat, not the dryhigh-veld heat of Jo-hannesburg butsomething denser,pounded by the timewe came back fromthe beach at lunch-time. It reverberated

off the stone, angled into every recess.The lunch table was set and soonenough fried fish, usually firm-fleshedkingklip, would be served, so fresh itseemed to burst from its batter. Atnight the lights of Simon’s Townglittered, a lovely necklace strungalong a promontory.

This was a happiness whose othername was home.

Wood writes: ‘‘Freud has a wonder-ful word, ‘afterwardness,’ which I needto borrow, even at the cost of kidnap-ping it from its very different context.To think about home and the departurefrom home, about not going home andno longer feeling able to go home, is tobe filled with a remarkable sense of ‘af-terwardness’: It is too late to do any-thing about it now, and too late to knowwhat should have been done. And thatmay be all right.’’

Yes, being not quite home, accept-ance, which may be bountiful, is what isleft to us.

NicholasKristof

We in the United States grow up celeb-rating ourselves as the world’s mostpowerful nation, the world’s richest na-tion, the world’s freest and mostblessed nation.

Sure, technically Norwegians may bewealthier per capita, and the Japanesemay live longer, but the world watchesthe N.B.A., melts at Katy Perry, usesiPhones to post on Facebook, tremblesat our aircraft carriers, and blames theC.I.A. for everything. We’re No. 1!

In some ways we indisputably are,but a major new ranking of livability in132 countries puts the United States in asobering 16th place. We underperformbecause our economic and militarystrengths don’t translate into well-be-ing for the average citizen.

In the Social Progress Index, theUnited States excels in access to ad-vanced education but ranks 70th inhealth, 69th in ecosystem sustainabil-ity, 39th in basic education, 34th in ac-cess to water and sanitation and 31st inpersonal safety. Even in access to cell-phones and the Internet, the UnitedStates ranks a disappointing 23rd,partly because one American in fivelacks Internet access.

‘‘It’s astonishing that for a countrythat has Silicon Valley, lack of access toinformation is a red flag,’’ notes Mi-chael Green, executive director of theSocial Progress Imperative, whichoversees the index. The United Stateshas done better at investing in dronesthan in children, and cuts in social ser-vices could fray the social fabric further.

This Social Progress Index ranksNew Zealand No. 1, followed bySwitzerland, Iceland and the Nether-lands. All are somewhat poorer thanAmerica per capita, yet they appear todo a better job of meeting the needs oftheir people.

The Social Progress Index is abrainchild of Michael E. Porter, the em-inent Harvard business professor whoearlier helped develop the Global Com-petitiveness Report. Porter is a Repub-lican whose work, until now, has fo-cused on economic metrics.

‘‘This is kind of a journey for me,’’Porter told me. He said that he becameincreasingly aware that social factorssupport economic growth: tax policy

and regulations affecteconomic prospects,but so do schooling,health and a society’sinclusiveness.

So Porter and ateam of expertsspent two years de-veloping this index,based on a vastamount of data re-flecting suicide,property rights,school attendance,attitudes toward im-

migrants and minorities, opportunityfor women, religious freedom, nutri-tion, electrification and much more.

Many who back proposed Republicancuts in Medicaid, food stamps and pub-lic services believe that such trimswould boost America’s competitive-ness. Looking at this report, it seemsthat the opposite is true.

Ireland, from which so many peoplefled in the 19th century to find opportu-nity in the United States, now ranks15th. That’s a notch ahead of the UnitedStates, and Ireland is also ahead ofAmerica in the category of ‘‘opportuni-ty.’’

Canada came in seventh, the bestamong the nations in the G-7. Germanyis 12th, Britain 13th and Japan 14th.

The bottom spot on the ranking wasfilled by Chad. Just above it were Cen-tral African Republic, Burundi, Guinea,Sudan and Angola.

Professor Porter notes that ArabSpring countries had longstandingproblems leading to poor scores in the‘‘opportunity’’ category. If that’s a pre-dictor of trouble, as he thinks it may be,then Russia, China, Saudi Arabia andIran should be on guard. None do wellin the category of opportunity.

In contrast, some countries punchwell above their weight. Costa Rica per-forms better than much richer coun-tries, and so do the Philippines, Estoniaand Jamaica. In Africa, Malawi, Ghanaand Liberia shine. Bangladesh (No. 99)ranks ahead of wealthier India (No.102). Likewise, Ukraine (No. 62) out-performs Russia (No. 80).

China does poorly, ranking 90th, be-hind its poorer neighbor Mongolia (No.89). China performs well in basic educa-tion but lags in areas such as personalrights and access to information.

All this goes to what kind of a nationwe want to be, and whether we put toomuch faith in G.D.P. as a metric.

Over all, the United States’ economyoutperformed France’s between 1975and 2006. But 99 percent of the Frenchpopulation actually enjoyed more gainsin that period than 99 percent of theAmerican population. Exclude the top 1percent, and the average French citizendid better than the average American.This lack of shared prosperity and op-portunity has stunted our social pro-gress.

There are no quick fixes, but basiceducation and health care are obviousplaces to begin, especially in the firstfew years of life, when returns are thehighest.

The arguments for boosting opportu-nity or social services usually revolvearound social justice and fairness. TheSocial Progress Index offers a remind-er that what’s at stake is also the healthof our society — and our competitive-ness around the globe.

Michel Wieviorka

PARIS It was clear for months that theFrench had fallen out of love with theirpresident. But the municipal electionsthat ended Sunday showed that the dis-affection ran much deeper. Abstentionrates were at record highs. The main-stream right gained ground. TheGreens consolidated their standingwithin the left. And, most significant forthe long term, the extreme right madeunprecedented inroads.

These results were a searing rebuketo the leftist government of PresidentFrançois Hollande. The first to admit asmuch, Mr. Hollande immediately re-placed the prime minister and re-shuffled the cabinet. Political analystssometimes say that there is a generalpolitical crisis in Europe, and that rep-resentative democracy here is in badshape. In France at least, it turns outthat it is mostly the Socialist Party thatis in crisis.

And so now the National Front, theleading far-right party, will govern 11municipalities, including two ratherlarge cities in the south, as well as onedistrict in Marseille. (Another far-rightparty also picked up three municipalit-ies.) In many other places, the F.N. willbe a viable opposition force. This elec-tion marks the advent of a new era: Theparty, which controlled no township be-fore, now has between 1,200 and 1,500local councilors of its own.

This change will weigh heavily onFrance’s political future, and not onlybecause local councilors elect senators.The F.N., which used to pride itself onbeing anti-système (against the sys-tem), today calls itself un parti degouvernement (a government party).Now that it has become one of France’smain political parties, the overall equi-librium between the left and the rightmay change.

A good turnout for the F.N. is alwaysevidence, at bottom, of a protest vote;people cast their ballot for the party asa way of complaining about the main-stream. But this time the F.N. was espe-cially clever about tapping the discon-tent so as to legitimize itself. To capturevotes among disaffected blue-collarworkers, for example, it abandoned its

traditional endorsement of economicliberalism, instead promoting social-economic policies. It supplemented itsclassic opposition to globalization witha virulent critique of the European Un-ion, proposing to bring an end to theeconomic crisis by having France with-draw from the euro zone — a ratherpopular argument, including on the left.

Many of the F.N.’s members and sup-porters remain motivated by a hatredof immigrants and a dread of both Juda-ism and Islam. But since Marine le Pensucceeded her father at the party’shelm in early 2011, it has distanced itselffrom more explicit forms of racism. TheF.N., like other national-populist forcesin Europe, is no longer embarrassed by

its contradictions; though still extrem-ist, it has become respectable. The tra-ditional right has helped that processalong by endorsing some of the F.N.’score positions, notably on immigrationand the Roma.

And while this is not the first time theF.N. scored impressively — it did wellin local elections in 1995 and during thefirst round of presidential elections in2002 and 2012 — this time, rather thanjust playing the part of spoiler and un-dermining one of the mainstream can-didates, it has gained real power. TheF.N. now has hundreds of elected offi-cials at its disposal to serve actual con-stituents. This is a chance for it to takeroot, building up a political apparatusand developing broad policies.

The F.N.’s excellent showing in these

local elections will probably be con-firmed, perhaps even surpassed, in theelections for the European Parliamentin a few weeks. This is not to say,however, that the party’s influence willnecessarily keep growing beyond that.For one thing, there is plenty of time forthe F.N. to let its voters down before thenext presidential elections, in 2017. Foranother, it remains to be seen if theparty will be able to stand up to themainstream right.

After all, the French municipal elec-tions were also notable for the tradi-tional right’s strong showing, despiterivalries within the party, an apparentlack of leadership or planning capacityand various scandals concerningformer President Nicolas Sarkozy andsome of his close advisers.

This is one reason why Mr. Hollandesacked his prime minister and replacedhim with Manuel Valls, until then theinterior minister, who is consideredmore centrist than leftist. Mr. Valls isnot a social-democrat, but a social-liber-al, and is often compared to Bill Clintonand Tony Blair. In short order a newgovernment was put together that isboth small and supposed to ‘‘synthes-ize’’ the main strands within the Social-ist Party.

The Greens, who did well in the mu-nicipal elections and have doubts aboutMr. Valls’s dedication to ecology, haverefused to join the government. (Thenew environment and energy ministeris Ségolène Royal, a former candidatefor president and Mr. Hollande’s formerpartner.) Their defiance is one har-binger of future tussles within the left.

Mr. Valls is supposed to introducemore austerity to economic policy, forexample, by reducing public expenses.Such an agenda would be a challengeanytime, but it will be especially so inthe months ahead, with the leftist endof the Socialist Party having just re-ceived a boost from voters. A real eco-nomic renaissance is unlikely, andmore political trouble lies ahead — therecent local elections may be just thefirst of many setbacks for the left inFrance.

MICHEL WIEVIORKA, a sociologist, is thehead of the Fondation Maison desSciences de l’Homme in Paris anda member of the European ResearchCouncil’s Scientific Council.

We’re not No. 1! We’re not No. 1!

A punch to the French left

In search of home

America un-derperformsbecause eco-nomic andmilitarystrength doesnot translateinto well-be-ing for the av-erage citizen.

If youhad a fewweeks to live,where wouldyou go?

opinion

FRED DUFOUR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Prime Minister Manuel Valls

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INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMESI | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

A highlight of the 2013-14 season at theRoyal Opera House promises to be the newproduction by the renowned theater and op-era director Jonathan Kent of Puccini’s earlymasterpiece ‘‘Manon Lescaut.’’ Starring theLatvian soprano Kristine Opolais and theGerman tenor Jonas Kaufmann, the operawill be performed from June 17 to July 7, witha live cinematic broadcast on June 24.

‘‘Manon Lescaut’’ is Kent’s secondPuccini collaboration with TheRoyal Opera and the com-pany’s music director, AntonioPappano, following Kent’ssumptuous production of ‘‘To-sca,’’ which also makes a wel-come return this season, May10 to June 26.

Kent’s production of ‘‘To-sca’’ has the original setting ofRome in 1800, but Kent saysthat ‘‘Manon Lescaut,’’ set in France andLouisiana in the 1730s, does not invite sucha historicist approach: ‘‘There has to be adialogue between the time that the operawas written and the time that it is per-formed, without distorting the intents of theoriginal or denying the romanticism of themusic.’’ The themes in ‘‘Manon Lescaut’’that speak to the modern world, says Kent,are the cult and temptations of celebrity, ex-ploitation of women and ‘‘the culture thatlikes to name and shame.’’

One of the challenges Kent faced was tofind ‘‘a narrative road’’ in this episodicpiece. With the opera starting in an inn, heimagined an actual road leading to theheroine’s ultimate destruction. The son andbrother of architects and onetime aspiringpainter, Kent likes to begin working on his

productions visually, using design as a wayof formulating ideas. ‘‘For me,’’ he says,‘‘the way of approaching opera is to buildthe house that the piece can live in and thento imagine how the piece can tell itself.’’

Pappano describes the ‘‘enormoussymphonic canvas’’ of ‘‘Manon Lescaut,’’which he calls ‘‘one of the biggest chal-lenges for a conductor.’’ He sees echoes ofWagner in the music, a style that Puccini all

but abandoned in his laterworks.

The composer was 34when the opera had itspremiere in 1893. ‘‘For ayoung man to have such com-mand of the possibilities ofthe orchestra is extraordi-nary,’’ says Pappano. ‘‘Thepiece is quite dark, with aforeboding and sadness that

are palpable. Harmonically, also, it is muchmore complex and adventurous than manyof Puccini’s later operas.’’

Kent says he enjoys directing the earlyworks of composers and dramatists, suchas Chekhov or Wagner, whose ‘‘Der Flie-gende Holländer’’ he directed for the EnglishNational Opera in 2012. ‘‘There is a wildnessand aspiration about them, which is veryexciting,’’ he says, adding that he finds the‘‘emotional anarchy’’ of ‘‘Manon Lescaut’’particularly fascinating. As for the character-ization of the opera’s protagonists, hestrove to find a way of honoring the greatstory on which the opera is based (written inthe 18th century by the French writer AbbéPrévost) of ‘‘a fallible not always admirableheroine and a constant — sometimes fool-ishly constant — young man.’’

At the same time that David McVicar’ssumptuously decadent staging of Gounod’s‘‘Faust’’ is making a return to the RoyalOpera House, April 4 to 25 — with a brilliantinternational cast led by the Operalia win-ners Sonya Yoncheva and Joseph Calleja,and including Alexia Voulgaridou (sharing therole of Marguerite with Yoncheva), BrynTerfel and Simon Keenlyside — the Linbury

Studio Theater is hosting two specially com-missioned one-hour operas also on theFaust theme, performed on alternate nights,April 3 to 12.

John Fulljames, associate director of op-era at Covent Garden, explains that this ispart of ‘‘a joined-up artistic conversation’’between the main stage and the Linbury.One of the Royal Opera House’s recent

Now in its third full season of relaying operaand ballet throughout the world, the RoyalOpera House has committed itself to a fullprogram of live cinema broadcasts, currentlywith 1,400 cinemas in 40 countries involved.The purpose of the live relays is less to at-tract more people to come to Covent Garden,which already has a high attendance rate,than to reach a wider public worldwide, andthe Royal Opera House says that the broad-casts are proving to be enormously popular.

The Royal Opera House relies on a smallgroup of in-house experts and an excellentmedia suite with very good sound facilities,and also brings in a team of freelancers foreach broadcast. From an early stage in theprocess, especially with new productions,a multicamera director works closely withthe stage director. For operas released onDVD, considerable time is spent in post-production to deliver the best possible ver-sion of each opera.

When it comes to choosing the reper-toire to be broadcast, a balance is struck

between reflecting the range of works pro-duced in the opera house and selecting op-eras that might have a broad appeal forworldwide audiences. The technical team isconstantly looking for new initiatives thatcontinue to make use of the latest tech-nology, such as on-demand streaming oflive opera or broadcasting from locationsother than the Royal Opera House whenperformances take place elsewhere.

So those who find it difficult to visit Cov-ent Garden still have much to look forwardto. Live broadcasts in movie theaters com-ing up in the next few months include theworld premiere on April 28 of a full-lengthballet version of Shakespeare’s ‘‘TheWinter’s Tale,’’ choreographed by Christoph-er Wheeldon, and the new production ofPuccini’s ‘‘Manon Lescaut,’’ directed byJonathan Kent and conducted by AntonioPappano, on June 24. To find screenings intheaters around the world, go towww.roh.org.uk/cinemas.n

ROLEX CULTURE PARTNERS:SPOTLIGHT ON THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

‘MANON LESCAUT’NEW STAGING FOR AN EARLY PUCCINI WORK

LINBURY STUDIO THEATERMODERN RETELLINGS OF THE FAUST STORY

BROADCASTSCOMING LIVETO THEATERSAROUNDTHE WORLD

The Royal Opera House is offering a ‘‘Faustian Pack,’’ with a production of Gounod’s grand opera on the main stage and two contemporary works in the Linbury Studio Theater.

The Euronews ‘‘Musica’’ seriesregularly drops in on the Royal OperaHouse, most recently as it resoundedto the words of ‘‘Happy Birthday’’ forKiri Te Kanawa, who celebrated her70th birthday in what was her firstperformance in 17 years. In July, theseries will feature ‘‘Maria Stuarda,’’Donizetti’s tale of rival queens. Seethe programs on the Web ateuronews.com/programs/musica.

Medici.tv offers live webcastsand a large catalog of classicalmusic videos. At last year’sSalzburg Festival, The RoyalOpera’s music director, AntonioPappano, conducted JonasKaufmann in Verdi’s ‘‘Don Carlo.’’Watch a video interview with themabout the production atwww.medici.tv/#/don-carlo-salzburg-musica-euronews.

Opera Online covers works ofopera, opera houses, composersand musicians, and productions.The website features a newssection as well as an onlineencyclopedia. Go to tinyurl.com/ROHhistory for its profile of theRoyal Opera House, which includes ahistory as well as links to entriesabout current productions atCovent Garden.

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That sometimes foolishly constantyoung man, Des Grieux, is to be performedby the tenor Jonas Kaufmann, whomPappano describes as ‘‘an amazing, techni-cally gifted artist who dominates everycorner of the repertoire.’’ The production willbe the first time Kaufmann has sung the roleat Covent Garden.

Asked if singing Des Grieux poses vocaland interpretative challenges different fromthose of Cavaradossi in ‘‘Tosca,’’ Kaufmannexclaims: ‘‘Oh, yes! The part of Des Grieux isnot only much longer than Cavaradossi, it’smuch more demanding as well. Just think ofthose great scenes with Manon in thesecond and fourth acts, let alone the con-trast between the love song in the first act— ‘Donna non vidi mai’ — and the dramaticoutburst in the third act, ‘No, no, pazzo son,’which is a trial for any tenor. O.K., Cavara-dossi’s ‘Vittoria!’ isn’t easy either. But I think,much more than Cavaradossi, Des Grieuxrequires the full vocal range from lyric to dra-matic. That goes as well for the develop-ment of the character.’’

Kaufmann notes that he is particularlypleased to be able to perform again at theRoyal Opera House with Pappano. He madehis Covent Garden debut nearly 10 yearsago, in a leading role as Ruggero in Puccini’s‘‘La Rondine,’’ returning two seasons lateras Don José in a new production of ‘‘Car-men’’ under Pappano. With Pappano’s sup-port, these performances proved to be thelaunchpad for his international career and,since then, he has returned to CoventGarden on several occasions, singing op-posite such stars as Anna Netrebko andBryn Terfel.

‘‘I always feel at home at Covent Garden,’’

he says, ‘‘for the working conditions as wellas for my colleagues and Tony Pappano.Singing with him is always a joy. There are notso many conductors like him nowadays, mu-sicians who have grown up with opera, whoknow the repertoire inside out, who knowhow to bring out the drama in the music andbreathe with the singer at the same time.’’

He remembers with particular pleasurethe recording sessions they made togetherin Rome of the ‘‘Verismo Arias’’ album, es-pecially when he sang ‘‘Vesti la giubba,’’from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s ‘‘Pagliacci,’’ forthe first time: ‘‘It went so well that we hugged

each other, jumping and giggling like kids.You can imagine how much I’m looking for-ward to singing my first Des Grieux in ‘Man-on Lescaut’ with him!’’

On April 6, Kaufmann will also be per-forming Schubert’s late song cycle ‘‘Winter-reise’’ on Covent Garden’s main stage withhis regular accompanist, Helmut Deutsch.

Asked about the challenges of singing insuch a large theater, he replies: ‘‘When youare singing in a house bigger than those youare used to, you’re easily tempted to givemore voice and to sound less intimate. It isalmost like a reflex. Most of the singers Iknow had this experience when they sang atthe New York Met for the first time, althoughthey had been warned before: Don’t try togive more than you normally do, just trustyour projection! And this is the keyword.Singing without a microphone or any othersort of amplification means that you shouldbe able to adjust your voice projection to therepertoire, the space and the specificacoustics. There are small houses with verytricky acoustics and vast places with perfectones. When I had my first song recital at theMet, I was really surprised that despite thevastness of this space it’s possible to cre-ate an intimate atmosphere there, acoustic-ally as well as in terms of communication.’’

The different space might change theway he approaches the interpretation of thesongs, he explains, but not to a great extent.He recounts that one of the most importantthings he learned during his early years on-stage from Giorgio Strehler, the great Italiantheater and opera director, was: ‘‘Never givethe same performance twice! Always try totell the story as if you are going to tell it forthe first time.’’n

major innovations has been to place both themain stage and the Linbury under the sameumbrella, and the creative results are begin-ning to show. The two new operas have beenin development for two years and take verydifferent approaches to the Faust myth.

‘‘Through His Teeth,’’ by the 35-year-oldEnglish composer Luke Bedford, with a lib-retto by the Scottish playwright David

Harrower, concerns a woman lured into apassionate affair with a ruthlessly charmingcar salesman; his secret life is revealed asshe becomes trapped in his dark other world.The internationally acclaimed conductor SianEdwards is working with an exciting youngcast including Anna Devin, Victoria Simmondsand Owen Gilhooly, and the London-basedchamber ensemble Chroma.

The English electronic composer MatthewHerbert’s ‘‘The Crackle,’’ conducted by TimMurray, involves a mysterious stranger offer-ing a frustrated music teacher technology thatunlocks a hidden power in music. Fulljamesdescribes the opera as being about ‘‘tech-nological progress taking the soul away.’’

Bryn Terfel, who plays Méphistophélès inGounod’s ‘‘Faust’’ in the main theater,appears in Herbert’s work as an invisibleprerecorded voice that, as Fulljames puts it,‘‘is completely integrated into MatthewHerbert’s sound world.’’

Both operas are proof of the Royal Op-era House’s continuing commitment to newmusic. Fulljames will be directing anothermodern opera in the Linbury Studio Theaterin June, a musical setting by the Italian com-poser Luca Francesconi of Heiner Müller’splay ‘‘Quartett.’’

‘‘Quartett,’’ set in a bunker at the end oftime, explores the nature of the only two hu-mans left alive, who happen to be the

Machiavellian central characters fromLaclos’s novel ‘‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses,’’the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomtede Valmont. All they can do is play mind andsexual games with each other, enactingtheir fantasies through role play.

Fulljames, who first saw the opera inVienna and ‘‘was blown away by it,’’ stressesthe immersive effect of the work, staged intraverse, with the audience on two sides of astage suspended above the orchestra pit. Inthe play, there seems to be no life of anykind outside the bunker, he says, but in theopera, ‘‘the music gives the sense of somesort of organic life continuing outside.’’

Francesconi has written music not onlyfor a live orchestra but also for a recordedorchestra and chorus. The composer, whohas been commissioned by The Royal Operato write an opera for the main stage in 2020,will be present at rehearsals, a prospectthat excites Fulljames. ‘‘Luca Francesconi isinterested in singers,’’ he says, ‘‘and in newways that singing can communicate.’’

Fulljames, who was appointed associatedirector of opera in 2011, has now had timeto settle in at Covent Garden along with thedirector of opera, Kasper Holten, appointedthe same year. ‘‘It is beginning to feel likehome,’’ says Fulljames. ‘‘It is a privilege towork in such a place with amazing artists.There is a real energy here.’’n

Jonas Kaufmann sings the Des Grieux rolein ‘‘Manon Lescaut,’’ June 17 to July 7.

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Broadcasts include the April 28 world premiere of aballet based on Shakespeare’s ‘‘The Winter’s Tale.’’

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A great soprano who has long been asso-ciated with the Royal Opera House, Kiri TeKanawa, celebrated her 70th birthday andmarked her retirement by singing in Doni-zetti’s ‘‘La Fille du Régiment’’ at CoventGarden in March. The beauty and warmth ofher voice, especially in Mozart, Strauss andPuccini, will long be cherished by those whohad the good fortune to hear her.

Marking another birth, that of RichardStrauss 150 years ago, was a new produc-tion of ‘‘Die Frau ohne Schatten,’’ which fin-ished its run on April 2. Christof Loy’s pro-duction of Strauss’s ‘‘Ariadne auf Naxos’’returns June 25 to July 13, starring theFinnish soprano Karita Mattila and conduct-ed by The Royal Opera’s director of music,Antonio Pappano.

Apart from these notable anniversaries,The Royal Opera has concentrated this year

Center stage: The Royal Opera Housewas produced by the Creative Solutionsdepartment of the International New YorkTimes and did not involve the newspaper’sreporting or editorial departments. Text byNICK HAMMOND.

on rarely performed and new works, as wellas its core repertoire. Richard Eyre’s much-loved production of Verdi’s ‘‘La Traviata’’runs April 19 to May 20, with DmitriHvorostovsky and Simon Keenlyside alter-nating in the role of Giorgio Germont, andDiana Damrau and Ailyn Pérez alternating asVioletta.

Mozart’s ‘‘Le Nozze di Figaro,’’ starringAlex Esposito, Camilla Tilling, Rebecca Evansand Gerald Finley, returns in David McVicar’sbeautifully realized staging, May 2 to 15,conducted by The Royal Opera’s head ofmusic, David Syrus.

Jonathan Kent’s production of Puccini’s‘‘Tosca’’ comes back with an exceptionalcast, including Roberto Alagna, the risingstar Oksana Dyka and Thomas Hampson.Oleg Caetani conducts May 10 to June 3,and Plácido Domingo takes up the baton forfour performances, from June 16 to 26, witha new cast, including a Metropolitan Operafavorite, Sondra Radvanovsky, as Tosca,and Bryn Terfel and Lucio Gallo as Scarpia.

Later in the season, a new production byPatrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser of Doni-zetti’s ‘‘Maria Stuarda’’ runs July 5 to 18. The

American superstar Joyce DiDonato singsthe role of Mary, Queen of Scots.

John Copley’s naturalistic production ofPuccini’s ‘‘La Bohème’’ celebrates its 40thyear in The Royal Opera’s repertory, July 7 to19, in a revival with a cast that includes thesopranos Ermonela Jaho and Angela Gheor-ghiu as Mimì, and the tenors Charles Castro-novo and Vittorio Grigolo as Rodolfo.

Arnold Schoenberg’s magnificent andrarely performed ‘‘Moses und Aron’’ will beshown July 25 and 26. This productionmarks the beginning of a three-year artisticpartnership between the Welsh National Op-era and The Royal Opera, and features thegreat Wagnerian bass-baritone John Tomlin-son in the pivotal role of Moses, with RainerTrost as his eloquent brother Aron.

Looking further ahead, two exciting newproductions of rarely performed operas areplanned for 2015. John Fulljames will pro-duce Kurt Weill’s ‘‘Rise and Fall of the City ofMahagonny,’’ a work Fulljames calls ‘‘a po-tent satire on consumption,’’ and AntonioPappano will conduct the gorgeously exotic‘‘Król Roger,’’ about Roger II of Sicily, by thePolish composer Karol Szymanowski.n

SEASON HIGHLIGHTSA SUMMER OF DRAMA AND DELIGHT

Plácido Domingo will conduct four performances of Puccini’s ‘‘Tosca’’ at the Royal Opera House in June.

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Bringing his production of ‘‘Dialogues desCarmélites’’ to the Royal Opera House is alittle like returning home for the Toronto-borndirector Robert Carsen, who first sawFrancis Poulenc’s masterpiece at the RoyalOpera House at Covent Garden in 1983.

‘‘This opera is very special to me,’’ hesays. ‘‘It’s a unique piece on every level, witha very moving background. Although, inkeeping with so many operas, ‘Dialogues’ isabout love and death, it is not the traditionaluse of love and death. Here we are dealingwith love directed toward one’s faith anddeath as martyrdom.’’

The opera was first performed at the Roy-al Opera House in 1958, the year after itspremiere at La Scala in Milan, and the cast in-cluded Joan Sutherland singing the role ofMadame Lidoine (to be played in this produc-tion by the British soprano Emma Bell).

The opera is inspired by real events duringthe French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, whennuns from the Carmelite order were sent tothe guillotine. Poulenc drew his material froma film script by Georges Bernanos (which thewriter later turned into a play), in turn basedon a novella by Gertrud von le Fort (whosename is uncannily similar to that of theheroine of the opera, Blanche de la Force).

Carsen insists that the work has relev-ance for all people, not simply for those whoshare Poulenc’s Catholic faith. He sees theopera as abstract and modern in concep-tion, but with music of great clarity. As thetitle indicates, the opera deals with a seriesof encounters, with the characters cominginto conflict, passing each other by and oc-casionally finding themselves in harmonywith each other.

Although the story on paper seems avery tragic one about the martyrdom ofwomen, Carsen insists that Poulenc’s music‘‘has a lightness and liberation about it, andthe extraordinary final hymn sung by thenuns as they go to the scaffold should beviewed as something positive, as the musicseems to become ever more disconnectedfrom the earth.’’

For a piece that is so deeply rooted in re-ligion, it might seem an obvious ploy for a di-rector to fill the stage with religious imagery,but Carsen has opted to leave the stagebare apart from benches and tables, anduses no religious icons other than the nuns’rosaries. Carsen explains: ‘‘The audienceneeds to believe in the space before themwithout our resorting to overly theatricalscenery. I have tried to reflect the sense ofsolitude and the mob by using people rather

than constructed elements as thescenery.’’

Past Carsen productions, such as his‘‘Les Contes d’Hoffmann’’ and ‘‘Capriccio,’’both of which were shown in Paris in 2013,have focused on the self-regarding natureof the theater, but in Poulenc’s opera, self-conscious theatricality has no place. ‘‘De-cisions that serve the work the best comefrom an intuitive and instinctive sense,’’ hesays. ‘‘I’m interested in creating a worldwhere you will hear the music more clearlywithout distraction.’’

The central part of Blanche is to be sungby the English soprano Sally Matthews, whohas had a long association with CoventGarden, ever since she stepped in at shortnotice to sing the role of Nannetta in Verdi’s‘‘Falstaff’’ under Bernard Haitink in 2001.She was in the first cohort of The Royal Op-era’s Young Artists Program, between 2001and 2003, and she says she is excited to bereturning to a place she knows well.

Matthews sang Blanche under Carsenin Vienna in 2008, and says that ‘‘it is prob-ably the best production that I have everbeen in.’’

‘‘The psychological journey for the singerplaying Blanche is very intense,’’ she says,but she found the role surprisingly easy toplay. ‘‘The part seems very childlike — sheis so wide-eyed and innocent, yet incrediblypassionate. She has the ability to feelscared, and she is also quite erratic. You

have to live every moment with her.’’ InCarsen’s production, she adds: ‘‘Everythingmakes sense and is organic.’’

This production of ‘‘Dialogues des Car-mélites’’ is Carsen’s third collaboration withthe Royal Opera House (he staged‘‘Iphigénie en Tauride’’ there in 2007 and‘‘Falstaff’’ in 2012). He says he is thrilled tobe returning to Covent Garden, which hesees as one of the best-run companies inthe world on both an organizational and atechnical level.

Conducting is Simon Rattle, whomCarsen has known for many years, eversince they both worked in the early 1980s atGlyndebourne Festival Opera in East Sus-sex. ‘‘Simon is ideally suited to conductthis,’’ says Carsen. ‘‘He has a wonderful dra-matic instinct and yet also such a musicallimpidity and way of shaping the music.’’

Matthews has enjoyed performing withRattle on a number of occasions, notablyas Sophie in Strauss’s ‘‘Der Rosenkava-lier’’ in 2011 in Amsterdam, and she is rel-ishing the chance to sing Blanche under hisbaton. ‘‘He is understanding and warm,’’she says, ‘‘and someone with whom youfeel very safe as a singer.’’

The rest of the cast for ‘‘Dialogues’’ isstellar, and includes two great veteran op-era singers, Deborah Polaski and ThomasAllen, singing the roles of Madame deCroissy and the Marquis de la Force. Theproduction runs from May 29 to June 11.n

‘DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES’LOVE, FAITH, MARTYRDOM AND LIBERATION

A scene from Robert Carsen’s production of ‘‘Dialogues des Carmélites’’ at the Dutch National Opera.

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Culture film music

CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

BY MELENA RYZIK

The filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is oldschool. He writes all his scripts out byhand and then dictates them to a typist.Ideas are jotted down in small, color-co-ordinated notebooks and, despite thepresence of an iPad and iPhone in hislife, he doesn’t have email. ‘‘I don’t haveenough time as it is to read a book ormake music, or see my friends,’’ he said.‘‘People don’t believe me, too. Theythink I’m just saying that because Idon’t want to give it to them. But no, I donot have email.’’

So his interest in vampires, the subjectof his latest movie, ‘‘Only Lovers LeftAlive,’’ is hardly modish: He hasn’t seen‘‘Twilight’’ or ‘‘True Blood’’ or readAnne Rice, but can recount the origin ofone of the first English vampire stories,which dates to around 1816. His film,which continues a limited worldwide re-lease through June, stars Tom Hiddle-ston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve,an ur-cool bloodsucking couple whoselove spans centuries and continents — helives in crumbling Detroit; she in seedy,tangled Tangier. They’re united as muchby their creative and literary appetites —he’s a musician, she’s a reader — as bytheir darker urges. In some ways, Mr.Jarmusch said, it’s quite a personal film.

Mr. Jarmusch could be called vampir-ic, too, and not just for his predominantlyblack wardrobe and movie-villain-like

nimbus of silver hair, which he has styledand cut himself since he was a boy. At 61,he still has an unquenched culturalthirst: old school but with a tremendousjones for new (or new-to-him) projects.His catholic tastes reflect the cross-pol-linating downtown artistic life that flour-ished in tandem with his early career.

Through Thursday, the Film Societyof Lincoln Center is offering a retro-spective, ‘‘Permanent Vacation,’’ on his11 feature films, several shorts and mu-sic videos, including some for repeatcollaborators like Jack White and TomWaits. More than three decades intofilmmaking, Mr. Jarmusch remains therare indie director who achieved criticalsuccess (and four prizes at Cannes) and

enough prestige to cast bankable moviestars like Cate Blanchett and JohnnyDepp, and yet never made a move to-ward Hollywood, never even leapt at di-recting a commercial. Instead he hasmaintained, in movies and music, hisown wry, rad vision.

‘‘For my generation of European filmnerds, he was pretty much the first whoshowed us America through the eyes ofan American alien,’’ said Ms. Swinton,who has made three films with him. As astudent, she saw ‘‘Stranger Than Para-dise,’’ his 1984 breakthrough, and eversince, ‘‘he has been a consistent NorthStar for me,’’ she wrote in an email, ‘‘areliable idiosyncratic bass note underthe anthem of generica sounding

around him.’’The film is part of a productive swoop

for Mr. Jarmusch. It’s the first in whichhis five-year-old band, Sqürl, providesmuch of the soundtrack, in collaborationwith the composer and lutist Jozef vanWissem; alongside musicians like ZolaJesus and Yasmine Hamdan, they haveplayed shows in Berlin, Paris and NewYork to promote the accompanying al-bum, from ATP Recordings. Comingprojects include a quasi-documentaryabout the Stooges (‘‘a little poetic essay,’’Mr. Jarmusch said); an opera aboutNikola Tesla, in collaboration with hisfriend the composer Phil Kline and theinternational director Robert Wilson;and another feature, about a bus driverand poet in Paterson, N.J., that Mr. Jar-musch wrote in the years he waited for‘‘Only Lovers’’ to come together.

‘‘I take on a lot more now,’’ he said,partly out of age, experience and desire,and partly out of professional gumption.

Hemmed in by financing, ‘‘Only Lov-ers Left Alive’’ is the first movie he’s shotdigitally, a concession (he prefers film),but one he eventually liked. ‘‘The thingsI hate about digital are daylight depths offield and skin tones,’’ he said, neither ofwhich were a problem in a movie aboutextra-pale creatures who wither in sun.After a long hiatus, he also started play-ing guitar again, because music makingis more immediate than film, and also be-cause he started to wonder, ‘‘Why don’t Iuse my left hand for anything?’’

‘‘I had this period where I would tryshaving or brushing my teeth with myleft hand,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s like, what thehell, it’s got to have something in yourbrain that helps it. So then I thought:

O.K., I’ll pick up the guitar again. Youuse both hands.’’

Mr. Jarmusch is nocturnal, which iswhy his films so often take place atnight; sitting recently at B Bar, the ’80s-era haunt in the East Village, he seemedto waken as the midafternoon lightfaded. He has long had a loft on theLower East Side, and a place in the Cat-skills, too — ‘‘that saves my sanity,’’ hesaid — with his longtime partner SaraDriver, also a filmmaker. He came toNew York from Akron, Ohio, for collegein the 1970s and never left, baking him-self into a scene that produced DIY rockstars and idiosyncratic auteurs.

‘‘What I loved when I came here fromOhio is that I realized, you could be theweirdest person in the world and thenwalk around, and in three blocks, you’regoing to see someone way weirder thanyou,’’ he said.

Though he misses the wildness ofthose days (in the SoHo of the late ’70s,‘‘I looked out my window at about 3:30a.m., and I saw a man walking a llamadown Prince Street’’), ‘‘I’m not nostal-gic,’’ he said. ‘‘Because New York’s onlyabout change and conning everybodyout of whatever they have. That’s justwhat New York is.’’

If his work has eccentric tonal similar-ities — long, slow takes; a penchant forblack-and-white; evocative, obscure mu-sic; tinder-dry humor — Mr. Jarmuschhas applied them to familiar genres, likewesterns (‘‘Dead Man,’’ with Mr. Depp),martial arts-gangster flicks (‘‘GhostDog: The Way of the Samurai’’ withForest Whitaker) and dark rom-coms(‘‘Broken Flowers,’’ with Bill Murray,his highest-grossing film to date).

He conceived ‘‘Only Lovers LeftAlive’’ as a tender romance. Vampireswere, to him, a way to sneak in an over-view of cultural history. John Hurt playsan undead Christopher Marlowe, nowwriting in Tangier; in Detroit, Adamand Eve point out Jack White’s child-hood home. A wall of fame includes por-traits of their illustrious friends likeMark Twain, Franz Schubert and Rod-ney Dangerfield — all Mr. Jarmusch’ssuggestions. In under two minutes ofconversation at B Bar, he moved seam-lessly from Godard to a 1955 DroopyDog cartoon to Beethoven’s productiv-ity. Mr. Jarmusch quit smoking a fewyears ago, and we drank tea, not coffee.But otherwise, it could’ve been a scenein one of his movies.

In the new film, Adam is a reluctantvirtuoso who shares Mr. Jarmusch’s af-finity for avant drone rock (with lute).‘‘He has a weakness that he wants tohear his own music echo back,’’ Mr. Jar-musch said. ‘‘That’s not a smart thing todo, if you’re trying to live undercover.Unlike Eve — she has no need for that,she’s full of wonder at things, and that’senough for her.’’

He thought a bit. As a filmmaker whohas always played coy with popularity,‘‘I have his weakness,’’ Mr. Jarmuschsaid. ‘‘I think she’s more enlightenedsomehow.’’

Tom Waits had a different, more char-itable take. ‘‘While Jim toils alone,’’ hesaid, ‘‘as all great men must, his filmsfreely roam the world, like weather bal-loons that astound and awe those hereon the ground.’’

He also couldn’t resist pinging hisJARMUSCH, PAGE 11

The filmmaker worksin only one genre,and that’s his own

The indie director Jim Jarmusch , above,multitasked for his new film ‘‘Only LoversLeft Alive,’’ both directing and playingmuch of the soundtrack with his band,Sqürl. Tilda Swinton, left, plays a vampire.Jarmusch is kissing vampires

SANDRO KOPP/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

A music writer’s opus, now with sound and video

BY LARRY ROHTER

As a college classics major, the musichistorian, writer and critic Peter Gural-nick once submitted a paper comparingthe Roman poet Catullus’s ‘‘Little Bird,Delight of My Girl’’ to Robert Johnson’s‘‘Stones in My Passway.’’ ‘‘It was notwell received,’’ he recalled recently, butit helped establish a template that hasserved Mr. Guralnick superbly in writ-ing groundbreaking books on blues,country and soul music, and biogra-phies of pop music figures like ElvisPresley and Sam Cooke.

In more than 40 years of writing aboutmusic and musicians, one of Mr. Gural-nick’s fundamental premises, he said,has been to ‘‘take Howlin’ Wolf or JamesBrown as seriously as you would take

‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles.’ ’’ That mayseem commonplace today, but when Mr.Guralnick was starting out, it was a con-troversial, even revolutionary, concept.

Now Mr. Guralnick, 70, is extending hisfranchise. Seven of his books, beginningwith ‘‘Feel Like Going Home’’ and ‘‘LostHighway,’’ his two earliest, but also in-cluding the Presley and Cooke biogra-phies, are being reissued this year andnext in ‘‘enhanced e-book’’ editions thatinclude video and audio material and, insome cases, new chapters on figures likeJerry Lee Lewis and Delbert McClinton.

Mr. Guralnick, who has had four of hisbooks inducted into the Blues Hall ofFame, said that inserting video and au-dio material into his books seemed anatural outgrowth of what he has beendoing in other media. The writer and co-producer of a documentary about therock ’n’ roll pioneer Sam Phillips, healso wrote the scripts for a Grammy-winning documentary about Sam Cookeand for Martin Scorsese’s blues docu-mentary ‘‘Feel Like Going Home.’’

‘‘Peter is a meticulous archivist, andthese are among the most cited bookson American music ever written,’’ saidJohn Parsley, an editor at Little, Brownand Company, which publishes Mr. Gur-alnick’s work and is a division of theHachette Book Group. ‘‘So, it was cry-ing out to be used in new editions.’’

In its original print format, Mr. Gural-nick’s work ‘‘has been foundational,’’said Jim Miller, the original editor of‘‘The Rolling Stone Illustrated Historyof Rock & Roll.’’ Of his two-part Presleybiography, for example, Bob Dylan saidthe first book ‘‘cancels out all others,’’and in a review in The New York TimesBook Review, Gerald Marzorati de-scribed the two volumes as ‘‘the finestrock-and-roll biography ever written.’’

Though Mr. Guralnick began writing‘‘in the era of Hunter Thompson and the‘Almost Famous’ school of journalism,that wasn’t him at all,’’ added Mr. Miller,now a professor of liberal studies at theNew School in New York City. ‘‘In fact,he was almost the opposite: extremely

thoughtful, very reserved in some ways,fastidious about the accuracy of the in-formation he was gathering, and with aclassicist’s sensibility of the alien andthe strange as being an invitation to un-derstanding and interpretation.’’

Mr. Guralnick’s e-book project is aparticularly ambitious example of whatseems be a growing trend in the publish-ing world. As the technology for adding‘‘enhanced content’’ like music, videoand documents to the electronic ver-sions of books advances, publishers are

incorporating more of that material intowork about popular music, whether crit-ical assessments like Mr. Guralnick’s orthe autobiographies and memoirs writ-ten by musicians.

At Penguin Random House, theworld’s largest trade book publisher,two memoirs by members of Crosby,Stills, Nash and Young issued in the lastyear — Graham Nash’s ‘‘Wild Tales’’and Neil Young’s ‘‘Waging HeavyPeace’’ — have received that treatment,as has Dolly Parton’s ‘‘Dream More.’’ AtHarperCollins, recent memoirs byGregg Allman, Tony Bennett, SammyHagar and Steven Tyler are now avail-able in enhanced e-book editions.

The phenomenon might be growingeven faster, were it not for copyright is-sues. Because of predatory practiceslong widespread in the business, musi-cians often don’t own the rights to songsthey have written or recorded, and mustask permission of publishing and recordcompanies to use them.

Those companies, hungry for reven-

ue, may demand too high a price tomake the inclusion of music in booksworthwhile. Editors said the actual pro-duction costs of inserting the additionalmaterial into e-books, done in-house, isnot onerous, and that the payoff in addi-tional sales is clear.

Mr. Guralnick, of course, doesn’t con-trol any song copyrights, but he did pre-serve tapes of many of his interviews,and excerpts have been inserted intothe e-book versions of ‘‘Feel Like GoingHome’’ and ‘‘Lost Highway.’’ Theyprovide both context and atmosphere:In an interview with Muddy Waters athis Chicago home, his grandchildrencan be heard scampering around in thebackground, and during a conversationwith the blues songwriter and producerWillie Dixon, conducted at the businessoffices of Chess Records, the telephoneis constantly ringing.

Hearing Johnny Cash talk about hisadmiration for the gospel singer SisterRosetta Tharpe is instructive, but a 1980

Peter Guralnick’s projecttaps into growing trendfor amplified e-books

BOOKS, PAGE 11

JOE BUGLEWICZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Peter Guralnick is reissuing seven works.

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 11INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

interview with Merle Haggard,conducted in a motel room in Meridian,Miss., with a dog yelping in the back-ground, seems especially revealing.When Mr. Guralnick asks this prickly,self-assured country singer if he hadany models for his songwriting when hewas starting out, the answer is a long si-lence and then just one word, ‘‘Nope.’’

With a camera rolling, Mr. Guralnickalso went back to reinterview some ofthe sources for his books. His conversa-tions with Roland Janes, originally theguitarist in Jerry Lee Lewis’s band andlater a pioneering recording engineerand producer, and the rockabilly singerSleepy LaBeef are especially lively andinformative, their thick Southerndrawls contrasting with Mr. Guralnick’sBoston accent.

‘‘The idea was to dig deeper into thesepeople, and not tell the same stories thatare in the book,’’ said the documentaryfilmmaker and author Robert Gordon,who shot the sequences. ‘‘We wanted togive an intimate feel of what it’s like tohang out with Dan Penn or William Bellor Rick Hall, and give a back door viewinto how Peter and his process work.’’

One characteristic of Mr. Guralnick’swork, on display in the video content aswell as the books, is that he likes to talknot just to the stars, but also to thepeople who work with them behind thescenes: sidemen, producers, song-writers, managers and even, in the caseof the singer Bobby ‘‘Blue’’ Bland, hisvalet and driver. That is an approach in-creasingly rare in an era obsessed withcelebrity and seemingly bored by pro-cess.

‘‘I never saw a distinction there, anymore than I saw the distinction betweenhigh culture and so-called low culture,’’Mr. Guralnick said. ‘‘Someone likeMerle Haggard or Ernest Tubb mayhave changed the location of their life,but none of them abandon their identity,which is as much tied up in these peoplethe world has never heard of as in any-thing else.’’

In some cases, Mr. Guralnick’s rela-tionship with subjects of his books be-came so close that he felt he had toswear off writing further about them be-cause ‘‘I didn’t want the challenge ofeither writing truthfully or maintainingmy friendship, so I chose friendship.’’The soul singer Solomon Burke was oneexample, and the country music singerand pianist Charlie Rich is another.

To Mr. Guralnick’s surprise, Mr. Richwas so moved by the warts-and-all por-trait of him in ‘‘Feel Like Going Home’’that he wrote a song with the same title,now a pop standard of regret and disap-pointment. Later, he invited Mr. Gural-nick to help produce what ended up be-ing his last album, the jazz- and blues-flavored ‘‘Pictures and Paintings.’’

For the last eight years or so, Mr. Gur-alnick has been working on a biographyof Sam Phillips, the Memphis recordproducer and Sun Records founderwhose discoveries include Elvis Pres-ley, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash andJerry Lee Lewis. Phillips was a primesource for some of Mr. Guralnick’s otherbooks, and though the biography, sched-uled for publication next year, will in-clude video and audio in an e-book edi-tion, Mr. Guralnick stressed that theseare merely aids to enrich the process-oriented storytelling approach he hashoned over the years.

music art film books culture

Dana StevensI started shaping my reading listaround the recommendations ofpeople I wanted to be friends with,to get close to, to emulate, to be.

Anna HolmesFigurative or literal checklists ofpublished texts can suck the joyout of reading and should beavoided at all costs.

I’M LESS ATTRACTED tothe question of books Ifelt I should read andmore interested in theidea of ‘‘should’’ as an

friend. ‘‘I think Leavenworth was goodfor Jim,’’ he wrote, lying and deadpaneven in an email. ‘‘It disciplined him andgave him a sense of containment andappreciation for the austere. In metalshop, he made a camera out of a Cokebottle and piece of pipe.’’ His colorpalette, gray tones and shadows, was‘‘informed by the bits of rat hair andcobwebs that decorated his cinder-block cell.’’

Mr. Jarmusch, who started in bandsbefore movies, has always enjoyed com-munion with songwriters. He’s studyingArabic pop via Ms. Hamdan, a Lebanesesinger who appears in the film, and hecan as readily name-drop the rapperand producer El-P as the conductorClaudio Abbado.

‘‘He’s definitely not just a directorwho does some music, he’s definitely amusician,’’ said Deborah Kee Higgins,the co-director with her husband, BarryHogan, of ATP Recordings and the rov-ing festival All Tomorrow’s Parties. Mr.Jarmusch was its curator in 2010. Aspart of the noise trio Sqürl, ‘‘he’s got hisown sound,’’ Mr. Hogan said. ‘‘It’s notfor the faint of heart, but it’s reallygreat.’’

With film, Mr. Jarmusch likes to im-provise, writing new pages, addingscenes when locations strike him andshooting as much as he can. He works‘‘as the musician he is,’’ Ms. Swintonsaid, ‘‘assembling and tickling up arhythm and a relaxedness in the sceneby extended ‘jamming’ before eventu-ally laying down tracks. I happen to lovethis free-fall way of working.’’

He rehearses his actors, but only inscenes that will never be in the movie, atechnique to keep their reactions fresh.In ‘‘Ghost Dog,’’ Mr. Whitaker plays aloner urban samurai. To prepare, theyroamed the East Village, Mr. Whitakerin character. ‘‘He carried a practicewooden sword in his backpack, and hewas dressed like Ghost Dog, right, andhe hardly speaks — it’s super intense,’’Mr. Jarmusch said, especially when hewhipped out the weapon to practicemartial arts in East River Park, to thedelight of nearby schoolchildren. GhostDog even went to get a slice. (Mr. Jar-musch said he hopes to translate thefilm into a TV series, with Mr. Whitakerand the rapper RZA involved, and havesomeone else direct.)

Mr. Jarmusch’s real-life stories easilyequal, or maybe surpass, the narrativeleaps of his movies. ‘‘A lot of strangethings happen, yeah, for sure,’’ he said.‘‘It’s sort of been my way. I have a lot ofweird experiences by not having a plan.I have that, too, while filmmaking. Ihave this motto of: It’s hard to get lostwhen you don’t know where you’re go-ing.’’

Which is not to say that Mr. Jarmuschwants to live forever, extending his self-proclaimed dilettanteness into the cen-turies, like his loving vampires. ‘‘I likethat there’s an end,’’ he said, putting onhis metal voice. ‘‘ ‘Because that’s theway I like it baby. I don’t want to liveforever.’ That’s from a Motörheadsong.’’

But as an aficionado of decay, he has,of course, imagined his own demise. TheZoroastrians, an ancient Iranian reli-gious group, ‘‘get eaten by vultures,’’ hesaid. ‘‘They put their dead bodies on amountaintop, and they get eaten. Iwould love that.’’

BERLIN

BY MELISSA EDDY

The ‘‘Evidence’’ from which the Ai Wei-wei exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau derives its name could be the dis-played collection of hard drives, laptopsand notebooks the Chinese authoritiesconfiscated after arresting the artist in2011 as he tried to board a plane. Or itcould be the life-size replica of the cellwhere he was held under constant sur-veillance for 81 days following his deten-tion. Or even the 6,000 wooden stoolsthat fill the sunken atrium of the space,in a silent testimony to a lost way of lifein the Chinese countryside.

Mr. Ai’s solo exhibition, which openedhere on Thursday and runs through July7, is the largest show of his works to date.It reflects both the current social upheav-al in China, as well as the artist’s own ex-periences with repression. Organizerssaid they encouraged Mr. Ai, who haslong angered the Chinese authoritiesthrough his outspoken opinions aboutcensorship and art, to highlight the polit-ical element of his works in the show.

‘‘He is always accused of being apolitical activist,’’ said Gereon Siever-nich, the director of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, in a recent interview. Mr. Siever-nich made several trips to China to meetwith Mr. Ai, who has not been allowed totravel since his release. ‘‘We took thatcharge and stood it on its head and fullyembraced the political,’’ he said.

‘‘That this is taking place in the Mar-tin-Gropius-Bau, which is funded by theGerman state, is a German response tothis political art and to the power of cul-ture,’’ said Monika Grütters, Germany’sminister for culture, before the opening.She also stressed the importance ofholding the exhibition in one of the coun-try’s most prominent, state-funded ex-hibition spaces for art.

‘‘Evidence’’ was two years in the mak-ing, said Mr. Sievernich, who curated theshow with Mr. Ai. Members of the artist’steam who were allowed to travel came toBerlin to help install the works, most ofwhich were shipped by sea from China,while a few arrived from North America.

The installations are displayed in 18rooms and several of the main conceptu-al works were made for the exhibition,while the others have not previouslybeen shown in Germany, where Mr. Aienjoys a large following. Chancellor An-gela Merkel of Germany pressured theChinese government for Mr. Ai’s releasein 2011 and there were hopes that shewould be successful in securing him anew passport to attend the opening of theexhibition in Berlin. That did not happen.

Instead, Mr. Ai sent a video messagefrom his studio in Beijing, where the in-stallations were conceived and pre-pared with his team of 20 assistants. Themessage was shown at the opening ofthe exhibition.

‘‘This show reflects the work in pastyears. Most of them are new works,’’ Mr.Ai said, speaking in English. ‘‘Some arerelated to my current condition, relatedto my concerns. Some are more aestheticpresentation of the kind of concerns thatI always have with art and art history.Some are more involved with my activi-ties on the Internet and documentary.’’

An element of that condition — theconstant surveillance of Mr. Ai by theChinese authorities — greets visitors asthey enter the exhibition in the form oftwo cameras, marble replicas of thosetrained on the entrance to the artist’sBeijing studio.

Above them, a web of 150 bicycles bythe Shanghai-based Forever bikemakers hangs suspended from a ro-tunda. Called ‘‘Very Yao,’’ the work is anod to Marcel Duchamp, the conceptualartist who Mr. Ai often references. It alsocommemorates the controversial case ofa young Beijing resident, Yang Jia, who

was arrested on charges of stealing abike in 2007 and gained public sympathyfor speaking out against the police har-assment he said he suffered. Mr. Yanglater killed six Shanghai police officersand was executed in 2008, but to manyChinese he remained a symbol of the in-dividual standing up against govern-ment injustice.

For ‘‘Stools,’’ a collection of 6,000 tradi-tional Chinese stools lined up in tightrows, Mr. Ai designed the work to fit thesunken level of the 19th-century exhibi-tion hall’s central atrium. To create it, Mr.Ai carefully studied the building’s archi-tecture and drawing plans, creating tightrows that look pixelated from a distance.

Alexander Ochs, a Berlin-based gal-lery owner who has known Mr. Ai sincethe late 1990s and helped to build his fol-lowing in Germany, said the show reflec-ted the full range of the artist’s abilities.

‘‘Ai Weiwei has given us a very politic-al, but also very aesthetically and adeeply spiritual exhibition,’’ said Mr.Ochs, who helped found the Friends ofAi Weiwei group, which has raisedawareness of Mr. Ai’s situation with theGerman public and politicians.

The artist had hoped until the lastminute that he would be able to attendthe opening, telling the German publicradio broadcaster ARD last week that hekept a suitcase packed and ready. Mr.Ochs and his friends have been lobbyingMs. Merkel’s government to take up thecase with Chinese officials, includingPresident Xi Jinping who visited Berlinlast week.

Supporters in the United States,where exhibitions are planned at theBrooklyn Museum and on Alcatraz inCalifornia, have also taken up the callfor Mr. Ai to be allowed to travel. Lastmonth the graphic artist ShepardFairey released a poster of Mr. Ai, hishead shaved and bearing a gash from arun-in with police, in a sign of solidarity.

Despite, or perhaps because, of Ger-many’s support, Mr. Ai did not shy froma wink at the powerful industrial countryin an installation included in the show. Itinvolves eight ceramic vases from theHan Dynasty painted in the metallicgreens, shimmering silver and irides-cent blue of the luxury automobiles thatearn German carmakers millions eachyear in sales to the Chinese market.

‘‘Everywhere he is sending us littlemessages in a bottle,’’ Mr. Sievernichsaid.

MARKUS SCHREIBER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Above, an installation of 6,000 stools at the new Ai Weiwei exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The Chinese authorities did not permit Mr. Ai, below, to travel to the opening.

Ai Weiwei embraces the political

JARMUSCH, FROM PAGE 10

UNTIL I WAS 13 OR SO, myprimary reasons forreading any given bookwere that (a) it was inour house; and (b) I

hadn’t yet read it. In fact, (b) wasn’tenough of a reason, as I was more thanhappy to read my childhood favoritesover and over again. (Even now, handme a copy of ‘‘The Secret Garden’’ andI’m set for the afternoon.) Indiscrimin-ate bibliophagia didn’t give way to thesearch for the right book to read until theage when the authority conferred by thatnotion — the right book, the right music,the right person — began to matter.I started shaping my reading listaround the recommendations of peopleI wanted to be friends with, to get closeto, to emulate, to be. My eighth-gradefriend Jen, who played guitar andsomehow got me to sing a Beatles songonstage with her in the middle-schooltalent show, once meaningfully lent mea grubby, clearly beloved copy of C.S.Lewis’s novel ‘‘The Lion, the Witch andthe Wardrobe.’’ She prefaced my read-ing with a spoiler-filled exegesis of theending, laying particular stress on theChrist-like resurrection of the fallen li-on king. Though I doubt she was tryingto convert me, Jen was a devout Chris-tian, and she was clearly eager to sharethe good news as well as a good book.So I threw myself into reading the Nar-

nia series — but perhaps because of theadvance notice, Lewis’s allegoricalfantasy struck me as schematic andflat, and I made it through only the firstvolume. It wasn’t until I read his auto-biographical works (‘‘Surprised byJoy,’’ ‘‘A Grief Observed’’) more than adecade later that I was able to appreci-ate the depth and clarity of his writing— a slow-arriving present from Jen.I was probably 15 when ‘‘The BrothersKaramazov’’ was pressed on me ur-gently by Chris, a boy two years my se-nior with whom I had a complicatedfriendship for the years when we over-lapped in high school. Neither of usquite had a crush on the other — I’mnot sure we even enjoyed each other’scompany all that much — but we none-theless kept trying awkwardly to mat-ter to each other in some way, for thesimple reason that we both cared tre-mendously about words and ideas, andhad few other friends we could sharethat obsession with.I have no idea what Dostoyevsky’sbizarre, ungainly last novel must haveread like to me then. I would reread ityears later in a Russian-literat-ure-in-translation course in college, andcome to love if never fully to under-stand it. (As I would discover in thatclass, I’m more of a Chekhov girl.) ButI’ll never forget the conspiratorial thrillof sneaking that thick red-and-white pa-perback into health class to read undermy desk, or of sitting up late at Denny’swith Chris, the two of us arguing as onlya 15- and 17-year-old can over what theGrand Inquisitor chapter was trying tosay about faith and justice and free will.Later I would experience the DNA-al-tering joy of discovering a great book atthe same time as, and in the company of,a great love. I would start to choose

auxiliary verb applied to anything oth-er than treating others with kindnessand respect, paying taxes and the con-sumption of leafy green vegetables.But let me back up a bit. In the interestof full transparency, I’m going toprovide a list of books that, at one point

or another, I felt obliged to read butdidn’t: ‘‘Moby-Dick,’’ ‘‘The Rise andFall of the Third Reich,’’ ‘‘Anna Karen-ina,’’ ‘‘Catch-22,’’ ‘‘The Adventures ofTom Sawyer,’’ ‘‘Cannery Row,’’ ‘‘TheAge of Innocence,’’ ‘‘Great Expecta-tions,’’ ‘‘1984,’’ ‘‘Gravity’s Rainbow.’’ Inlater years — i.e., my early to late 20s —there were others: ‘‘Infinite Jest,’’‘‘Motherless Brooklyn,’’ ‘‘Bastard Outof Carolina,’’ ‘‘Jazz,’’ ‘‘Fight Club,’’‘‘Generation X,’’ ‘‘The Corrections.’’There are, of course, many, many more.Do I feel sheepish about this? Some-times, yes. But I’ve also come to acceptthat the holes in my ongoing literary syl-labus are not so much intellectual fail-ings as symptoms of a larger affliction— a stubbornness against culturallymandated consumption and a lifelongdisdain for authority, legal or literary. Inshort, my ambivalence about any num-ber of what are commonly held to begreat or important books is a direct re-sult of the fact that they are held to begreat or important books, especiallywhen it comes to more contemporaryworks, whose agreed-upon influencemay have as much to do with an au-thor’s social capital — and publicity-ma-chine marketing dollars — as the qualityof the prose or the contours of the story.This obstinacy, this default setting ofsuspicion, inevitably means that Isometimes throw the baby out with thebath water, like the moment in 1996when, faced with what felt like the500th glowing review, I vowed never topick up a copy of Frank McCourt’s ‘‘An-gela’s Ashes.’’ To be fair, I’m 40 now,and this insolence has waned some inthe 17 years since I rejected McCourt’sPulitzer-winning memoir, which, by allaccounts, is a wonderful, moving por-trait of individual resilience amid eco-

nomic and domestic catastrophe.But I continue to be less interested inwhat the conventional arbiters andgatekeepers of culture — agents, edit-ors, publicists, critics — deem neces-sary than what titles speak to me in anygiven moment: What I would want toread as opposed to what I should.Sometimes these interests line up, aswas the case with ‘‘Freedom,’’ byJonathan Franzen (meh), or ‘‘GoneGirl,’’ by Gillian Flynn (loved it). Some-times it takes a few months — or years,as with Colum McCann’s lovely ‘‘Letthe Great World Spin’’ — for me towarm up to the idea of a book, to cometo a particular novel or memoir or his-torical survey on my own, despite, notbecause of, exhortations like ‘‘bestbook of the year’’ or ‘‘instant classic!’’Rejecting ‘‘should’’ in favor of ‘‘could’’seems to me preferable, a privileging ofcuriosity and discovery over necessity,even if this sometimes haphazard ap-proach doesn’t always guarantee stimu-lating conversation among the literati.The fact is that books one ‘‘should’’ readare fine for high school English cur-riculums or collegiate surveys of literat-ure, but beyond that, figurative or literalchecklists of published texts can suckthe joy out of reading and should beavoided at all costs. Unless, of course,you’re a professional critic or editor ofsaid critics, in which case, I salute you.And now I’m off to read whatever I want.

Anna Holmes has written for numerouspublications, including The WashingtonPost, Salon, Harper’s, Newsweek, SportsIllustrated and The New Yorker online.

ONLINE: AGREE? DISAGREE?Post comments, read columnist bios and

browse the archive at nytimes.com/books

books because they were mentioned inother books, or because I heard an au-thor give an interview on the radio thatstayed with me, or because they offereda window onto some larger body ofknowledge — I became, in short, anadult capable of deciding for myselfwhat to read next, and I’m glad of it. Butthere’s a power to those early memoriesof books as talismans, passed from oneinitiate to the next as in a holy rite. Evennow, many of my best literary discover-ies are directly traceable to passionaterecommendations from friends, prefer-ably issued as they stand next to a book-case gesticulating with a dog-earedcopy. Insisting people absolutely haveto read a book you loved — what betterway of telling them you love them?

Dana Stevens is the film critic at Slateand a co-host of the Slate CultureGabfest podcast.

PEOPLE

KAREN JOY FOWLER has won the PEN/Faulkner prize for fiction for her novel‘‘We Are All Completely BesideOurselves,’’ the PEN/Faulkner Founda-tion has announced. The $15,000 awardis the largest peer-juried prize for fictionin the United States. The judges —MADISON SMARTT BELL, MANUELMUÑOZ andACHY OBEJAS — reviewed more than 430novels and short-story collections beforechoosing Fowler’s novel about a lost sis-ter, set in the Midwest in the 1970s. Theother finalists were DANIEL ALARCÓN, PER-

PHOTOGRAPHS: AP, AFP

CIVAL EVERETT, JOAN SILBER. Ms. Fowler isbest known for her novel ‘‘The JaneAusten Book Club.’’

A lost masterpiece of British silentcinema has been discovered in a smallcinema in the Netherlands, BBC Newsreported. ‘‘Love, Life and Laughter,’’written and directed by GEORGE PEARSON,was made in 1923 and had been one of theBritish Film Institute’s 75 Most Wantedfilms. Starring the British silent actressBETTYBALFOUR, it told the story of a chor-us girl who falls for an impoverished au-thor. Only one other complete film byPearson survives, according to the BFI.The institute says it hopes to screen the90-minute film in Britain later this year.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. KIKUO JOHNSON

For largest exhibition yet,dissident artist wasurged to be outspoken

BOOKENDS

Barring books read for school, what were the first books you felt you ‘should’ read, and why?

Jarmuschtakes onvampires

GAO YUAN

BOOKS, FROM PAGE 10

Music writeramplifies hisdigital books

KAREN JOY FOWLER, BETTY BALFOUR

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES12 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

Sports soccer golf basketball

GONZALO FUENTES/REUTERS

Ezequiel Lavezzi of Paris St.-Germain. It took only four minutes for Lavezzi to give P.S.G. an early lead, when he settled a weak clearance from Chelsea and fired it into the net.

Huge loss for P.S.G. as it wins bigSOCCER PARIS

BY SAM BORDEN

The ball had barely settled in the back ofthe net, and José Mourinho, Chelsea’sunpredictable manager, was already onhis way to the Paris St.-Germain bench.While the P.S.G. players and coachescelebrated Javier Pastore’s last-minutegoal, Mourinho somewhat bizarrelywalked around shaking hands with theecstatic home side, too.

Mourinho said later that he simplywanted to beat the traffic in the tunnelon the way back to the locker rooms;after all, he noted, the referee blew thefinal whistle seconds later. But in someways, the strange gesture looked as ifMourinho was tacitly acknowledgingthe gravity of Pastore’s goal: After a 3-1victory Wednesday in the first leg of thisChampions League quarterfinal, P.S.G.is in prime position to eliminate Chelseaand advance to the final four of Europe’stop club competition.

A one-goal deficit would have beenmanageable for Mourinho’s team in next

week’s second leg. Two goals, however,may be too much to ask of a team that hasstruggled to identify which of its strikers— if any — can consistently produce.

‘‘It is difficult for us to score goals,’’Mourinho said afterward. ‘‘It is difficultto transform the half-chances intochances. And when you make the defen-sive mistake, you are in trouble.’’

Chelsea’s best hope for a comeback?It may lie in the fate of P.S.G.’s star,Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was removedfrom the game after an hour with whatappeared to be a hamstring injury.P.S.G.’s president, Nasser al-Khelaifi,indicated to French news media thatIbrahimovic may be out for severalweeks, and if he is unable to play inTuesday’s game at Stamford Bridge, itwill be a significant setback.

But Pastore, who came off the bench,showed P.S.G.’s depth. His goal in the94th minute was well-taken, thoughMourinho and his players rued the easewith which he zipped around two Chelseadefenders and whipped a shot past goal-keeper Petr Cech at the near post.

‘‘The third goal was a joke,’’ Mourinhosaid. ‘‘It was not a goal. It was a joke.’’

Chelsea defender Gary Cahill added:‘‘It was a horrible time to concede, and asloppy goal, which is unlike us. It’s a bigblow.’’

Chelsea’s woeful finish came several

hours after ugliness of a different kind.The underbelly of continental soccerwas on display earlier Wednesday asseveral groups of fans, believed to besupporting Chelsea, were involved in vi-olence on the streets of the city center.

The scenes on Rue St. Denis, amongother areas, were troubling: Witnessesreported seeing fans making fascist sa-lutes and spewing racial invective to-ward black Parisians.

Additionally, flares were set off whilenumerous storefronts and windowswere damaged.

After that unsavory beginning, P.S.G.got off to a sizzling start in the game,seizing a lead four minutes into thegame when Ezequiel Lavezzi settled aweak clearance from Chelsea’s captain,John Terry. Without missing a beat, herifled a stunning half-volley into the topcorner of the net.

That early punch should have sent thehome side flying, but P.S.G. could nottake advantage of Chelsea’s unorthodoxlineup. Mourinho has made no secret ofhis displeasure with his strikers recently,so, in a typically Mourinho-style move,he played without one, starting the gamewith midfielder Andre Schürrle playingalone up front. At one point, Mourinhoscreamed at Schürrle not to drop backtoo far (as he was surely used to doing),imploring him to push forward.

Ultimately, it was a series of mistakesfrom P.S.G. that led to Chelsea’s equal-izer. Ibrahimovic, who was largely in-visible even before his injury, gave theball away easily in midfield, and mo-ments later Thiago Silva, the veteranP.S.G. captain and defender, made amisguided challenge on Oscar just in-side the penalty area. Eden Hazardcoolly scored the penalty kick to giveChelsea a coveted away goal.

The Blues could have had a second be-fore halftime — Hazard hit the post withan artful drive about five minutes beforethe interval — and that would havesurely tilted the series. But P.S.G. wentahead after the hour mark whenChelsea’s David Luiz turned the ball in-to his own net. The biggest mistake ofthe sequence was when Luiz fouledBlaise Matuidi to give P.S.G. a free kickin the first place. After that, there waslittle Luiz could do once Lavezzi’swickedly bending ball turned himaround.

Optimists will recall that Mourinho’steams have won the Champions Leaguetwice before, so he certainly knowswhat a comeback requires. But afterthis result, he struggled to find cause forhope.

‘‘It will not be easy,’’ he said flatly.‘‘We are not a team full of talent to scorelots of goals — especially at this level.’’

Club beats Chelsea, 3-1,but Ibrahimovic exitsgame with leg injury

Real Madrid’s sole focus is on a 10th crown

RobHughes

GLOBAL SOCCER

LONDON The craving that consumesReal Madrid to try to win ‘‘La Decima’’— a tenth European Cup or ChampionsLeague crown — moves inexorably on.

But for Borussia Dortmund, the in-juries, suspensions and loss of playersto its biggest rival have combined tobecome too big a burden for evenCoach Jürgen Klopp to repair.

After a deluge of rain and of goals atthe Santiago Bernabéu Stadium inMadrid on Wednesday, Real mustsurely have one foot in the semifinals.Gareth Bale scored with his first shot.Isco glided out of midfield to strike asecond. And, almost inevitably, Cristi-ano Ronaldo danced into the batteredand beleaguered remnants ofDortmund’s defense to score again.

Why would Ronaldo not score on thisnight? He was celebrating his 100thChampions League appearance andtied the record of 14 tournament goalsin a single season (held, of course, byBarcelona’s Lionel Messi).

And Ronaldo has now accumulated64 goals in this, the world’s premierclub tournament, compared to Messi’s67 in 85 matches.

A minor knee injury should not pre-vent Ronaldo from progressing to atleast the semifinals this year.

Most of injured Borussia players willnot be back for the second leg inDortmund on Tuesday, though Robert

Lewandowski, the Pole who struck fourgoals in one night against Madrid lastseason, should return after suspension.

Even that will probably be Lewan-dowski’s last stand because he, likeMario Götze a year ago, has alreadydecided he would rather play for Ger-many’s wealthiest team, Bayern Mu-nich. And Dortmund, though still insecond place in the Bundesliga, has nocontractual power to resist.

But with injuries removing five fromthe side that carried Borussia all theway to the final last season, the Bern-abeu was a bridge too far.

‘‘Sporting revenge,’’ said Isco to re-porters in Madrid after Wednesday’sgame, ‘‘is a beautiful thing. Now wehope to knock them out.’’

Isco is 21. Vengeance for him waspersonal and twofold, becauseDortmund had not only knocked RealMadrid out of the Champions League

last year, it also eliminated his previousclub, Málaga. He is a player expectedto mature into a vital No. 10 for Spain,though on Wednesday he stole in fromthe left flank to strike with a shotsweetly placed low beyond the reach ofDortmund goalkeeper Roman Weiden-feller.

Before that, the power and speed andcool finish of Bale picked holes in aDortmund rearguard that appearedbarely to have come out of the lockerroom. And when Ronaldo camethrough that same defense, too quickfor Sokratis Papastathopoulos andMats Hummels, his finishing stroke

was full of the majesty that has decor-ated his career.

One hundred Champions Leaguegames and counting. Carlo Ancelotti,the Italian who specializes in guidingclubs to this trophy, cautioned thatReal is still three games away from thefinal in May. The coach’s caution is nodoubt born of the fact that his defend-ers showed complacency that wouldhave been punished, had Lewandowskibeen present.

‘‘We practically assisted two of theirgoals,’’ Klopp said after the game. ‘‘Wehad our chances in the second half, butwe didn’t execute either the final passor the attempt on goal. So we are not ina position to make battle cries aboutthe return leg.’’

Klopp spoke realistically about theobligation to throw everything at thegame. He used the phrase ‘‘glimmer ofhope.’’

But his Dortmund is not theDortmund of last year. The absenteescannot help, and even the fit players,such as that fine and spirited creatorMarco Reus and the energetic KevinGrosskreutz, appeared on Wednesdayto be snatching at their half chances.

Too eager. Too fatigued by a seasonof trying to lift a side which has had itslegs torn from underneath it.

There was succor offered toDortmund in the way that Pepe, for ex-ample, mixed timely interceptions andblocks with his habitual errors in de-fense. But Borussia was too tired andtoo erratic to capitalize. The team thatwon two Bundesliga titles this decadeand made it to the Champions Leaguefinal a year ago is no match at the mo-ment for Real.

Madrid has come through its ownwobble in Spain’s domestic league. Buteveryone knows — and everyone hasseen it in the way that Real hashammered opponents in Europe — thatthis club is about one thing this season:La Decima.

DANI POZO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Dortmund defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos was sandwiched between Pepe and Ser-gio Ramos as Real Madrid rolled to a 3-0 victory in the Champions League quarterfinal.

Houstonis missinglook of truecontenderBASKETBALL

BY BECKLEY MASON

After losing to the Nets in Brooklyn onTuesday night, the Houston Rockets(49-24) acted as if they had had enoughof the N.B.A.’s grueling 82-game regularseason. They played that way, too.

Missing three starters, includingDwight Howard, the Rockets, who ap-pear destined for the Western Confer-ence’s fourth seed when the playoffsstart in three weeks, offered a listless,impatient performance in Brooklyn.

‘‘We didn’t attack,’’ Rockets CoachKevin McHale said. ‘‘We settled a lot.’’

Even given the injuries, Tuesday’sgame raised questions about the Rock-ets’ preparedness to make a deep play-off run. They remain untested, throughno real fault of their own: There may beno amount of regular-season winningthat can fully prepare a young team for atough seven-game series. When teamsplay each other over and over, as they doin the playoffs, there is no hiding flaws,just mitigating them where possible.

The Rockets have had a top-10 de-fense and top-five offense nearly all sea-son. These are reliable surface indica-tors of a balanced team withchampionship aspirations. But for all oftheir winning, the Rockets may lack theon-court seasoning to break through inthe brutal Western Conference.

The Rockets’ offense is almost exclus-ively concerned with drives to the bas-ket and spot-up 3-pointers. No midrangejumpers for them. It is a mathematicallyand tactically prudent strategy, but inexecution it can almost look cynical.

James Harden, the Rockets’ bestplayer, spent his Tuesday night flinging

himself toward the rim on drives thatseemed intended to draw fouls ratherthan score layups. That is probably ameaningless distinction, and ultimately,his style works. Harden earned andmade 16 free throws for his trouble, fin-ishing with 26 efficient points.

The quintessential Rockets possessionlasts only a handful of seconds. To pushthe tempo, three or more of the Rocketson the court have license to bring up theball. They often appear to be playing on aslanted court as they barrel toward therim in search of a crease in the otherteam’s worried transition defense.

Seen once, the Rockets’ manic transi-tion offense appears simplistic and raw.The kind of chaos they create demandsits own kind of discipline. Every N.B.A.team says it wants to run more, but run-ning is hard labor, and staying organ-ized at top speed is even tougher. TheRockets run with purpose. The wings fillprescribed positions in the corners,where the 3-point line is shortest.

The Rockets have the first 10 secondsof a possession figured out. Their issuesare with the back half of the shot clock,when things slow down. The freedomand aggressiveness they play with atthe start of a possession can devolve in-to disorganized stagnation at the end.The Rockets can seem to lack a plan be-yond putting Harden in a pick-and-roll— never a bad option — when the shotclock is short.

This was the case in Tuesday’s loss,and the frustration in the locker roomwas evident. ‘‘Our spacing tonight wasnot very good,’’ forward Chandler Par-sons said with a growl. ‘‘We didn’t doanything to help anyone else.’’

The Rockets know they can play bet-ter, more together. They did so for a sol-id 20-game stretch last month. But asthe playoffs near, the Rockets are stillchasing a level of consistency necessaryto advance against the likes of the SanAntonio Spurs.

Other teams have made a leap in ma-turity in the playoffs. Most recently, the2012 Thunder, a team Harden played for,put together their best stretch of basket-ball for four magnificent games againstthe Spurs.

‘‘The longer we play together, themore comfortable we’re going to be,’’Parsons said. ‘‘By now, it’s getting latein the season. We are who we are.’’

The Rockets will be dangerous in theplayoffs. But they may have to wait an-other 82-game regular season beforethey can call themselves contenders.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

James Harden, right, Houston’s top scorer.

Rockets struggle to adapt,if their offensive systemdoesn’t work right away

A studentand a masterof the gameGOLF RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF.

BY KAREN CROUSE

The week of the Founders Cup in Ari-zona, Karrie Webb sat for an interviewwith filmmakers for a feature-lengthdocumentary on the 13 women who star-ted the Ladies Professional Golf Associ-ation. The project intrigued Webb, aseven-time winner of major tourna-ments and a World Golf Hall of Famemember whose excellence in the gameis surpassed only by her encyclopedicknowledge of its history.

After Stacy Lewis posted a string of 13consecutive top-10 finishes that wassnapped in Singapore in March, somepeople mused that it must be some kindof record until Webb quietly mentionedto Lewis that she had recorded 16 in arow in 1998-99.

Asked recently how she had managedto return to the winner’s circle at the ad-vanced age of 39, Webb, who has twotitles in four 2014 tour starts, pointed outthat Juli Inkster won eight events, in-cluding two majors, after turning 40.

‘‘I wouldn’t have known that,’’ Ink-ster, 53, said, adding, ‘‘But Webbieknows the history of the game, knows alot about it.’’

The past is important to her, but so isthe future, which is why Webb, whoturns 40 in December, is on theL.P.G.A.’s board of directors. During ameeting in which the fine print of thenew season-long points race was dis-cussed, Webb supported a system thatwould avoid a repeat of what happenedin 1998, when Se Ri Pak won two majorsbut lost the points-based Player of theYear award to Annika Sorenstam.

‘‘She gets what she needs to do tomake the L.P.G.A. a better place,’’ Ink-ster said, adding, ‘‘She really thinksthings through.’’

Webb made her debut in the KraftNabisco Championship — where shewill again play this week — two yearsafter the death in 1994 of the tourna-ment’s inimitable host, Dinah Shore.Webb has kept alive her memory by ad-vocating that Shore’s name be returnedto the event’s title.

Webb, the 2000 and 2006 champion,did not have to meet Shore, a big-band

singer and television star, to know howmuch the tournament, the first to fea-ture a $100,000 purse, meant to women’sgolf.

The sport’s legacy never stoppedmattering to Webb even as she built andbuffed her own. It is why, after she camefrom six strokes back to win theFounders Cup last month, she decidedon the spot to donate $25,000 of her$225,000 check to help finance the filmon the L.P.G.A.’s original 13.

‘‘It’s so Karrie,’’ said Paige Macken-zie, another player on the L.P.G.A.board. ‘‘She loves this tour and has suchrespect for its history.’’

Webb’s golf story was made for thebig screen. She won the Women’s Brit-ish Open in 1995 at 20, before she joinedthe L.P.G.A. Tour. In a three-yearstretch beginning in August 1999, Webbwon six major titles. At 24, she ascendedto No. 1 in the world. Webb was so dom-inant that she drew comparisons withTiger Woods.

After 2002, fear and insecurity creptinto Webb’s game. She had one victoryin 2003 and 2004 and none in 2005, theyear she was inducted into the WorldGolf Hall of Fame. Her world rankingdropped to 27.

‘‘I guess I meandered there for a littlewhile,’’ Webb said. ‘‘But winning hereearly in 2006, in the fashion that I won, Ithink really turned everything aroundfor me.’’

At the 2006 Kraft Nabisco Champion-ship, Webb holed a pitching wedge from116 yards for an eagle on the par-5 18thon the final day, then defeated LorenaOchoa in sudden death.

On Monday, Webb played a practiceround with two 17-year-old amateursfrom her native Australia, Minjee Leeand Su Hyun Oh. ‘‘They asked me whenwe were on 18 where I made the shotfrom,’’ Webb said.

Her caddie, she said, consulted hisyardage book and pointed to the spot inthe fairway where Lee’s mother wasstanding.

Webb has been standing on seven ma-jors since. She would love to win hereighth this week, but she knows betterthan to try too hard. Whether she suc-ceeds or not, her legacy is secure. Thatis what she keeps reminding herself.

Ask Webb a questionabout golf’s history, andshe can usually answer it

DONALD MIRALLE/GETTY IMAGES — AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Karrie Webb has won seven majors.

Decimated by injuries,Dortmund is not the team itwas last year, when it made itto the Champions League final.

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 13INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

tennis sports

SCOREBOARD

NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1972

GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES

WIZARD of ID DILBERT

Across

1 Romania andBulgaria, once

16 Frank Loessershow tune

17 It might coveran oil spill

18 Doing the rounds?

19 Sporting goodschain withthe slogan “Getoutside yourself”

20 Potsdam pronoun

21 Peculiar: Prefix

22 Start-up helper:Abbr.

24 Pace at PompanoPark

26 Shoving matches?

29 Relative of unetulipe

31 “Frasier” role

33 Match cry

34 Pooh-pooh

38 “You’re probablyright”

40 Mojo

41 Sister co. of Virgin

42 Middle square,maybe

43 Sea of ___ (viewfrom Crimea’seastern coast)

45 Chart, in Cádiz

48 Sol mates?

50 Frost-covered

52 Crook’s place

54 Many activists’concerns: Abbr.

56 One given up forgood?

61 “What a sight forsore eyes!”

62 Its islands are notsurrounded by water

63 Unease

Down

1 Some defensiveweapons, in brief

2 “Love and Death onLong Island” novelistGilbert

3 Lead-tin alloys

4 Unmarried, say

5 Activist Guinier

6 Some claims

7 “Cool, dude”

8 Many a backpacker,at night

9 62-Across optionnorth of the border

10 Go a coupleof rounds

11 Preweighed, in a way

12 Very rarely heardinstruments

13 Long shift, perhaps

14 Ending to prefer?

15 Young or oldfollower

23 Rich person’s suffix?

25 Alternative to .net

27 Rural parents

28 Cry of pleasedsurprise

30 Songwriters Hallof Fame memberwho wrote“April Love”

32 Get-up-and-go

34 Doo-wop syllable

35 Body part detectingodeurs

36 One getting ridof possessions?

37 “Third Watch”actress Texada

39 Hester Prynne woreone

44 Labor Day arrivals,e.g.

46 Conf. whosemembershipincreased by twoin 2011

47 Melodic49 Not leave the house51 Prefix with second53 Sticks in the brig?

55 Utah senator whoco-sponsoreda tariff act

56 Potential serialmaterial

57 “___ in Full”(Tom Wolfe novel)

58 Security figure:Abbr.

59 Abrupt transition

60 Some picnicsupplies

CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60

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Solution to April 3 puzzle PUZZLE BY MARTIN ASHWOOD-SMITH AND JOE KROZEL THE NEW YORK TIMES

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BRIDGE | Frank Stewart

If your assumptions are wrong, yourconclusions aren’t likely to be too goodeither. Such was demonstrated intoday’s deal.Against four spades, West took two highclubs (not best) and shifted to a trump.South drew trumps and assumed thatthe three-to-one odds would hold up, andone of the red-suit finesses would win.He led the queen of hearts from dummy,and West won and returned a heart.South won and next let the queen of dia-monds ride, but East produced the king;down one.Red KingsThe play came to a sad conclusion for de-clarer because he made the wrong as-sumptions. If West held both red kingsplus the A-K of clubs and shortness inspades, he would have acted over onespade. So South can assume that Easthas one red king.After taking two high trumps, Southmust lead a low diamond from dummy. IfEast wins, South can play low, saving hisqueen, and later discard two hearts on dummy’s A-J.If West had the king of diamonds, South could expect the heart finesse to win.

Daily Question: You hold:ä 8 ;×K 7 4 ;µ 9 8 6 4 2 ;å A K 8 7. Neither side vulnerable.The dealer, at your right, opens one spade. You pass, the next player bids two spadesand two passes follow. What do you say?Answer: You couldn’t act at your first turn, but now that the opponents have stoppedlow, you can compete. Partner surely has some values, and since the opponents havea spade fit, your side probably has a fit somewhere. Double, which he should treat asfor takeout. Tribune Content Agency

South DealerN-S vulnerable

Northä Q 10 9 5× Q J 3µ A J 7 3å J 3

Westä 8× K 7 4µ 9 8 6 4 2å A K 8 7

Eastä 7 4 2× 9 8 6 2µ K 10å Q 10 5 4

Southä A K J 6 3× A 10 5µ Q 5å 9 6 2

South West North East1ä Pass 3ä Pass4ä AllPass

Opening lead -å K

SPORTS

Roundup

SOCCER

More arrests made in Englandin match-fixing investigationSeven more players from FootballLeague clubs in the northwest of Eng-land have been arrested after a match-fixing investigation by the British au-thorities, taking the number of suspectsto 13.

The National Crime Agency saidThursday that seven new arrests hadbeen made as well as the re-arrest ofsix players held in December undersuspicion of conspiracy to commit actsof bribery and money laundering.

In December the third-tier club Old-ham Athletic fired the winger CristianMontaño after the investigation intomatch-fixing. The N.C.A.’s investigationbegan after revelations on Sunday inthe British tabloid The Sun. (REUTERS)

Senior FIFA official says Brazilis ‘not ready’ for World CupThe secretary general of FIFA, JérômeValcke, has again raised concerns aboutBrazil’s World Cup preparations, sayingthat the stadium for the opening game isone of two venues that worry him most.

Just two months before theshowpiece tournament starts, Valckesaid Wednesday in South Africa thatthe stadiums in São Paulo, where theopening game will be played June 12,and Porto Alegre in the south were‘‘where we have more work to do thanin the other 10.’’

‘‘If you want me to summarize,’’ Val-cke said when asked to describeBrazil’s status, ‘‘we are not ready.’’ (AP)

OLYMPICS

Judo chief dislikes proposalto move sport to winterThe head of judo’s world governingbody has fired back at internationalcycling’s new chief for suggesting themartial art could be moved to theWinter Olympics.

The cycling president, Brian Cookson,had said that some indoor sports couldbe switched to the Winter Games totake pressure off the Summer Olympics.

That didn’t sit well with the Interna-tional Judo Federation president, Mari-us Vizer, who offered to help Cookson‘‘in better understanding the worldsports movement and in avoiding presscommunications at times when he actu-ally does not have any message totransmit.’’ The Winter Olympics are re-stricted to sports on snow or ice. (AP)

Swiss unleash their stars in Davis CupTENNIS

BY CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

The tennis band still known as the BigFour is split in two this week. Roger Fe-derer and Andy Murray are playing inthe Davis Cup quarterfinals, while Ra-fael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are rest-ing up for the clay-court tussles soon tocome.

Yet this is still better news than usualfor the beleaguered Cup, which mightnot have all the major stars engagedand enthused but does have a number ofpotentially resonant story lines thatcould bring the sport’s leading teamcompetition back to a wider audience.

Switzerland — and that includes Fe-derer — has never won the Davis Cup.Britain has not won it since 1936 and hasnot reached a World Group quarterfinalsince 1986, a year before Murray wasborn in Dunblane, Scotland.

Novelty is good plot fodder, and a full-strength semifinal between Switzerlandand Britain, which would be staged inBritain in September, would be the kindof high-profile clash that has been toorare in recent years, contributing to theevent’s decline.

But first the Swiss and the Brits needto win this weekend.

Switzerland looks like a lock with itstwo Grand Slam singles champions —Stanislas Wawrinka and Federer — inthe lineup at home against Kazakhstan,which beat a Federer-free Swiss team in2011 but has no player in the top 50 thistime.

The British, more of a one-man showwith Murray, are in a much tighter spot inNaples on outdoor clay against an Italianteam with two talented, well-establishedsingles players in the 13th-ranked FabioFognini and 34th-ranked Andreas Seppi.

Fognini is carrying a thigh injury, andMurray had health problems of his ownThursday, missing the draw because of astomach illness. But he practiced later inthe day and presumably will have to beclose to his best — perhaps in doubles,too — for Team GB to have a chance. Heis now well-accustomed to ending histor-ical droughts for his nation after becom-ing the first British man in 77 years to winthe singles title at Wimbledon last July.

But Murray has not made it past thesemifinals in any tournament sincethen, cutting short his 2013 season inSeptember because of back surgery andsplitting with his coach Ivan Lendl lastmonth. He has not hired a replacementand is down to No.8 in the singles rank-

ings, which is no help to the Big Fourbrand even if Murray is clearly stillviewed as a member of the ruling class.

He showed signs of revival in Miamilast week, losing in the quarterfinals ofthe Masters 1000 event in two tough setsto Djokovic. But this will be a quick tran-sition to clay, which remains his weak-est surface even if he has reached twoquarterfinals and a semifinal at theFrench Open.

Even so, he will be favored to win bothhis singles matches, unlike the 161st-ranked James Ward, the 27-year-oldwho pulled off the upset of the firstround by defeating Sam Querrey of theUnited States on an outdoor clay courtin San Diego. He has, however, won justone match on the main tour since then.

It could thus be a wild weekend inNaples, assuming the forecast of raindoes not extend the matches into nextweek. And it would have been a muchmore interesting weekend in AriakeColiseum in Tokyo if Japan’s star, KeiNishikori, had not had to withdraw fromthe quarterfinal with the Czech Republicbecause of a groin injury aggravated inhis run to the semifinals in Miami, wherehe beat Grigor Dimitrov, David Ferrerand Federer before withdrawing.

Without the 18th-ranked Nishikori,the highest ranked Japanese man in his-tory, the home team has no players inthe top 130 and has had to get creative,calling up the Davis Cup rookie TaroDaniel to play singles.

The Czechs have won the Cup the lasttwo years and are now big favorites toreach the semifinals, most likely againstFrance, which is playing host in Nancyto a German team missing its top fourplayers.

But the Czechs are also far from fullstrength, although not because of injur-ies. Their leader Tomas Berdych has de-cided to conserve his energy for indi-vidual pursuits by not playing awaymatches this year and has become thelatest of many stars to lobby for achange to the Cup’s annual format.

‘‘It should be at least every twoyears,’’ the 5th-ranked Berdych said inMiami.

That is quite a statement from a manwho has been one of the most loyal Cupplayers. But Berdych has seen and heardenough to know that change remains un-likely with Francesco Ricci Bitti, thepresident of the International TennisFederation that runs the event, consis-tently opposing any major format shifts.

The prize no longer means what itused to mean, which is a paradox and apity considering how much energy andsuspense a Cup match can generate andhow much a biennial team event like theRyder Cup in golf has grown in impor-tance in recent years.

But Federer, who has won all the indi-vidual titles that matter except theOlympic gold in singles, has decidedthat it is a prize still worth chasing atage 32, and not just because his personalcoach, Severin Lüthi, is the captain.

With Wawrinka at a new level, Feder-er has committed to the campaign andfor the first time since he was a teen-ager, he will not play No. 1 singles.Wawrinka, this year’s surprise Australi-an Open champion, is ranked No. 3 in theworld, one spot ahead of Federer, the 17-time Grand Slam singles champion.

Whatever the pecking order, plenty ofSwiss will cheer them on.

The Palexpo in Geneva can accommo-date 15,900 and there should be fewempty seats as the duo that has beendubbed ‘‘Fedrinka’’ return to action.

It would be quite a surprise if Fed-rinka is not back in action again for thesemifinals, where Murray just might bewelcoming them both back to Britain.

CLIVE BRUNSKILL/GETTY IMAGES — AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Stanislas Wawrinka is ranked higher than Roger Federer, so he will play No. 1 singles as Switzerland meets Kazakhstan in the Davis Cup.

ONLINE: COMPLETE SPORTS RESULTSinyt.com/sports

BASKETBALL

SOCCER

N.B.A.EASTERN CONFERENCEATLANTIC DIVISION W L Pct GBx-Toronto 43 32 .573 —x-Brooklyn 40 34 .541 2½New York 33 43 .434 10½Boston 23 52 .307 20Philadelphia 16 59 .213 27

ITALIAN SERIE AWEDNESDAYAS Roma 4 Parma 2

P W D L F A PtsJuventus 31 26 3 2 67 22 81AS Roma 31 22 7 2 62 17 73Napoli 31 19 7 5 59 32 64Fiorentina 31 15 7 9 49 33 52Inter Milan 31 12 13 6 49 33 49Parma 31 12 11 8 51 41 47Atalanta Bergamo 31 14 4 13 37 39 46Lazio 31 12 9 10 40 40 45Verona 31 13 4 14 46 52 43Torino 31 11 9 11 45 40 42AC Milan 31 11 9 11 47 43 42Sampdoria 31 11 8 12 40 43 41Genoa 31 10 9 12 34 39 39Udinese 31 11 5 15 34 42 38Cagliari 31 7 11 13 29 41 32Chievo Verona 31 7 6 18 26 46 27Bologna 31 5 11 15 24 48 26Livorno 31 6 7 18 34 58 25Sassuolo 31 5 6 20 29 61 21Catania 31 4 8 19 23 55 20(REUTERS)

SOUTHEAST DIVISION W L Pct GBy-Miami 52 22 .703 —x-Washington 39 36 .520 13½Charlotte 37 38 .493 15½Atlanta 32 42 .432 20Orlando 21 54 .280 31½

CENTRAL DIVISION W L Pct GBy-Indiana 53 23 .697 —x-Chicago 43 32 .573 9½Cleveland 31 45 .408 22Detroit 27 48 .360 25½Milwaukee 14 61 .187 38½

WESTERN CONFERENCESOUTHWEST DIVISION W L Pct GBy-San Antonio 59 16 .787 —Houston 49 25 .662 9½Dallas 44 31 .587 15Memphis 44 31 .587 15New Orleans 32 43 .427 27

NORTHWEST DIVISION W L Pct GBx-Oklahoma City 54 19 .740 —Portland 49 27 .645 6½Minnesota 37 37 .500 17½Denver 33 42 .440 22Utah 23 52 .307 32

PACIFIC DIVISION W L Pct GBy-L.A. Clippers 54 22 .711 —Golden State 46 29 .613 7½Phoenix 44 31 .587 9½Sacramento 27 48 .360 26½L.A. Lakers 25 50 .333 28½x-clinched playoff spot; y-clinched division

WEDNESDAYCleveland 119, Orlando 98Indiana 101, Detroit 94Washington 118, Boston 92Charlotte 123, Philadelphia 93New York 110, Brooklyn 81Toronto 107, Houston 103Miami 96, Milwaukee 77Chicago 105, Atlanta 92Minnesota 102, Memphis 88San Antonio 111, Golden State 90Denver 137, New Orleans 107L.A. Clippers 112, Phoenix 108Sacramento 107, L.A. Lakers 102(AP)

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES14 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

BusinessParliamentbacks ‘netneutrality’for EuropeLONDON

BY MARK SCOTTAND JAMES KANTER

European lawmakers approved newrules on Thursday aimed at guarantee-ing equal access to the Internet and cut-ting cellphone charges across the 28-member European Union.

The proposals, which had been sub-ject to intense lobbying by industrygroups and consumer advocates, mir-ror similar efforts in the United States toallow access by all companies and indi-viduals to the Internet’s pipelines forservices like streaming music, on-de-mand television and cloud computing.

The new legislation, which aims to cre-ate a single market for electronic com-munications across the bloc, faces a fewmore hurdles before it can become law.

The next European Parliament, elect-ed next month, would still need to give afinal endorsement of the rules, and indi-vidual countries would need to reachagreement with the Parliament and theEuropean Commission on a reconciledversion of the proposed law.

Any future horse-trading, particu-larly over how telecom giants charge In-ternet companies for access to theirdata networks, may lead to changes inthe final rules after domestic politiciansand regulators provide feedback for thepan-European proposals.

Despite the uncertainty, Internetcompanies and consumer advocacygroups voiced support on Thursday forthe new rules, while telecom companiessaid the changes would potentially cur-tail investment in the Continent’s mobileand fixed-line Internet infrastructure.

European politicians inserted last-minute amendments intended to providea strict definition of so-called net neutral-ity, which means that telecom companiesand other Internet service providers

cannot discriminate between differentservices that run on their data networks.

The lawmakers also made it mandat-ory for mobile phone companies to com-ply with rules to phase out roamingcosts when consumers use cellphonesin other European Union countries bythe end of next year.

‘‘This vote is the E.U. delivering forcitizens,’’ Neelie Kroes, the Europeancommissioner responsible for telecom-munications, said in a statement onThursday. ‘‘This is what the E.U. is allabout — getting rid of barriers to makelife easier and less expensive.’’

Industry lobbyists said that the cutsin cellphone roaming charges, which re-ceived widespread political backing,were likely to stand when a new Parlia-ment convened. The net neutrality pro-visions, which passed with slim majorit-ies, could be reopened depending on theoutcome of the parliamentary elections.

The legislation is part of a continuingdebate in Europe over how to pay for the

PARIS

BY DAVID JOLLYAND ALISSA J. RUBIN

A $20 billion battle for control of a Frenchmobile phone operator is testing the lim-its of President François Hollande’s will-ingness to let market economics work,while alarming consumer advocates whoworry that the government’s favoredsolution would reduce competition.

Whatever the outcome, the winner willbe one of the two billionaires vying to ac-quire SFR, the mobile unit of the Vivendimedia and entertainment conglomerate,with 21 million cellphone subscribers.Only the mobile carrier Orange, withabout 27 million subscribers, is bigger.

Leading one team of bidders, and thegovernment’s favored contestant, isMartin Bouygues, the scion of one ofFrance’s biggest family fortunes andboss of the country’s No.3 mobile play-er, Bouygues Telecom, with 11 millioncustomers.

His rival is Patrick Drahi, an enigmat-ic French-Israeli entrepreneur who con-trols the largest French cable televisionoperator and is seeking to break into themobile market.

The outcome could be decided as soonas Friday when Jean-René Fourtou,Vivendi’s chairman and chief executive,meets with his colleagues on the boardto consider the rival offers.

The deal would be ‘‘by far’’ the largestever in the French telecommunicationssector, according to Frederic Boulan, ananalyst in the London office of Nomura,the financial services group.

From the start, Arnaud Montebourg,the outspoken Socialist Party stalwart

who was named economy minister onWednesday in a shake-up after lastweekend’s local elections, has made itclear that he opposes the bid from Mr.Drahi.

Mr. Drahi’s holding company, Altice,is based in Luxembourg. Besides its be-ing foreign, it is financed with an exten-sive amount of debt that Mr. Monte-bourg deems dangerous.

Mr. Montebourg has also cast suspi-cion on Mr. Drahi’s personal finances,and French media reported that the Fi-nance Ministry had begun investigatinghis tax status.

Mr. Montebourg, seen as being on theleft of the Socialist Party spectrum, hassaid the state wants to reduce the num-ber of mobile operators to three fromfour, because the current market com-petition is so cutthroat that it endangers

jobs and the companies’ ability to fi-nance new investment. His critics sayhe has seemed less concerned about thepossible anticompetitive impact of re-ducing the number of companies.

As evidence of the government’s back-ing, the state-owned finance businessCaisse des Dépôts et Consignations isponying up 300 million euros, or $411 mil-lion, to back Mr. Bouygues’s offer. Two ofFrance’s wealthiest families, Pinault andDecaux, have also rallied to his side.

For all the commotion, the deals areactually very similar. Both Bouygues

Telecom and Mr. Drahi’s cable business,Altice-Numericable, are offering about$20 billion in a combination of cash andshares for SFR. And both would leaveVivendi with a significant minoritystake in the merged entity.

But there are crucial differences.A company created from a combina-

tion of Altice-Numericable and SFRwould have shares traded on the market.That would enable Vivendi — whichwants to sell SFR as quickly as possible— to easily unload its residual stake. Anda lack of overlapping operations meansthe deal would be unlikely to encountertrouble with antitrust regulators.

In contrast, a combined BouyguesTelecom-SFR would not be publiclytraded, making it harder for Vivendi todispose of its stake. And there is a riskthat antitrust regulators would demandsignificant asset sales because of theoverlap between the two companies’mobile operations.

If Bouygues hopes to win, it will needto reassure Vivendi on its ability to exitfrom the minority stake, according topeople close to the negotiations.

Three weeks ago Vivendi agreed toenter exclusive talks with Mr. Drahi’sAltice-Numericable, saying its proposalwas the better one. But Mr. Bouygueshas not given up.

Xavier Niel, a maverick entrepreneurwho shook up the French mobile marketin 2012 with the introduction of his Freeultra-low-cost mobile service, has alsosigned on with Mr. Bouygues.

Bouygues Telecom agreed last monthto sell him portions of his existing mo-bile network’s hardware and a numberof valuable radio frequencies for ¤1.8 bil-lion, if the deal goes through, to address

antitrust concerns. That side deal wouldtransform Mr. Niel into a much more im-portant telecom player in France.

Both Mr. Bouygues and Mr. Drahihave kept a low profile over the lastmonth, and both declined to commentfor this article.

Vivendi declined to comment, beyondsaying that it planned ‘‘to work in thebest interest of our shareholders andemployees.’’

The focus on choosing between thebillionaires is misplaced, according toconsumer advocacy groups. AntoineAutier, a project manager at UFC-QueChoisir, France’s largest consumer or-ganization, said the government wasnot paying enough attention to the con-cerns of mobile phone users.

‘‘There’s a certain incoherence in thegovernment’s thinking,’’ Mr. Autiersaid. On the one hand, ‘‘they’re sayingthe market needs to shrink because fouroperators is too many,’’ he said. ‘‘On theother, they’re saying prices are not go-ing to rise for consumers.’’

French mobile rates, once among thehighest in Europe, are now among thelowest, thanks to Mr. Niel’s Free mobileservice, Mr. Autier said. ‘‘Competitionhas been very beneficial for the con-sumer,’’ he said.

The open involvement of the Frenchgovernment in trying to shape the out-come of a big business battle is part of along history of such interventions, tra-cing from the legendary 17th-century fi-nance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, astrong believer in the state’s role in thecreation of wealth.

Acceptance of Colbertism, which con-trasts with Adam Smith’s ‘‘invisiblehand,’’ is shared to some extent across

the French political spectrum. JacquesChirac’s center-right government in2005 put the kibosh on a takeover ofDanone, the French yogurt maker, bythe American giant Pepsi. More re-cently, Mr. Montebourg torpedoed theplan by Yahoo — another foreign com-pany — to acquire VideoMotion, aFrench competitor to YouTube.

In those cases, the government wor-ried that strategic assets would be soldto foreign companies that were littleconcerned with maintaining Frenchjobs. But the current case involves twoFrench investors.

Speaking in a radio interview lastmonth in which he clearly signaled hispreference for Mr. Bouygues’s plan, Mr.Montebourg raised concerns about Mr.Drahi’s personal finances.

‘‘Numericable is a Luxembourg hold-ing, his company is quoted on the Am-sterdam bourse, its boss’s personalholding is in Guernsey, a tax haven ofHer Majesty the Queen of England, andhe is a Swiss resident,’’ Mr. Montebourgsaid. Should he return to France, Mr.Montebourg added, the tax authorities‘‘will have some questions for him.’’

Mr. Montebourg appeared to be back-pedaling this week, saying Tuesday onFrance Inter radio that ‘‘I don’t supportBouygues, I don’t support anyone, and Ihave no friends in the grande bourgeois-ie française.’’

Nonetheless, Mr. Boulan, at Nomura,said Mr. Montebourg’s promotion toeconomy minister had added a new ele-ment to the equation, because in theorythat would give him the authority to over-rule the French antitrust authorities.

Whatever happens, consumers willbe watching closely their phone bills.

FRANKFURT

BY JACK EWING

The European Central Bank gave itsstrongest signal yet that it was consid-ering unprecedented action to stimulatethe euro zone economy. But the bankimmediately faced criticism that talk oflarge-scale bond purchases — the samemethod used by the Federal Reserve tohelp restart the United States economy— was little more than a bluff.

Mario Draghi, the central bank’spresident, said that members of thebank’s Governing Council, which metThursday, had a ‘‘rich and ample’’ dis-cussion about so-called quantitativeeasing, purchases of government or cor-porate bonds on a grand scale as a wayof reducing market interest rates.

Inflation in the euro zone was 0.5 per-cent in March, its lowest level since2009. Mr. Draghi said that the Govern-ing Council had grown concerned aboutsome of the negative effects of subduedprice increases, which make it harderfor euro zone countries like Greece orItaly to reduce their huge debts.

The Governing Council ‘‘is unani-mous in its commitment to using alsounconventional instruments’’ to con-front the risks of a prolonged period oflow inflation, Mr. Draghi said, readingfrom a prepared text.

The statement was the central bank’smost explicit indication yet that it wasready to deploy quantitative easing.Use of the word ‘‘unanimous’’ in thestatement was evidently designed to

show that such a move would not facedissent within the council from conser-vative members like Jens Weidmann,who is also president of the Germancentral bank, the Bundesbank.

At a news conference, though, Mr.Draghi declined to give specifics abouthow quantitative easing might be car-ried out in Europe, where most creditcomes from banks rather than corpo-rate bonds as in the United States. Thatmeans the central bank would have few-er assets to buy as a way of pumpingmoney into the economy.

The lack of detail caused some ana-lysts to conclude that Mr. Draghi, whosemost effective monetary tool has oftenbeen his spoken words, was bluffing.‘‘It’s hard to say how much of the rhet-oric is a genuine signaling of Q.E. intentand how much is just trying to talk downthe euro,’’ Luke Bartholomew, an in-vestment manager at Aberdeen AssetManagement, said in an email.

The central bank left its benchmarkrate at 0.25 percent on Thursday,already a record low. The euro dippedagainst the dollar following Mr.

Draghi’s remarks to $1.37, down 0.37percent from earlier in the day.

Mario Draghi said inflation was ex-pected to pick up in April. That wasprobably one reason that the GoverningCouncil decided to not take any stepsnow to stimulate the economy. Andwhile Mr. Draghi said the council ex-pected inflation to remain low in themidterm, the bank still expects inflationto approach the 2 percent level, whichthe bank sees as its target, in 2016.

Mr. Draghi may be hoping that an in-crease in inflation in April will removepressure on the central bank to be moreaggressive. Mr. Draghi betrayed someannoyance Thursday with outsiders, in-cluding top officials of the InternationalMonetary Fund, who have been exert-ing such pressure.

‘‘The I.M.F. has been recently ex-tremely generous with its suggestionsof what we should do or not do,’’ Mr.Draghi said with obvious sarcasm. ‘‘Weare really thankful for that.’’

The central bank’s council, he said, isunanimous in its commitment to takingsteps to address low inflation if it deemsthem necessary. But for now, he said,‘‘we need more information.’’

Some economists have begun to warnof the perils of ‘‘lowflation,’’ a new termused to describe the phenomenon af-fecting the euro zone.

Lowflation is not as damaging as de-flation, a broad-based decline in pricesthat undercuts corporate revenue andoften leads to higher unemployment be-cause companies stop creating jobs.

ORESTIS PANAGIOTOU/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Big discounts in Athens. Declining prices in countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain make it more difficult for their governments to pay down their large debt burdens.

E.C.B. mulls vast bond purchases

Britain leanstoward newtobacco lawLONDON

BY STEPHEN CASTLE

The British government took a stepThursday toward imposing a ban onbranding for cigarette packs, indicatingthat it was likely to go ahead withsweeping new restrictions on the mar-keting of tobacco.

Until late last year the governmentappeared to oppose any requirement forplain cigarette packaging, which is in-tended to make smoking less attractiveto young people who might be temptedby the brand messages of tobaccocompanies.

But on Thursday, Jane Ellison, the un-der secretary for public health, pub-lished the findings of an independentstudy on the issue, which found thatthere was ‘‘enough evidence to say thatstandardized packaging is very likely tocontribute to a modest but important re-duction in smoking.’’

Ms. Ellison said she was inclined toproceed with laws to standardize ciga-rette packaging and told lawmakers thatif the rate of smoking by children was re-duced even by 2 percent, 4,000 fewer chil-dren would take up the habit each year.

She said that, before proceeding, shewould review any new information thathad emerged since the last full publicconsultation in 2012 and could be ‘‘relev-ant to a final decision on this policy.’’

Any such law would give public healthadvocates a big lift by introducing someof the toughest restrictions on tobaccosales in the world. Australia requiresplain packaging, and Ireland intends toeliminate trademarks and logos on packsand to set rules on the size and position-ing of health warnings. All packs wouldbe one plain neutral color, with the brandname in the same uniform typeface.

New restrictions across Europe willsoon increase the size of mandatoryhealth warnings on cigarette packages.In February, the European Parliamentapproved regulations to permit pictureand text health warnings that would cov-er 65 percent of the front and the back ofthe packs, and 50 percent of their sides.

Countries inside the 28-nation blocare permitted to go further if they wish.

The report published Thursday waswritten by a prominent pediatrician,Cyril Chantler. He said in a statementthat research ‘‘cannot prove conclus-ively’’ that any one measure wouldhave an impact on curtailing smoking,but he noted that even a moderate de-cline was important.

The Labour Party criticized the Brit-ish government for requiring a con-

sultation period instead of pressingahead immediately with legislation.

‘‘How many more children are goingto take up smoking before this govern-ment takes firm and decisive action?’’said Luciana Berger, a spokeswoman onpublic health issues for the opposition.

Some opponents of the plan have ar-gued that plain packaging would en-courage counterfeit cigarettes, but Mr.Chantler’s report rejected that idea. Itfound ‘‘no evidence that standardizedpackaging is easier to counterfeit, andindeed in Australia hardly any counter-feit standardized packages have beenfound to date.’’

The report said the effect on tobaccoconsumption of the new rules in Aus-tralia, which were introduced in 2012,was unclear, and that the switchoverprocess might have distorted the statis-tics. Tobacco shipped to retailers actu-ally increased in volume by around 0.3percent in 2013. But cigarette sales ingrocery stores fell by around 0.9 percentin the same year, the report said, citingthe Retail World trade magazine.

Mark Littlewood, the director generalof the Institute of Economic Affairs, aresearch institute in London that favorsfree markets, said that the British gov-ernment should resist a rush to regu-late.

‘‘The early evidence from Australia,where plain packs have been intro-duced, suggests this policy has not hadany impact on youth smoking rates — infact, overall smoking appears to haverisen,’’ he said in a statement.

High stakes in cellphone battle of the billionaires in France

DANIEL ROLAND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Lack of details about the program had analysts wondering if Mario Draghi was bluffing.

The bidders are the scion ofone of France’s biggest familyfortunes and an enigmaticFrench-Israeli entrepreneur.

Health official publishesreport calling for plainpackaging of cigarettes

‘‘This is what the E.U. is allabout — getting rid ofbarriers to make life easierand less expensive.’’

EUROPE, PAGE 17 RATES, PAGE 17

CONOR ASHLEIGH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

An example of the antismoking messagesthat appear on Australian cigarette boxes.

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 15INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

technology media business

Amazon seeks a portal via the TV screen

EDUARDO MUÑOZ/REUTERS

Peter Larsen, an Amazon vice president, demonstrating the Fire TV device at a Manhattan news conference this week. It will show programming that Amazon creates and licenses.

BY DAVID STREITFELD

Amazon is a retailer that makes andsells entertainment. This week it took abig step toward a future in which shop-ping and video are tightly linked, per-haps even inseparable.

If Amazon has its way — and it did notbecome one of the United States’ mostvaluable companies by drifting with thecurrent — even watching home moviesof your sister’s adorable children or afriend’s crazy cat will become market-ing opportunities.

The company began selling a deviceWednesday that lets consumers watchAmazon’s extensive video library, aswell as play a wide array of games ontheir television sets.

‘‘Amazon has a vested interest inmaking sure it is present at every mo-ment of possible consumption, which isall the time,’’ said James McQuivey, ananalyst with Forrester Research. ‘‘Itwants to get into that television screenand start to build a relationship.’’

Amazon Fire TV is part of a multi-billion-dollar effort by Amazon to movefrom selling goods produced by others,which is traditionally a low-marginbusiness, to presiding over the entireprocess of creation and consumption.Physical formats such as books, CDsand DVDs are being replaced by down-loads and streaming.

In books, Amazon has largely madethis transition. It makes e-readers andtablets and then sells the content forthem. Some writers produce their booksexclusively for Amazon.

Video is much more competitive. Net-flix, which began by renting the sameDVDs that Amazon was selling, is theleader both in streaming video and cre-ating original shows to feature on it.

‘‘Streaming is the long-term future ofvideo,’’ said William V. Power, an analystfor Robert W. Baird & Company.‘‘Amazon needs to capitalize on that. Theprize is controlling much of the livingroom and a big piece of the economy.’’

Fire TV, which arrives after years ofspeculation, costs $99. In addition tocontent from Amazon’s studios, it offersprogramming the retailer licenses foran estimated 20 million Amazon Primesubscribers. Those customers pay asmuch as $99 a year for a membershipthat includes videos and shipping.

Other Fire content will come from es-tablished players like Hulu and Netflix.Another source will be homemade films.With a separate $40 controller, Fire TVcan also be used to play games, includ-ing a version of the popular Minecraft.

‘‘We’re missionaries about inventingand simplifying on behalf of customers,’’Peter Larsen, an Amazon vice presi-dent, said at a Manhattan news confer-ence held to announce the device.

Mr. Larsen, speaking on a stage outfit-ted to look like a living room, saiddevices from competitors, which includeRoku, Google and Apple, have threeproblems: It is too hard to search forcontent, performance is slow and unreli-able, and the content is a closed system.

He noted that Apple TV users could notget the full Amazon Prime experience.

Among the enhancements promotedfor Fire TV: a voice search function thatallows users to say a name like GeorgeClooney and see results instantly popup, and a prediction feature that knowswhat you want and lines it up.

Amazon is leveraging its position as aretailer to expand into new fields, some-thing it has become very good at. ‘‘Be-cause we’re selling millions’’ of set-topboxes already, ‘‘we hear what’s workingand we hear what’s not working,’’ Mr.Larsen said. Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’sfounder and chief executive, was notpresent at the news conference.

Dave Limp, another Amazon execu-tive, dismissed all the new and oldcompanies that will be duking it out withAmazon in the consumer’s living room.

‘‘We don’t go at it from the perspec-tive of who you’re going to competeagainst,’’ he said. ‘‘We don’t think of thisas a sporting event where there has tobe one winner.’’

But in a chart on Amazon’s site, wherethe company has already started selling

the Fire TV, it made explicit comparis-ons with those competitors, whom itjudged wanting. Amazon’s chart wasimmediately attacked for leaving outthings that its competitors did better.For instance, Roku offers more optionsfor live-streaming sports events.

Consultants are already laying bets.‘‘The likely winners are Apple and

Amazon, both of which offer entire eco-systems, are excellent at merchandis-ing content and are capable of subsidiz-ing prices and making up the revenueelsewhere,’’ said Bill Rosenblatt, presi-dent of GiantSteps Media TechnologyStrategies. ‘‘The likely losers areGoogle, which has a poor track record inentertainment devices and is not verygood at merchandising content, andRoku, which has no ecosystem or syner-gies with other devices or services.’’

For all the lure of new devices likeGoogle Glass, Americans still spendfour hours a day watching television.The dream of securing that audiencehas fired up many a technology mag-nate. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Intelall have tried, with mixed results. No

one has done for TVs what Steven P.Jobs did for computers, portable musicplayers and cellphones.

TV was on Mr. Jobs’s to-do list. ‘‘I’d liketo create an integrated television set thatis completely easy to use,’’ he told his bi-ographer, Walter Isaacson. ‘‘I finallycracked it.’’ But then he died, and Applefans have waited. Apple TV, a set-top box,is the leader in the field, but until recentlyApple referred to it as a ‘‘hobby.’’

In Amazon’s vision, the television be-comes a supercharged home-shoppingecosystem.

‘‘Imagine,’’ Mr. McQuivey said, ‘‘I’mwatching a Jason Bourne movie. He’s onthe run through Europe. The moviepauses and lets you move into an inter-active game with Bourne. Or maybe hegoes through Vienna, and you alwayswanted to go there, so here’s how youcould plan a trip or at least buy a bookabout it. Amazon will know who to offerthese deals to because those people arealready in front of it at that moment.’’

This was not something Amazontalked about much at the news confer-ence, but Amazon is also not a company

that gives away its secrets.One small clue to the company’s ulti-

mate plans: Amazon is promoting anapp for its box from a start-up calledMagisto. It offers free automatic video-editing software that can reduce thethree-hour movie you shot about yourcat to something far snappier. The com-pany says it has tens of millions of users,a small percentage of whom choose tomake their films public.

Magisto has the potential to be a sortof YouTube for Amazon customers.

Reid Genauer, chief marketing officerof Magisto, said he had no idea howAmazon would generate revenue fromMagisto’s app but speculated that themetadata in each video could be auto-matically analyzed in the same wayGoogle automatically scans Gmail mes-sages and then advertises against them.

‘‘In the same way that I write, ‘I’mcoming to see you in England,’ and thenI see airfare ads,’’ Mr. Genauer said,‘‘you could see how someone could usemetadata in video to sell products.’’

Jonah Bromwich contributed reporting.

Berlin aimsto cement itsrole as havenfor start-ups

BY MARK SCOTT

Berlin has one of the fastest-growingstart-up communities, as engineers anddesigners have flocked to the Germancapital in recent years, attracted by theunderground music scene, cutting-edgeart galleries, stylish bars and low rent.

Yet as a number of European technol-ogy companies close in on high-profileinitial public offerings, following the re-cent debut of King Digital Entertain-ment, the maker of the Candy CrushSaga franchise, many wonder whetherBerlin will be able to capitalize on itsburgeoning reputation.

Entrepreneurs there complain thatthere is still a lack of funding availablefrom local venture capitalists, many ofwhom were badly burned during thedot-com crash more than a decade ago.Logistics also make it difficult for Amer-ican investors to scout talent and start-ups in Berlin. (There are no directflights from the German capital to theWest Coast, for example.)

‘‘U.S. venture firms find it tough to in-vest in Berlin,’’ said Konstantin Guer-icke, a German co-founder of LinkedIn,who now is a United States-based part-ner of the German venture capital firmEarlybird. ‘‘Until we see really big exitscoming from Berlin, U.S. venture capi-talists will remain happy with what theycan get in the U.S.’’

Mr. Guericke, who joined Earlybird asa consultant in 2012 and became a fullpartner in the firm on Wednesday, isbanking that Berlin’s technology com-munity can overcome these challenges

to cement itself alongside Tel Aviv, Lon-don and Stockholm as a leading technol-ogy center outside Silicon Valley.

Currently, Germany lags behind oth-er countries in the amount of venturecapital raised per capita, according tothe data provider DJX VentureSource.

Earlybird, which has raised a com-bined $960 million since being foundedin 1997 and has expanded into EasternEurope and Turkey in search of newstart-ups, has a number of portfoliocompanies that have garnered attentionfrom major American investors.

Last year, Union Square Ventures, aNew York firm that has backed compa-nies like Twitter, Zynga and Tumblr, an-nounced that it had invested $7 millionin Football App, a Berlin-based start-upthat is also funded by Earlybird. Se-quoia Capital also invested $19 million in6WunderKinder, another Earlybird-backed technology company thatmakes an online task application.

‘‘It’s time for another SAP to come outof Germany,’’ said Mr. Guericke, in ref-erence to the country’s software be-hemoth. ‘‘Berlin has done a good job ofmarketing itself as one of Europe’s maintech ecosystems.’’

The city is home to companies likeSoundCloud, the audio-sharing service;Wooga, the Internet gaming company;and Rocket Internet, a technology in-cubator known for copying successfulideas from American start-ups — all ofwhich have reached global audiences.Other local start-ups, includingResearchGate, a social network for sci-entists that has raised money from BillGates and Benchmark Capital, havealso garnered attention abroad.

For Mr. Guericke, Berlin is well situ-ated to profit from Europe’s expandingtechnology industry. Its location in Cen-tral Europe gives it access to developersfrom countries like Hungary and Ro-mania, and it offers cheaper living andworking costs in comparison with citieslike London.

‘‘Berlin is ready for global categoryleaders,’’ Mr. Guericke said. ‘‘The city isat a point to take advantage of whatEuropean tech has to offer.’’

Yet for Berlin to secure a place amongEurope’s technology clusters, many in-vestors will be keeping a close eye on thepotential multibillion-dollar initial pub-lic offering this year by Zalando, an e-commerce start-up considered to be aGerman copy of Zappos, the online shoeretailer. Zalando, initially backed byRocket Internet, has now spread to 15European countries since starting in2008 and reported a 52 percent rise in itssales, to $2.4 billion, in 2013.

‘‘People have to remember that it willtake time for major exits,’’ Mr. Guerickesaid.

Nonetheless, he added, ‘‘if I was acopy of myself looking to create a com-pany, I would start it in Berlin.’’

MachineLearning

MOLLY WOOD

Your search history contains some ofthe most personal information you willever reveal online: your health, mentalstate, interests, travel locations, fearsand shopping habits.

And that is information most peoplewould want to keep private. Unfortu-nately, your web searches are carefullytracked and saved in databases, wherethe information can be used for almostanything, including highly targeted ad-vertising and price discriminationbased on your data profile.

‘‘Nobody understands the long-termimpact of this data collection,’’ said Ca-sey Oppenheim, co-founder of Discon-nect, a company that helps keep peopleanonymous online. ‘‘Imagine thatsomeone has 40 years of your searchhistory. There’s no telling what hap-pens to that data.’’

Fortunately, Google, Microsoft’s Bingand smaller companies provide ways todelete a search history or avoid leavingone, even if hiding from those ads canbe more difficult.

Google makes it easy to find yourpersonal web history, manage it andeven delete it. Just go to google.com/history and log in to your Google ac-count. There, you will see your entirehistory and can browse it by category.For example, in the last month, I’vedone image searches for Gal Gadot(who will play the new Wonder Wom-an), ‘‘pointy nail trend’’ and ‘‘WayneRooney hair transplant,’’ plus a fewmore intelligent things, I’m sure.

If you would like this history to goaway, click the gear icon in the upperright of the page and choose Settings.Here, you can turn off search history, soGoogle won’t save future searches. Youcan delete your history from Google’s

database or just remove specific itemsfrom your recent history.

This does not opt you out of ad track-ing, however. It just gets rid of a poten-tially embarrassing or damaging his-torical record. Google also lets you optout of targeted and search ads on theweb and in Gmail, at google.com/set-tings/ads.

You can turn off and erase yoursearch history on Microsoft Bing atwww.bing.com/profile/history. Yahoolets you turn off future search historiesbut doesn’t have a way to delete the oldone. Visit search.yahoo.com/prefer-ences to turn off your history.

Even with your history turned off,though, you are still sending a lot ofpersonal data when you surf or searchfrom all three, especially if you arelogged in to your Google, Microsoft orYahoo account when you search.

Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive atthe alternative search engine Duck-DuckGo, says there is a different way,

and it can still involve making moneyfrom search-related ads.

DuckDuckGo collects no personallyidentifying information (like your I.P.address) as you search and doesn’tsave any search history that can be tiedto you. But DuckDuckGo still makesmoney on ads. ‘‘It’s a myth that thesearch engines need to track to you tomake most of their money in websearch,’’ Mr. Weinberg said. ‘‘Most ofthe search ads are based on the queriesyou type in and have nothing to do withyour search history.’’

DuckDuckGo said its searches morethan doubled from 2012 to 2013 to over abillion queries a year. That is tiny com-pared with Google (100 billion searchesa month) or even Bing or Yahoo, but thegrowth demonstrates a real interest inprivate searching. Other options in-

clude PrivateLee, Qrobe.it and IxQuick,which is based in the Netherlands.

Using DuckDuckGo or anotherprivate engine takes a little gettingused to. DuckDuckGo doesn’t autocom-plete search terms, for example, butPrivateLee does. They obviously don’tfilter results on the basis of your pastsearches, either. The results may seema little strange as a result.

If you are partial to Google, Bing orYahoo as a search engine but want it tobe anonymous, try Disconnect Search.

The web version lets you specifyGoogle, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo orBlekko as your engine, but it searchesthem without sharing your Internet ad-dress or saving a search history.

You can also install DisconnectSearch as a plug-in for the Chrome orFirefox browsers, so you don’t have toremember to go to the site. There is anAndroid app available, but none forApple’s iOS. Disconnect also offers oth-er privacy tools that block ad trackingin browsers and on iOS.

So why do all of this? If you have beenwondering why eerily specific ads keepshowing up on every site you visit, inyour email, on Facebook or anywhereelse you go online, it’s because thoseadvertisers do know you that well.

Search companies like Google feedyour queries to advertisers, who usethem to show you ads related to yourinterests — and that is just on Google’ssite.

When you click search result links,the sites you visit can access yoursearch terms and your I.P. address,which can determine the location of thecomputer you are using. That meansthose third-party sites also know whatyou searched for and who you are or atleast where your computer lives.

For me, the right combination of pri-vacy and search convenience camefrom making DuckDuckGo the defaultsearch engine in my browser. I like itsinstant search results, which appearabove the rest of the results, and it’sfast and accurate. Ads are clearlymarked and often relevant.

While Google does give users somecontrol over their web and search activ-ities and ad tracking, it will always be inthat company’s best interest to shareyour information to serve you better adsand to collect as much as it can. That isnot necessarily in your best interest.

Privacy matters for many reasons,both tangible and not, and it’s wise toexercise control when you can.

JAMES BEST JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES

HONG KONG

BY NEIL GOUGH

The latest Chinese technology companyto seek a stock market listing in theUnited States comes with heavyweightbackers and is a rare attempt at an offer-ing by a parent company already listedin Hong Kong.

On Thursday, Kingsoft Corporation, aChinese software company listed inHong Kong, announced that its subsidi-ary, Cheetah Mobile, had filed for an ini-tial public offering in the United States.

Cheetah, which develops Internet se-curity software, said in a filing on Wed-nesday with the United States Securi-ties and Exchange Commission that itmay seek to raise $300 million. Cheetahdid not indicate whether it planned tolist on the New York Stock Exchange orthe Nasdaq.

Coming amid a number of tremend-ously successful Chinese technologyI.P.O.s in the United States, Cheetah’splanned offering stands out on several

fronts. The company’s biggest backersare Lei Jun, a billionaire software andsmartphone entrepreneur, and Tencent,a Chinese online video game and socialnetworking company with a marketvalue of about $130 billion.

It is also uncommon for a company list-ed in Hong Kong to seek a new listing fora business in the United States. In doingso, Cheetah plans to adopt a two-tieredshareholding structure that would givethe company’s founders a disproportion-ate say over the way the company is run.

While Hong Kong’s stock market regu-lators have frowned on such structures,similar arrangements are common in theUnited States, especially among technol-ogy companies like Google, which is cre-ating a new class of shares with no votingrights — or Facebook. Partly as a resultof this stance, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has chosen the UnitedStates over Hong Kong for an I.P.O. thatanalysts expect will surpass Facebook’s$16 billion offering two years ago.

Cheetah has developed mobile appsand computer programs that block vir-uses, remove unwanted files and gener-ally improve security. It had a total of329.5 million monthly active users as ofDecember. Last year, it made a profit of62 million renminbi, or about $10 million,on revenue of 750 million renminbi.

Coveringyour trackson the web

JEROME FAVRE/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Kingsoft, Cheetah Mobile’s parent company, is already listed on the Hong Kong exchange.

Kingsoft files for I.P.O.for its mobile subsidiary,a security software maker

City offers a cutting edgeand plenty of promisebut lacks access to capital

U.S. listing for China company

FLORIAN SCHUH/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

The TV Tower in Berlin; start-ups therewould benefit from better American links.

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES16 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

ONLINE: DEALBOOKRead more about deals and the deal

makers. nytimes.com/dealbook

BY SHIVANI VORA

The Refinery, a luxury hotel in the heartof the fashion district in Midtown Man-hattan, was converted from a former hatfactory from the early 19th century. The11-month-old New York property has 197rooms on 12 floors and a distinct contem-

porary feel, with touches paying homageto the building’s millinery days. Everystaff member, for example, wears a pinadorned with needle, thread and scissorcharms, and the desks with cast-ironlegs in the rooms are meant to resembleearly 19th-century sewing machines.Original works from local artists adornthe walls. From $459 for a studio queen.LOCATION The Refinery is on a non-descript block of West 38th Street buthas a prime location: Times Square, thetheater district, Bryant Park and theEmpire State Building are all within a10-minute walk. Most major subwaylines are also nearby.THE ROOM My husband, Mahir, and Ihad booked a 250-square-foot studioqueen, the lowest category of room, butwere upgraded free of charge to a 400-

square-foot Empire State studio king,which had views of the landmark it’snamed for. Tasteful décor was clearly apriority: A long hallway led to a crispand inviting bedroom with high ceil-ings, plenty of natural light, gleaminghardwood floors, two large blue and redabstract paintings and a large contem-porary floor lamp with a red patternedshade. All rooms are decorated in asimilar style. There was also a comfort-able chair, 42-inch flat-screen televisionand robes and slippers from Frette, theluxury Italian linen house.THE BATHROOM A frosted-glass doorslides open into the spacious bath,which has white marble floors, attract-ive chrome accents and a hanging lightfixture. The divine-smelling toiletriescome from Le Labo, a New York Cityfragrance house. Our one nitpick wasthe small single-sink area with limitedcounter space.AMENITIES A rooftop with indoor andoutdoor seating is a hideaway in theheart of Midtown and has already be-come a popular happy hour spot for thefashion set working in the area. Thelobby bar, Winnie’s, is an equally styl-ish place to imbibe and features livejazz and piano performances. Wi-Fi and

a daily newspaper are complimentary,and there is also a small gym on thesecond floor.ROOM SERVICE Parker & Quinn, theproperty’s American bistro, providesall the food for room service. Our $35breakfast of mixed fruit, an omelet,toast, tea and coffee arrived in 15minutes, but the presentation wassorely lacking: The food came in blackplastic takeaway boxes with plasticutensils and in a brown paper bag. Theeggs had no condiments such as salt,pepper and ketchup, and the fruit wasan unappetizing small portion of not-so-sweet mixed melons. A representativesaid recently that the hotel has rolledout a more refined room service.BOTTOM LINE With its hat factory his-tory, good location, upscale finish andan eager-to-please staff, the Refinery isa definite draw and is an ideal place fortravelers who are looking to be near thecity’s major tourist attractions. Itlacked the polish of other well-estab-lished luxury properties in town, butthat may improve over time, and itscharm more than makes up for it.

Refinery Hotel, 63 West 38th Street,1-646-664-0310, refineryhotelnewyork.com

Luxury in the heart of a fashion capital

I N T E R NAT I O NA L T RAV E L E R

dealbook finance companies business

Window onWall Street

JESSE EISINGERPROPUBLICA

The regulatory cloud has lifted for Ken-neth D. Lewis, the former head of Bankof America. Last week, he received amodest penalty, paid for by the bank,and a temporary ban from an industryhe is no longer a part of.

In this seminal financial crisis inves-tigation, regulators put on a masterclass in how to take a strong case andrender it weak.

It’s worth recounting the story fromits beginning.

Bank of America was an unwieldy ag-glomeration of dozens of banks tackedtogether with spit and spreadsheets. Asthe world economy imploded inSeptember 2008, the bank rushed intoyet another acquisition, taking overMerrill Lynch. Merrill was failing, fac-ing the same short-term funding runthat would have collapsed all the in-vestment banks, had it not been for thegovernment’s intervention.

In what now reads as unintendedcomedy, Mr. Lewis called it the ‘‘stra-tegic opportunity of a lifetime.’’ Oh, andhe said there had been ‘‘absolutely nopressure’’ from the Federal Reserve totake Merrill over. He would later ac-knowledge that this was untrue.

We now know, of course, that Bank ofAmerica’s acquisition of Merrill wasone of the worst deals in corporate his-tory. As the two banks moved to con-summate the merger in the fourthquarter of 2008, Merrill bled billionswhile paying huge bonuses to its execu-tives. Bank of America ended up need-ing two bailouts from the Treasury De-partment, as well as extraordinarylending from the Federal Reserve.

On Feb. 4, 2010, Andrew M. Cuomo,then New York State’s attorney gener-al, accused Bank of America of mislead-ing its shareholders and the publicabout the losses and the bonuses by fail-ing to disclose them before sharehold-ers voted on the merger on Dec. 5, 2008.

According to the complaint, Bank ofAmerica executives wrestled overwhether to tell investors about themounting Merrill losses. On Nov. 13,2008, Bank of America’s general coun-sel, Timothy J. Mayopoulos, and thebank’s outside lawyers from Wachtell,Lipton, Rosen & Katz decided that thenumbers would have to be disclosed ina Securities and Exchange Commissionfiling, according to the complaint. Then,they consulted Joe Price, the bank’schief financial officer, and decided to re-verse their decision.

On Dec. 4, 2008, the complaint al-leges, Mr. Price knew that the losseshad breached the threshold that Mr.Mayopoulos had laid out as the bench-mark for requiring disclosure. Theshareholder vote went ahead withoutany filing.

On Dec. 9, 2008, according to Mr.Cuomo’s complaint, Mr. Mayopouloslistened while Mr. Price told the boardthat Merrill was going to lose $9 billionin the fourth quarter. In truth, Merrill

JOHN GRESS/REUTERS

Kenneth D. Lewis did not admit or deny any wrongdoing in leading the troubled merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.

LONDON

BY CHAD BRAY

The legal costs keep piling up for CreditSuisse.

On Thursday, the Swiss bank revisedits results again to reflect an additionalcharge of 468 million Swiss francs, orabout $528 million, in increased legal pro-visions primarily related to a continuinginvestigation into Americans whosecretly held assets in Swiss accounts.

As a result, Credit Suisse reported afourth-quarter loss of 476 million francs.

In February, the bank initially report-

ed a profit of 267 million francs for thelast three months of 2013. Its quarterlyresults initially reflected 514 millionfrancs in legal provisions related tomortgage litigation and the tax inquiry.

In recent weeks, however, the bank hasrevised its results downward to reflect an$885 million settlement to resolve claimsthat it had sold questionable loans to themortgage finance giants Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac in the run-up to the financialcrisis, and has now made additional pro-visions related to the tax investigation.

The latest provision comes on the heelsof a two-year investigation by the UnitedStates, which found that Credit Suisse

BY BEN PROTESSAND MICHAEL CORKERY

Just as Citigroup was putting a troubledpast of taxpayer bailouts and risky in-vestments behind it, the bank has founditself in the government’s cross hairsagain.

Federal authorities have opened acriminal investigation into a recent $400million fraud involving Citigroup’s Mex-ican unit, according to people briefed onthe matter, one of a handful of govern-ment inquiries looming over the giantbank. The investigation, overseen bythe F.B.I. and prosecutors from theUnited States attorney’s office in Man-hattan, is focusing in part on whetherholes in the bank’s internal controls con-tributed to the fraud in Mexico. Thequestion for investigators is whetherCitigroup — as other banks have beenaccused of doing in the context of moneylaundering — ignored warning signs.

The bank, which also faces a parallelcivil investigation from the Securitiesand Exchange Commission’s enforce-ment unit, hired the law firm Shearman& Sterling to lead an internal inquiry in-to the fraud, said the people briefed onthe matter, who spoke only on the condi-tion of anonymity. At a meeting lastmonth, the bank’s lawyers presentedtheir initial findings to the government.

The bloom of activity stems from Citi-group’s disclosure in February that itsMexican unit, Banamex, uncovered anapparent fraud involving an oil servicescompany. The disclosure — that at leastone Banamex employee processed fals-ified documents that helped the oil ser-vices company obtain a loan that cannotbe repaid — generated immediate in-terest from federal authorities. But thedecision by the F.B.I. and prosecutors toopen a formal investigation, a move thathas not been previously reported, hasnow officially drawn a faraway crime toCitigroup’s doorstep.

The case represents another setbackfor the bank, which has also come underfire from regulators in Washington.Last week, the Federal Reserve rejec-ted Citigroup’s plan to increase its divi-dend. The rebuke embarrassed thebank and raised questions about the re-liability of its financial projections.

The scrutiny coincides with Citigroup’srecent announcement that it faces a sep-arate, and perhaps more threatening, in-vestigation from federal prosecutors inMassachusetts. The prosecutors, whohave sent subpoenas to Citigroup, are ex-amining whether the bank lacked propersafeguards against clients launderingmoney. The case stems from the prosecu-tors’ suspicion that drug money wasflowing through an account at the bank.

Together, the developments threatento complicate Citigroup’s relationshipswith government authorities, who hadpreviously lost faith in the bank after itrequired two bailouts and came to epi-tomize Wall Street’s role in the financialcrisis. While Citigroup’s chief executive,Michael L. Corbat, has repaired ties toregulators using a blend of contritionand self-accountability, the latest investi-gations could test those improvements.

Still, the government scrutiny couldbe short-lived. Citigroup has not beenaccused of wrongdoing, and prosecu-tors might ultimately close the caseswithout extracting fines or imposingcharges, which typically come only ifwrongdoing was pervasive.

And Citigroup is sharing the spotlightwith banks like JPMorgan Chase, whosemissteps, including a $6.2 billion tradingloss in London, make its own problemsseem manageable by comparison. ACitigroup spokesman declined to com-ment. In a letter to shareholders lastmonth, Mr. Corbat said: ‘‘We continueto investigate what took place in Mexicoand are working to identify any areaswhere we need to strengthen our con-trols through stronger oversight or im-proved processes.’’

Spokesmen for both the F.B.I. in NewYork and Preet Bharara, the UnitedStates attorney in Manhattan, declinedto comment.

At first glance, Citigroup appeared to

be the victim of the fraud involving theMexican oil services company Oceano-grafía. After all, the bank lost millions ofdollars. But the F.B.I. and prosecutors,the people briefed on the matter said,are questioning whether Citigroup wasequal parts victim and enabler.

For one, it is unclear whether thewrongdoing at Citigroup was actuallylimited to a single Banamex employee,as early reports indicated. The authorit-ies, according to the people briefed onthe matter, are investigating whetherthe scheme involved co-conspirators atthe bank’s offices in the United States.

Prosecutors also tend to weighwhether an episode was isolated or il-lustrative of a broader problem. In thecase of Banamex, the fraud was thelatest in a series of questionable loandeals for the Citigroup unit. Bank em-ployees say that Banamex, which ac-counts for 13 percent of Citigroup’s rev-enue, undergoes the same level ofoversight as any other business arm.But others inside the bank say that theMexican unit has always had some de-gree of autonomy from New York.

And even if Oceanografía defraudedCitigroup , the bank may have lackedthe proper controls to thwart thescheme at its inception.

Under the law, banks must report sus-picious activity and set up complianceprograms to prevent money launderingand other illegal activity. When banksfail to do so, it could amount to a criminalor civil violation, depending on theseverity of the problem. For a break-down to be criminal, prosecutors wouldtypically need to show that the bank will-fully ignored warning signs of the fraud.

With the focus on bank controls, theBanamex case and the separate moneylaundering investigation in Massachu-setts echo other recent Wall Street in-vestigations. Prosecutors have claimed

that lax controls enabled drug traffick-ing, money laundering and businessdeals with blacklisted countries like Iranand Cuba.

At Banamex, Oceanografía becameone of the bank’s largest corporate cli-ents. Under a short-term lending ar-rangement, Banamex would advancemoney to Oceanografía, whose exist-ence hinged almost entirely on govern-ment contracts. Banamex issued theloans with the understanding thatOceanografía had received contractsfrom the state-owned oil monopoly Pe-mex. Once the work was completed, Pe-mex would repay the loan to Banamex.

But this year, the Mexican authoritiessuspended Oceanografía from obtain-ing additional government contracts forseveral months. Shortly after, Banamexdiscovered a fraud.

There was valid documentation for$185 million of work, Citigroup said, butBanamex had advanced Oceanografía atotal of $585 million. Some of Oceano-grafía’s invoices, Citigroup said, ‘‘werefalsified to represent that Pemex hadapproved them. A Banamex employeeprocessed them.’’

Mexican authorities, including law-makers and the attorney general, havedirected their own investigations intothe fraud. Citigroup has said it hasworked with the Mexican authorities‘‘to initiate criminal actions’’ that mayallow it to recover some of the missingmoney.

‘‘We are exploring every available op-tion to recoup the misappropriatedfunds and we will be relentless in pursu-ing their recovery,’’ Mr. Corbat said in amemo to employees. ‘‘All will be heldequally responsible and we will makesure that the punishment sends a crys-tal-clear message about the con-sequences of such actions.’’

Jessica Silver-Greenberg contributed re-porting.

A pivotal case ends with a whimper U.S. investigates Citigroupover fraud at Mexican unit

had helped American citizens hide bil-lions of dollars from the tax authorities.Credit Suisse executives, includingBrady W. Dougan, the chief executive,were questioned on the findings at a Sen-ate committee hearing in February.

The United States Department ofJustice is investigating more than adozen Swiss financial institutions andhas prosecuted dozens of Americans whofailed to pay taxes on income-generatingaccounts they held in Switzerland andhad not disclosed to the American gov-ernment.

The banks have been reluctant toshare client information for fear of

breaching Swiss bank secrecy laws.In 2009, the Swiss bank UBS paid a

$780 million fine and entered a deferred-prosecution agreement with the UnitedStates government. As part of theagreement, it turned over the names ofmore than 4,000 Americans with UBSaccounts.

Last year, Wegelin & Company, theoldest bank in Switzerland, pleadedguilty to a criminal conspiracy chargeand was ordered to pay $74 million. We-gelin, which was founded in 1741, hassold off its assets and plans to close itsdoors once it resolves legal issues re-lated to the American investigation.

Credit Suisse revises results as legal costs climb

The authorities are lookinginto whether holes in thebank’s internal controlscontributed to fraud in Mexico

had already lost $9 billion and expectedto lose billions more before the quarterwas over. After the board meeting, Mr.Mayopoulos tried to discuss the losseswith Mr. Price, who was unavailable.

The next morning, Mr. Mayopouloswas fired and frog-marched out of thebuilding, according to people briefed onthe matter.

Bank of America installed Brian T.Moynihan as general counsel. Mr.Moynihan hadn’t practiced law in 15years. His legal career was such an af-terthought that he had let his bar mem-bership lapse. He would go on to be-come chief executive of the bank.

Merrill’s fourth-quarter loss wouldeventually be more than $15.8 billion,and Merrill paid more than $3.6 billionin bonuses.

It is a crime to knowingly deceiveshareholders about the financial condi-tion of your company. Top officers ofBank of America knew about giant, sur-prising Merrill losses but did not dis-close them promptly or precisely to theboard or shareholders. They took stepsto cut out people who advocated dis-closing the information. That sureseems like a lot of smoke.

At least one regulator thought it mer-ited a criminal investigation. The Officeof the Special Inspector General for theTroubled Asset Relief Program re-ferred the case for criminal investiga-tion to the chief federal prosecutor inManhattan.

Raymond J. Lohier, who was the chiefof the securities and commodities fraud

task force at the prosecutor’s office,took charge of the investigation. But heseemed to view it with skepticism, ac-cording to a person close to the investi-gation. The Federal Reserve, both aregulator and one of the potential vic-tims because it was lending to Bank ofAmerica, contended that it did not con-sider the losses material. The investiga-tion didn’t go anywhere. Mr. Lohier, theFed and the prosecutor’s office declinedto comment.

White-collar criminal cases are al-ways difficult, and this one would havebeen especially hard. One big problem:Mr. Mayopoulos, the general counselwho was summarily fired, never turnedagainst his former bosses.

The Justice Department, of course,isn’t the only securities law enforcerout there. The Securities and ExchangeCommission brought its own case. In-ternally, however, that agency felt thatthe New York State complaint over-reached, unconvinced, for instance,that Mr. Mayopoulos was fired over theissue of whether to disclose the losses.The agency eventually settled with thebank in August 2009 for $33 million.Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal DistrictCourt in Manhattan found that amountludicrously low. Several months later,the agency bumped it up to $150 millionand Judge Rakoff reluctantly signed off,writing with obvious fury that this was‘‘half-baked justice at best.’’

The New York State case was settledlast week. Mr. Lewis agreed to pay $10million, provided by Bank of America,which also reached a settlement withthe state for $15 million. He did not ad-mit or deny any of the charges. He isbarred from being an executive or di-

rector of a public company. I don’t con-sider that entirely toothless; it dam-ages his standing in society. But it’s notexactly severe.

On Friday, the office of the currentNew York State attorney general, EricT. Schneiderman, intends to seek topermanently bar Mr. Price, who did notsettle, from serving as a director, officeror in any capacity in the securities in-dustry, according to a person close tothe investigation. If it happens, it wouldbe a serious accomplishment.

Mr. Price’s lawyer did not respond toa request for comment.

Here’s a ‘‘Where Are They Now?’’roster. Mr. Lohier was appointed byPresident Obama to be a judge on theUnited States Court of Appeals for theSecond Circuit. Mr. Mayopoulos be-came chief executive of Fannie Mae.Mr. Cuomo became governor of NewYork.

Then there is Mr. Lewis’s high-pricedlawyer, who initially issued a scathingassessment of the case. Mr. Cuomo’sdecision to sue was ‘‘a badly misguideddecision without support in the facts orthe law,’’ this lawyer said, assertingthat there was ‘‘not a shred of objectiveevidence’’ to support the case.

Who was this zealous advocate?Mary Jo White. You may recall herfrom such roles as the current chair-woman of the Securities and ExchangeCommission.

And the public? We got as muchjustice as we have come to expect.

Jesse Eisinger is a reporter for ProPub-lica, an independent, nonprofit news-room that produces investigative journa-lism in the public interest.

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Traveler’s forecastHigh/low temperatures, in degrees Celsius anddegrees Fahrenheit, and expected conditions.

C ..................... CloudsF .......................... FogH ........................ HazeI.............................. IcePC.......... Partly cloudyR ......................... Rain

Sh ................. ShowersS .......................... SunSn ...................... SnowSS....... Snow showersT ........ ThunderstormsW ...................... Windy

Abu Dhabi 30/22 86/72 T 27/20 81/68 SAlmaty 17/7 63/45 C 12/6 54/43 RAthens 22/15 72/59 C 20/12 68/54 CBangkok 35/27 95/81 T 35/26 95/79 TBarcelona 18/11 64/52 PC 19/11 66/52 SBeijing 23/7 73/45 S 22/6 72/43 SBelgrade 23/14 73/57 PC 21/7 70/45 RBerlin 16/6 61/43 PC 18/8 64/46 HBoston 7/4 45/39 C 13/3 55/37 PCBrussels 18/11 64/52 PC 17/12 63/54 PCBuenos Aires 26/19 79/66 PC 24/19 75/66 TCairo 26/15 79/59 S 29/18 84/64 SChicago 12/0 54/32 Sh 10/-1 50/30 SFrankfurt 24/11 75/52 S 23/10 73/50 ShGeneva 18/11 64/52 C 15/8 59/46 RHong Kong 24/19 75/66 C 24/20 75/68 PCIstanbul 17/12 63/54 PC 18/14 64/57 CJakarta 31/24 88/75 T 31/24 88/75 TJohannesburg 23/11 73/52 T 22/10 72/50 PCKarachi 34/23 93/73 S 33/23 91/73 SKiev 11/-1 52/30 PC 9/-2 48/28 SLagos 32/25 90/77 T 32/25 90/77 TLisbon 13/11 55/52 Sh 18/12 64/54 PCLondon 18/7 64/45 PC 17/12 63/54 ShLos Angeles 20/11 68/52 PC 22/13 72/55 SMadrid 16/7 61/45 C 19/8 66/46 ShManila 34/24 93/75 S 34/25 93/77 SMexico City 29/14 84/57 S 27/13 81/55 TMiami 29/23 84/73 PC 30/23 86/73 PCMoscow 4/-7 39/19 SS 3/-3 37/27 PCMumbai 36/26 97/79 H 35/26 95/79 HNairobi 29/16 84/61 T 29/16 84/61 PCNew Delhi 34/19 93/66 H 35/21 95/70 HNew York 8/6 46/43 R 16/4 61/39 PC

Nice 19/14 66/57 Sh 21/14 70/57 SOsaka 15/6 59/43 PC 12/4 54/39 ShParis 18/8 64/46 C 17/12 63/54 PCRiyadh 26/16 79/61 S 27/14 81/57 SRome 17/9 63/48 R 18/10 64/50 PCSan Francisco 16/9 61/48 C 17/9 63/48 PCSao Paulo 25/19 77/66 PC 27/18 81/64 SSeoul 12/1 54/34 PC 13/2 55/36 PCShanghai 19/10 66/50 S 16/4 61/39 SSingapore 33/26 91/79 T 31/26 88/79 T

Stockholm 7/0 45/32 PC 10/3 50/37 PCSydney 25/18 77/64 Sh 26/18 79/64 ShTaipei 21/16 70/61 PC 24/16 75/61 STel Aviv 21/14 70/57 S 26/15 79/59 PCTokyo 20/8 68/46 R 14/7 57/45 PCToronto 10/0 50/32 R 6/-2 43/28 WTunis 21/12 70/54 PC 19/12 66/54 ShVienna 22/9 72/48 S 21/9 70/48 SWarsaw 12/1 54/34 S 13/1 55/34 SWashington 19/12 66/54 R 18/4 64/39 PC

Friday Saturday˚C ˚F ˚C ˚F

Meteorology byAccuWeather.

Weather shownas expected

at noon onFriday.

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | 17INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

economy markets business

multibillion-euro investments needed toupgrade the Continent’s mobile andlandline Internet infrastructure. In theabsence of clear rules, Europe hasslipped increasingly behind the moreadvanced data networks of NorthAmerica and Asia.

Operators like Vodafone of Britain andDeutsche Telekom of Germany want tocharge Internet companies like Google,Netflix and smaller start-ups for use oftheir networks because services like on-line-television streaming occupy a largepercentage of the Internet pipelines.

In contrast, Internet companies andconsumer advocacy groups warn thatthe telecom companies could reduceconsumer choice if they require compa-nies to pay extra for access to data net-works. Companies say only those withdeep pockets, such as Internet giantslike Microsoft, which owns the videomessaging service Skype, would be ableto pay for greater access to Europe’s In-ternet infrastructure.

The vote on Thursday provided extraprotection for equal access to Europe’smobile and fixed-line data networks. In-ternet service providers like cablecompanies would still be able to sell ac-cess to higher-quality networks, as longas that access did not affect the existinginfrastructure.

Consumer advocacy groups wel-comed the changes.

‘‘The E.U. seized the opportunity tosecure users’ rights and protect innova-tion and freedom of expression online,’’Raegan MacDonald, the Europeanpolicy manager at the consumer groupAccess, said in a statement.

Telecom carriers, which have plans toput billions of euros into the Continent’smobile and landline Internet infrastruc-ture over the next 10 years, are con-cerned that they will not be able to re-coup their investment from consumers’growing appetite for online services likestreaming of music and TV.

For many telecom companies, roam-ing also is a significant source of reven-ue in an increasingly competitive mar-ket where more than four major carriersin each European country typically viefor consumers’ attention.

‘‘Today’s vote risks derailing the orig-inal objectives of the Connected Conti-nent regulation,’’ Luigi Gambardella,chairman of the European Telecommu-nications Network Operators’ Associ-ation, said in a statement. ‘‘The accessof European citizens and businesses toinnovative and high-quality serviceswill be negatively affected.’’

Mark Scott reported from London, andJames Kanter from Brussels.

E.U. officialsapprove ‘netneutrality’EUROPE, FROM PAGE 14

Thursday, April 3

United States Last Chg 12 mo.%

World markets

The Americas

Europe and Middle East

Asia

U.S. Dow Jones indus. 16,558.36 –14.64 +12.9

U.S. S.&P. 500 1,887.64 –3.26 +20.2

U.S. S.&P. 100 834.27 –0.81 +18.0

U.S. Nasdaq composite 4,250.63 –25.83 +30.6

U.S. NYSE composite 10,586.72 –30.15 +16.4

U.S. Russell 2000 1,183.60 –9.21 +26.7

Mexico IPC 40,729.34 –171.19 –7.7

Canada S.&P./TSX 14,389.78 –69.33 +13.5

Brazil Bovespa 51,591.68 –109.37 –6.0

Argent. Merval 6,539.54 +98.89 +93.4

Chile Stock Market select 3,786.02 –23.84 –13.9

Euro zone Euro Stoxx 50 3,206.76 +19.31 +19.7

Britain FTSE 100 6,649.14 –9.90 +2.4

Germany DAX 9,628.82 +5.46 +21.2

France CAC 40 4,449.33 +18.47 +16.9

Italy FTSE MIB 21,992.08 +300.04 +41.4

Spain IBEX 35 10,584.10 +148.30 +31.5

Switzerland SIX 8,521.63 +13.37 +7.9

Sweden OMX 30 1,368.88 –8.62 +13.1

Russia RTS 1,210.71 –11.76 –15.9

Czech Rep. Prague Stock Exch. 1,015.97 –1.70 +3.9

Israel TA-25 1,417.26 +2.36 +14.1

Japan Nikkei 225 15,071.88 +125.56 +25.6

H.K. Hang Seng 22,565.08 +41.14 +0.9

Australia All Ordinaries 5,415.68 +6.89 +8.4

China Shanghai composite 2,043.70 –15.29 –8.3

S. Korea Kospi 1,993.70 –3.55 +0.4

India S.&P. CNX Nifty 6,706.35 –46.20 +16.7

Taiwan Taiex 8,888.54 –16.91 +12.3

Singapore Straits Times 3,220.06 +27.28 –2.9

Thailand SET 1,391.64 –4.98 –10.2

Indonesia Jakarta composite 4,891.32 +21.12 –1.3

Interest rates

10-year govt. Ask yield Chg 12 mo. ago

Britain 2.750% –0.023 1.769%France 2.107 –0.025 2.016Germany 1.600 –0.011 1.303Japan 0.635 +0.012 0.555United States 2.777 –0.026 1.861

Britain 0.386% –0.017 0.196%France 0.181 +0.007 0.062Germany 0.130 –0.002 -0.005Japan 0.075 unch. 0.045United States 0.101 –0.015 0.126

1-year gov’t

Britain n.a.% n.a. n.a.%France 0.176 +0.010 -0.037Germany 0.032 +0.032 -0.099Japan 99.989 –0.001 n.a.United States 0.015 –0.015 0.073

3-month gov’t Ask yield Chg 12 mo. ago

Britain (bank) 0.50% –0.50 (Mar. 5) 0.50%Canada (overnight) 1.00 unch. (May. 14) 1.00Euro zone (refinancing) 0.25 –0.25 (Nov. 12) 0.75Japanese (overnight) 0.10 unch. (Jun. 25) 0.10United States (prime) 3.25 –0.75 (Dec. 16) 3.25

Benchmark rates Last Latest chg

Agricultural City Units Delivery Last Chg

Futures

Metals, energy

Corn Chicago $/bu May 4.97 +0.02

Cotton N.Y. $/lb. May 0.91 –0.01

Soybeans Chicago $/bu May 14.68 +0.06

Wheat Chicago $/bu May 6.74 +0.05

Rice Chicago $/cwt May 15.72 +0.07

Cocoa N.Y. $/ton May 2,915.00 –2.00

Coffee N.Y. $/lb. May 1.73 unch.

Sugar N.Y. cts/lb. May 17.06 +0.09

Orange juice N.Y. cts/lb. May 154.50 +0.80

Aluminum London $/m. ton 3 mo. 182,950 +3400

Copper N.Y. $/lb. May 3.03 –0.02

Gold N.Y. $/tr.oz. June 1,287.70 –3.10

Palladium N.Y. $/tr.oz. June 787.80 unch.

Platinum N.Y. $/tr.oz. July 1,441.50 +2.80

Silver N.Y. $/tr.oz. May 19.85 –0.21

Brent crude London $/bbl. May 105.77 +0.98

Light sw.crude N.Y. $/bbl. May 100.06 +0.44

Natural gas N.Y. $/mln.BTUs 3 mo. 4.43 +0.07

Cross rates

Australia 1.086 1.487 1.799 1.044 0.031 1.216 0.983

Brazil 2.281 3.126 3.782 2.195 0.064 2.556 2.067

Britain 0.603 0.826 - 0.580 0.017 0.676 0.546

Canada 1.104 1.512 1.830 1.062 0.310 1.236 -

China 6.210 8.510 10.296 5.974 0.175 6.958 5.626

Denmark 5.447 7.464 9.032 5.240 0.153 6.104 4.935

Euro zone 0.730 - 1.210 0.702 0.021 0.818 0.661

India 60.165 82.494 99.788 57.905 1.695 67.476 54.507

Japan 103.94 142.43 172.32 - 2.925 116.46 94.170

Mexico 13.126 17.987 21.762 12.600 0.000 14.707 11.892

Russia 35.518 48.683 58.901 34.200 - 39.810 32.187

Singapore 1.263 1.731 2.094 1.215 0.036 1.415 1.144

S. Africa 10.600 14.570 17.629 10.200 0.301 11.914 9.633

S. Korea 1057.50 1449.09 1753.23 1017.30 29.759 1184.87 958.05

Sweden 6.548 8.972 10.856 6.299 0.184 7.337 5.931

Switzerland 0.892 1.222 1.479 0.858 0.025 - 0.808

Taiwan 30.280 41.487 50.198 29.100 0.853 33.923 27.433

U.S. - 1.370 1.658 0.962 0.028 1.121 0.906

One OneOne Swiss Can.

$1 €1 £1 ¥100 ruble franc doll.

Exchange rates

Euro 0.730 0.004 - - 1.210 0.003Dollar - - 1.370 –0.007 1.658 –0.005Pound 0.603 0.002 0.826 –0.002 - -Swiss franc 0.892 0.006 1.222 0.002 1.479 0.005Yen 103.94 0.090 142.43 –0.530 172.32 –0.330

AsiaAustralian dollar 1.086 0.005 1.487 –0.001 1.799 0.002Chinese renminbi 6.210 0.005 8.510 –0.032 10.296 –0.020Hong Kong dollar 7.757 0.001 10.627 –0.053 12.861 –0.037Indian rupee 60.165 0.265 82.494 0.036 99.788 0.228Indonesian rupiah 11320.0 30.000 15508.4 –37.930 18768.6 –6.710Malaysian ringgit 3.281 0.012 4.495 –0.006 5.440 0.004Philippine peso 45.060 0.130 61.732 –0.136 74.709 –0.009

Singapore dollar 1.263 0.001 1.731 –0.007 2.094 –0.005South Korean won 1057.50 0.300 1449.09 –6.250 1753.23 –4.370Taiwan dollar 30.280 –0.013 41.487 –0.214 50.198 –0.164Thai baht 32.480 0.070 44.498 –0.131 53.852 –0.046

EuropeCzech koruna 20.024 0.088 27.433 –0.019 33.200 0.046Danish krone 5.447 0.025 7.464 unch. 9.032 0.020Hungarian forint 224.08 1.350 306.99 0.290 371.52 1.125Norwegian krone 6.009 0.041 8.232 0.014 9.963 0.038Polish zloty 3.038 0.012 4.162 –0.005 5.037 0.005Russian ruble 35.518 0.080 48.683 –0.100 58.901 –0.014Swedish krona 6.548 0.072 8.972 0.057 10.856 0.098Turkish lira 2.137 0.014 2.928 0.004 3.543 0.013

Argentine peso 8.000 0.003 10.960 –0.052 13.264 –0.035Brazilian real 2.281 0.013 3.126 0.003 3.782 0.011Canadian dollar 1.104 0.001 1.512 –0.006 1.830 –0.004Chilean peso 556.32 3.120 762.16 0.402 922.38 2.407Mexican peso 13.126 0.039 17.987 –0.029 21.762 0.005Venezuelan bolivar 6.284 unch. 8.609 –0.044 10.419 –0.031

Middle East and AfricaEgyptian pound 6.972 unch. 9.552 –0.049 11.560 –0.035Israeli shekel 3.471 0.002 4.755 –0.022 5.755 –0.014Saudi riyal 3.750 unch. 5.138 –0.026 6.218 –0.019South African rand 10.600 0.050 14.570 0.046 17.629 0.089

Major currencies $1 Chg. €1 Chg. £1 Chg. Asia (cont.) $1 Chg. €1 Chg. £1 Chg. The Americas $1 Chg. €1 Chg. £1 Chg.

World 100 The companies with the largest market capitalization, listed alphabetically by region. Prices shown are for regular trading.A ‡+ or ‡− indicates stocks that reached a new 52-week high or low.

Abbott Laborat. 38.55 –0.03 +6.7 32.93 40.12

Amazon.com 333.7 –8.3 +26.7 248.2 407.1

Apple 539.4 –3.2 +25.5 390.5 570.1

AT&T 35.50 +0.13 –5.5 31.86 39.00

Bank of America 17.09 –0.14 +40.7 11.44 17.92

Berkshire Hath. 186,112 –647 +18.1 153,784 187,850

Caterpillar 102.3 –0.4 +20.5 80.4 99.4

Chevron 119.6 +0.2 +0.5 109.5 127.8

Cisco Systems 23.06 +0.07 +8.7 20.24 26.38

Citigroup 47.40 –0.84 +7.5 42.50 55.20

Coca-Cola 38.10 –0.23 –6.4 37.05 43.09

Comcast 51.10 +0.20 +20.8 38.91 55.24

ConocoPhillips 70.66 –0.23 +17.7 56.81 74.34

Exxon Mobil 98.45 +0.50 +8.7 85.16 101.51

General Electric 26.12 +0.08 +11.9 21.35 28.03

Google 581.6 –553.5 +4.1 557.0 567.2

Home Depot 79.64 –0.31 +12.1 69.47 82.91

IBM 193.0 –0.6 –10.0 172.8 214.4

Intel 26.42 +0.53 +23.1 20.94 26.67

J&J 97.85 –0.38 +18.3 79.68 98.23

JPMorgan Chase 60.44 –0.04 +25.2 46.64 61.07

Kraft Foods 56.70 +0.05 +8.3 50.09 58.29

McDonald’s 97.60 +0.01 –2.7 93.02 103.59

Merck 56.08 –0.38 +24.9 43.69 57.47

Microsoft 40.90 –0.45 +42.0 28.16 41.42

Occidental Petrol. 96.31 +0.29 +19.4 78.01 99.37

Oracle 40.79 –0.34 +24.6 29.96 41.49

P&G 80.10 –0.03 +1.4 75.25 85.41

Pepsico 82.81 +0.08 +3.9 77.10 86.80

Pfizer 32.25 –0.04 +10.3 27.23 32.75

Philip Morris 82.42 –0.04 –12.7 75.39 96.44

Qualcomm 80.80 +0.66 +22.0 59.39 79.28

Schlumberger 98.45 +0.76 +31.6 69.95 97.96

United Technol. 119.6 –0.3 +28.6 91.1 118.3

UPS 98.46 +0.49 +17.3 82.37 105.08

Verizon 47.95 +0.13 –3.1 45.91 53.91

Visa 213.9 –0.7 +27.4 161.3 233.0

Wal-Mart 77.41 +0.23 +1.8 71.87 81.21

Walt Disney 81.74 +0.07 +42.2 56.21 83.34

Wells Fargo 49.73 –0.04 +34.8 36.27 49.77

The Americas

AmBev (BR) -9,999,401 unch. unch. n.a. n.a.

Amer. Movil (MX) 13.43 –0.01 +5.4 12.26 15.37

Bradesco (BR) 32.25 –0.05 –3.4 25.27 35.40

Ecopetrol (BR) 4,055 +25 –18.5 3,390 5,070

Itau Unibanco (BR) 35.01 –0.24 +0.2 26.80 35.99

Petrobras (BR) 15.05 –0.61 –6.9 12.02 20.34

R. Bk of Can. (CA) 72.72 –0.47 +16.9 58.92 73.18

Toronto Dom. (CA) 51.53 –0.07 –39.0 47.62 100.11

Vale (BR) 29.86 +0.50 –6.2 25.90 34.44

Middle East and Africa

Saudi Basic In. (SA)118.0 closed +22.0 90.3 118.0

Europe

A-B InBev (BE) 77.93 +0.25 –0.9 65.05 78.66

BASF (DE) 80.03 –0.34 +15.1 64.79 83.81

BG Group (GB) 1,137 –2 –1.6 1,019 1,352

BP (GB) 485.2 –0.3 +4.6 428.3 508.8

Brit. Am. Tob. (GB) 3,324 +16 –7.5 2,881 3,784

ENI (IT) 18.20 +0.03 +1.1 15.29 18.98

Gazprom (RU) 134.5 –0.4 +2.8 107.2 157.9

GDF Suez (FR) 19.71 –0.03 +27.0 14.53 19.96

Glaxo (GB) 1,578 –4 +2.0 1,513 1,791

HSBC (GB) 610.5 –0.7 –13.8 591.8 770.7

L’Oreal (FR) 119.1 –0.5 –6.4 115.2 136.7

LVMH (FR) 133.6 –0.7 –2.3 119.3 149.3

Nestle (CH) 67.50 +0.15 –2.9 59.30 69.50

Novartis (CH) 74.45 –0.40 +9.7 63.25 75.30

Novo Nordisk (DK) 244.5 –1.5 –74.3 200.9 1,015.0

R. Dutch Shell (GB)2,209 +14 +2.8 1,987 2,279

Roche (CH) 265.0 +1.7 +18.6 214.1 273.0

Rosneft (RU) 230.5 –2.5 –2.5 208.5 266.0

Sanofi (FR) 75.79 +0.80 –6.4 69.40 86.67

Santander (ES) 7.15 +0.13 +32.7 4.84 7.04

SAP (DE) 58.99 +0.16 –6.5 52.20 64.05

Sberbank (RU) 81.51 –1.16 –17.8 69.84 110.74

Siemens (DE) 98.98 +0.60 +15.3 76.00 101.35

Statoil (NO) 167.8 +0.5 +18.9 123.0 171.3

Telefonica (ES) 11.61 +0.11 +9.5 9.61 13.11

Total (FR) 48.00 +0.16 +25.7 35.25 48.03

Unilever (GB) 2,539 –8 –9.4 2,306 2,900

Vodafone (GB) 219.5 –1.7 +13.5 176.2 249.0

Volkswagen (DE) 190.7 –0.3 +21.0 138.5 204.2

Asia

Agric. Bank (CN) 2.39 –0.05 –11.2 2.29 2.90

Bank of China (CN) 2.58 –0.02 –11.9 2.45 2.99

BHP Billiton (AU) 37.53 +0.16 +14.7 30.65 39.38

CBA (AU) 77.03 +0.08 +11.7 65.02 79.32

CCB (HK) 5.40 +0.05 –14.8 4.90 6.64

China Life (CN) 13.75 +0.01 –19.9 12.91 17.67

China Mobile (HK) 71.90 +0.55 –13.1 64.50 88.40

Chi. Shenhua (HK) 22.60 +0.50 –20.1 18.20 28.75

CNOOC (HK) 11.82 +0.12 –21.6 11.54 16.28

Honda Motor (JP) 3,700 +38 +9.8 3,370 4,365

ICBC (CN) 3.42 –0.02 –15.8 3.23 4.22

Mitsubishi UFJ (JP) 580.0 +1.0 +6.6 532.0 732.0

NTT (JP) 5,554 –33 +38.5 3,960 6,008

NTT DoCoMo (JP) 1,605 +11 –98.8 1,518 165,800

PetroChina (HK) 8.59 +0.04 –16.6 7.34 10.30

Rio Tinto (AU) 63.68 –0.42 +12.7 50.24 70.88

Samsung El. (KR)1,390,000+33000 –8.9 1,217,000 1,544,000

Sinopec (HK) 6.95 –0.01 –23.8 5.08 9.14

Toyota Motor (JP) 5,840 –7 +26.5 4,615 6,640

TSMC (TW) 118.5 –1.5 +17.9 94.4 116.5

Westpac Ban. (AU) 34.47 –0.15 +11.1 27.47 34.90

Data are at 1600 U.T.C. Prices are in local currencies.

Source: Reuters Infographics by: CUSTOM FLOW SOLUTIONS

Company 52-wk price rangeU.S. Last Chg 12 mo.% Low Last (‡) High

Company (Country) 52-wk price rangeU.S. (cont.) Last Chg 12 mo.% Low Last (‡) High

Company (Country) 52-wk price rangeEurope (cont.) Last Chg 12 mo.% Low Last (‡) High

ing the stadium and has flourished onstate contracts. Mr. Meszaros declinedto comment.

The former mayor, Gyorgy Varga, ob-jected to terms of a deal that would havesold village land for the stadium. Afterthat, the state passed a law that seemedtailored to usher Mr. Varga out of a job,disqualifying him from holding officebecause of an outstanding tax debt.

‘‘In the Communist times, it didn’tmatter if you knew your trade or if youwere qualified to do a job, but if youwere a loyal comrade, you got the jobanyway,’’ Mr. Varga said. ‘‘Today, it’sthe same. You just don’t have to be agood comrade, but a good friend.’’

Hungary’s business leaders clearlywant to please Mr. Orban. Mayor Mesz-aros is the president of a foundation thatwill operate the new stadium, alongwith an accompanying soccer academythat Mr. Orban founded. (Mr. Orban’sson, Gaspar, who now plays for theacademy’s professional team, was oncea student.) That foundation has beenbankrolled by some of the country’slargest corporations. Among them are

MOL, the state gasoline giant, and OTP,the biggest bank. Contributing, too, isKozgep, a construction company tied toMr. Orban; his son-in-law sits on theboard. Coca-Cola Hungary and Suzukihave also kicked in.

To Mr. Orban’s critics, Felcsut is thecenterpiece of a lucrative alliance be-tween his government and politicallyconnected corporate interests. Theprime minister’s ambitions are visiblein the cavernous arena here, which istopped with towers and an undulating,black-shingled roof.

Hungary’s autocratic turn has madeit something of a black sheep in theEuropean Union, which it joined in 2004.Mr. Orban is pushing his special proj-ects even as the Hungarian economystruggles and financial markets worryabout the nation’s currency, the forint.Gordon Bajnai, Hungary’s former So-cialist leader, has called Felcsut ‘‘thecapital of Orbanistan.’’

‘‘Think of a stadium that has doublethe capacity of the population of the vil-lage,’’ Mr. Bajnai said. ‘‘The whole thingis like Disneyland. When you are a child,you dream of having a Disneyland at the

end of your garden where you can goevery day, and now this dream is beingrealized.’’

Mr. Orban declined to comment. Aspokesman provided his public disclo-sure form, which showed that the primeminister owned homes in Budapest andFelcsut, as well as modest land hold-ings. A local newspaper recently report-ed that 94 acres of land near the stadiumwere registered in his wife’s name.

For businesses of all sizes, being onthe wrong side of Fidesz can be costly.The party has chilled outside invest-ment by targeting industries for specialtaxes and, in some cases, structuringthose taxes to favor domestic compa-nies whose leaders back Fidesz.

One leaked audiotape caught a Fideszofficial discussing the possibility ofgranting licenses to sell tobacco only toparty loyalists. Mr. Orban was alsocaught on tape saying he could create alaw that would allow Budapest to repat-riate a building from a foreign investor.

Coca-Cola Hungary said it workedwith various partners to promote an‘‘active lifestyle’’ and called the socceracademy, which has 130 full-time stu-

dents, ‘‘one of the most recognized or-ganizations for education and trainingof young football talents in the country.’’

The bank, OTP, said it earmarked itscontributions for ‘‘the development andeducation of talented youngsters, notbuilding stadium or arena in Felcsut.’’

The academy’s foundation also runs alocal cable channel and a 37-bed hotel in aneighboring town. It is planning a biggerhotel closer to the stadium, as well as amuseum. Gyorgy Szollosi, a spokesmanfor the academy, said the stadium had not‘‘come to be built next to the house of aprime minister’’ — disputing a reporter’sphrasing — ‘‘but the prime minister’sfamily built their weekend house next tothe old football pitch of the village.’’

While Mr. Orban has no official role inthe academy, Mr. Szollosi said: ‘‘We allknow that Mr. Orban is a very popularpolitician and that this project, which isfor future generations and which is wellknown, is important to him, was wellsupported by a number of privatecompanies even when he was the leaderof the opposition.’’

Anita Komuves contributed reporting.

But very low inflation has other neg-ative effects. When inflation falls, bor-rowers effectively pay more interest onexisting loans. For example, a companythat took out a loan when inflation was 2percent, the E.C.B.’s official inflationceiling, would expect the effective costof the loan to decline over time as pricerises eroded the value of the principal.

But if inflation falls, the cost of theloan is higher than the company expect-ed. If the company is not able to raise itsprices, it might have trouble paying itsdebts. In Europe, this negative effect isespecially damaging because the coun-tries with the highest debts tend to havelow or negative inflation. In Greece,Portugal and Spain, prices are falling.

‘‘With low inflation the real value ofthis debt doesn’t go down as fast as itwould if inflation were higher,’’ Mr.Draghi said. ‘‘It makes the adjustmentof imbalances much more difficult.’’

Mr. Draghi also argued, though, thatlow inflation is largely the result of fall-ing energy prices and other one-timefactors and will pick up in May.

He acknowledged that deflation hadposed problems in Japan in the 1990s,but added, ‘‘We don’t see those risksnow in the euro area.’’

The problem for the central bank isthat the measures available to stimulatethe euro zone economy are all risky andcontroversial.

Extensive purchases of corporate orgovernment bonds, the same tool usedby the Federal Reserve to pump moneyinto the American economy, would bemore difficult in Europe. The Fed canbuy United States Treasury bonds, themost widely traded debt in the world.The E.C.B. would have to choose amongdifferent bonds from its member coun-tries. In addition, the corporate bondmarket in Europe is much smaller be-cause companies tend to get credit di-rectly from banks.

‘‘Our institutional and financial setupis considerably different from what it isin the United States,’’ Mr. Draghi said.‘‘The program has to be carefully de-signed.’’

Mr. Draghi’s specific talk of quantita-tive easing on Thursday may haveraised expectations that will be difficultto meet, some analysts said.

‘‘From here on, a further verbal step-ping up seems impossible,’’ CarstenBrzeski, an economist at ING Bank,said in a note to clients. ‘‘In a way it’s agamble, either the recovery continuesand inflation picks up again, or theE.C.B. will have to act.’’

In Hungary, the chief’s word is goldenHUNGARY, FROM PAGE 1

AKOS STILLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Construction is booming in Felcsut. Its mayor, Lorinc Meszaros, a friend of the prime minister and owner of a construction company, has become one of Hungary’s wealthiest men.

E.C.B. mullsa Fed-styleprogram ofbond buyingRATES, FROM PAGE 14

For online listings and past performance visit

www.morningstar.com/Cover/Funds.aspx April 3, 2014

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International FundsFor information please contact Clare Chambers

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The Independent Mark of QualityMorningstar Analyst Research and Ratings for Fundswww.morningstar.co.uk

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES18 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

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WEATHER / TRAVEL ON PAGE 16

FloydNorris

HIGH & LOW FINANCE

Call it the banality of tax avoidance.What was most impressive about this

week’s Senate hearing into the wayCaterpillar ducked billions of dollars inUnited States income taxes was thesimple strategy involved. There was nosubsidiary that somehow qualified tobe taxed nowhere, as at Apple. Therewas no ‘‘Double Irish With a DutchSandwich,’’ a strategy made famous byGoogle in its quest to avoid taxes.

Instead, back in 1999, Caterpillar,helped by its audit firm, Price-waterhouseCoopers, decided that tosharply reduce the American tax onprofits from the sale of parts sent fromthe United States to customers aroundthe world, it had to do little more thantake the name of the American parentoff the invoices and put in the name ofa Swiss subsidiary.

So even though the parts might havenever come within a thousand miles ofSwitzerland, the profits accrued to theSwiss subsidiary. And Caterpillar nego-tiated a deal to tax those profits wellbelow Switzerland’s norm. SenatorCarl Levin, the Michigan Democratwho is chairman of the Senate Perma-nent Subcommittee on Investigations,put the rate at 4 to 6 percent.

That cut the Caterpillar tax bill by$300 million a year.

Was that legal? Opinions differ. Pro-fessors called by the subcommitteesaid it was not. A professor retained byCaterpillar said it was, and companyofficials told the subcommittee theyhad complied with the law. Documentsreleased by the subcommittee showed,however, that some at Caterpillar hadbeen worried about the strategy andthat the company had taken steps to re-

al ones, had an obligation to help payfor their government.

Instead, the preferred cure was tocut the corporate tax rate — now 35percent, though virtually no multina-tional company pays anything nearthat amount. The country must becomemore competitive in attracting thesecompanies, the senators said.

Under current law, United Statescompanies can defer taxes on foreignincome until that income is broughthome. The Caterpillar case, perhaps in-advertently, provides an example ofhow that can work in practice to givebreaks to those that need them theleast. Caterpillar has had to bring someof its profits home and pay taxes onthem, because it needed the money inthe United States. Apple seems to havenot had that problem.

Much of the problem with taxation ofmultinational companies is that, asProfessor Kleinbard put it, ‘‘The taxsystem treats foreign subsidiaries as ifthey were independent actors,’’ whichthey are not.

The law deals with transfer pricing is-sues — transactions between two partsof the same company — by requiringthey be conducted as if they werearm’s-length transactions. One of thefunnier parts of the hearing was Sena-tor Levin’s long, and ultimately unsuc-cessful, effort to get a Caterpillar officialto admit the obvious — that the com-pany would never have made a similardeal with an unaffiliated company.

The ideal solution would be for multi-national companies to face multination-al tax authorities that share the goal ofensuring that a company pays its fairshare of taxes and agree on ways to di-vide up the money. Perhaps that couldbe based in part on where the ultimatepurchaser was, and in part on wherethe company was based or had signifi-cant operations.

Large countries have agreed thatsomething should be done, and theGroup of 20 has asked the Organizationfor Economic Cooperation and Devel-opment to work on a ‘‘BEPS’’ project,for ‘‘base erosion and profit shifting.’’Chances of an effective action planseem small.

In the Caterpillar case, the deal thecompany struck with Switzerland en-abled that country to collect low taxeson profits that — based on the kind ofanalysis an ordinary person might use— clearly had nothing to do withSwitzerland.

duce slightly the amount of profit beingdiverted, hoping that would make thestrategy more likely to pass muster.

In any case, the Internal RevenueService does not seem ever to havechallenged it, even after a former Cater-pillar tax official filed a whistle-blowerlawsuit. That suit was unsuccessful.

What was most notable about theCaterpillar strategy was its sheer lackof creativeness. ‘‘This is boring as anintellectual matter,’’ said Edward D.Kleinbard, a tax law professor at theUniversity of Southern California and aformer chief of staff at the congression-al Joint Tax Committee. If this strategyis vulnerable to legal challenge, he said,it would largely be because Caterpillarchanged its corporate structure to savetaxes. Had it had the foresight to adoptthe structure decades earlier, the com-pany would be on much safer ground.

Apple, he told me, set up an Irish sub-sidiary ‘‘as soon as it moved out of thegarage.’’ He conceded that was an ex-aggeration, but not, he said, a large one.

Under current corporate tax law, it iseasy for multinational companies topark profits in subsidiaries based inlow-tax countries. Companies that op-erate only in the United States find itmuch harder, although not always im-possible, to avoid taxes.

It was interesting that Senator Levinwas the only senator who appeared tobe exercised over what Caterpillar andPricewaterhouseCoopers had done.

‘‘The revenue lost to those strategiesincreases the tax burden on workingfamilies, and it reduces our ability to

make investments ineducation and train-ing, research and de-velopment, tradepromotion, intellec-tual property protec-tion, infrastructure,national security andmore — investmentson which Caterpillarand other U.S.

companies depend for their success,’’he said. ‘‘It is long past time to stop off-shore profit shifting and start ensuringthat profitable U.S. multinationals meettheir U.S. tax obligations.’’

Not all the Republicans joined Sena-tor Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky,in offering an apology to Caterpillar forthe existence of the hearing, but theygenerally agreed that it was proper fora company to do everything it could toavoid paying taxes. None of themseemed interested in the question ofwho should pay taxes if the companiesdo not. Nor was there the slightest indi-cation of agreement with Senator Lev-in that corporate citizens, like individu-

The nameof the game:Avoiding tax

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Filling top slot is Glencore’s big challenge

opportunity for investment bankers.Equity markets are also back from

the dead. Two real estate funds raisedover ¤900 million of fresh capital thisyear. The travel company eDreams willbe the first corporate I.P.O. since 2011.Rebounding stock prices are a sign ofgrowing confidence in Spain’s revivaland will help drive mergers and acqui-sitions like Vodafone’s recent $10 billionpurchase of the cable operator Ono.

Competition remains stiff. Manybanks made do on the occasional crumbfrom Spain’s largest companies, corpo-rate debt restructurings or with low-paying government mandates. As a con-sequence, Madrid saw no meaningfuldecline in banking capacity, with Euro-pean and American banks vying againsthometown institutions for business.

So the recent emergence of smallercompanies tapping the debt and equitymarkets for capital has Madrilenobankers in robust spirits. Indeed, at thecurrent rate, Spanish corporate financefees could hit nearly $2 billion this year.While below the 2007 peak of $3.3 billion,any rain on the plain will be much ap-preciated in Spain. FIONA MAHARG-BRAVO

The investment bankers of Madrid areregaining some of their cheer, thanks tothe country’s recovery. After a few leanyears, cash-starved Spanish companiesare turning from banks to capital mar-kets for debt. The market for initial pub-lic offerings is reviving. Corporate fi-nance fees rose 70 percent year on yearin the first quarter, according to Thom-son Reuters and Freeman Consulting,but fell in other big euro zone countries.

More than 40 percent of the activitywas driven by a surge in bond sales —including high-yield issues, where feesare juicier. Subinvestment-gradecompanies like Abengoa (renewable en-ergy), Grifols (pharmaceuticals) andIsolux (construction and energy) tappedbond investors in March. The banksSantander, BBVA and Popular raisedcapital via contingent convertible bonds.

Meanwhile, companies struggling toget back on their feet are keepingbankers busy. FCC, the construction gi-ant, just closed a loan restructuring dealof 4.5 billion euros, or $6.2 billion, and isworking to refinance a convertible bond.That’s part of a turnaround plan that in-cludes ¤2.2 billion of asset sales, another

Ms. Masters’s main handicap is thatshe has not been a chief executive her-self, although she had many senior lead-ership positions at JPMorgan. And theGlencore board already has someformer chief executives on it — includ-ing Morgan Stanley’s ex-chief, JohnMack — so it might be hard for Ms. Mas-ters to run the board authoritatively. Mr.Mack’s presence also dilutes the valueof Ms. Masters’s financial perspective.

There is also the question of what is init for Ms. Masters. Nonexecutive chair-men may be relatively well paid by Brit-ish standards: Tony Hayward got$742,000 as Glencore’s interim chair-man and senior independent directorlast year. But the rewards of finance areusually greater, and the Glencore jobwould rule out other opportunities.

If Glencore finds a better chairmanwho satisfies the multiple criteria forthe role, it will be well served. And itmay still have vacancies for a masterfulnew nonexecutive. CHRISTOPHER HUGHES

Blythe Masters’s exit from JPMorganChase with the sale of its physical com-modities business could solve Glencore’slongstanding search for a chairman. Ms.Masters, the brains behind the credit de-fault swap, has the expertise to join thetrading house’s board, whose all-maleroster makes it an anachronism in theFTSE 100. But there is one big obstacleto her leading this or any board: She hasnever run a company before.

Time is short. Glencore has commit-ted to filling the chairman vacancy be-fore its annual meeting on May 20. It isnot surprising the search has draggedon — there are few people who have allthe skills for the job. The key attributeneeded is the ability to act as both a sup-port and a balance to the chief executive,Ivan Glasenberg, who has more influ-ence than most bosses since he owns an8.3 percent stake. The candidate alsoneeds to have the backing of British in-stitutional shareholders. That argues forsomeone whose curriculum vitae isheavy with British company experience.Knowledge of commodities is also essen-tial if the chairman is to participate fullyin strategic and technical discussions.

E.U. TAKES FIRM STANDFOR NET NEUTRALITYPAGE 14 | BUSINESS FRONT

ONLINE: HIGH & LOW FINANCEJoin the conversation with Floyd Norris,

the chief financial correspondent of TheNew York Times. norris.blogs.nytimes.com

For more independent commentary andanalysis, visit www.breakingviews.com

business

It is easy formultinationalcompaniesto park profitsin subsidiariesin low-taxcountries.

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Data as of 1600 U.T.C.Source: ReutersGraphs: Custom Flow Solutions

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | S1INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

DON DUONG, VIETNAM

BY MIKE IVES

The cheesemaking hub of UniversalFood Creation, a narrow orange building,looks no different from the other struc-tures lining the main street in this dustyfarming village in southern Vietnam.

But on a recent Wednesday morning,about a dozen workers made mozzarellaand burrata cheeses in metal bowls withmilk from 25 neighborhood cows. Thefresh batches, produced with Danishrennet, would ship that evening to up-scale hotels and restaurants across Vi-etnam and Southeast Asia.

Yosuke Masuko, the company’s chiefexecutive and a former financialstrategist from Tokyo, opened the mod-est factory in 2012 to complement hispopular restaurant, Pizza 4P’s, in HoChi Minh City, about 200 miles south.

In addition to fresh cheeses, his top-pings include vegetables grown on five

farms not far from the factory. Thefarms, which have contracts with thecompany, are scattered across thesouthern portion of the country’s Cen-tral Highlands, a hilly region with a tem-perate climate.

Mr. Masuko’s holistic approach topizza is reminiscent of farm-to-table en-terprises in Europe and the UnitedStates, but is a rarity in Vietnam. Thekey to his success appears to lie in atechnical precision honed during hisprevious career in finance, coupled witha quixotic instinct to engineer the per-fect pizza experience.

The overall goal is ‘‘delivering wowand happiness,’’ Mr. Masuko, 35, said atthe 860-square-foot factory as two Viet-namese employees weighed balls ofburrata on a digital scale and sealedthem in plastic bags. But to create thoseeffects, he added, ‘‘The important thingis detail, detail, detail, detail, detail.’’

Pizza 4P’s serves around 350 dinersevery night, about two-thirds of themVietnamese, and on average turns awayanother 50, he said, even though the res-taurant has doubled in size since itopened without any formal marketingin May 2011. It does not deliver, andseasoned customers typically reserve

tables in advance.This in a country that has a rice-based

cuisine and an annual per capita incomethat is the equivalent of around $1,800.

While Mr. Masuko began makingcheese to serve his pizza restaurant, henow also has a separate cheese exportbusiness that sells 10 varieties, includingcamembert and mimolette, to upscalehotels and restaurants in Vietnam, Cam-bodia, Singapore and Japan. It accountsfor 15 percent of his total revenue.

Geoffrey Bouillet, operations man-ager for four restaurants in Vietnamowned by Didier Corlou, a French chef,says that Mr. Masuko’s camembertworks nicely in a salad with arugula andartichoke. And at 55,000 dong, or $2.59,for a 5.3-ounce portion, it costs roughlyhalf as much as the imported Frenchversion.

‘‘It’s a nice product, not so strong as aCamembert from Normandy,’’ Mr.Bouillet wrote in an email. ‘‘But a verynice value.’’

Mr. Masuko is a self-described ‘‘pizzamaniac’’ who said he developed a lovefor the dish about 10 years ago afterbuilding a wood-fired pizza oven in hisTokyo backyard at the request of a nowformer girlfriend. He later traveled onpizza pilgrimages to Rome, Naples,London and other European cities.

In 2008 he moved to Hanoi, the Viet-namese capital, as the country directorfor CyberAgent Ventures, a Tokyo-based venture capital firm specializingin high-tech investments. But soon hebegan pondering ways of striking out asan entrepreneur. Given his interest inpizza and Vietnam’s rising middle class,he said, opening a pizzeria with a wood-fired oven struck him as a logicalstrategy.

Mr. Masuko said he leased an alley-side building in Ho Chi Minh City and in-vested about $100,000 of his savings intoa renovation, kitchen gear and otherstart-up essentials. He and a Japaneseemployee, Keinosuke Konuki, taughtthemselves how to make mozzarella bywatching a YouTube video.

Finding the highest-quality milk en-tailed traveling around Vietnam by mo-torbike and talking with small-scalefarmers, who typically agreed on a priceof around 15,000 dong per liter, or about71 cents for a quarter of a gallon, Mr.Masuko said. He made the cheese in hisapartment, and later at the restaurant.

Mr. Masuko and his wife, Sanae Ma-suko, who met in Japan while workingtogether at the parent company ofCyberAgent Ventures, said one obstacleto starting Pizza 4P’s was her parents,who were highly skeptical of the wholeidea. ‘‘I was a very good child, and I al-ways followed their decisions,’’ Ms.Masuko, 30, said. But she disobeyedthem in this particular case.

Pizza 4P’s is now rated in the topthree of the roughly 5,000 restaurantsreviewed on the Vietnamese food web-site Foody.vn, which draws about 1 mil-lion unique visitors per month, accord-ing to Dang Minh, chief executive of thesite’s parent company, Foody Corp.

Customers like Pizza 4P’s, where theaverage pie costs about 200,000 dong,because it serves quality products atcompetitive prices, Mr. Minh said. Headded that the restaurant’s Japanese-influenced pizza toppings, such as fishsashimi and teriyaki chicken, appeal to

Sometimes artisans focus their skills on the edible — such as reimagining a traditional Japanese candy or helping bees to make honey on the rooftops of London.

Farm-to-table pizza

PIZZA, PAGE S4

An entrepreneur wantsrice-loving Vietnamto enjoy his pies

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ONLINE: PIZZA PARTYFor more photographs of Yosuke

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON JOEL SANTOS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Digging inA meal at Pizza 4P’sin Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam. Therestaurant’s namestands for Platformof Personal Pizza forPeace.

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INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMESS2 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

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TOKYO

BY KELLY WETHERILLE

Attend just about any major street fes-tival in Japan and, along with vendorsselling fried octopus balls and yakisobanoodles, you are bound to encounter anamezaiku artist perched on a low stool,creating intricate candies as local chil-dren stare in wonder.

Amezaiku loosely translates as‘‘candy craft,’’ and it is an art that hasevolved over hundreds of years. Origi-nally brought to Japan from China andused to create offerings at temples, itbegan to flourish in the mid-Edo period(1603-1867), when its raw ingredient,mizuame, began to be produced in largequantities.

attached to the end of wooden sticks.The candy is pinched, pulled and cut in-to the desired shape. Finishing touches,like eyes, the stripes of a tiger, or pollenclusters on flowers are painted on withfood dye.

Japanese amezaiku artists were tra-ditionally like traveling salespeople,setting up their stands at whatever lo-cation was deemed to be best for busi-ness. Today, they are mainly seen atfestivals and corporate or culturalevents.

Takahiro Yoshihara, 38, is one of thefew amezaiku artists to have a perma-nent shop as his base. In the Sendagidistrict of Tokyo, Amezaiku Yoshiharaopened in 2008, after Mr. Yoshihara hadapprenticed with a master for abouttwo years and worked on his own forfour. He says the shop, where three oth-er artisans work alongside him, was thefirst in Japan dedicated to amezaiku.

Q. Why did you decide to open anamezaiku shop?A. In the past, amezaiku was done inthe streets, like on roads children wouldtake on their way home from school, orat parks or shrines. But now we can’tdo any of that because of hygiene laws.So unfortunately the amezaiku artistshave disappeared.

I hear a lot of people saying, ‘‘Wenever see amezaiku anymore,’’ so Ithought I wanted to create a placewhere you could go and see amezaikuanytime. When I thought about that, Ithought the only legal way to do itwould be to open a shop. So, rather thangoing around to different places andfestivals, I thought people would noticea shop more.

Q. Recently there is a lot of talk aboutJapan’s traditional arts disappearing.Would you say that is true of amezaiku?A. Yes. As far as I know, there are onlyabout 30 people who are doingamezaiku now in Japan. Of course,there are some people from the young-er generation who have started doingit, but I think there are a lot of peoplewho can’t easily make a living from it,so maybe they end up doing it as a

hobby or something.

Q. How did you get into amezaiku? Whatdrew you to it?A. When I was a child I would go to fes-tivals and see the candy makers, and Ithought, I want to do that.

But then when I grew up I forgotabout that and went into a different lineof work. I worked in a restaurant cook-ing food and, since I was cooking Italianfood, I went to Italy to study a bit andtravel a bit.

During that time — when I wentfrom Japan overseas — I really felt howJapanese I was and I thought that in-stead of cooking Italian food, I wantedto do something related to Japaneseculture.

And it was at that time that I re-membered I had wanted to doamezaiku, so when I came back to Ja-pan I started doing it.

Q. Does every amezaiku artist make thesame figures, or is each person’s workunique?A. Basically, in the beginning, you copythe kinds of things that the person youlearned from makes. But then fromthere you start thinking things like, ‘‘IfI do it this way, I can make somethingbeautiful,’’ and your style graduallychanges.

Of course, a lot of people make thesame kinds of animals, but usually at aglance you can see that they’re slightlydifferent.

Q. You also do workshops from the shop.What made you decide to offer thatservice?A. Most people have seen amezaiku inplaces like festivals, and I think a lot ofpeople have thought that they’d like totry making it themselves. I want to ful-fill that dream for them.

In actuality, amezaiku is quite diffi-cult, and a lot of people don’t realizethat until they’ve tried doing it them-selves. Then they can really under-stand the true meaning of amezaiku.

Q. What are the most challengingaspects of amezaiku?

An artisan reimaginesthe traditional shapesfor a taffy-like treat

ONLINE: THE CANDY MENAGERIEMore photographs of Takahiro

Yoshihara’s creations. inyt.com/style

A. For one, well, of course the candy ishard but we heat it to soften it, and thefirst mizuame you take is at 80 degreesCelsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit). It’sextremely hot. And you have to makethe candy before it cools, so you can’thesitate.

You need to have an image of whatyou’re going to make in your mind fromthe beginning, and then just do it all atonce. So that is quite difficult. Also tocome up with something that is notalready done — to do something unique— is also very difficult.

You do burn yourself when you firststart making amezaiku. But eventually— of course your hands get used to it —but you also learn how to handle thecandy without burning yourself. That’sone of the toughest things in the begin-ning.

Q. Is there a particular shape or itemthat sells the best?A. Our original character — a rabbit,whose name is Amepyon — we sell themost of him.

Usually amezaiku shapes are anim-als, but to suddenly change the pose ofone means you have to make it in a dif-ferent way, which can be quite diffi-cult.

But for our original character, wemade it so that we can change the pose

freely. So we can ask the children whatpose they’d like, and we can make itthat way for them. Then after that wecan add props and other parts. So sincethere are many things we can do with it,people get very happy to buy one ofthese.

Q. Do you think you’ll continue doingthis kind of work for the rest of yourcareer?A. Yes, I want to. I want to preserve theprofession.

There are a lot of people who don’tknow about amezaiku, so I want themto notice this one element of Japaneseculture. I want to show them someonewho is working hard at it.

I think in the future, amezaiku won’tsurvive without these kind of shops.

Q. Why is that?A. At festivals, you buy amezaiku foryourself, and the fun part is watching itbeing made. But in a shop like this one,people come to buy something to giveto someone else, so the person who re-ceives it doesn’t know how it was made.And if the thing they receive is not ex-tremely well made, they won’t behappy to receive it.

One thing I noticed since I opened theshop is that I think the shapes becomemore and more beautiful.

Candy that’s a feast for the eyesPHOTOGRAPHS BY KOSUKE OKAHARA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Feather touchTakahiro Yoshihara,bottom left, owns ashop dedicated toamezaiku, the art ofmaking whimsicalshapes out ofsuperheated candy.Above, the signs ofthe Chinese zodiac.At left, crafting acrane. Bottom right,the store, whichopened in 2008 inthe Sendagi districtof Tokyo.

Mizuame means ‘‘water candy,’’ andis created when starch is converted tosugar. The taffy-like substance is solidat room temperature but becomes pli-able when heated.

In the Chinese style of candy making,artists blow into a ball of mizuame tocreate balloon-like shapes — much likeglass blowing — but that practice isnow outlawed in Japan for hygienic rea-sons. Instead, candy makers use theirhands, as well as tools like scissors andpliers, to shape animals, flowers andmythical creatures.

They start with balls of softmizuame, dyed with food coloring and

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 | S3INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. . . .

½º��½»¤�µ craftsmanship

LONDON

BY HANNAH OLIVENNES

The honeybees on the roof of the luxurydepartment store Fortnum & Mason areliving the life.

The four hives, which overlook Picca-dilly, have sweeping views from theShard to Big Ben. They were made ofEnglish oak by the Welsh carpenter KimFarley-Harper, painted in the famousFortnum ‘‘eau de nil’’ turquoise andtopped with gold leaf-covered finialsshaped like traditional bee skeps.

Most important of all, since they ar-rived in 2008 the bees have had the at-tention of their keeper, Steve Benbow.

Mr. Benbow, 45, is an urban beekeep-er who clearly loves what he does. ‘‘Ilive my life by my bees,’’ he said, his ex-pression conveying his enthusiasm. ‘‘Iget grumpy when I don’t see my beesfor a while.’’

On this particular day atop Fortnum& Mason, he is wearing a waistcoat overan orange shirt, jeans and a flat cap — adapper outfit nothing like the veiledhats and gauntlet gloves used by somebeekeepers.

‘‘It’s nice to beekeep without glovesbecause you can be more tactile — andyou can make sure you don’t squashanyone,’’ he noted. ‘‘You get stung quitea bit but only when you’re clumsy.’’

Although, he added, ‘‘you become im-mune to it, and you don’t really notice itmost of the time.’’

Mr. Benbow opened the hives care-fully and removed the 10 or so frames in-side each one, taking a look at how thebees’ early efforts at creating honey-combs were coming along. Bees arevery sensitive creatures, he noted.‘‘You’ve got to be quite gentle withthem, you don’t want to be bangingaround.’’

Honeybees are dormant over thewinter. But it was a very warm Marchafternoon and Mr. Benbow said thebees, a mix of the Welsh Black andBuckfast Cross species, soon would beflying as far as three miles at a time, for-aging London’s flora in well-knownspots like Green Park, Hyde Park andeven Buckingham Palace.

At the height of the summer, he esti-mates, the hives will be home to 50,000bees, and he will add more layers andframes to the hives to give them plentyof space to make honey.

‘‘I love being outdoors, connectingwith nature or on the rooftop,’’ he said.‘‘Seeing my bees coming in with pollenis awesome.’’

The production of Fortnum’s BeesHoney depends mostly on the weather,so the number of jars the company hasto sell varies widely each year — a verycold and wet spring limited the 2012batch to 430 jars, but there was a record850 in 2010. (The waiting list opens afterEaster, with jars actually going on salein July at 25 pounds, or $41.25, a jar.)

Two of Mr. Benbow’s grandparentswere beekeepers. But he only startedkeep bees seriously 17 years ago, whenhe was living in South East London anddecided he wanted to make honey fromrooftop hives.

He trained for a while with a friendwho was a professional beekeeper.‘‘When I became a commercial bee-keeper, as opposed to a hobbyist, Iwasn’t allowed to touch bees for aboutsix months until I had the sufficientskill, even though I’d been in contactwith bees all my life,’’ he said. ‘‘I had toshow that I was competent.’’

During a visit to Paris, he was in-

spired by the hive installations on top ofthe Opéra Garnier and in the Luxem-bourg Gardens and, in 2004, he foundedThe London Honey Company.

Fortnum & Mason, which heard abouthim by word of mouth, became his firstclient and soon he also was beekeepingatop the Tate Modern and Tate Britain,the Victoria & Albert Museum and othercity locations.

Mr. Benbow now is something of anurban beekeeping star. He has been thesubject of numerous newspaper andmagazine articles and has written abook, ‘‘The Urban Beekeeper: A Year ofBees in the City,’’ and has another oneon the way.

The beekeeper won’t disclose howmany clients he has — or the total num-ber of hives he tends, other than to saythere are hundreds and some are insuch locations as Shropshire, Salisburyand Wales. Those produce the 10 variet-ies of honey he distributes to customerssuch as the Savoy hotel and Harrodsand sell at the London Honey Companyheadquarters in the Bermondsey dis-trict of south London.

In an area called Spa Terminus, a cen-ter for food producers and distributors,Mr. Benbow has a small space thathouses his factory and warehouse, andhis office on the mezzanine.

At the front of the factory is a smallshop, where he sells his London HoneyCompany jars for £6 each every Satur-day morning.

The smells of honey and beeswax hitvisitors as soon as they walk throughthe door. Three dead bees are on dis-play, pinned under a magnifying glasson a long wooden table, and beeswaxcandles hang from the ceiling. Woodenwine crates hanging on the walls serve

as shelves for some old bee frames, pho-tos and even some dried flowers thatare examples of the blossoms bees fa-vor.

The honey pots are displayed in rows,so visitors can see the various shades ofhoney, and the store also has four largehoney tanks.

‘‘Customers can come in with theirempty pots for a refill,’’ said Kim Bur-rows, 33, who works for Mr. Benbowthree days a week and is one of his fouremployees. ‘‘We offer then a 20 pencediscount on their honey but it’s reallymore about the recycling.’’

High up on the left hand side wall is alarge sepia picture of Mr. Benbow’s pa-ternal grandmother in front of a beehive in her garden.

Mr. Benbow said his first bee-relatedmemory happened in that garden. Hewas six years old, having ‘‘honey on abig slab of bloomer bread,’’ he recalled,

looking into the distance and indicatingthe size of the piece of bread, as if hecould picture it perfectly.

Although she died before he was 10,‘‘she’s really such an inspiration to me,’’he said.

The shop opens at 8:30 a.m., but by9:30 Mr. Benbow had left it in his em-ployees’ care and was driving off some-where in his weathered white pickuptruck.

‘‘I live a nomadic life, very much onthe road,’’ he said.

Every day he wakes at 5 a.m., hasgranola with yogurt and ‘‘a massive dol-lop of honey,’’ and plans where he will gonext to check on his bees. ‘‘We’ll driveoff and work those bees for a couple ofdays, do a bit of rough camping and thencome back to check that the factory isO.K.,’’ he said, using the plural as he of-ten takes an employee along with him.

While he spends most of his time onthe production side, he also runs thecompany and noted proudly that it willbe going into a bigger space soon. ‘‘It’s abig move for us,’’ he said.

They will also be taking on an appren-tice, supported by a government train-ing program and the Bee Farmers’ As-sociation of the United Kingdom,something that Mr. Benbow is very ex-cited about.

‘‘The average age of beekeepers isaround 60 years old, and we’re taking onsomeone who is about to turn 21, andshe’s a woman, which is fantastic be-cause there are also few female beekeep-ers’’ he said. ‘‘There’s a real lack of pass-on of knowledge, so this is brilliant.’’

Mr. Benbow often talks to groupsabout his craft — ‘‘people coming to usto learn about pollination and the impor-tance of pollination’’ — and he said he

Nurturingbees witha view

A devoted beekeepertakes care of hives onsome London rooftops

‘‘It’s nice to beekeep without gloves because youcan be more tactile — and you can make sureyou don’t squash anyone.’’

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOM JAMIESON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A taste of honeyLeft and below,Steve Benbow,beekeeper andowner of theLondon HoneyCompany, inspectingone of the four hivesatop Fortnum &Mason in London.Bottom, the store’shoney display, whichwill start to sellFortnum’s BeesHoney in July.

would like to do more such sessions inthe future.

But, he added, ‘‘Beekeeping is notsomething you can learn on the Internetor in a weekend course.’’

Above all, he said, you have to be con-siderate of the bees.

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INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMESS4 | FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014. . . .

½º��½»¤�µ craftsmanship

local palates.‘‘The taste is delicious and the price is

reasonable,’’ Vuong Binh, an import-ex-port dealer from Ho Chi Minh City, saidon a recent Monday evening in the res-taurant’s packed dining room.

Francesco Patella, a Vietnam Airlinespilot from Italy, was sitting on themezzanine with a group of other Italianpilots. He said Pizza 4P’s could easilyrival pizzerias in both Naples and Rome,and he had even come to love some ofMr. Masuko’s nontraditional creations,such as a four-cheese pizza served withhoney for drizzling.

His only major complaint was that thepizzas were always cooked and servedone at a time, forcing him to sharerather than eat his own.

The pilots said the restaurant’s spe-cialty — a pizza topped with prosciutto,arugula and a ball of fresh burrata —was unheard-of in Italy because freshburrata, a mix of mozzarella cheese andheavy cream, is so expensive. (Mr. Ma-

suko said after an Italian customer re-quested fresh burrata as a topping inDecember 2012, he decided to make it amenu mainstay even though producingthe cheese locally requires considerableeffort.)

It quickly became the pilots’ favorite,and they now order it whenever theyeat at Pizza 4P’s, usually once or twice aweek.

‘‘This kind of pizza in Italy would beimpossible’’ because a ball of burratacosts around 9 euros there, or $12, saidMr. Patella, who was the head pizza cheffor about 10 years at Spaccanapoli, hisfamily’s restaurant in Rome. ‘‘He has abrilliant idea.’’

The pilots and other customers saidthey were impressed by the attention todetail. Toppings, for example, are posi-tioned according to how many peopleplan to eat the pie, so cutting is easierand toppings won’t slide off, Mr. Ma-suko said.

Pizzas also are baked for a specificperiod of time, which he asked a report-er to keep secret because he considers itproprietary information.

Mr. Patella said Mr. Masuko occasion-ally refused to be paid for pizzas thatwere not perfectly round, even thoughMr. Patella could find nothing wrongwith them. (Mr. Masuko noted suchtimes were extremely rare, in part be-cause of his rigorous quality controlstandards.)

The restaurant’s full name — Plat-form of Personal Pizza for Peace — re-flects such a continuing effort to listento customers and constantly improvetheir pizza experience, said TakayukaOka, one of Mr. Masuko’s employees.

Mr. Oka is one of several Japanese em-ployees. Another is Masashi Kubota, thecheese department manager in DonDuong, who trained in France andemailed Mr. Masuko from Hokkaido toask for a job after searching online for‘‘Asia’’ and ‘‘cheesemaker’’ in Japanese.

One of the five contract farms isstaffed by five Japanese farmers whomoved to Vietnam after the Fukushimanuclear plant accident, said one of them,Motoyuki Takano.

At 7:30 a.m. on a recent Thursday, Mr.Takano was inspecting rows of toma-toes and eggplants inside a 1,000-square-meter, or 1,076-square-foot,greenhouse in Dasar, a village about 50miles from the cheese factory in DonDuong.

Mr. Takano, 32, a former Tokyo busi-nessman, said he had learned how tofarm partly by reading about it online,and that the real thing is full of sur-prises. For example, Mr. Masuko hadasked him to grow San Marzano toma-

toes, an Italian variety, for the restau-rant’s pizza sauce but the project failedfor reasons that are still not entirelyclear.

As a result, the restaurant has contin-ued to import San Marzanos while Mr.Takano grows salad tomatoes from Jap-anese seeds.

‘‘We are very, very beginner!’’ hesaid amid peals of laughter. ‘‘But nostress.’’

There have been other obstacles, Mr.Masuko said, including a failed attemptto build a cheese cave at the factory anddifficulties in importing rennet fromDenmark, which he says he prefers be-cause it offers the best combination of

quality and value. He also said some ofhis former employees had moved to an-other pizzeria in Ho Chi Minh City andappropriated some of his signaturedishes.

But Mr. Masuko recently purchased aone-hectare, or 2.5-acre, farm near DonDuong where he intends to grow vege-tables and try again to build a cheesecave. He also plans to buy 10 cows, pos-sibly from Thailand because, he said, itsdairy cows tend to be of higher qualitythan Vietnamese ones.

He is determined to expand his brandfar beyond Ho Chi Minh City, with an ini-tial goal of opening Pizza 4P’s restau-rants in every Southeast Asian capital,

and later in Tokyo, London and NewYork.

He also intends to develop a fast-food-style version of the restaurant, startingin Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok andSingapore, although he has not leasedany sites yet.

As for longer-term goals, he has beenbrowsing auction websites in hopes offinding an island for sale at around $10million. By 2025, he wants to open anecological resort on a private island —in Asia or beyond — where guests couldlearn about pizza making and sustain-able agriculture.

‘‘Making something from scratch isalways fun,’’ Mr. Masuko said.

In Vietnam, pizzafrom farm to table

PIZZA, FROM PAGE S1

‘‘Delivering wow and happiness’’ is the goal atPizza 4P’s, Yosuke Masuko said. ‘‘The importantthing is detail, detail, detail, detail, detail.’’

AARON JOEL SANTOS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Delivering ‘wow’Yosuke Masuko, theowner of Pizza 4P’s,with his wife, Sanae.Mr. Masuko’sapproach to pizzacan be reminiscentof farm-to-tableenterprises inEurope and theUnited States.