Pakistan’s Spies Tied to Slaying of a Journalist

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New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details about the intelligence.

But the disclosure of the information in itself could further aggravate the badly fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan, which worsened significantly with the American commando raid two months ago that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan safehouse and deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government, military and intelligence hierarchy. Obama administration officials will deliberate in the coming days how to present the information about Mr. Shahzad to the Pakistani government, an administration official said.

The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence, and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials. “There is a lot of high-level concern about the murder; no one is too busy not to look at this,” said one.

A third senior American official said there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Mr. Shahzad’s death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed.

“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information.

A spokesman for the Pakistan intelligence agency said in Islamabad on Monday night that “I am not commenting on this.” George Little, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, declined to comment.

In a statement the day after Mr. Shahzad’s waterlogged body was retrieved from a canal 60 miles from Islamabad, the ISI publicly denied accusations in the Pakistani news media that it had been responsible, calling them “totally unfounded.”

The ISI said the journalist’s death was “unfortunate and tragic,” and should not be “used to target and malign the country’s security agency.”

The killing of Mr. Shahzad, a contributor to the Web site Asia Times Online, aroused an immediate furor in the freewheeling news media in Pakistan.

Mr. Shahzad was the 37th journalist killed in Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Pakistan’s civilian government, under pressure from the media, established a commission headed by a Supreme Court justice to investigate Mr. Shahzad’s death. The findings are scheduled to be released early next month.

Mr. Shahzad suffered 17 lacerated wounds delivered by a blunt instrument, a ruptured liver and two broken ribs, said Dr. Mohammed Farrukh Kamal, one of the three physicians who conducted the post-mortem.

The anger over Mr. Shahzad’s death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of the army and the ISI, a military-controlled spy agency, in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Since that initial volley of questioning, the ISI has mounted a steady counter-campaign. Senior ISI officials have called and visited journalists, warning them to douse their criticisms and rally around the theme of a united country, according to three journalists who declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

Mr. Shahzad, who wrote articles over the last several years that illuminated the relationship between the militants and the military, was abducted from the capital three days after publication of his article that said Al Qaeda was responsible for an audacious 16-hour commando attack on Pakistan’s main naval base in Karachi on May 22.

The attack was a reprisal for the navy’s arresting up to 10 naval personnel who had belonged to a Qaeda cell, Mr. Shahzad said.

The article, published by Asia Times Online, detailed how the attackers were guided by maps and logistical information provided from personnel inside the base.

Particularly embarrassing for the military, Mr. Shahzad described negotiations before the raid between the navy and a Qaeda representative, Abdul Samad Mansoor. The navy refused to release the detainees, Mr. Shahzad wrote. The Pakistani military maintains that it does not negotiate with militants.

Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

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Vacationing Myanmar Democracy Leader Draws Crowds

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BAGAN, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was supposed to be on a private tour of the temple city of Bagan, but she drew crowds Tuesday in a test of the government's tolerance after it warned her against political appearances.

Suu Kyi, in her first trip out of the main city of Yangon since she was released from house arrest in November, was visiting the ancient city with her youngest son.

"I am very happy. This is my first vacation with my son in twenty years," Suu Kyi told reporters after praying at one of Bagan's famous temples. "I never have enough sleep at home but now I want to sleep all the time. I have time to rest."

However, she and son Kim were mobbed by a small crowd of local residents and shadowed by dozens of plainclothes police during the second day of her visit.

The police made no moves to break up the gatherings.

Suu Kyi has said she will soon travel around the country to meet her political supporters, drawing a warning in the state-controlled press that she could cause chaos.

Suu Kyi drew large crowds when she last made a trip to the countryside in 2003, and her popularity badly rattled the then-military government. Supporters of the junta ambushed her entourage as it toured northern Myanmar, killing several of her followers. She escaped but was detained. There were suspicions that the attack was organized by the army, which denied involvement.

Suu Kyi often faced problems in the past when she traveled outside Yangon — where she lives and her National League for Democracy is headquartered — with the government stopping her motorcades.

Although her reception in Bagan was relatively modest, with perhaps 100 to 200 supporters and the curious turning out to see her at various stops, the area is loosely populated and publicity over Suu Kyi's plans has been low-key.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday that the U.S. hopes that Suu Kyi's ability to travel and meet with supporters after her freedom from house arrest is a "harbinger of better things" in Myanmar.

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Explosion in Iraq Draws Victims for a Second Blast

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BAGHDAD — First, at midday, a truck exploded near a municipal building in Taji, north of the Iraqi capital. As people rushed to help the injured, a second, larger explosion struck. Nearly three dozen were killed, and many more wounded.

In the afternoon at a nearby hospital in the Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya, a macabre scene unfolded, as women cried and shouted over the bodies of their husbands and sons, and the wounded, bloody and covered in dust, sought care. A list of the dead and wounded adorned a wall; the youngest victim was 3 years old.

“Why am I still alive?” moaned Hesham Hasoon, 23, sitting on the floor. “My brothers, friends, everyone left me.”

Mr. Hasoon, who works at a light bulb factory, said two of his brothers were killed.

“When the first explosion happened, I saw the people and the kids start to gather near the car bomb and I knew something else would happen,” he said. “I called on the stupid soldier to evacuate the place, but he didn’t care.”

Some witnesses said a third attack came from a suicide bomber, although this was not verified by an official at the Interior Ministry.

But at the hospital, two police vehicles arrived, one carrying four charred bodies, the other the ashen hulk of the truck and a severed head that one officer said was that of a suicide bomber.

As is usual in the aftermath of such attacks, precise casualty figures were hard to come by. The list at the hospital showed 32 dead and 61 wounded. The Interior Ministry official said that 35 were killed and 28 wounded. The Associated Press reported 35 killed and 47 wounded.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was in the same style as similar strikes by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which frequently singles out the infrastructure of the state — whether it be government buildings, police stations, army barracks or security forces on patrol.

“Our district is mixed with Shiites and Sunnis, and we haven’t witnessed any sectarian problems, but we know Al Qaeda is active and we are always afraid of them,” said Ali Shakir, 40, a member of the local council who was in the area when the attack occurred but was uninjured.

Large-scale attacks in the capital that take aim at civilians had abated compared with previous years, but Tuesday’s bombings came less than two weeks after three explosions tore through a public market, killing at least 21 people.

As the final months for the American military presence here approach — all troops are scheduled to be out by the end of the year barring a request from the Iraqi government to extend the deadline — the layered attack on Tuesday highlighted the fragile state of security here, even eight years after the American invasion.

As Sunni insurgent groups, like the Qaeda affiliate, continue attacks against the government and civilians, Shiite militant groups — including the Promised Day Brigade, which is linked to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr — have stepped up attacks against American troops. In June, 14 American soldiers were killed by enemy attacks, the most since 2008.

On Monday night, a rocket fired at the Green Zone in Baghdad struck near Al Rasheed Hotel, killing three people, according to the Interior Ministry official.

Meanwhile, perhaps the biggest security threat in the heavily fortified capital has been assassinations of government officials and military officers, many dozens of whom have been killed this year by pistols with silencers.

As the violence persists, the country’s troubles are compounded by political stalemate.

In December, two politicians, Ayad Allawi, the leader of the Iraqiya bloc, and the country’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, entered into an American-backed power-sharing agreement. But since then, the men have been unable to agree on who should run the Interior and Defense Ministries, the government’s two most important departments.

The United States has been unable to end the stalemate, demonstrating to some analysts and Iraqis its waning influence here.

“The insurgents are taking advantage of this,” Iskandar Jawad, a member of Parliament’s security committee, said in an interview.

Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.

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Japan’s Reconstruction Minister Resigns Over Verbal Gaffes

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The reconstruction minister, Ryu Matsumoto, was forced to step down after offending local officials during a visit to the northern areas of Japan that bore the brunt of the devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Mr. Matsumoto, who assumed the post just last week, angered local governors by confessing his ignorance of local geography, and then showing irritation when one local governor made him wait in a reception room.

The final straw appeared to come when he demanded that disaster-struck local areas play a role in leading their own reconstruction. This is a political no-no in a nation where rural regions enjoy disproportionate voting power, and are used to being coddled by a financially generous central government.

“We will try to help those places that come up with ideas to help themselves, but not those that don’t,” Mr. Matsumoto told the governor of Iwate Prefecture on Sunday.

The comments were front-page news on Tuesday in Japanese newspapers, which criticized Mr. Matsumoto, a relative newcomer who held his first cabinet job last fall, for insensitivity toward regions where some 22,500 are dead or missing. They were also seized upon by the opposition, which jumped on another chance to accuse Mr. Kan of weak and clumsy leadership in handling the disaster.

“His remarks were out of the ordinary and awful,” said Ichiro Aisawa of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party.

Later Tuesday, Mr. Kan appointed Tatsuo Hirano, a senior vice minister for national policy and another relative newcomer to the cabinet, as the new reconstruction minister.

The resignation comes as Mr. Kan struggles to pass a series of earthquake- and energy-related bills that he says are needed for Japan to recover from the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Facing intense public criticism for his handling of the triple disaster, Mr. Kan has promised to step down once the bills are passed, effectively making himself a lame duck.

On Tuesday, his cabinet agreed on a supplementary budget bill for 2 trillion yen, or $24.7 billion, in spending for reconstruction, compensation to displaced residents and health checkups for those who lived near the Fukushima plant. The government will submit the bill to Parliament in hopes of winning passage by the end of the month.

However, passage would require cooperation from the opposition, which has seized on Mr. Kan’s weakness as a chance to push a general election and possibly regain power. Despite public distaste for political maneuvering during a national crisis, the opposition apparently sees an irresistible opportunity as Mr. Kan’s approval ratings have dropped into the 20 percent range in recent polls.

Mr. Matsumoto at first tried to control the damage by apologizing for the remarks, which he made during his first visit to the tsunami-ravaged northeast since assuming his newly created post.

In one exchange that was vividly recounted in local newspapers, Mr. Matsumoto fumed in front of reporters as he waited in a reception room for the governor of Miyagi Prefecture, Yoshihiro Murai. When Mr. Murai finally came, Mr. Matsumoto refused to shake his hand, and instead scolded him: “When a guest comes, you have to be present.”

“Instead of speaking in a tone of command, it would be better to respect each other’s positions,” Mr. Murai told reporters on Monday.

In a separate meeting, Mr. Matsumoto apparently stunned the Iwate governor, Takuya Tasso, by confessing he did not know the geography of the region that he was supposed to be helping.

“I’m from Kyushu, so I don’t know which city is in which prefecture,” he reportedly said, referring to Japan’s southernmost main island, hundreds of miles from the devastated northeast coast.

To the end, Mr. Matsumoto denied that the remarks were out of line.

“I feel sorry if my remarks hurt the feelings of earthquake victims,” Mr. Matsumoto told reporters. “But if you check what I said, I believe they require no explanation.”

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Acquittals of Ex-Officials Feed Anger Across Egypt

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The acquittals were seen as especially provocative because they followed by one day a separate Cairo court decision to release on bail seven police officers charged with killing 17 protesters and wounding 350 in the city of Suez during the revolution. That decision set off a riot at the courthouse and led protesters to block a major highway for hours.

The decisions have aggravated growing anger at the military council now running the country. It has faced mounting criticism from protesters who say it is too slow to prosecute former officials, yet has moved quickly and aggressively to prosecute hundreds of civilians before military courts in connection with pro-democracy activities.

“People see more and more that nothing is changing,” said Lilian Wagdy, who is helping to organize a large protest in Tahrir Square on Friday. “Those who have been robbing this country for 30 years get acquitted, while protesters are found guilty before military courts.”

Egyptian officials have increasingly struggled to contain deep public anger and frustration. Those demanding political change are angry over alleged rights violations and unsatisfactory trials. Others are fed up with the post-revolutionary uncertainty and crippled economy. Their sentiments often erupt in violence, sometimes pitting policemen against protesters, and civilians against civilians.

A coalition of human rights groups sued the military council on Tuesday on behalf of a woman they said was tried before a military court in March, tortured and forced to submit to a “virginity test” within view and earshot of military prison workers.

Violence has also continued in the capital. On Saturday, 47 people were injured when protesters in Tahrir Square clashed with tea vendors they accused of being agents planted by the police.

So far, only one police officer has been convicted, in absentia, of killing protesters. The former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, was sentenced in May on corruption charges, but his trial over protester deaths was postponed. The former president, Hosni Mubarak, has also been charged in the deaths of protesters and is scheduled to have his first day in court Aug. 3.

“People, especially families of martyrs, have had enough,” said Sarah Abdelrahman, an activist, referring to those killed in the uprising. “The more people continue to stall, the angrier people are getting.”

Tuesday’s acquittals involved a former finance minister, Yousef Boutros-Ghali, and a former information minister, Anas el-Feqy, over charges of misusing about $6 million in public funds on parliamentary and political campaigns. Mr. Boutros-Ghali, a nephew of the former United Nations secretary general Boutros?Boutros-Ghali, has been abroad since February and was earlier sentenced to 30 years in absentia for misuse of office equipment. Mr. Feqy remained in prison on other charges.

The third official, Ahmed el-Maghraby, was found not guilty of profiteering from an improper sale of state-owned land when he was housing minister. He maintained throughout the trial that it happened before he took office.

In a fourth, separate case, the court convicted a former minister of trade and industry, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, of profiteering and the misuse of public funds totaling more than $2 million. He was also tried in absentia. Mr. Rachid, who was visiting Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, when the revolution began and has stayed there since, insisted on his innocence.

During President Mubarak’s last years in power, he appointed a government that had the unpopular task of redesigning the economy, and often was the focus of public ire. Mr. Rachid championed Egypt’s economic liberalization, which was marked by high growth rates but also a yawning gap between rich and poor. Mr. Boutros-Ghali, the former finance minister, also promoted that effort. Mr. Feqy, the chief propagandist and a friend of the Mubarak family, aggressively defended the regime on state-run media during the uprising.

“There is no doubt in the minds of most people in Egypt that these guys are guilty of something,” said Samer Shehata, a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.

Mr. Maghraby’s acquittal has been met with some surprise. The Housing Ministry was long seen as a clearinghouse for the illicit sale of publicly owned land through sweetheart deals, and Mr. Maghraby, already convicted in May over a separate land deal, is the subject of seven corruption investigations, said his lawyer, Hussein Abdelsalam el-Feki.

“Anyone who knows anything about Egyptian politics knows that the Housing Ministry is the center of corruption in Egyptian politics,” said Mr. Shehata, who called illicit land sales under the Mubarak government “the rule, not the exception.”

Mr. Feki said he expected the government to appeal the acquittals and accused prosecutors of “trying to appease sentiments in Tahrir.”

“It is typical that the general prosecutor’s office is trying to appease the feelings on the street,” he said. “It is difficult for them to deal with the acquittal, even if the men are innocent, because they are on a witch hunt.”

Dina Salah Amer and Lara el-Gibaly contributed reporting.

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Nearly 200 Migrants Feared Drowned Off Sudan as Boat Burns

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KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Nearly 200 African migrants were feared drowned on Tuesday after a boat carrying them to Saudi Arabia caught fire off Sudan’s northeastern coast, a semiofficial news agency reported.

Three people were rescued, the news agency, the Sudan Media Center, reported. The boat had departed from Red Sea State, one of Sudan’s 26 states, and sailed for four hours in Sudanese territorial waters before the fire broke out, the news agency said.

The local authorities were still searching for possible survivors, it said. The report could not be independently confirmed.

The news agency said that the effort to smuggle the illegal migrants into Saudi Arabia was planned in Port Sudan, which is a main port in Sudan and the capital of Red Sea State. The boat sank south of Sawaken, which is at the south tip of Red Sea State, the agency reported.

The report said the owners of the boat, all Yemenis, had been arrested.

Human trafficking is rife in Sudan as smugglers use locally manufactured boats and take advantage of lawless areas in the conflict-ridden country.

There have been several other instances of illegal migrants drowning off the coast of Sudan on their way to nearby countries in the past. Thousands of African migrants, especially Eritreans and Ethiopians, risk the dangerous routes to escape conflicts in their countries and to seek better lives in oil-rich states in North Africa and the Middle East.

In early June, a ship carrying about 850 migrants fleeing the conflict in Libya capsized off Tunisia, and 150 of the passengers drowned.

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Brawl Erupts During Impeachment Talks in Afghan Parliament

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The dispute centers on the legality of a special court set up by President Karzai to adjudicate allegations of fraud by candidates who lost their seats or were disqualified in last September’s parliamentary elections. Two weeks ago the special court ruled that 62 members of the current Parliament should be replaced by those who brought challenges, many of whom are allies of the president.

Neither the country’s election authorities nor the international community have recognized the court’s authority, and the prospect of now having to give up their seats has enraged a large bloc of the current 249-seat Parliament. All of the legislators have already been sworn in.

The fight between the Parliament and Mr. Karzai has halted the normal workings of government. Nine months after the election, the president has yet to introduce a transitional government — or to submit proposed legislation for review. He has been ruling by decree and by allowing a number of acting ministers and acting Supreme Court justices to remain in charge.

The result is a situation in which the majority of the Parliament does not trust the president; he has lost trust in them as well as they have become more hostile and estranged.

In clips of the session broadcast on the Afghan Tolo Television Network, most members of Parliament appeared to be present Tuesday as the impeachment discussion got under way with much shouting and banging on desks. “The president is sick,” said Mohammed Shafiq Shahir, a member of Parliament from Herat.

He was drowned out by one of Mr. Karzai’s defenders, a member of Parliament from Kandahar, Abdul Rahim Ayoubi. There was no substitute for the president, he argued. “Do we have an alternative for the president, do we have the knowledge and wisdom of running the country ourselves?” he asked. “Why should we sacrifice the achievements gained by the blood and money and sacrifice of the international community and sacrifice it in favor of 62 fraudulent Parliament members?”

The Afghan Constitution provides for the impeachment of the president under Article 69, which says that crimes against humanity, national treason or other crimes can be grounds for the chief executive’s removal.

Soon after Mr. Ayoubi spoke, Hamida Ahmadzai, who represents the Kuchis, a Pashtun minority, expressed her support of the president’s position. She had previously been part of a coalition of Parliament members who had agreed to stand together against the special court.

Her switch in position infuriated Nazifa Zaki, a former police general and representative from Kabul. She reached under her desk, removed her shoe and hurled it at Ms. Ahmadzai, according to another Parliament member who was there. “Your support is wrong; you may have taken money to support bad people and you are taking the wrong road!” Ms. Zaki shouted.

Ms. Ahmadzai took the only weapon she had to hand — a bottle of water — and threw it at Ms. Zaki, who rushed at her and began punching her; Ms. Ahmadzai managed only one or two punches in return before the two were separated.

By then legislators were swarming around them, still yelling.

The scene might appear to be merely political opera, but the situation has reached a point where it is difficult to see a way out that would be acceptable both to the members of Parliament and Mr. Karzai.

The majority of Parliament members, 200 out of 249, according to Fatima Aziz, a Parliament member from Kunduz, have decided to stick together, putting the president in the position of having to take an extreme step if he wants to force them to comply: either dissolve the Parliament or order their arrest — either of which could turn violent. Senior government officials have unsuccessfully tried to divide the anti-president bloc, according to several Parliament members.

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French Boat Leaves Greek Waters, but Gaza May Prove Too Far

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Defying a government order, a small French boat quietly left Greek waters early Tuesday and set course for the Gaza Strip, coordinators announced later in the day, when the craft had reached international waters. It was the first vessel to successfully depart Greek territorial waters aiming to be part of an international flotilla challenging Israel’s naval blockade.

But organizers were undecided as to whether the vessel, carrying eight pro-Palestinian activists, a journalist and three crew members, would indeed continue on course to Gaza. It was unclear that the boat had enough fuel to reach the Gaza coast.

“It’s kind of in a holding pattern for the moment,” said one organizer, Adam Shapiro. “We’re trying to find out what is the next step.”

Last week, Greece decreed that no ships would be permitted to sail from its territorial waters toward “the maritime area of Gaza,” later citing safety concerns for the passengers of such ships. The Greek Coast Guard has turned back two flotilla boats, and the harbor authorities have held others in port for what they call administrative irregularities or seaworthiness issues.

Organizers had kept the location of the French boat a secret, and moored it in open water, not at a dock, so as to avoid alerting the Greek authorities to its presence.

Separately on Tuesday, a Greek court released the American captain of The Audacity of Hope, the United States-flagged boat that set out for Gaza from Athens last week but was almost immediately stopped by the coast guard and impounded. The captain, John Klusmire, was jailed Saturday after a judge advanced initial charges of endangering the vessel’s passengers, a felony, and disobeying an official directive. The charges have been dropped, said Mr. Shapiro, the organizer.

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China Admits Extent of Spill From Oil Rig

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News of the accident emerged in late June on the microblogging site Sina Weibo and was not confirmed by the state-owned operator until last Friday. The government sought to play down the significance of the leak, saying the environmental repercussions were most likely insignificant and blaming the rig’s Western operator.

“There is no visible floating oil on the sea and the leak is now under control,” said a spokesman for the State Oceanic Administration, according to a transcript of a news conference posted on its Web site, although another official acknowledged that a small slick could be seen from the two platforms involved in the accident.

Officials at the agency said ConocoPhillips China, a subsidiary of the Houston-based energy giant that operates the rigs with a Chinese state-owned company, “should take the blame” for the accident, which occurred in the mouth of the Bohai Sea, a largely enclosed body of water that touches on three provinces and the city of Tianjin.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, an official at the oceanic agency’s Beihai branch, said the minimum fine would be about $30,000, a figure that could rise depending on the extent of the economic and ecological damage.

ConocoPhillips officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday, but in an earlier e-mailed statement, the company said that it was still investigating the scope of the leak and that there had been no reported impact on wildlife, fishing or shipping activities.

The company owns a 49 percent stake in the venture, Penglai 19-3, which is the country’s largest offshore oil discovery, reportedly producing 150,000 barrels a day. It operates the rig with China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation.

In recent days, several Chinese media outlets have reported die-offs among fish farmed in ocean enclosures, but such accounts could not be verified Tuesday.

According to the oceanic agency’s Web site, a leak was first detected June 4 and then again on June 17. It said the spills occurred during the drilling process, when water is forced into the earth’s crust. By June 19, the problem was under control, the agency said, and by Monday, 40 cubic meters of oily water had been removed from the sea.

Yang Fuqiang, a senior adviser on climate and energy at the Beijing offices of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group based in the United States, said that even if the environmental damage turned out to be minimal, the long delay in publicizing the accident erodes public trust in the government and its state-run energy companies. “According to the regulations, any oil spill has to be reported to the public,” he said. “People who live in coastal areas have a right to know so they can make preparations.”

In a commentary published in The Global Times on Tuesday, Han Xiaoping, a columnist for the Web site China Energy Network, accused the state-run oil company of evasion and the government of playing a role in a cover-up. “We do everything to protect state-owned enterprises, which eventually leads them to think they can always get support from the government when they get into trouble,” he wrote.

The case comes nearly a year after a major oil spill near Dalian, not far from the Bohai Sea, that also raised questions about whether the government was giving an honest accounting — and whether there was lasting impact on aquatic life.

In that spill, an explosion ruptured a pipeline at an onshore oil storage site run by the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, forcing emergency workers to empty the contents of an enormous oil tank. More than 11,000 barrels of oil flowed into the Yellow Sea, the government said, fouling miles of beaches and a large stretch of ocean. Environmental groups like Greenpeace, however, say the figure was much larger.

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Restive City of Hama Tests Will of Syrian Government

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Hama, the scene of the largest protests yet and haunted by the memories of a ferocious crackdown a generation ago, has emerged as a potent challenge to President Bashar al-Assad. In just days, the protests and the government’s uncertain response have underlined the potential scale of dissent in Syria, the government’s lack of a strategy in ending it, and the difficulty Mr. Assad faces in dismissing the demonstrations as religiously inspired unrest with foreign support.

Hama is still a far cry from the liberated territory that the most fervent there have declared, with perhaps more hope than evidence. But a government decision last month to withdraw its forces has ceded the streets to protesters, who have tried to create an alternative model to the heavy-handed repression that serves as a trademark of Baathist rule. Residents interviewed by telephone said they had begun working collectively in acts as small as cleaning a downtown square and as large as organizing the defense of some neighborhoods.

More critically, the scenes of enormous, peaceful rallies there Friday, with their echoes of dissent in Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year, have served as a persuasive critique of the government’s version of events, which had won over large segments of Syrian society. Throughout the nearly four-month uprising, the government has pointed to the deaths of hundreds of its forces, in particular in the still murky events in Jisr al-Shoughour in the north, to argue that the unrest is the product of violent Islamist radicals with support from abroad.

Hama was peaceful for weeks, but Monday, security forces returned to its outskirts, carrying out arrests. Those forces killed at least 11 on Tuesday in yet more raids, activists said. Each foray has run up against opposition wielding what one activist called a medieval arsenal: stones, sand berms and, in his unconfirmed account, bows and arrows.

“There’s no easy solution to Hama,” Peter Harling, a Damascus-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, said in an interview.

“The regime made significant progress in terms of convincing people in Syria and abroad that there was an armed component to this protest movement and that its security forces were very much focused on that component,” he added. “Hardly two weeks later, the regime gets embroiled in the exact opposite, once again undermining its own case.”

Since the uprising erupted in mid-March, the government has wavered between harsh crackdown and tentative reform. Hama has emerged as a microcosm of this shifting strategy, which has befuddled even some of the government’s supporters.

After protests in Hama on June 3, when security forces killed as many as 73 people and arrested hundreds, residents, diplomats and officials say a deal was struck in which protests were permitted as long as property was not damaged. In the ensuing weeks, the protests gathered momentum, culminating with Friday’s scenes that suggested that at least in Hama, opposition to the government was far from marginal.

Since then, the government’s strategy has shifted again. The governor responsible for Hama, Ahmad Khaled Abdulaziz, was fired Saturday. His rumored replacement is Walid Abaza, a former head of political security believed to have a role in the events of February 1982, when a struggle between the government and an armed Islamic opposition culminated in Hama. Over four weeks, the government retook the central Syrian city, killing at least 10,000 people and flattening parts of the old city. Hundreds of soldiers were also killed.

Though security forces occasionally entered the city last month, they returned in force for the first time Monday, carrying out dozens of arrests. Their intent, however, is unclear. Instead of repeating what happened in Dara’a, the southern Syrian town where the uprising began, the military has remained on the outskirts of Hama. After a reported buildup over the weekend, some activists said dozens of tanks had even withdrawn, in another confusing sign.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

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Netherlands Found Liable for 3 Deaths

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THE HAGUE (AP) — The Netherlands is liable for the deaths of three Bosnian Muslim men who were killed by Serbs during the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, appeals court judges ruled in a civil suit on Tuesday. They ordered the Dutch government to compensate the men’s relatives.

The ruling could open the way to other compensation claims by people who contend their male relatives should have been protected by the Dutch United Nations peacekeepers in charge of the designated “safe zone” near Srebrenica during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war. The same appeals court in The Hague has dismissed such claims in the past, however.

The decision could also have implications for countries that send troops on United Nations peacekeeping missions, because it creates the precedent of a national government being taken to court for the actions of its troops, even when they are under the control of the United Nations.

The case involving the deaths of the three men at Srebrenica was brought by Hasan Nuhanovic, an interpreter who lost his brother and father, and by relatives of Rizo Mustafic, an electrician who was also killed. They argued that all three men should have been protected by Dutch peacekeepers. Mr. Mustafic and Mr. Nuhanovic were employed by the Dutch peacekeepers, but Mr. Nuhanovic’s father and brother were not.

“I am very happy, finally,” said one of the relatives, Damir Mustafic. “It has been a long case.” The victims were among thousands of Muslims who took shelter in a United Nations compound as Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, in what became the bloody climax to the Bosnian war, in which 100,000 people were killed.

Two days later, the outnumbered Dutch peacekeepers bowed to pressure from Mr. Mladic’s troops and forced thousands of Muslim families out of the compound. Bosnian Serb forces then sorted the Muslims by gender, trucked the males away and began executing 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

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Scandal Grows Over Hacking of Girl’s Cell

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Prominent politicians chastised the company and Ms. Brooks, and Ford Motor Company suspended advertising in The News of the World, the tabloid that has faced a long-running scandal over the widespread interception of voice mail messages of celebrities and other public figures.

Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said Tuesday that Ms. Brooks should “consider her conscience and consider her position” after the disclosures.

“It wasn’t a rogue reporter,” Mr. Miliband said. “It wasn’t just one individual. This was a systematic series of things that happened, and what I want from executives at News International is people to start taking responsibility for this.” News International is the News Corporation’s British newspaper division, and Ms. Brooks is now its chief executive.

Prime Minister David Cameron took time out from a visit to British troops in Afghanistan to lament what he called a “truly dreadful situation.” The police, he added, “should investigate this without any fear, without any favor, without any worry about where the evidence should lead them.”

Adding to the pressure, Ford Motor Company said it was suspending advertising until the newspaper concluded its investigation into the episode. “We are awaiting an outcome from The News of the World investigation and expect a speedy and decisive response,” Ford said in a statement released to news agencies. Under an onslaught of Twitter messages demanding a boycott of the paper, several other companies said they were reviewing their advertising policies.

Late Tuesday, The Guardian reported that the police would review every highly publicized murder, kidnapping or assault involving a child since 2001 for evidence of phone hacking. That would include the notorious case of Madeleine McCann, the 3-year-old who disappeared while her family was on vacation in Portugal in 2007.

In another development, Channel 4 reported on Tuesday that Ms. Brooks met with the police in 2002 over accusations that the tabloid had placed a senior Metropolitan police detective under surveillance.

The detective was investigating the murder of a private investigator who had been found dead with an ax buried in the back of his head. The chief suspect at the time was the dead man’s business partner, a private investigator who earned a six-figure salary supplying The News of the World with confidential information. Nothing apparently came of the inquiry into The News of the World’s surveillance.

Scotland Yard detectives were also investigating whether the phones of some families of victims of the bombings of three London subway trains and a double-decker bus in July 2005 had also been hacked, The Telegraph reported.

In his remarks, Mr. Cameron did not mention Ms. Brooks, but his comments were notable because, like other British politicians, he has cultivated social connections with News Corporation executives like Ms. Brooks and Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of the company. Mr. Cameron, along with Gordon Brown, the Labour prime minister at the time, was a guest at the reception following Ms. Brooks’s marriage to her second husband, Charlie Brooks, in 2009.

Ms. Brooks vowed to “pursue the facts with vigor and integrity,” saying she had no intention of quitting.

“I am aware of the speculation about my position,” she said in a memo to News International employees. “Therefore it is important you all know that as chief executive, I am determined to lead the company to ensure we do the right thing and resolve these serious issues.”

The allegations center on one of the most sensational Fleet Street stories of the last decade, the disappearance of Milly Dowler in 2002. The case was the subject of many tabloid front pages over the last decade, culminating last month in the conviction of Levi Bellfield, a former nightclub doorman, on charges of kidnapping and murder.

The allegation that investigators working for The News of the World may have had ordinary people like the Dowlers, not just celebrities, in their sights has raised the level of alarm in Britain over tabloid newspaper excesses.

Sarah Lyall reported from London, and Eric Pfanner from Paris.

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Russia Meets With NATO in New Push for Libyan Peace

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MOSCOW — Russia stepped up its efforts on Monday to negotiate a resolution to the war in Libya, with officials here receiving the president of South Africa, who has offered his services as a mediator, and the secretary general of NATO.

The Russian president Dmitri A. Medvedev, left, and the chief of NATO, ?Anders Fogh Rasmussen, met in Sochi, Russia, on Monday. More Photos ?

At the same time, the president of the World Chess Federation, who is acting as Moscow’s informal go-between with Libya’s embattled leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, made his second trip to Tripoli.

On his last visit, the chess official, Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, played a game with Colonel Qaddafi while discussing whether he would consider stepping down and leaving Libya. During the match, Mr. Ilyumzhinov said later, he maneuvered Colonel Qaddafi close to checkmate but then offered him a draw instead.

But in their conversation, Mr. Qaddafi said he intended to die on Libyan soil and would not consider any negotiated settlement that called for his departure from the country.

On Monday, Mr. Ilyumzhinov told Russian news agencies that he had met with Muhammad el-Qaddafi, the colonel’s eldest son, and had again been told that Colonel Qaddafi would not leave Libya. But the Libyan government acknowledged that its emissaries had met on numerous occasions in Europe with representatives of the Libyan opposition, and that the talks were continuing, Reuters reported.

The Russian diplomatic effort to open a channel of communication with the Libyan leader, who has been a major buyer of Russian weapons for years, began after President Dmitri A. Medvedev met with President Obama on the sidelines of a Group of 8 gathering in France in May.

At that meeting, Mr. Medvedev offered to serve as a mediator, and to use what leverage Russia has in Libya to persuade Colonel Qaddafi to cede power. To date, with the colonel refusing the Libyan rebels’ demands that he leave the country, none of Moscow’s forays have borne fruit.

Russia has sharply criticized the NATO bombing campaign as overstepping the United Nations’ mandate to protect civilians, instead apparently aiming to oust Colonel Qaddafi. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned a recently confirmed French weapons airdrop to the Libyan rebels, saying this, too, violated the United Nations resolution. Mr. Medvedev has, however, said that Colonel Qaddafi must step down.

Sergei A. Karaganov, dean of the department of international economics and foreign affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said Russia is appealing to two constituencies. Its mediation efforts gains Moscow points with the West, while its criticism of the NATO campaign plays well in the developing world.

“It might bring results, but nobody knows,” Mr. Karaganov said. “The game, of course, includes Qaddafi. And if he has proven one thing, it is that he is not an easy person to deal with. He doesn’t respond to threats.”

“And by the way,” Mr. Karaganov added of Colonel Qaddafi and Russia, “he is profoundly distrusted here. We know him better than others.”

After Monday’s meeting with the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, at a Russian government retreat surrounded by palm trees in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Mr. Medvedev offered encouraging words but no specifics.

“I think all of us are inspired with the results,” he said, the Interfax news agency reported. “The meeting was rather productive, and I hope we made progress.”

Mr. Medvedev also met Monday with Jacob G. Zuma, the president of South Africa, who has negotiated on behalf of the African Union and proposed that an interim government take power in Libya, Russian state television reported. At a meeting over the weekend, the African Union called on its members to disregard an arrest warrant for Colonel Qaddafi issued by the International Criminal Court, saying the warrant could hinder any settlement that included Mr. Qaddafi seeking asylum outside of Libya.

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Portugal’s Debt Rating Cut to Junk by Moody’s

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Moody’s cut its rating on Portugal’s long-term government bonds to Ba2 from Baa1 and said the outlook was negative, suggesting more downgrades might be in store.

Even though Portugal negotiated a $116 billion rescue package in May, the ratings agency cited the risk that the country would need a second bailout before it could raise funds in the bond markets again and that private sector lenders would have to share the pain.

It also warned that Portugal might fall short of the financial goals it had worked out with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund under the terms of its bailout because of the “formidable challenges the country is facing in reducing spending, increasing tax compliance, achieving economic growth and supporting the banking system.”

The downgrade came a month after a general election in Portugal in which voters unseated the Socialist government of José Sócrates. Since then, the new center-right coalition government, led by the Social Democrats and Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, have pushed ahead with austerity measures and other reforms pledged by Portugal in return for its bailout.

Among such austerity measures, Mr. Passos Coelho’s government said last week that it would need to raise taxes to meet its budget deficit target. Under the plan, the government hopes to collect 800 million euros ($1.2 billion) in additional tax receipts this year by introducing a special tax that will amount to a 50 percent cut on the traditional Christmas bonus given to Portuguese workers, equivalent to one month of salary.

Responding to Moody’s decision on Tuesday, the finance ministry said in a statement that Moody’s had “ignored the effects” of the tax plan outlined last week in Parliament. The tax increase, the ministry added, “constitutes a proof of the government’s determination to guarantee the deficit targets for this year.”

The finance ministry said Moody’s downgrade vindicated the government’s recent policy initiatives since “a robust program of macroeconomic adjustment constitutes the only possible approach to reverse the tide and recover credibility.” The new government has also shelved several infrastructure projects, including a new high-speed train link between Lisbon and Madrid, as well as pledged to speed up the privatization of state-controlled companies.

Still, proposals like raising taxes will most likely yield more pain for citizens of a country whose economy is forecast to contract 2 percent this year and next.

As a practical matter, the downgrade “means that a smaller universe of investors can hold Portuguese debt on their books,” said Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in New York, referring to rules banning many investment vehicles from holding debt rated below investment grade. Portugal does not have to borrow in the markets, he noted, so the immediate damage to government finances is limited

Still, with all the confusion about another bailout for Greece, “this adds to the perception that there might not be a ready solution,” Mr. Weinberg said. “It revives the concern that a multicountry sovereign default could happen.”

“They’re playing with dynamite in euro land,” he added.

Hopes that Greece’s problems might be brought under control soon were deflated after Standard & Poor’s said Monday that a proposal by French banks to help Greece to meet its medium-term financing needs would constitute a de facto default because banks would be required to roll over loans for a longer term at a lower interest rate.

“We’re continuing to work for a possible solution,” Michel Pébereau, chairman of BNP Paribas, the biggest French bank, said Tuesday at the Paris Europlace conference, a gathering attended by hundreds of international bankers. If the current ideas do not work, Mr. Pébereau said, “we’ll come up with something else.”

French and German bankers were scheduled to meet Wednesday morning at BNP Paribas’s headquarters in Paris with central bank officials, under the auspices of the Institute of International Finance, an association of the world’s biggest financial companies, to discuss how to proceed, said people briefed on the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

Raphael Minder contributed reporting from Lisbon.

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Indian Minister Offers Clarification on Gay Sex Comments

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The minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, told a news conference on Tuesday that he had been “totally misquoted” and that he had been referring to H.I.V. “I know as health minister that men having sex with men is not a disease,” he said.

Televised footage of a national meeting on Monday of district and mayoral leaders on H.I.V./AIDS prevention showed him appearing to say that homosexuality was “unnatural and not good for India.”

“It is a disease which has come from other countries,” he said in his speech, which he delivered in English and Hindi.

“Even though it is unnatural, it exists in our country and is now fast spreading, making it tough to detect.”

At his news conference, Mr. Azad said he did not want “ to get into this discussion” about whether homosexuality is “natural,” and said his concern over sex between men had to do with their suffering from the disease and was “not against them.”

But in a country where gay rights were hard-won, and where H.I.V. is spread mainly through heterosexual contacts, the resurgence of focus on gay sex — at an AIDS prevention forum no less — infuriated activists. “To have such a level of bias and ignorance expressed in that context about something so basic is very dangerous,” said Mario D’Penha, a historian of the gay rights movement in South Asia.

Some called for a more direct apology from Mr. Azad.

Anjali Gopalan, who heads the NAZ Foundation, an Indian rights group that works with H.I.V.-positive people, said he did not believe the minister’s comments had been taken out of context.

“He needs to acknowledge that he made a mistake — he needs to apologize, which he is not going to do,” she said.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in a landmark Delhi High Court ruling two years ago. Prior to that, conviction for “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” could be punished with up to 10 years in prison.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the president of the governing Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, also attended the meeting, but had left before Mr. Azad spoke.

Mr. Azad has been the focus of furor in the past. In 2009, he was widely ridiculed after suggesting bringing electricity to remote areas was crucial to population control because villagers would spend more time watching television than having sex.

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When Bell Sounds, Surgeon Answers Ringside Calling

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This presents a contradiction for Khabie and other doctors who moonlight as ringside physicians. They come from the world of medicine, which is predicated on healing, into the world of boxing, which is predicated on pain. Khabie must reconcile these worlds, for a few hundred dollars a fight, while his patients cut, bruise and disfigure each other for sport.

“It’s tough, but we do the best we can for them,” Khabie said. “If society says we don’t want boxing, then I wouldn’t be taking care of boxers. But I’m not a politician. I do know these boxers need help, these boxers are hurt, and often they have no one to take care of them.”

On Saturday, the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko defeated David Haye in Germany in a fight shown on HBO. Khabie watched both boxers and the physicians who watched over them. In 2006, he examined Klitschko before a bout at Madison Square Garden.

That fight, with the boxer Laila Ali on the undercard and her father, Muhammad Ali, in attendance, served as a career highlight. Just like the time Evander Holyfield raised his left glove between rounds when Khabie instructed him to lift his right, inadvertently smacking Khabie in the face.

Khabie long ago learned the violence inherent in his favorite sport. He tried boxing with a friend and ended up with broken ribs. His wife, Brenda, told Khabie: “You’re a surgeon. You need those hands.” But she also understood that the violence, so different from his daily routines, drew him ringside in the first place.

“If he wasn’t a surgeon,” she said, “he’d be a boxer.”

By day, Khabie can be found in Mount Kisco, N.Y., where he is the chief of sports medicine at Northern Westchester Hospital and also helps operate the Somers Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine Group. On fight nights, he makes a mental switch, from repairer of torn ligaments and busted knees to caretaker of battered faces, from central figure in the operating room to anonymous face at ringside.

Khabie described his job like this: between rounds, he fights through camera crews and trainers into a designated corner, where he attempts to pepper a boxer who is often injured and trying to catch his breath with questions for 10 to 15 seconds. He then makes a decision on whether the bout should continue, one he must live with through the next round.

If all goes well, Khabie operates unseen. This being boxing, “all goes well” means none of the combatants end up in the hospital. Those are the fights that stick with Khabie, that keep him awake at night, like a bout a few years ago at a beer garden on Long Island where a boxer was knocked unconscious. For five minutes that felt like five hours, the boxer did not move.

Khabie never expected to work in boxing, but knew early he would become a doctor, even back in Boy Scouts when his favorite tasks included constructing a bandage in the woods. A longtime sports fan, he entered orthopedics because they combined both passions, because the first time he removed a screw from a leg, his instructors asked not about removal technique, but about a football game the night before.

After college at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School, Khabie worked at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in California. There, he served as assistant physician for the professional sports teams in Los Angeles. Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal occasionally pulled pranks on him.

Khabie enjoyed caring for athletes (as an assistant doctor, he examined and called in a prescription for the tennis champion Steffi Graf at the United States Open). But boxing, with no place to hide, all the energy and raw aggression, drew him in. His first bout as a ringside physician took place at a cafe in the Bronx, which later became a Red Lobster and had a makeshift ring inside.

On the recent Friday in Queens, Khabie called his work typical: eight fights, three boxers knocked down, two repeatedly, one serious gash opened by a head butt.

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What’s Inside The Bun?

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Don’t count on the label to help much. Those pricey “natural” and “organic” hot dogs often contain just as much or more of the cancer-linked preservatives nitrate and nitrite as that old-fashioned Oscar Mayer wiener.

And almost no one knows it because of arcane federal rules that make the labels on natural and organic hot dogs, luncheon meats and bacon virtually impossible to decipher when it comes to preservatives. That includes products made from beef, pork, turkey and chicken.

“If you actually surveyed consumers going out of their way to buy no-nitrate products, they’d be very surprised to learn that there’s plenty of nitrates in there,” said Bruce Aidells, a chef and cookbook author. “It’s very misleading.” In a role reversal, food manufacturers are now pushing the federal government for more truthful labeling that would allow them to tell consumers clearly that some products contain nitrate and nitrite, just from natural rather than synthetic sources. The current rules bizarrely require products that derive the preservatives from natural sources to prominently place the words “Uncured” and “No nitrates or nitrites added” on the label even though they are cured and do contain the chemicals.

“Nitrite is nitrite and consumers should be aware of what they’re eating,” said Marji McCullough, director of nutritional epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, which recommends that people reduce consumption of processed meats because of studies that link them to colon cancer.

The United States Department of Agriculture says it is aware of the labeling problem and may take a fresh look. “We feel strongly that labels should help consumers make informed decisions and we are open to reviewing additional information to enhance accuracy in labeling,” said a spokesman for the department. Nitrate and nitrite have been used for centuries to cure meat, giving products like hot dogs, bacon and ham their characteristic flavor and color and killing the bacteria that causes botulism. Today, conventional meat packers typically use a synthesized version known as sodium nitrite.

But companies that label their products natural or organic must use natural sources of the preservatives. They usually employ celery powder or celery juice, which are high in nitrate. A bacterial culture is used to convert that to nitrite. The resulting chemicals are virtually identical to their synthetic cousins. When the products are packaged, both conventional and natural products contain residual amounts.

A study published earlier this year in The Journal of Food Protection found that natural hot dogs had anywhere from one-half to 10 times the amount of nitrite that conventional hot dogs contained. Natural bacon had from about a third as much nitrite as a conventional brand to more than twice as much.

The current U.S.D.A. labeling rules require natural products to indicate there may be naturally occurring nitrate or nitrite, but it often appears in small print. When combined with the more prominently displayed “No nitrates or nitrites added” banner, many consumers are left scratching their heads.

“The most consistent feedback we get is, ‘I don’t understand what that means,’?” said Linda Boardman, president of Applegate Farms, the leading brand of natural and organic processed meats. “It’s confusing and it’s not adding anything to the consumer decision-making process.”

Applegate and other natural companies have proposed alternate wording to the U.S.D.A. in the past without success. They say they are confident their products offer enough other benefits — all natural ingredients, meeting the standards for the humane treatment of animals, for example — that it is best to be upfront with consumers about the preservatives. Ms. Boardman said tests showed the amount of nitrite and nitrate in Applegate products was similar to conventional brands.

Consumer advocates agree the problem does not lie with the meat companies. “We see the problem lying squarely with U.S.D.A.,” said Urvashi Rangan, technical policy director of Consumers Union.

Since the 1970s, concerns about the health effects of nitrate and nitrite have focused on the potential for nitrite to combine with meat protein to form carcinogenic substances called nitrosamines.

The U.S.D.A. responded by limiting the amount of nitrate and nitrite that goes into processed meats, and today they contain far less than they did 40 years ago.

But since the health concerns first emerged, scientists have gained more understanding of the role of nitrate and nitrite in human health and have discovered the preservatives also have benefits, for example, in the healthy functioning of the cardiovascular and immune systems.

Some in the meat industry have seized on these discoveries to dismiss as outdated the link between nitrite in processed meat and cancer. They insist processed meats are safe.

But many scientists say the evidence of health risks remains persuasive. While the occasional hot dog or piece of bacon is probably O.K., they point out that high levels of salt and saturated fat in processed meats also contribute to health problems.

“What’s very clear is that consuming processed meats is related to higher risk of diabetes, heart attacks and colon cancer,” said Dr. Walter C. Willet, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health. “If you tweak the cured meat a little bit like some of these new products, that’s no guarantee that’s going to make it any better.”

And that weekend weenie roast? George L. Siemon , the chief executive of Organic Prairie, an organic meat processor, said that when he tried selling meats with no nitrates from any source, they didn’t taste the same and no one wanted them.

“We tried the non-anything,” he said. “It just didn’t work for the customer.”

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The Then and Now of Memory

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Researchers have long known that the brain links all kinds of new facts, related or not, when they are learned about the same time. Just as the taste of a cookie and tea can start a cascade of childhood memories, as in Proust, so a recalled bit of history homework can bring to mind a math problem — or a new dessert — from that same night.

For the first time, scientists have recorded traces in the brain of that kind of contextual memory, the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions that surrounds every piece of newly learned information. The recordings, taken from the brains of people awaiting surgery for epilepsy, suggest that new memories of even abstract facts — an Italian verb, for example — are encoded in a brain-cell firing sequence that also contains information about what else was happening during and just before the memory was formed, whether a tropical daydream or frustration with the Mets.

The new study suggests that memory is like a streaming video that is bookmarked, both consciously and subconsciously, by facts, scenes, characters and thoughts. Experts cautioned that the new report falls well short of revealing how contextual memory and different cues interact; some words might throw the mind into a vivid reverie, while others do not. But the report does provide a glimpse into how the brain places memories in space and time.

“It’s a demonstration of this very cool idea that you have remnants of previous thoughts still rattling around in your head, and you bind the representation of what’s happening now to the fading embers of those old thoughts,” said Ken Norman, a neuroscientist at Princeton who did not participate in the study. “I think they have very good evidence that this process is crucial to time-stamping your memories.”

In the new study, appearing in the current issue of the journal PNAS, doctors from the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University took recordings from tiny electrodes implanted in the brains of 69 people with severe epilepsy. The implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing doctors to pinpoint the location of the flash floods of brain activity that cause epileptic seizures.

The patients performed a simple memory task. They watched a series of nouns appear on a computer screen, one after another, and after a brief distraction recalled as many of the words as they could, in any order. Repeated trials, with different lists of words, showed a predictable effect: The participants tended to remember the words in clusters, beginning with one and recalling those that were just before or after.

This pattern, which scientists call the contiguity effect, is similar to what often happens in the card game concentration, in which players try to identify pairs in a grid of cards lying face-down. Pairs overturned close in time are often remembered together.

Recording from the electrodes, the researchers looked for a neural firing pattern that had a very distinct signature — it updated continually, like a news ticker tape. They found a strong signal in the temporal lobe of the brain, an area extending roughly between the temple and the ear. When participants recalled a word — “cat,” for example — the pattern in this region looked identical to when “cat” was originally seen on the computer screen.

Moreover, the pattern was only slightly different when they recalled the words just before, and just after, “cat” on the list.

“Here we have shown, in effect, that the word before ‘cat’ — let’s say it’s ‘tree’ — has colored or influenced the encoding for ‘cat,’ just as ‘cat’ has influenced the encoding of the next word, let’s say ‘flower,’?” said Michael J. Kahana, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of the paper. His co-authors were Jeremy R. Manning, Dr. Gordon Baltuch and Dr. Brian Litt, all of Penn; and Sean M. Polyn of Vanderbilt.

The way the process works, the authors say, is something like reconstructing a night’s activities after a hangover: remembering a fact (a broken table) recalls a scene (dancing), which in turn brings to mind more facts — like the other people who were there — and so on. Sure enough, the people in the study whose neural updating signals were strongest showed the most striking pattern of remembering words in clusters.

“When you activate one memory, you are reactivating a little bit of what was happening around the time the memory was formed,” Dr. Kahana said, “and this process is what gives you that feeling of time travel.”

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The Choice: Now That You’ve Gotten In

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Lionel Anderson is an academic adviser at The Fox School, the undergraduate and graduate business school at Temple University, where he leads an initiative to raise graduation rates. A decade ago, he received a New York Times College Scholarship, which he used to attend the University of Pennsylvania and earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Lionel Anderson

Nearly 11 years ago, I left for college. Having agonized over the essay, the campus visits and the months between Jan. 1 and regular decision notices, the hard work was over. I got in.

My job was done. Or so I thought.

What I know now is that a successful entry in no way guarantees a successful exit. Amid the obsession over getting in, I gave little thought to how I would stay in, excel or graduate. In high school, I succeeded on intellect and expected to do the same as an undergraduate.

Years later, as an academic adviser, I know that success, particularly in your first year, is contingent on your actively becoming a savvy college student. And this idea, as it turns out, has little to do with what you’re assigned and a lot to do with what you assign yourself.

In that spirit, here are some recommendations I make to first-year students:

Manage your time.
Savvy students dictate the pace of their day.

For starters, wake up at the same time every morning, no matter what time your class is. Varying when you get up on weekdays reduces your likelihood of developing a routine and decreases your productivity.

Managing your time also means being wise about how you work and play. Have fun on the weekend, but if you’re out at night be productive during the day. Treat whatever’s on your social agenda as a reward for disciplined time spent studying. And distance yourself from Facebook and texting while you work.

With regard to extracurricular activities, be sensible. They’re an enormously rewarding part of college, but over-extending yourself can be costly.

Don’t fall behind.
Savvy students partition their work and attack it in stages. Identify assignment/project due dates and work as if they’re two to three days closer. This gives you time to revise and polish submissions. Working towards the date your professor sets encourages procrastination and doesn’t afford much flexibility if something unexpected occurs.

Don’t fall behind in your program. Meet with your adviser early on to chart a course toward graduation. Seeing the finish line motivates performance. The sooner you can visualize your full trajectory, the more time you’ll have to plan for study-abroad or explore a minor as an upperclassman.

Visit the Career Center.
Savvy students don’t wait until senior year. Visit as a freshman. While most first-year students aren’t hunting for internships, meeting with a career coach can provide tremendous insight on selecting a major and understanding how to use it later.

Identify a mentor.
Savvy students seek one out. Cultivate a relationship with a professor or administrator whose work and background appeal to you. Borrow from his/her experiences and seek counsel in areas you’re still developing. With time, he or she will be able to speak convincingly about your talents and abilities. Sooner or later, an internship or job opportunity will require someone to do so.

Get connected and stay connected.
Savvy students align themselves with others. Form study groups, participate in student organizations and recognize the value of your peers. Like-minded students are resources for one another. Tutors and peer mentors in your freshmen year may be networking pathways for you as a senior or a graduate.

See the forest.
Savvy students see the big picture. Beyond your major, much of your undergraduate education is learning how to think critically and arrive at new ideas. Information will be memorized and forgotten. Focus on concepts of problem-solving. Improve your communication and public speaking. Most importantly, challenge yourself to acquire knowledge and skills you didn’t have when you arrived.

Now that you’ve gotten in, give some thought to staying in, excelling and, ultimately, graduating.

Have some tips of your own to add to Mr. Anderson’s advice? Please send them along using the comment box below.

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National Briefing | WEST: California: Two Accused of Aiming Laser at Police Helicopter

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How the president rallied Congress and the Union with a now-forgotten Fourth of July message.

Family court judges need a formula, not just their own discretion, to avoid unfair settlements.

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Carmakers and White House Haggling Over Mileage Rules

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Depending on the stringency of the standard, the deal could also reduce global warming emissions by millions of tons a year and cut oil imports by billions of barrels over the life of the program, cornerstones of President Obama’s energy policy.

The administration is proposing regulations that will require new American cars and trucks to attain an average of as much as 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025, roughly double the current level. That would require increases in fuel efficiency of nearly 5 percent a year from 2017 to 2025.

The standard would put domestic vehicle fuel efficiency on a par with that in Europe, China and Japan, saving consumers billions of dollars at the pump and creating for the first time a truly global automobile market.

The automakers say the standard is technically achievable. But they warn that it will cost billions of dollars to develop the vehicles, and they express doubt that consumers will accept the smaller, lighter — and in some cases, more expensive — cars that result.

“We can build these vehicles,” said Gloria Bergquist, vice president for public affairs at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the leading industry lobby in Washington. “The question is, will consumers buy them?”

The talks have heated up and will continue through the summer, with the proposed new standard expected in September and completed early next year after public hearings.

The auto companies are asking the government to phase in the standard gradually, to allow credits for using certain technologies and fuels and to include a review period that could lower the target if it proves too costly, industry and government officials said. They are also seeking assurances that the government will help build the charging stations needed for electric and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles, which will help to meet the new standard.

A senior administration official, insisting on anonymity because the negotiations were continuing, said the 56.2 m.p.g. goal represented the government’s opening bid, and might not be the final figure. The official said there was still some disagreement within the government, and the final outlines are far from certain.

The United States has the world’s most lenient vehicle emissions and mileage standards, lagging as much as 10 m.p.g. behind the rest of the world. Europe is expected to reach about 60 m.p.g. by 2020.

The official added that arriving at a new mileage rule was particularly difficult because the auto industry has not yet fully recovered from the recession and the government was trying to force technological change more than a decade in the future.

On that, industry and government agree.

“It is very challenging,” Mark Reuss, president of General Motors North America, said of the 56.2 m.p.g. goal at a press event in Detroit last week. “But it’s up to us as engineers to provide high value to the customer and support the environment.”

The auto companies and the government are returning to a familiar battleground, which the industry dominated for three decades beginning in the 1970s, using its clout on Capitol Hill and within the federal bureaucracy to keep fuel economy standards low.

But two years ago, when Chrysler and General Motors were clinging to life and the rest of the industry was slumping, carmakers agreed to aggressive new nationwide fuel economy standards covering the years 2012 to 2016. That deal, announced by President Obama in May 2009 as a dozen auto executives looked on, raises the domestic car and light truck fleet fuel economy to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

Now, the government wants to extend that mandate nine years, but is confronting a much healthier and feistier industry.

The lobbying is already in full swing. The auto companies are seeking a standard at the lower end of the range proposed by the government, citing studies that say that meeting the stiffer regulation will add thousands of dollars to the cost of a new vehicle and require a significant downsizing of vehicles in all classes.

They also want certainty that there will be a single national standard and that California will not be permitted to pursue a tougher standard on its own.

Bill Vlasic contributed reporting from Detroit.

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The Radiation Boom

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Published: August 1, 2010 Among patients tested for strokes with a complex type of brain scan, radiation overdoses were more widespread than previously known, a New York Times examination has found.

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With the Shuttle Program Ending, Fears of Decline at NASA

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Space experts say the best and brightest often head for the doors when rocket lines get marked for extinction, dampening morale and creating hidden threats. They call it the “Team B” effect.

“The good guys see the end coming and leave,” said Albert D. Wheelon, a former aerospace executive and Central Intelligence Agency official. “You’re left with the B students.”

NASA acknowledges the effect and its attendant dangers. It has taken hundreds of steps, including retention bonuses for skilled employees, new perks like travel benefits and more safety drills. Through cuts and attrition in recent years, the shuttle work force has declined to 7,000 workers from about 17,000.

“The downsizing has been well managed and has achieved an acceptable level of risk,” said Joseph W. Dyer, a retired Navy vice admiral and the chairman of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. After a slow start, “NASA and its industry partners did a genuinely excellent job” in planning for the shuttle’s retirement, he said. But he conceded, “There’s added risk anytime you downsize.”

Nobody is predicting problems for the coming flight of the Atlantis, the 135th and last launching in the shuttle program. The event is scheduled for Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, before an estimated one million spectators.

After that, there is little glory to look forward to. NASA has been forced to cancel the big missions that capture public attention and attract top talent, and frustrations have bubbled to the surface within the agency. Not only has the shuttle program been scrapped, but so has Constellation, which would have sent Americans back to the moon. Astronauts have been steadily leaving the agency.

At the direction of the Obama administration and Congress, NASA is instead developing a large new rocket to send deep into space. But no destination has been selected, and money is tight. NASA is also trying to nurture a commercial industry that will loft astronauts toward the stars. But the ventures, which involve partnerships with private-sector companies like SpaceX and Boeing, focus on hardware development and so far have no declared goals beyond low orbits around the planet. The shuttles did that for decades, starting in 1981.

In an interview last week, Charles F. Bolden Jr., NASA’s administrator and a former astronaut, said he had no misgivings about the last shuttle flight, and he heaped praise on the agency’s work force.

“Do we have concerns about morale?” he asked. “Yes, we always do. Do we have concerns about the welfare of our workers? Yes, we always do.”

But Mr. Bolden, a retired Marine Corps general, said his workers were excited not only about the Atlantis mission but also about a range of new endeavors at both the space agency and its commercial partners.

“We’re trying to help our people stay in the aerospace industry, if not in NASA,” he said while denying any paralyzing loss of talent. “We’re capturing the brainpower.”

And he flatly rejected the idea that the agency had lost its way.

“We’re not adrift,” he said. “And the vision is not gone. And we have a plan. We have a very sound plan.”

History has offered some bleak lessons, with tons of wreckage testifying to the danger. Experts say the Team B effect contributed to disasters in the mid-1980s and late 1990s that destroyed more than a dozen rockets, wiped out billions of dollars in satellites and threw the nation’s unpiloted space program into turmoil. The two catastrophes of the space shuttle program — in 1986 and 2003, which killed 14 astronauts — had more to do with design flaws and management failures than with depleted ranks of experts.

NASA officials say close examinations of failures and problematic retirements have made the agency smarter. “We went out and looked at who has done this well — and who has not,” said Bryan D. O’Connor, NASA’s chief of safety and mission assurance.

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Eddy Nicholson, 73, Colorful Collector, Dies

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The cause was complications of Lewy body disease, a neurodegenerative condition, his family said.

Mr. Nicholson, a spark plug of a man who was the son of a factory worker in Sherman, Tex., began collecting early American artifacts in the early 1980s, flush from his recent success in high finance. His blunt, hard-driving style unnerved some buyers steeped in Old World collector traditions of propriety, art scholarship and, above all, privacy.

“For one thing, he would sit there with an auction paddle, which was unusual,” said John Hays, the deputy chairman of Christie’s America, who became a friend. Important buyers usually sent surrogates or bid by phone, he explained.

“And if he wanted something,” he added, “nothing could stop him.”

Mr. Nicholson helped push prices to unprecedented heights. Bidding on an 18th-century Philadelphia Chippendale wing chair at Sotheby’s in 1986, he made the first bid at $400,000, and kept hoisting his paddle high while imperceptible signals from competitors around the room (an earlobe tug, a crossing of arms) drove the sale price to $1.1 million, then a record for American furniture, according to an account in The New York Times. Mr. Nicholson got his wing chair.

In 1980 Mr. Nicholson was president of Congoleum, a publicly traded conglomerate involved in military contracting, auto supplies and floor covering, when he and a fellow executive, Byron C. Radaker, took the company private in a $580 million buyout backed by investors. The deal was among the first of its kind, and the largest at the time, in a decade that would come to be defined by such leveraged buyouts, so named because buyers used a company’s own assets as collateral to finance, or leverage, the purchase of its stock.

In 1986, Mr. Nicholson and Mr. Radaker dismantled Congoleum and sold its various subsidiaries for a reported $850 million.

Mr. Nicholson’s interest in early American art and furniture began with his move to Portsmouth, N.H., where Congoleum moved its corporate headquarters from Milwaukee in 1980. He wanted to decorate the new headquarters with nautical paintings, and sought expert help in finding works that reflected American military history.

After one of his first purchases — a painting by the 19th-century artist Thomas Birch depicting a scene from the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812 — “a light went off for him,” Mr. Hays said. He became a studious and shrewd collector of a wide variety of artifacts, most of which ended up as furnishing and decoration in his family’s home in Hampton Falls, N.H.

When Mr. Nicholson left New Hampshire and auctioned the contents of the house in 1995, the lot brought total sales of $14 million, which at that time was the most ever paid for a privately held early American collection, Mr. Hays said.

Eddy Gene Nicholson was born on May 2, 1938, the oldest of Doris and Voy Nicholson’s five children. His father worked on the assembly line in a Levi’s jeans factory.

Eddy Nicholson graduated in 1960 from what is now the University of Memphis with a business degree and later became a certified public accountant, working his way up to executive positions at a number of firms before arriving at Congoleum in 1975. He became the company’s president and chief operating officer in 1980.

He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Linda; their children, Kevin, of Beverly, Mass., Steven, of West Lake Village, Calif., and Deidre Cronenbold, of Montecito, Calif.; and four grandchildren, as well as four siblings: Joel, of Osprey, Fla.; Timothy, of Chesterfield, Mo.; Sara Hartshorn, of Contoocook, N.H.; and Jeffrey, of Decatur, Tex.

Mr. Nicholson’s style may have raised eyebrows, Mr. Hays, said, but it also had a “democratizing” effect on the insular world of art collecting. “He was,” Mr. Hays said, “a real game-changer.”

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National Briefing | WEST: California: Police Kill Man in San Francisco Transit Station

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How the president rallied Congress and the Union with a now-forgotten Fourth of July message.

Family court judges need a formula, not just their own discretion, to avoid unfair settlements.

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Ruptured Montana Pipeline Was Shut Down Before

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The president of the Exxon Mobil Pipeline Company, Gary Pruessing, said in a conference call that the company decided to restart the line after examining its safety record and determining that the risks of failure were minimal.

The pipeline, which is buried about eight feet below the river, runs about 70 miles to Billings, Mont., where it supplies an Exxon refinery.

Mr. Pruessing said it was unclear what had caused the spill. In addition to sending 70 employees to clean up and investigate, Exxon said it was using contractors and airplanes to search for oil along the riverbank and to assess whether the shores had been damaged.

On Sunday, Exxon’s team was joined by federal and state workers who traveled to the affected area to assess the damage. Mr. Pruessing said that company observers flying over the river had seen “very little soiling” beyond Billings.

Tim Thennis, a public assistance officer at the Montana Disaster and Emergency Services Division, told The Associated Press that the company’s claim was reasonable but had not been independently verified. “My guess is that as fast as that water is moving, it’s probably dissipating pretty quick,” he said.

Claire Hassett, a spokeswoman for Exxon, said by telephone on Sunday that the company had reduced production at its refinery in Billings and shut down the pipeline after the leak, which the company estimated at 750 to 1,000 barrels. Industry experts said that the amount was relatively small, although it remained uncertain precisely how much oil had been leaked.

The company said that air-quality monitoring in the affected area was continuing and that there was no danger to public health. It said the impact of the spill on water quality had not been determined.

The pipeline burst about 10 miles west of Billings, coating parts of the Yellowstone River that run past Laurel — a town of about 6,500 downstream from the rupture — with shiny patches of oil. Throughout the weekend, cleanup crews in Laurel worked to lessen the impact of the spill, laying down absorbent sheets along the banks of the river to mop up some of the escaped oil and measuring fumes to determine the health threat.

Fearing a possible explosion, officials in Laurel evacuated about 140 people on Saturday just after midnight, then allowed them to return at 4 a.m. after tests showed that fumes from the leaked oil had dissipated, The Associated Press reported.

While the cause of the rupture was not immediately known, Brent Peters, the fire chief for Laurel, told the news agency that it might have been caused by high waters eroding parts of the riverbed and exposing the pipeline to debris.

The pipeline is 12 inches wide and runs to Billings, an area with three refineries, Exxon Mobil said. All three were shut down after the spill. Exxon Mobil said it had called in its North American Regional Response Team to help clean up the spill, and a Fire Department spokesman in Laurel said more than 100 people, including officials with the Environmental Protection Agency, were also dispatched.

In a statement, Exxon Mobil said it “deeply regrets this release and is working hard with local emergency authorities to mitigate the impacts of this release on the surrounding communities and to the environment.”

“The pipeline has been shut down and the segment where the release occurred has been isolated,” the statement added. “All appropriate state and federal authorities have been alerted.”

The rupture occurred around 11:30 p.m. Friday. Duane Winslow, a disaster and emergency services coordinator for Yellowstone County, told a local television station, KTVQ, that all oil companies with pipelines near the river were told to immediately shut them down, and that the damaged pipe was shut down within half an hour.

Mr. Winslow said drinking water in the surrounding area was being monitored and so far had been determined to be safe. Officials in Billings initially shut down water intake but later reopened it, KTVQ reported.

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