India Ink: Newswallah: Long Reads Edition

In Down to Earth, Alok Gupta analyzes the damaging effect violence has had on Bihar’s efforts to empower women and advance self-governance. The article argues that although the Bihar government announced a 50 percent quota for women in the panchayat (village council) in 2006, it has not helped in bringing about true empowerment for women. Instead, men force their homemaker wives to contest elections as the husbands continue to make all the decisions.

As sarpanchs (village council leaders) and mukhiyas (district leaders) have the power to approve development projects and administer social welfare programs, the posts are highly coveted. Often violence is used to discourage women from contesting elections. Mr. Gupta lists a number of incidents in which women standing for village council elections or their husbands were attacked, murdered and mutilated. In the three village council elections since 2006, 191 people were killed in Bihar before and during elections.

Rising violence along with continued gender discrimination have undermined the efficacy of the quota system for women in village council leadership. “In the past five years, the number of widowed mukhiyas and sarpanchs has spiraled, casting doubt if the Bihar government’s efforts to empower women were merely yet another political sop,” Mr. Gupta concludes.

In Tehelka, Kunal Majumder weighs in on last month’s events in Bangladesh, where young Muslim activists took to the streets of Dhaka protesting the Islamist political group Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh in an assertion of secularism and nationalism.

The protests were triggered on Feb. 5 when the War Crimes Tribunal, instituted by the government to try those accused of committing atrocities in Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971, handed down a life sentence to Abdul Kader Mollah, who was convicted of rape and mass murder. Many Bangladeshis had expected a death sentence for Mr. Mollah, who is often called the “Butcher of Mirpur” for slaughtering 344 people.

In response to the sentence, four bloggers in their 20s — Imran H. Sarkar, Mahmadul Haq Munshi, Maruf Rosul and Amit Bikram Tripura — organized a protest near the National Museum adjacent to Shahbag Square. Within days, students from other universities joined the protest, which grew exponentially. The protesters demanded the death sentence for the perpetrators of war crimes, a ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, which are associated with the war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s liberation struggle, and a ban on enterprises controlled by the Jamaat.

Mr. Majumder compares the youth protesting at Shahbag Square to the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Pakistan, where young Muslim populations massed on the streets. However, the critical difference in Bangladesh, Mr. Majumder writes, is that the young Muslims’ demands were extremely un-Islamic.

“A young generation of Bangladeshis set out to recapture the legacy of their country’s birth and reclaim the narrative of 1971, taking ownership of an event that occurred well before this generation was born,” Mr. Majumder writes. “Young Muslims came out on the streets, angry and impassioned. They were not advocating or emerging as the vanguard for Islamism; they were opposing it.”

In Open, Rahul Pandita critiques the draft Jammu and Kashmir Police Bill 2013, which empowers local police and reduces police accountability. He notes that while the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Omar Abdullah, has often publicly denounced the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that grants armed forces impunity, the draft Kashmir Police Bill gives similar powers to the state police. The bill, which has already stirred controversy in the Kashmir Valley, allows police personnel to bypass the district magistrate in law-and-order disputes.

Other controversial parts of the act include allowing a police officer “not authorized by rank or jurisdiction” to keep a person in custody for six hours before a competent officer takes over and the authorization to create “village defense committees” and appoint civilians as special police officers.

While the chief minister has said that the bill will only be passed after it goes through the state cabinet and both legislative houses, Mr. Pandita argues that Mr. Abdullah’s inaction with regards to the bill has hurt himself by giving his opponents plenty of ammunition in this debate.

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IHT Rendezvous: Muslims Seek Dialogue With Next Pope

LONDON — As the Catholic Church’s cardinal electors gather at the Vatican to choose a new pope, Muslim leaders are urging a revival of the often troubled dialogue between the two faiths.

During the papacy of Benedict XVI, relations between the world’s two largest religions were overshadowed by remarks he made in 2006 that were widely condemned as an attack on Islam.

In a speech at Regensburg University in his native Germany, Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

In the face of protests from the Muslim world, the Vatican said the pope’s remarks had been misinterpreted and that he “deeply regretted” that the speech “sounded offensive to the sensibility of Muslim believers.”

For many in the Muslim world, however, the damage was done and the perception persisted that Benedict was hostile to Islam.

Juan Cole, a U.S. commentator on the Middle East, has suggested that although the pope backed down on some of his positions, “Pope Benedict roiled those relationships with needlessly provocative and sometimes offensive statements about Islam and Muslims.”

Despite the Vatican’s efforts to renew the interfaith dialogue by hosting a meeting with Muslim scholars, hostilities resumed in 2011 when the pope condemned alleged discrimination against Egypt’s Coptic Christians in the wake of a church bombing in Alexandria.

Al Azhar University in Cairo, the center of Islamic learning, froze relations with the Vatican in protest.

Following the pope’s decision to step down, Mahmud Azab, an adviser on interfaith dialogue to the head of Al Azhar, said, “The resumption of ties with the Vatican hinges on the new atmosphere created by the new pope. The initiative is now in the Vatican’s hands.”

Mahmoud Ashour, a senior Al Azhar cleric, insisted that “the new pope must not attack Islam,” according to remarks quoted by Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, and said the two religions should “complete one another, rather than compete.”

A French Muslim leader, meanwhile, has called for a fresh start in the dialogue with a new pope.

In an interview with Der Spiegel of Germany this week, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, said of Benedict, “He was not able to understand Muslims. He had no direct experience with Islam, and he found nothing positive to say about our beliefs.”

Reem Nasr, writing at the policy debate Web site, Policymic, this week offered Benedict’s successor a five-point program to bridge the Catholic and Muslim worlds.

These included mutual respect, more papal contacts with Muslim leaders and a greater focus on what the religions had in common.

“There has been a long history of mistrust that can be overcome,” she wrote. “No one should give up just yet.”

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Death Toll From Bangladesh Unrest Hits 42

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Violent clashes between protesters and security forces erupted across Bangladesh on Thursday, leaving at least 44 people dead, after a special war crimes tribunal handed down a death sentence to an Islamic leader for crimes against humanity committed 42 years ago, during the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

The verdict against Delawar Hossain Sayedee, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, resonated across the country. It was celebrated by the hundreds of thousands of young protesters who have taken to the streets in recent weeks to condemn Jamaat and demand justice in the war crimes cases against other party leaders, insisting that those who were convicted be hanged.

“This verdict is a victory for the people,” declared Imran H. Sarkar, a blogger and an organizer of the protests, during a rally on Thursday afternoon.

But followers of Jamaat reacted with fury, saying the case brought against Mr. Sayedee and others was politically motivated and tainted by judicial irregularities. The police and witnesses said that of the 42 people killed in the unrest, six of them were policemen.

Jamaat leaders had called a nationwide strike on Thursday to protest the verdict, and by afternoon bloodshed had erupted across the country, as party workers fought with the police in the streets.

The protests for and against Jamaat have convulsed Bangladeshi politics, demonstrating that the country has still not healed from the bloody 1971 conflict, in which an estimated three million people were killed and thousands of women were raped. Before the war, Bangladesh was East Pakistan, separated from the rest of that country by a wide expanse of India. The war pitted Bangladeshi separatists against Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators, who were known then as the Razakar Bahini.

“As judges of this tribunal, we firmly hold and believe in the doctrine that ‘justice in the future cannot be achieved unless injustice of the past is addressed,’ ” Justice A. T. M. Fazle Kabir commented in a written summary of the judgment.

The war crimes tribunal has convicted three Jamaat leaders in connection with the war, and other cases are under way, including some against defendants not affiliated with the party.

Mr. Sayedee, 73, is a well-known religious speaker with a bright red beard who became a member of the Bangladeshi Parliament after the war. Prosecutors accused him of involvement in looting and burning villages, raping women and forcing members of religious minorities to convert to Islam during the war.

His defense lawyer, Abdur Razzaq, scoffed at the court’s verdict and accused the authorities of deliberately prejudicing the trial and preventing an important witness from testifying.

“This is unfortunate, and this is unexpected,” Mr. Razzaq said of the verdict and sentence in a telephone interview. “This is a perverse judgment. It is inconceivable that a court of law awarded him a conviction. This prosecution was for a political purpose.”

Jamaat leaders and other opposition politicians have said for months that the government was manipulating the war crimes process to go after political rivals, accusations that the authorities deny. The proceedings have already created dissent and some international criticism. The chief presiding judge resigned after reports, based on hacked Skype conversations, that the judge had improper contacts with a legal expert linked to prosecutors and the government.

But to many Bangladeshis, the real injustice has been that war criminals have remained free for decades. On Feb. 5, the tribunal convicted another Jamaat leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, and sentenced him to life in prison. Furious that the tribunal had not sentenced Mr. Mollah to death, protesters gathered in growing numbers, surpassing 200,000 on some days.

The protests have become known as the Shahbagh movement, named for a large intersection in central Dhaka where the main demonstrations have taken place. Many political analysts say the Shahbagh protests are the most significant spontaneous political movement in Bangladesh in decades. Though the movement may be suffused with idealism and proud nationalism, it also bears a hard edge, with demands for the execution of convicted war criminals.

Sultana Kamal, a prominent human rights leader in Dhaka, said that she disagreed with the calls for the death penalty, but that they reflected the cynicism of Bangladeshis who have seen war criminals evade punishment for decades. Many people were infuriated when Mr. Mollah flashed a victory sign after receiving his life sentence.

“We have a problem in accepting that they are demanding the death penalty,” Ms. Kamal said in a telephone interview. “But we understand that it was from a nervousness among the people here that unless they are given the highest penalty in the land, these people will come back out.”

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Jim Yardley from New Delhi.

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India Ink: Big Hikes in Rural, Social Spending in India’s New Budget

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the Union budget in Parliament on Thursday morning. When Mr. Chidambaram walked into the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament, carrying the ceremonial budget briefcase, it was eighth time he had presented the country’s annual budget, and the 82^nd national budget presented in India.

As the last Union Budget to be presented before the national elections in 2014, the finance minister faced a difficult task of balancing good politics with good economics, particularly in trying to rein in a record-high national deficit.

He was, nonetheless, upbeat. “I acknowledge that the Indian economy is challenged, but I am absolutely confident that, with your cooperation, we will get out of the trough and get on to the high growth path,” he said, before presenting the budget in a speech that lasted nearly two hours. “There is no reason for gloom or pessimism,” he said. “Even now, of the large countries of the world, only China and Indonesia are growing faster than India in 2012-13.”

Here is a brief overview of the Union Budget for the fiscal year that begins April 1, 2013:

Total Expenditure:

Planned expenditure in 2013-2014 is 5.55 trillion rupees, or $103 billion, up 29.4 percent from revised estimates for the year before. Total expenditure for 2013-2014 will be 16.7 trillion rupees, up 16 percent from the total expenditure in the fiscal year 2012-2013 of 14.3 trillion rupees.

Full year economic growth projections for the year beginning April 1, 2013:

Gross domestic product growth for 2013-2014 will be 6.1 to 6.7 percent, up from 5 percent the year before. In a budget that emphasized growth, Mr. Chidambaram said that his aim was to get back to an 8 percent growth rate. “Our mantra is, higher growth leading to inclusive and sustainable development,” he said.

Fiscal Deficit:

The fiscal deficit for the current year was contained at 5.2 percent, Mr. Chidambaram said. For the fiscal year 2013-2014, which begins April 1, the estimated fiscal deficit is 4.8 percent and the revenue deficit is 3.3 percent. By 2016-2017, the finance minister said, he aimed to bring down fiscal deficit to 3 percent and revenue deficit to 1.5 percent

Trade:

Exports fell 5.5 percent in the 2012-2013 fiscal year to $ 214.1 billion, compared to their 21.3 percent growth in fiscal 2011-12, when they reached $226.5 billion.

Imports fell 0.7 percent percent in the 2012-2013 fiscal year to $361.3 billion, down from $ 363.9 billion in the corresponding period of 2011-12.

Current Account Deficit

The current account deficit, a measure of the difference between the value of exports and imports, is caused by high oil, coal and gold imports and a slowdown in exports, the finance minister said. This figure is a “bigger worry” than the fiscal deficit, he said. In the first half of the fiscal year 2012-2013, the latest figures available, the current account deficit worsened to $39 billion, or 4.6 percent of G.D.P, versus $36.4 billion, or 4 percent, in the corresponding period of 2011-12.

In order to finance the current account deficit, foreign investment must be increased. Over the next two years, $75 billion is needed to finance the current account deficit, Mr. Chidambaram said.

Rural Spending

The budget for the Ministry of Rural Development will rise by a staggering 46 percent, to 802 billion rupees, or $14.9 billion.

Agriculture Spending:

The Union budget 2013-2014 allocated 270 billion rupees, or $5.02 billion to the Agriculture Ministry, an increase of 22 percent from the previous budget.

Food Security:

The National Food Security Bill, which will provide subsidized food to poor people, is a “promise” of the United Progressive Alliance government, the finance minister said, and he hopes that the Parliament will pass the bill soon. The budget has set aside 100 billion rupees ($1.86 billion) for costs likely under the food security bill, he said.

Health and Education

“Health for all and education for all remain our priorities,” Mr. Chidambaram said. In 2013-2014 he allocated 373 billion rupees, or $6.93 billion to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This includes 212 million rupees for the National Health Mission, a program to improve healthcare in rural India, an increase of 24.3 percent from the year before.

He also proposed to provide rupees 47 billion rupees, or $878 million for medical education, training and research.

Defense Spending:

Allocations for defense in the upcoming year rose by 4.5 percent from the year before, to 2 lakh crore, or 2 trillion rupees. In 2012-2013 fiscal year, defense spending allocation was 1.94 trillion rupees ($38.7 billion), up 17.6 percent over the year before.

Taxes: Tax rates will remain the same, the finance minister said, but there will be a one-time surcharge imposed on the 42,800 Indians who report income of more than 10 million rupees ($186,000) to the tax department. This will be imposed for one year only, he said, adding that he hoped these rich Indians would feel a little of the spirit of Azim Premji, the Wipro founder and philanthropist.

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Pope Benedict Prepares for Final General Audience

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tens of thousands of believers gathered for Pope Benedict XVI’s final general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday.

ROME — In the waning hours of his troubled papacy, Pope Benedict XVI prepared on Wednesday to hold his final general audience as tens of thousands of believers gathered in St. Peter’s Square a day before his resignation takes formal effect.

Vatican officials said around 50,000 tickets had been requested for the occasion, which is likely to draw many more pilgrims into the broad boulevard leading toward the Vatican from the River Tiber.

The pope sent shock waves around the Roman Catholic world on Feb. 11 when he announced he would resign on Thursday — the first pope to have done so voluntarily in six centuries.

The announcement left officials scrambling to deal with the protocols of his departure as he ceases to be the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. Only on Tuesday did the Vatican announce that he will keep the name Benedict XVI and will be known as the Roman pontiff emeritus or pope emeritus.

He will dress in a simple white cassock, forgoing the mozzetta, the elbow-length cape worn by some Catholic clergymen, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters at a news briefing on Tuesday.

And he will no longer wear the red shoes typically worn by popes, symbolizing the blood of the martyrs, Father Lombardi said, opting instead for a more quotidian brown.

Benedict’s looming departure has also triggered a surge of maneuvering among the 117 cardinals who will elect his successor in a conclave starting next month, reviving concerns about the clerical abuse scandals that dogged Benedict’s time at the Vatican.

Indeed, the abrupt resignation of the most senior Roman Catholic cardinal in Britain on Monday — after accusations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward priests years ago — showed that the taint of scandal could force a cardinal from participating in the selection of a new pope.

His exit came as at least a dozen other cardinals tarnished with accusations that they had failed to remove priests accused of sexually abusing minors were among those gathering in Rome to prepare for the conclave.

But there was no indication that the church’s promise to confront the sexual abuse scandal had led to direct pressure on those cardinals to exempt themselves from the conclave.

Rachel Donadio reported from Rome, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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British Media to Challenge Secrecy Bid in Litvinenko Case

The British Broadcasting Corporation said it and other news organizations would oppose an effort on Tuesday by the British government to limit information disclosed to the planned inquest into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former officer in the KGB who died of radiation poisoning in London in 2006.

The BBC reported that the government had planned to apply for a so-called Public Interest Immunity certificate, usually issued on the grounds of national security. The case has strained ties between Britain and Russia, reviving memories of the cold war.

Mr. Litvinenko, who styled himself a whistle-blower and foe of the Kremlin, died in November, 2006, weeks after he secured British citizenship. He had fled from Russia to Britain in 2000.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution is seeking the extradition from Russia of Andrei K. Lugovoi, another former KGB officer, to face trial on murder charges. Mr. Lugovoi denies the accusation and Russia says its constitution forbids it from sending its citizens to other countries to face trial.

At a hearing in December in advance of the inquest, which is to start on May 1, Ben Emmerson, a lawyer representing Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, said that Mr. Litvinenko was a “registered and paid agent and employee of MI6, with a dedicated handler whose pseudonym was Martin.”

Mr. Litvinenko would meet his handler in central London, Mr. Emmerson said, and discuss the encounters with his wife, Marina.

Mr. Litvinenko also worked for the Spanish intelligence service, Mr. Emmerson said, and both the British and Spanish spy agencies made payments into a joint account with his wife. The lawyer added that the inquest should consider whether MI6 failed in its duty to protect him against a “real and immediate risk to life.”

The BBC said Marina Litvinenko would also oppose the British government’s effort to limit information about its knowledge of her husband his death.

Sir Robert Owen, a judge overseeing the inquest and its preparations, has said in previous hearings that he will examine what was known about threats to Mr. Litvinenko and would also seek to determine whether the Russian state bore responsibility. In a deathbed statement, Mr. Litvinenko directly blamed President Vladimir V. Putin, who dismissed the accusation.

Russian state prosecutors are expected to be represented at the inquest. Moscow has denied British suggestions that it may have been involved in killing Mr. Litvinenko, who died after ingesting polonium 210 — a rare radioactive isotope — at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in central London.

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India Ink: On Kissing, Bollywood, and Rebellion

Gardiner Harris’s recent piece in the New York Times made me do a double take, not just because of the attachment of the word “bombshell” before Katrina Kaif, which to me is somewhat like using “razor-sharp” as the defining adjective for President George W. Bush, but because of the cultural “Rubicon-crossing” significance attributed to a scene in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan:”

A pivotal screen kiss reflected the changing romantic landscape here. Kissing scenes were banned by Indian film censors until the 1990s, and Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood heartthrob who is one of the world’s biggest movie stars, has been teasing Indian audiences in dozens of films since then by bringing his lips achingly close to those of his beautiful co-stars. But his lips never touched any of theirs until he kissed the Bollywood bombshell Katrina Kaif in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” which was released in December 2012.

Mr. Khan tried to soften the impact by saying in a published interview that his director made him do it. But the cultural Rubicon had been crossed.

As a longtime pop culture buff and dispassionate observer of screen-kisses, while I may agree with the author’s observation of Shah Rukh Khan’s lips historically tending toward those of his heroine’s but never quite getting there, like the limit of a function, I firmly dispute the notion that Mr. Khan’s tepid liplock has given the kiss the acceptability it did not have before. That’s because kisses have been in mainstream Indian movies since the late 1920s with reigning screen diva, Devika Rani’s kiss with her off-screen husband, Himanshu Rai, for a full four minutes in “Karma” (1933) being the veritable stuff of legends.

It is true, of course, that Indian movies have had far more people chasing each other around the trees than kissing, and that is primarily because of the dictates of the dreaded censor board, the cheerless cinematic embodiment of the Nehruvian ideal of big-government intruding into every aspect of national life, which made directors move the camera away at strategic moments to two flowers touching each other.

But around the time when I started watching movies, which was the mid-1980s, kisses and intimacy were very much part of big-banner Bollywood, be it in “Ram Teri Ganga Maili” (1985) or “Janbaaz” (1986) or “Qayamat Se Qayamat Se Tak” (1986) and the truly shuddering scene in “Dayavan” (1988) between the venerable Vinod Khanna and an upcoming actress by the name of Madhuri Dixit, a sequence responsible for many VCRs getting jammed due to excessive pausing and replaying (or so my unscientific survey tells me).

Then of course, there was Aamir Khan establishing his reputation for commitment to detail and the embracing of variety by kissing Juhi Chawla in “Qayamat Se Qayamat” (1986) and “Love Love Love” (1986), Pooja Bhatt in “Dil Hai Ki Manta Naheen” (1991), Pooja Bedi in “Jo Jeeta Hai Sikander” (1992) and then Karishma Kapoor in “Raja Hindustani” (1997) for a full 40 seconds, if experts are to be believed.

In the 2000s, there were movies that had 17 kissing scenes in them, and an actor by the name of Emran Hashmi had made kissing a calling card in each of his movies, earning the sobriquet “serial kisser.”

I don’t want to keep on inserting citations to prior art — after all, this is not a journal paper — but my point is that by 2012, when “Jab Tak Hai Jaan” came to pass, Indian audiences had been quite desensitized to on-screen kissing.

In other words, it is no big whoop. Or should I say, no big “mwah.”

So if it’s not the influence of movies, why then do we see more public displays of affection (of which kissing is but one manifestation) in Indian cities today than say 10 or 20 years ago?

Here is my explanation: The last decade or so has seen a social revolution in urban India. More men and more women are working together. There are more coeducational institutions than ever before. Social media have allowed people to find others with similar interests and points of view, subverting traditional social walls that prevent free interaction, and then they could keep in touch discreetly, through cellphones and instant messaging. (In my day, we had to use the single rotary phone kept in the living room, making it impossible to have a secret conversation.)

As a result, there are more opportunities for meeting people and maintaining relationships. This naturally leads to more unmarried couples or couples that are not married to each other.

Getting a room every time one wants to kiss one’s partner or hold hands is neither financially viable nor practically feasible. Budget hotels are loath to rent rooms to couples without proof of “marriage” because of the fear of police raids. Some even collude with crooked cops to do a bit of extortion, since couples are willing to pay to avoid being hauled to the police station. Being outside, in parks and deserted spaces, does not totally protect couples from the police, but at least it is better than being busted at a hotel.

Hence what one sees as increased public displays of affection is merely the inevitable effect of an increasing number of young couples in urban India, who, because of an antiquated legal system with ill-defined notions of “public decency,” unfortunately find themselves unable to have safe spaces of their own.

The biggest threat to their safety is not the police but young men described in Mr. Harris’s piece, those who “often sit and stare hungrily at kissing couples,” India’s increasingly angry and volatile class of getting-it-nots, those that desperately wish to have but do not, who see these displays of affection as arrogant flaunting of privilege. Many of these frustrated young men coalesce to form mobs of moral police, who then attack couples, especially women, in public places under the comforting banner of protecting Indian tradition.

And so an important cultural battle rages on, in the parks and in pubs and in other common spaces, one that reflects one of modern India’s defining conflicts, that between ordinary people in pursuit of individual happiness and a legal and social system that insists on imposing, interfering and getting in their way — where a kiss is no longer just a kiss but a small symbol of unintentional rebellion.

By the light of day, Arnab Ray is a research scientist at the Fraunhofer Center For Experimental Software Engineering and also an adjunct assistant professor at the Computer Science department of the University of Maryland at College Park. Come night, he metamorphoses into blogger, novelist (“May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” and “The Mine”) and columnist. He is on Twitter at @greatbong.

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Insurgents Launch 4 Attacks in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A series of early morning attacks hit eastern Afghanistan Sunday, with three separate suicide bombings in outlying provinces and a shootout between security forces and a would-be attacker in the capital city of Kabul.

The deadliest attack was a suicide car bombing at a state intelligence site just after sunrise in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In that attack, a car approached the gate of a compound used by the National Directorate of Security and exploded, killing two guards and wounding three others, said regional government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai. The building was damaged in the attack, he added.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Shortly before the Jalalabad attack, an assailant detonated a van packed with explosives at a highway police checkpoint in Logar province, also in the east. That explosion wounded three police officers but no one was killed, said Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai.

In Kabul, meanwhile, police shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber who was trying to attack an intelligence agency office downtown, according to the city's deputy police chief, Gen. Mohammad Daud Amin. Intelligence agents spotted the bomber before he could detonate the explosives in his vehicle and shot him, Amin said.

The explosives in the vehicle were later defused, he added.

Later in the morning, a man wearing a suicide vest blew himself up outside the police headquarters for Baraki Barak district in Logar province. The man was stopped by police as he tried to force his way into the building, but still managed to detonate his vest, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, the provincial government spokesman.

One policeman was wounded in the Baraki Barak attack, Darwesh said.

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North Korea Warns U.S. Forces of ‘Destruction’ Ahead of Drills

SEOUL (Reuters) — North Korea on Saturday warned the top U.S. military commander stationed in South Korea that his forces would “meet a miserable destruction” if they go ahead with scheduled military drills with South Korean troops, North Korean state media said.

Pak Rim-su, chief delegate of the North Korean military mission to the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, gave the message by phone to Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, KCNA news agency said.

It came amid escalating tension on the divided Korean peninsula after the North’s third nuclear test earlier this month, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, drew harsh international condemnation.

A direct message from the North’s Panmunjom mission to the U.S. commander is rare.

North and South Korea are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

The U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command is holding an annual computer-based simulation war drill, Key Resolve, from March 11 to 25, involving 10,000 South Korean and 3,500 U.S. troops.

The command also plans to hold Foal Eagle joint military exercises involving land, sea and air manoeuvres. About 200,000 Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. forces are expected to be mobilized for the two month-long exercise which starts on March 1.

“If your side ignites a war of aggression by staging the reckless joint military exercises...at this dangerous time, from that moment your fate will be hung by a thread with every hour,” Pak was quoted as saying.

“You had better bear in mind that those igniting a war are destined to meet a miserable destruction.”

Washington and Seoul regularly hold military exercises which they say are purely defensive. North Korea, which has stepped up its bellicose threats towards the United States and South Korea in recent months, sees them as rehearsals for invasion.

North Korea threatened South Korea with “final destruction” during a debate at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Sung-won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Pistorius Returns to Bail Hearing

PRETORIA, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee track star accused of murdering his girlfriend, returned to court on Friday for the fourth straight day of hearings about whether he should be granted bail in a case that has riveted the nation.

News reports said he slipped into the courthouse, his head covered by a jacket, some time before the start of hearings that have packed the courtroom with a scrum of journalists alongside legal teams, family members and onlookers. He took his place on Friday to a clatter of photographers’ cameras. In the latest in a series of abrupt twists in the affair on Thursday, the South African police replaced the lead investigator after revelations that he was facing seven charges of attempted murder stemming from an episode in which police officers fired at a minivan.

After widespread news reports about the charges, Gerrie Nel, the prosecutor, said at the start of a hearing on Thursday that he had just learned about them. The national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, said later that a divisional police commissioner, Lt. Gen. Vinesh Moonoo, would be assigned to preside over “this very important investigation.” The change was announced a day after the original lead investigator, Detective Warrant Officer Hilton Botha, acknowledged several mistakes in the police work and conceded that, based on the existing evidence, he could not rule out the version of events presented by Mr. Pistorius.

The prosecution says Mr. Pistorius committed the premeditated murder of Reeva Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law graduate, when he fired four shots through a locked bathroom door while she was on the other side in the early hours of Feb. 14.

With his head bowed as he entered the court on Friday, Mr. Pistorius appeared to be struggling to hold back tears, his jaw clenched, the prosecutor, described Ms. Steenkamp’s plight that morning.

“I am not saying the planning of the murder of Reeva Steenkamp happened weeks ahead, days ahead,” Mr. Nel said. “I am saying the planning to kill Reeva Steenkamp happened that night.”

Ms. Steenkamp took refuge in the bathroom either to escape a fight or a gun, he said. The prosecution is seeking to persuade the magistrate, Desmond Nair, to deny the sprinter’s application be released on bail until a full trial, arguing that he might flee.

Mr. Pistorius has said that he opened fire believing there was an intruder in his home, in a gated community in Pretoria, and that he had no intention of killing Ms. Steenkamp, 29, a model and law school graduate.

On Thursday, Mr. Nel labeled Mr. Pistorius’s account “improbable.”

“What we can’t forget is the applicant is charged with murdering a defenseless, innocent woman,” Mr. Nel said.

Mr. Pistorius has said that he did not realize Ms. Steenkamp was no longer in bed as he rose to check for an intruder, shouting to her to call the police.

“You want to protect her, but you don’t even look at her?” Mr. Nel said on Thursday. “You don’t even ask, ‘Reeva, are you all right?’ 

On Thursday, a police brigadier, Neville Malila, told reporters that Detective Botha was scheduled to appear in court in May on the attempted murder charges in connection with an episode in which Mr. Botha and two other police officers fired at a minivan.

“Botha and two other policemen allegedly tried to stop a minibus taxi with seven people,” Brigadier Malila said. “They fired shots.” While the charges were initially dropped, “we were informed yesterday that the charges will be reinstated,” he said.

Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, told reporters that the decision to reinstate the charges was made on Feb. 4, long before Ms. Steenkamp was killed.

Lydia Polgreen reported from Pretoria, South Africa, and Alan Cowell from London.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 21

NEWS In a little-noticed trial in a small courtroom in Cyprus, a 24-year-old man provided a rare look inside a covert global war between Israel and Iran, admitting that he is an operative of the militant group Hezbollah, for which he acted as a courier in Europe and staked out locations that Israelis were known to frequent. Nicholas Kulish reports from Limassol, Cyprus.

The chief executive of an American tire company touched off a furor in France on Wednesday as he responded to a government plea to take over a Goodyear factory slated for closing in northern France. Liz Alderman reports from Paris.

A potentially lucrative market beckons Iceland if the country can find a way to export and transmit electricity across 1,000 miles of frigid sea to the European Union. Andrew Higgins reports from Krafla, Iceland.

China considered using a drone strike in a mountainous region of Southeast Asia to kill a Myanmar drug lord wanted in the murders of 13 Chinese sailors, but decided instead to capture him alive, according to an influential state-run newspaper. Jane Perlez reports from Beijing.

The recent flooding in Jakarta has exposed the city’s weak infrastructure and provided a test for its new leader, Joko Widodo. Sara Schonhardt reports from Jakarta.

The Daily Mail set out after the British historical novelist Hilary Mantel for what the tabloid said was “an astonishing and venomous attack” on the Duchess of Cambridge. John Burns reports from London.

Spain is no longer under imminent threat from financial markets, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told lawmakers Wednesday, but instead is on track to repair its public finances, as shown by an “unprecedented” decline in its budget deficit last year. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

Promises of lower taxes and tax amnesties have taken hold among many of Italy’s party parties as a key election looms. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome.

President Obama hopes to introduce an emissions trading system in the United States, but a similar scheme in Europe has not had the intended effect of encouraging companies to reduce pollutants. Stanley Reed reports from London.

Porto Nuova, a large redevelopment in Milan with 30 skyscrapers, a giant park and other amenities, will soon have new shops for some of the city’s best-known fashion labels. J J. Martin reports from Milan.

ARTS The Jewish Museum of Vienna has come under fire for its delay in returning many items looted by the Nazis. Patricia Cohen reports.

SPORTS Giampaolo Pozzo owns soccer teams in Italy, Spain and England, with players shuttling back and forth. That method has brought success to Watford, the English club. Rob Hughes writes from London.

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Bulgarian Government Is Reported Set to Resign

The government of Bulgaria will resign Wednesday afternoon following a week of sometimes violent protests, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said in a surprise announcement to Parliament. "The people gave us power and today we are returning it," he said, according to local news reports.

The mass protests were triggered by electricity price increases and corruption scandals, including one over the nominee to head the state electricity regulatory commission, which sets rates. She was alleged to have sold cigarettes illegally online and her nomination was later withdrawn.

Protests in cities around the country on Sunday night were believed to be the biggest the country had seen in 16 years.

Trying to appease the protesters, the prime minister said Tuesday that the license of the Czech utility CEZ, which provides power to many residential customers in Bulgaria, would be withdrawn.

Opposition political parties had been attempting to exploit public anger over the government’s austerity measures as general elections planned for July approached. They are now likely to be held earlier.

Mr. Borisov citied beatings of protesters Tuesday by the police as one reason for his decision.

"Every drop of blood for us is a stain," he said. "I can’t look at a Parliament surrounded by barricades, that’s not our goal, neither our approach, if we have to protect ourselves from the people."

Mr. Borisov said he would not participate in an interim government.

After the announcement, members of his party left Parliament and the speaker called a recess because of the lack of a quorum.

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IHT Rendezvous: Women Killed as 'Witches,' in Papua New Guinea, in 2013

BEIJING — “They’re going to cook the sanguma”, or witchcraft, “mama!”

This terrifying cry by Papua New Guinean children opens “It’s 2013, and They’re Burning ‘Witches’,” a long and eloquent report in The Global Mail, an Australia-based online news site.

It was published last week before news shot around the world on Tuesday that the police in Papua New Guinea, in another case, had charged two people with torturing and killing a 20-year-old mother, Kepari Leniata, whom they accused of being a witch. Ms. Leniata was “stripped, tortured with a hot iron rod, doused in gasoline and set alight on a pile of car tires and trash” earlier this month in front of a crowd of hundreds of people, including young children, The Associated Press reported.

Why?

“Leniata had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who had died in a hospital. Ware and Watea are believed to be the boy’s mother and uncle, police said in a statement,” The A.P. reported.

The year 2013 or not, such violence against women is not that uncommon in Papua New Guinea, where “witches” (in reality just women, often older ones) may be blamed when things go wrong, a reflection of the powerful belief in sorcery in the Pacific nation just north of Australia. A key reason for identifying a woman as a witch and attacking her is when a man, or child, dies unexpectedly.

But there may be other reasons. As the Australian international television station Australia Network reported, in a resource-rich country undergoing a boom, accusing her of being a witch is an easy way to take her land.

Dame Carol Kidu, a Papua New Guinean politician, told the station: “There are other things involved nowadays, like greed, acquisition of people’s properties and land, and all sorts of things might be all tied up in all of this, using – killing the sorcerers as a reason to acquire land. So it needs to be investigated and we need to work out how we can deal with it. It is a very complex issue.”

The United Nations also found that accusations of sorcery can be used to kill women for a range of motives: “The U.N. Human Rights agency says they’ve seen an increase in these types of killings as well as torture and rape. They say the accusations are often used to deprive women of land and property,” U.N. radio reported recently.

What lies behind the ferocity? Traditional beliefs, alcohol and drug use among men, and uneven development in a country that is in the middle of a mining boom where, as The Global Mail wrote, “the wealth bypasses the vast majority.”

It writes: “enduring tradition widely resists the notion that natural causes, disease, accident or recklessness might be responsible for a death. Rather, bad magic is the certain culprit.”

The dead person if often a man; the culprit is a woman. Or, a “witch.”

“When people die, especially men, people start asking ‘Who’s behind it?’ not ‘What’s behind it?’” said Philip Gibbs, a longtime resident, anthropologist, sorcery specialist and Catholic priest who was quoted by The Global Mail.

But in its report, the news site was careful to point out that while many Papua New Guineans believe in sorcery to some degree, that doesn’t mean they support the lynchings.

“In the words of the editor of the national daily Post Courier, Alexander Rheeney, city and country folk alike overwhelmingly ‘recoil in fear and disgust’ at lynch mobs pursuing payback, and at the kind of extremist cruelty that Sister Gaudentia was about to witness,” it wrote, referring to the “cooking” that the children were shouting about.

That’s Sister Gaudentia, a Swiss nun who tries to save “Angela,” a woman accused of witchcraft in the Global Mail article. The article includes powerful photos of accused “witches” (warning – they are graphic, showing machete injuries or healed, hacked-off limbs.)

Hearing the children shout that a witch was about to be cooked, Sister Gaudentia rushed after them. “Two days earlier, she had tried to rescue Angela (not her real name), an accused witch, when she was first seized by a gang of merciless inquisitors looking for someone to blame for the recent deaths of two young men.”

“Angela” was luckier than Ms. Leniata.

She had no male relatives to protect her (a common profile for accused “witches”) and was horribly tortured, but lived, the article says. A “sorcery survivor,” today she is in hiding with her small son.

“Those victims who lived to tell the tale owe their lives either to individual police members or to a strong church leader who intervened for them,” Mr. Gibbs, the anthropologist and priest, told the Global Mail.

“In effect it means that, if sufficiently motivated to act, the power of the police and civil authorities, or the power of the church, can be enough to defend a person who is otherwise powerless,” he said.

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IHT Rendezvous: Romanian Film Takes Top Prize at the Berlinale

10:46 a.m. | Updated

BERLIN — “Child’s Pose,” a film by the Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer, took the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday.

The story of a privileged woman whose maternal instincts kick into overdrive when her son kills a teenage boy in a car accident, “Child’s Pose” shares several hallmarks of the recently revitalized Romanian cinema, not least a focus on institutional malaise and corruption. It was written by Mr. Netzer and Razvan Radulescu, who also collaborated on the screenplays of many other acclaimed Romanian films, including “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”

The runner-up prize, the Silver Bear, went to another Eastern European social drama, “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.” Directed by the Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic (best known for the Oscar-winning “No Man’s Land”) and based on actual events, the film recounts an impoverished Roma family’s struggles with an unjust health care system, and enlists the real-life couple to re-enact their plight. The male lead, Nazif Mujic, won the best actor prize.

Paulina García, the star of Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria,” about the romantic reawakening of a Chilean divorcee, won the tightly contested best actress category. David Gordon Green won best director for “Prince Avalanche,” a buddy comedy starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. And best screenplay went to Jafar Panahi and Kamboziya Partovci for one of the most talked-about films in the competition, “Closed Curtain,” a confessional, self-reflexive drama about an artist and his demons. It is the second movie, after “This Is Not a Film” (2010), that Mr. Panahi has made in defiance of a ban on filmmaking by the Iranian authorities.

The Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation, named for the founder of the Berlinale, went to perhaps the most eccentric film in the competition, the French Canadian director Denis Côté’s “Vic and Flo Saw a Bear,” a darkly comic and melodramatic lesbian love story. The Australian director Kim Mordaunt won the best first feature award for “The Rocket.” And the Teddy Award for best gay-themed film went to the Polish director Malgoska Szumowska’s “In the Name of …,” about a Catholic priest struggling with his homosexuality.

Led by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose new film, “The Grandmaster,” opened the festival, this year’s Berlinale jury included the actor Tim Robbins; the filmmakers Susanne Bier, Andreas Dresen and Athina Rachel Tsangari; the cinematographer Ellen Kuras; and the artist Shirin Neshat.

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IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.

Here in Asia, in the nation of Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government plans to increase the population from just over five million to a possible high of nearly seven million by 2030, via regulated, legal immigration. It’s provoking opposition.

So much so that on Saturday, about 3,000 people turned out for what some commentators said was one of the biggest demonstrations in the nation’s history. (If the number seems small, it reflects the tight political control exerted over Singapore life by the People’s Action Party, which has run the country for about half a century and discourages public protest.)

What are the contours of the debate in Singapore?

Concern over booming immigration, often focused on new arrivals from increasingly rich China, has been simmering in the nation, with many feeling that the immigrants don’t play by the same rules, that their manners are poor and that they are pushing up prices. That feeling crystallized last year when a wealthy Chinese man driving a Ferrari at high speed killed three people (including himself) in a nighttime accident.

(Similar sentiments are found in Hong Kong, as my colleagues Bettina Wassener and Gerry Mullany wrote.)

Vividly illustrating the resentment, Singaporeans sometimes call the wealthy immigrants “rich Chinese locusts,” according to an article in the Economic Observer’s Worldcrunch.

Less controversially, the article quoted Peng Hui, a professor of sociology at National Singapore University, as saying: “Singaporeans do not discriminate against the Chinese. On the contrary, they very much identify with their Chinese ancestry.” (Of course, rich Chinese are not the only new immigrants, but they are a major group, many commentators have pointed out.) “What the local people do not appreciate is the fact that Chinese people talk loudly in public, eat on the subway and like to squeeze through in a crowd or grab things,” Mr. Peng was quoted as saying.

So the Singapore government’s Population White Paper that passed in Parliament earlier this month, just before Chinese New Year, was bound to stir things up.

The government is presenting the rise in immigration as a target that is needed if Singapore, where immigrants already make up about 40 percent of the population, and which has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world, is to continue to flourish, reports said. Singaporeans just aren’t having enough children, said the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

“In my view, in 2030, I think 6 million will not be enough to meet Singaporeans’ needs as our population ages because of this problem of the baby boomers and bulge of aging people,” Mr. Lee said in Parliament, adding that 6.9 million was not a target but a number to be used to help plan for infrastructure.

“Do we really need to increase our population by that much?” wrote a person called Chang Wei Meng in a letter to The Straits Times, according to Reuters. “What happened to achieving the Swiss standard of living?”

Gilbert Goh, a main organizer of the rally Saturday at Singapore’s Speaker’s Corner in a public park, said the protesters had a message: “They want to tell the government, please reconsider this policy. The turnout is a testimony that this policy is flawed and unpopular on the ground,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Goh as saying.

Yet amid the familiar rhetoric about immigrants, heard around the world – they don’t fit in, they’re rude, they’re different – might something more important be going on here?

In a blog post on Singapore News Alternative, Nicole Seah, a politician who has run for Parliament and comments on social issues, wrote: “Along with many other Singaporeans, I oppose the White Paper.”

Why? She is looking for “a society that lives in harmony, rather than tense and overcrowded conditions,” she writes.

“Not the Singapore Inc. that has been aggressively forced down our throats the past few years – a Singapore which is in danger of becoming a transient state where people from all over, come, make their fortunes, and leave.”

Not “a Singapore that has become a playground for the rich and the people who can afford it. A Singapore where the middle class is increasingly drowned out because they do not have the social clout or sufficient representatives in Parliament to voice their concerns.”

Ms. Seah’s statements raise an interesting question: Is this part of a phenomenon that the columnist Chrystia Freeland has written about so ably for this newspaper, the ascendancy of a wealthy, “plutocrat” class and the slipping status of the middle class?

As Ms. Freeland wrote last week: “The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis has revealed an equally stark structural problem in much of Europe.” Is it hitting Asia, too, and does Singapore’s protest speak, at least in part, to this? Hong Kong’s dissatisfaction too?

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U.S. Embassy Denies Intervening in Mexico Cabinet Choice

The United States Embassy in Mexico on Friday issued a statement denying an article in The New York Times that reported that Ambassador Anthony Wayne had met with senior Mexican officials to discuss American concerns about the possible appointment of Gen. Moisés García Ochoa of Mexico as that country’s defense secretary.

“Despite significant reporting in the Mexican press during the presidential transition about the potential candidates to head Mexico’s military,” the statement read, “Ambassador Wayne did not discuss Gen. Moisés García Ochoa with Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, now secretary of government, or Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, now secretary for agrarian, territorial and urban development (SEDATU), as reported in the New York Times story.”

The embassy’s statement comes 11 days after the Times article about Washington’s exchanges with Mexico regarding General García Ochoa. It follows an avalanche of outrage in the Mexican news media, whose columnists and commentators have accused the United States of “vetoing” General García’s nomination and of infringing on Mexican sovereignty. Some in the news media have called on Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to rethink the terms of his government’s cooperation with the Obama administration on security matters.

The embassy statement on Friday also came after an earlier statement by William Ostick, a State Department spokesman, that did not dispute the facts in the Times’ account.

On Feb. 4, The Times reported that some senior American officials suspected General García Ochoa of skimming money from multimillion-dollar defense contracts. It reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration suspected the general of having links to drug traffickers dating back to the late 1990s. And the newspaper reported that Ambassador Wayne discussed those concerns with Mexican officials.

In the end, General García Ochoa was passed over for his government’s top military job. The Times reported that it was unclear whether American concerns played a role in Mexico’s decision.

The Mexican government made no statement to The Times on the article. But Mr. Osorio Chong denied to Mexican newspapers that the United States had vetoed or made suggestions on any appointment, and Mr. Ramírez Marín has told Mexican reporters that while he and Mr. Chong were present at a meeting with the ambassador before the inauguration to discuss relations, the general’s possible appointment was not discussed.

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Meteorite Fragments Are Said to Rain Down on Siberia; 400 Injuries Reported

MOSCOW – A shower of falling objects, tentatively identified as fragments of a meteorite, was reported in Siberia early on Friday, damaging buildings across a vast swath of territory. More than 400 people were reported to have been injured, most from breaking glass.

But four hours after the objects fell to earth, emergency officials had reported no deaths.

Yelena Smirnykh, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations, told Ekho Moskvy radio that she believed the meteorite broke apart and fell in several places. Another government expert, who spoke to Moscow FM radio station, said he believed it may have been a bolide, a type of fireball meteor that explodes in the earth’s atmosphere because of its composition or angle of entry and can be observed from the ground.

However, the governor of the Ural region reported that a search team had found an impact crater on the outskirts of a city about 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk, which would indicate the meteor did not explode in the atmosphere. Several fragments were also reported to have hit the earth around the city of Satka.

Dozens of amateur videos of the event were broadcast on Friday morning. They showed bright objects streaking through a clear morning sky, leaving a thick trail of white vapor.

Video clips from the city of Chelyabinsk showed an early morning sky illuminated by a brilliant flash, followed by the sound of breaking glass and multiple car alarms apparently triggered by the impact, which was powerful enough to shatter dishes and televisions inside people’s homes.

Dozens of amateur videos of the event were broadcast on Friday morning. They showed bright objects streaking through a clear morning sky, leaving a thick trail of white vapor.

“I saw a flash in the window, turned toward it and saw a burning cloud, which was surrounded by smoke and was going downward – it reminded me of what you see after an explosion,” said Maria Polyakova, 25, head of reception at the Park-City Hotel in Chelyabinsk.

She said the explosion occurred shortly thereafter, shattering the thick glass doors on the hotel’s first floor. She said the hotel was evacuated, but that there was no panic. Emergency officials in Chelyabinsk reported that at least four people were injured by broken glass at a school, according to the Interfax news agency. Authorities said windows facing the point of impact broke throughout the city.

“Now we have many calls about trauma, cuts and bruises,” Igor Murog, a deputy governor of the Ural region, told Interfax.

A video made outside a building in Chelyabinsk captured a blast strong enough to break windows far from the point of impact and the astonished voices of witnesses who were uncertain what it was they had just seen.

“Maybe it was a rocket,” said one man, who rushed outside onto the street along with his co-workers when the object hit, far out of sight. A man named Artyom, who spoke to the Moscow FM radio station, said the explosion was enormous.

“I was sitting at work and the windows lit up and it was as if the whole city was illuminated, and I looked out and saw a huge streak in the sky and it was like that for two or three minutes and then I heard these noises, like claps,” he said. “And then all the dogs started barking.”

On impact, he said balconies shook and windows shattered. He said he did not believe it was a meteorite. “We are waiting for a second piece, that is what people are talking about now,” he said.

There were reports that falling objects were visible as far away as Yekaterinburg, 125 miles southeast of Chelyabinsk. A police official told Interfax that authorities had identified one meteorite’s point of impact, in a sparsely populated area around 50 miles outside the city of Satka.

Siberia stretches the length of Asia and there is a history of meteor and asteroid showers there. In 1908 a powerful explosion was reported near the Tunguska River in central Siberia, its impact so great that trees were flattened for 25 miles around. Generations of scientists have studied that event, analyzing particles that were driven into the earth’s surface as far away as the South Pole. A study published in the 1980s concluded the object weighed a million tons.

Viktor Klimenko contributed reporting.

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Woman Found Fatally Shot at Home of Pistorius

Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

Oscar Pistorius, the South African Olympic and Paralympic track star, has been arrested after a woman was shot dead at his home.

JOHANNESBURG — South African police and media reports said on Thursday that Oscar Pistorius, a Paralympic gold medal sprinter nicknamed Blade Runner, was being questioned after his girlfriend was fatally shot at his home in Pretoria, possibly mistaken for an intruder. Police said a man had been arrested, but did not identify him by name.

Mr. Pistorius, 26, who races using carbon fiber prosthetic blades, won two gold medals and a silver at last year’s Paralympic Games in London. He was the first double amputee to also run in the Olympics, where reached the 400-meter semifinal and competed in the 4x400-meter relay.

He is one of South Africa’s best-known athletes.

“We found a 9-mm pistol at the scene. A 26-year-old man was taken into custody,” a police spokeswoman, Katlego Mogale, told Reuters without giving further detail.

Capt. Sarah Mcira, another police spokeswoman, said: “There is a woman who was shot by Oscar Pretorius.”

Johannesburg’s Talk Radio 702 said the victim was thought to have been struck in the head and arm in circumstances that have not been fully explained. But the radio said she may have been mistaken for a burglar.

In the Paralympics last September, Mr. Pistorius won individual gold, when he successfully defended his Paralympic 400 meter title. He had lost his 100- and 200-meter titles, but was part of the gold medal-winning 4x100 meter relay team. He same second in the 200 meter race.

After that contest, Mr. Pistorius damaged his reputation among his followers by criticizing the winner, Alan Oliveira of Brazil, raising questions about the length of the winner’s blades. Mr. Pistorius later apologized and praised the gold medalist in the 100 meter race, Jonnie Peacock of Britain. Mr. Pistorius, who was born without fibulas, had both legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday and he battled for many years to compete against able-bodied athletes. In 2008, he qualified for the Beijing Games but was ruled ineligible by track’s world governing body because his blades were deemed to give him a competitive advantage.

South African journalists said Mr. Pistorius lived in an upscale, walled complex near the South Africa capital of Pretoria and said his girlfriend was a fashion model. South Africa has a high crime rate. and elaborate security precautions, as well as personal weapons, are not uncommon.

A reporter outside the complex on Thursday said it was protected by high walls and razor wire.

Lydia Polgreen reported from Johannesburg, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 14, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly in one reference to the sprinter at whose home a woman was fatally shot. He is Oscar Pistorius, not Pretorias.

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India Ink: India's Capital City Celebrates 'Design Week'

Art lovers have the India Art Fair and Francophiles have Bonjour India. And now interior design enthusiasts have a week to call their own in New Delhi.

India Design 2013, organized by Ogaan Publications, the company behind ELLE and ELLE Décor, celebrates design and decoration in India. An exhibition at the NSIC Grounds in the Okhla Industrial Estate will feature speakers like Anita Lal, the founder of Good Earth, a leading luxury home décor chain in India, and Lidewij Edelkoort, an internationally renowned Dutch trend forecaster. The exhibition will run through Sunday.

On this past Monday, over 60 venues all over the city opened up their space for a satellite event called “Style in the City,” including art galleries, restaurants and even salons.

For instance, Nature Morte and the Oberoi Gurgaon have collaborated with Divya Thakur of Design Temple, a graphic and product designer studio, to curate a special exhibition called “Sense and Sensuality.” Everything will be for sale and priced at under 25,000 rupees ($460).

The main action will be at the weekend exhibition, spread over 8,000 square meters. Here are some displays worth seeking out:

Pinakin Patel: Pinakin Patel, a self-taught architect and designer, is known for his modern take on Indian design, like his interpretation of jalli, an ornamental pattern made popular by the Mughals. His stainless steel jhoola (swing) won the coveted Elle Décor International Design Award in 2004, and he is the man behind Hara Villa, prefabricated one-bedroom luxury holiday homes that run completely on solar power.

Sunil Sethi Design Alliance: Sunil Sethi has been in the business of sourcing and representing Indian design for over 25 years, working with the Conran Shop, Armani Casa and Selfridges. In the concept area of the exhibition, he is working in a design alliance with the Italian designer Paola Navone to curate a mesmerizing display of home décor products that show off the best of Indian handmade craftsmanship. Quilts, furniture, tableware, glassware will be combined with over 100,000 flowers.

In the main hall, Mr. Sethi will show “Floored by Art,” featuring limited-edition floor art by some of India’s leading artists, like S.H. Raza, T. Vaikuntham and Bose Krishnamachari, as well by fashion designers like Manish Arora and Rajesh Pratap Singh.

Peter D’Ascoli: Having worked in New York with Diane von Furstenberg as studio director and then Covington Fabrics as creative director, Mr. D’Ascoli moved to New Delhi to open his studio, finding a gap in the Indian market for luxury and bespoke upholstery. Though he sources some of fabrics in Europe and his work displays a definite old world European touch, all his designs, embroideries and weaving techniques are done in India. The D’Ascoli Studio has supplied fabrics to Pierre Frey in Paris, Baker Interiors of America and the celebrity decorator Kathryn Ireland, and it is now working closely with Indian architects and interior designers.

The Klove Studio: The product design studio is best known for its lighting installations, which use hand-blown glass, wood and metal. Inspired heavily by Indian jewelry, the studio turns furniture into pieces of collectible art. For India Design 2013, the company has designed a four-by-three-meter wall installation inspired by a prayer space called Devalaya, one of its most ambitious projects.

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North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test

Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

South Korean army soldiers patroled along a barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak Pavilion, near the demilitarized zone of Panmunjom, in Paju, South Korea, on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — North Korea confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted its third, long-threatened nuclear test, according to the official KCNA news service, posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

The KCNA said it used a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously” and that the test “did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment.”

The test led to a crescendo of international condemnation Tuesday, with President Obama calling it a “highly provocative act” that demands “swift and credible action by the international community” against North Korea. Russia, Britain, South Korea and the United Nations similarly swiftly condemned the blast. The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 9 a.m. New York time to take up the matter.

Preliminary estimates by South Korea suggested the test was much more powerful than the previous two conducted by the North.

Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for South Korea’s Defense Ministry, said Tuesday’s blast generated an explosive yield of between six and seven kilotons, far greater than the yield of less than one kiloton detected in the North’s 2006 test and an estimated yield of two to six kilotons in its 2009 test. But it appeared less powerful than the first bomb the United States dropped on Japan, in Hiroshima in 1945, which had an explosive yield of 15 kilotons.

The test is the first under the country’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, and an open act of defiance to the Chinese, who urged the young leader not to risk open confrontation by setting off the weapon. In a statement issued several hours after the blast, China expressed its “staunch opposition” to the test but called for “all parties concerned to respond calmly.” And it was unclear how China would act at the United Nations Security Council as it convenes Tuesday.

The nuclear test came the same day President Obama is to use his State of the Union address to call for drastically reducing nuclear arms around the world, potentially bringing the number of deployed American weapons to roughly 1,000 from the current 1,700.

Even before Pyongyang conducted Tuesday’s test, the Obama administration had already threatened to take additional action to penalize the North through the United Nations. But the fact is that there are few sanctions left to apply against the most unpredictable country in Asia. The only penalty that would truly hurt the North would be a cutoff of oil and other aid from China. And until now, despite issuing warnings, the Chinese have feared instability and chaos in the North more than its growing nuclear and missile capability, and the Chinese leadership has refused to participate in sanctions.

Mr. Kim, believed to be about 29, appears to be betting that even a third test would not change the Chinese calculus.

The test set off a scramble among Washington’s Asian allies to assess what the North Koreans had done.

The United States sent aloft aircraft equipped with delicate sensors that may, depending on the winds, be able to determine whether it was a plutonium or uranium weapon. The Japanese defense minister, Itsunori Onodera, said Japan had ordered the dispatch of an Air Self-Defense Force jet to monitor for radioactivity in Japanese airspace.

Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told Parliament that the country was considering “its own actions, including sanctions, to resolve this and other issues.”

But the threat may be largely empty, because trade is limited and the United States and its allies have refrained from a naval blockade of North Korea or other steps that could revive open conflict, which has been avoided on the Korean Peninsula since an armistice was declared 60 years ago.

It may take days or weeks to determine independently if the test, was successful. American officials will also be looking for signs of whether the North, for the first time, conducted a test of a uranium weapon, based on a uranium enrichment capability it has been pursuing for a decade. The past two tests used plutonium, reprocessed from one of the country’s now-defunct nuclear reactors. While the country has only enough plutonium for a half-dozen or so bombs, it can produce enriched uranium well into the future.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, South Korea. Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Beijing, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo, and Chris Buckley and Gerry Mullany contributed from Hong Kong.

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