To the end of their disappointing run, the two men were unable to agree on the script, whether for slogans or more substantive matters. And like so many political marriages, the one between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards — Senate colleagues who became rivals then running mates but never really friends — ended in recrimination and regrets.

Kerry aides complain that Mr. Edwards never stopped running for president — a Democratic Party official recalled some aides wearing “Edwards for President” pins at a fund-raiser long after they were working for the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Kerry supporters say Mr. Edwards refused to play the traditional vice-presidential role of attack dog even going up against a purebred, Dick Cheney. And Mr. Kerry had barely conceded the race, they say, before Mr. Edwards was aiming for 2008 and embarking on what one campaign aide called the “it wasn’t my fault tour” around his home state to distance himself from the loss.

For his part, aides said, Mr. Edwards felt frustrated by Mr. Kerry’s public agonizing over the war in Iraq and a campaign that seemed to change consultants and message constantly. To Mr. Edwards, Mr. Kerry seemed unable to get out of his own way. He ignored Mr. Edwards’s warning not to go windsurfing, one aide recalled, which led to the infamous “whichever way the wind blows” advertisement mocking Mr. Kerry’s statements on the war. And in the end, Mr. Edwards concluded that Mr. Kerry lacked fight for not filing a legal challenge to the election results.

Today, Mr. Edwards insists he is “the same person I’ve always been.” But his experience as a vice-presidential candidate who went down in defeat has clearly influenced his current run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Having seen up close the perils of seeming to shift with the wind, he is selling himself as the candidate of “conviction” and “bold ideas” and trying to portray the front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as tacking for political gain. Once the sunny centrist who did not want to criticize his rivals by name, Mr. Edwards has become the most confrontational candidate in the race. And he has courted his party’s left wing by renouncing his vote on the war, something he counseled Mr. Kerry not to do.

“There’s no question John Edwards is different now than he was in 2004,” said Peter Scher, whom Mr. Kerry recruited to run Mr. Edwards’s vice-presidential campaign. “There’s a great deal more confidence in his own instincts and his own judgment. You see much less reliance on consultants and pollsters and media advisers, and more of a willingness to say what he believes and let the chips fall where they may.”

Kerry loyalists, meanwhile, seethe as they watch his new aggressiveness. Stephanie Cutter, who was Mr. Kerry’s communications director, said, “A lot of what I’m seeing now, I wish I’d seen in 2004.”

Mr. Edwards defends his change in tone, calling it the result of “a maturing process.”

“I believe that presidential candidates actually have a responsibility to point out substantive differences, to point out perspectives that are different,” he said in an interview. “I’m totally comfortable doing it.”

By KATE ZERNIKE

Published: November 21, 2007

There were no casualties when a pressurized air pipe snapped at the mine near Johannesburg and tumbled down a shaft Wednesday, causing extensive damage to an elevator and stranding more than 3,000 miners more than a mile underground.

The mine owner and South Africa’s minerals and energy minister vowed to improve safety in one of the country’s most important industries.

Earlier hopes that all the miners would be rescued by lunchtime faded and company officials said it would more likely be early evening.

”We nearly died down there,” one man yelled as he walked past reporters. ”I’d rather leave (the job) than die in the mine.”

The trapped workers were bringing brought to the surface in a second, smaller cage in another shaft. Most of the miners who emerged into the blinding sunlight looked dazed and exhausted, but there were no signs of injury — although one apparently dehydrated man rode away in an ambulance.

One large group emerged from the shaft singing traditional songs and stamping their feet with joy despite their exhaustion. They were greeted by a crowd of ululating women miners.

The hundreds of workers who remained underground were all near a ventilation shaft and had been given water — although no food for fear of provoking a scramble among hungry miners, according to Peter Bailey, health and safety chairman for the National Mineworkers Union.

The accident prompted allegations of the industry cutting safety corners in the name of profit — and accusations from the government that mine owner Harmony Gold Mining Co. did not bother to inform it of the potentially devastating crisis.

Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica complained that she learned about the early morning accident from the late evening news. She said President Thabo Mbeki also found out from the news bulletin.

Sonjica said during a visit to the Elandsrand mine at Carletonville — a town in South Africa’s mining heartland near Johannesburg — that health and safety legislation would be ”tightened up.”

Last year, 199 mineworkers died in accidents, mostly rock falls, the government’s Mine Health and Safety Council reported in September. One worker was killed last week in a mine adjacent to Elandsrand.

”We have to recommit ourselves to refocus on safety in this country; our safety record both as a company and an industry leave much to be desired,” Harmony Gold Mining Co. chairman Patrice Motsepe said according to the South African Press Association, as union officials accused the industry of taking short cuts on safety in the interest of profit.

Harmony’s per-share price on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange dropped almost 5 percent Friday morning, but later recovered and was at $10.99 Thursday afternoon, only slightly off the previous day. JPMorgan analyst Allan Cooke said the accident would hurt Harmony’s earnings, especially if the shaft remains closed for the entire quarter.

As rescuers slowly brought the miners to the surface Thursday, family members stood outside the mine offices, complaining that they had not been given enough information about their loved ones.

”I am very traumatized, exhausted, not knowing what is going on,” said Sam Ramohanoe, whose wife, Flora, 31, was among the trapped. ”It is very unfair to us, not knowing what is going one with our beloved ones.”

Sethiri Thibile, who was in the first batch of miners rescued about 19 hours after the accident, held a cold beef sandwich and a bottle of water he was given when he reached the surface.

”I was hungry, though we were all hungry,” said Thibile, 32, an engineering assistant who had been underground since early Wednesday morning. He said there was no food or water in the mine.

”Most of the people are scared and we also have some women miners there underground,” said Thibile.

Deon Boqwana, regional chairman for the union, said officials were in contact with the miners below ground by a telephone line. Boqwana said the smaller cage being used to bring miners out can hold about 75 miners at a time. He said it normally takes three minutes to reach the surface but would be slower because rescuers were being careful.

A spokesman for the union, Lesiba Seshoka, said that the mine was not properly maintained.

”Our guys there tell us that they have raised concerns about the whole issue of maintenance of shafts with the mine (managers) but they have not been attended to,” he said.

Company spokeswoman Amelia Soares said the mine had won a number of safety awards and had never seen any fatal accidents. She said the company was likely to suffer considerable loss in output during the closure, but was unable to give a precise estimate, saying that attention for now was concentrated on the rescue operation.

Senzeni Zokwana, the president of the National Mineworkers Union, said the accident should be a wake-up call for the industry.

”We are very much concerned. We believe that this should be a call to the industry that secondary exits underground be mandated,” said Zokwana.

Motsepe said he had been in the mining business since the 1980s and could not remember an another incident in which so many miners had been trapped underground.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 4, 2007

Gen. Edward Pietrzyk was being treated for minor burns covering 20 percent of his body and ”is going to be fine,” said Deputy Ambassador Waldemar Figaj, who spoke to The Associated Press from a hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Pietrzyk was to be flown home to Poland by way of German later in the day.

A civilian passer-by died after at least two roadside bombs were detonated around 10 a.m., an Iraqi police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. A Polish security guard, Bartosz Orzechowski, 29, died at the hospital a short time later, Poland’s Interior Minister Wladyslaw Stasiak said during a news conference.

At least 11 people, including three security guards with the convoy, were also wounded in the attack in the Karradah neighborhood, police said. The guards worked for Poland’s Government Protection Office, which is responsible for the security of Polish officials in Iraq, said Dariusz Aleksandrowicz, the agency’s spokesman.

The attack, which took place a few hundred yards from the Polish Embassy, seemed to target the ambassador. said Robert Szaniawski, a spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry.

”We still don’t have the reasons for the attack,” he said, adding that the embassy is not in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said the attack would not weaken his countrymen’s resolve to fight terrorism in Iraq.

”Backing out before terrorists is the worst possible solution and I trust that the Poles, who are a brave nation, will not desert the battlefield,” he said. ”We must fight terrorism and that entails a certain risk.”

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was shocked by the attack.

”Poland is a good friend and a good ally and we appreciate the fact — the Iraqis appreciate the fact — that they have such high-level diplomatic representation in Baghdad,” McCormack said. ”We are going to do what we can to help out.”

Poland contributed combat troops to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and has since led a multinational division south of Baghdad. About 900 Polish troops are stationed there training Iraqi personnel; 21 have died in the war.

Last year, the Polish government extended its mission in Iraq until the end of 2007, leaving a decision on further extensions for later this year.

”Poland has been a strong and steadfast ally here and around the world, and we commend its commitment to a stable and secure Iraq,” said a brief statement issued by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, condemning the attack. ”We stand ready to provide any additional assistance we can.”

U.S. officials said Blackwater USA, a Moyock, N.C.-based security firm, flew the ambassador to the Green Zone for treatment.

The company is under investigation for the role its personnel played in a Sept. 16 shootout that left 11 Iraqis dead in Baghdad. The incident prompted the Iraqi Interior Ministry to order the company out of the country, but Blackwater guards were back on duty less than a week later.

Blackwater has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, and at least $800 million in government contracts.

U.S. authorities confiscated an AP Television News videotape that contained scenes of the wounded being evacuated. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl told AP the government of Iraq had made it illegal to photograph or videotape the aftermath of bombings or other attacks.

Pietrzyk, 57, who was formerly commander of land forces in Poland, was appointed ambassador to Iraq in April, Szaniawski said. He studied in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and spent two years at the National Defense University in Washington. He then served as commander of Polish land forces from 2000 until 2006.

——

Associated Press writers Katarina Kratovac in Baghdad and Monika Scislowska and Ryan Lucas in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 3, 2007

But the jury also ruled that Thomas does not have to pay punitive damages to the woman, giving him a partial victory after an ugly, three-week trial.

The jury did find that Madison Square Garden committed harassment against the woman, and ruled that she is entitled to punitive damages from MSG.

U.S. District Judge Gerard E. Lynch called it an “imminently reasonable” verdict and said the jury will be asked to return later in the day to hear brief arguments on punitive damages against MSG.

After the verdict, the plaintiff hugged family members and friends gathered in the back of the courtroom.

The harassment verdict was widely expected after the jury sent a note to the judge Monday indicating that it believed Thomas and the other defendants, Madison Square Garden and MSG Chairman James Dolan, sexually harassed plaintiff Anucha Browne Sanders. But the question of whether Thomas would have to pay punitive damages was up in the air until Tuesday.

Browne Sanders, fired from her $260,000 a year job in 2006, sued Thomas and Madison Square Garden for $10 million. Her case presented the Garden as “Animal House” in sneakers, a place where nepotism, sexism, crude remarks and crass language were part of the culture.

The former Northwestern college basketball star characterized Thomas as a foul-mouthed lout who initially berated her as a “bitch” and a “ho” before his anger gave way to ardor, with Thomas making unwanted advances and encouraging her to visit him “off site.”

Thomas, who was hired in December 2003, followed her to the stand and denied all her allegations. Attorneys for Thomas and the Garden also portrayed Browne Sanders as incompetent and unable to adapt once the NBA great arrived as the Knicks’ president.

“That’s not about sexual harassment,” MSG attorney Ronald Green said in his closing argument. “That’s about team politics.”

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 2, 2007

Helicopters? At a boat show?

Stock markets may be volatile and the price of oil rising, but none of that dampened the mood here last month at the boating fair in Monaco. Europeans often watch boat fairs to judge the overall health of their economies. But Monaco may not be the best bellwether — if other boating fairs are prêt-à-porter, Monaco is haute couture.

The annual event, is hardly the largest in a series of fairs that run from Cannes, France, to Genoa, Italy, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at the end of October. The Monaco fair, which ran from Sept. 19 to Sept. 22, limits the number of exhibitors to about 500; moreover, many yacht builders do not even show yachts. Their customers do not want off-the-rack yachts; they want custom-built boats that will not be replicated.

“Our motto is, ‘To create what money can’t buy,’” said Mr. Vilardi, head of marketing in the business and private market segment of Eurocopter, a unit of the EADS aerospace group. “You’re looking at a global offer: a car, a yacht, a helicopter, maybe a plane.”

One bauble that more yacht buyers are asking for is a helicopter. Of course, that means adding a pilot and a mechanic to the yacht’s crew, but for the people who buy these yachts, that is hardly a concern.

So Mr. Vilardi has linked up with the British yacht brokers Edmiston to meet their wishes. At Monaco this year, Edmiston showed a 200-foot yacht with Eurocopter’s smallest helicopter, which sells for about $2 million, perched atop.

Across the fair from Edmiston, the Dutch company U-Boat Worx showed its colorful two-seater submarine — whose bulbous shape made it look like something Mickey and Minnie Mouse would drive — with a list price of $246,000. The minisub, said Erik Hasselman, U-Boat Worx’s head of sales and marketing, is ideal for stowing on a yacht, but for safety reasons can dive only to about 160 feet, where there is still surface light. “It’s only for recreation,” he said.

The bankers at the trade fair, said Mr. Milliex of ING, were doing cross-selling: offering tax and finance advice to the same people whom they serve as private banking clients. Some wealthy customers, for instance, prefer a mortgage for their yacht, taking advantage of low interest rates, rather than tying up cash in a yacht purchase.

Others need advice on creating a corporate entity to buy their yacht, rather than purchase it directly, to save on taxes, or on registering their boat in a foreign country to enable them to pay lower Social Security contributions for crew members. Many of the yachts moored here were registered in George Town, in the Cayman Islands.

“Anyone who is in the oil business, naturally, is going to be motivated to build a yacht,” said Hans-Erik Henze, senior vice president for yachts of Blohm & Voss, a division of the German steel maker Thyssen-Krupp. “And that’s where we do a lot of our business.”

Blohm & Voss had the largest yacht at the show, the 345-foot Lady Moura, but it was moored offshore and not available for visiting by the crowd since it was too large to navigate Monaco’s narrow harbor. Mr. Henze said the company’s three yards had 15 yachts under construction.

“Once, 100 meters was thought big,” he said, or 328 feet. “Now we have several projects above that.”

With yachts of this size and cost, many of the yards are dependent on the whims of their customers. Lürssen Yachts of Germany showed no boat this year because the owner of the yacht they wanted to display declined. ”He said he’d prefer to go cruising in Greece,” said Sylke auf dem Graben, Lurssen’s marketing manager. “But he promised we can have it for Fort Lauderdale, at the end of October.”

Despite the ostentation of Monaco’s yacht shoppers, some bargain hunters come here, and they, in turn, attract shipbuilders from low-cost countries. One of those was Timmerman Yachts, a Russian-Polish enterprise with yards in Moscow.

The yards build yachts in five sizes, from 85 to 155 feet, and there are 12 under construction. Asked why someone in Monaco would buy a Russian yacht, Irina Bogatyreva, a company official, replied unabashedly, “The price is cheaper, and the quality is the same as in other countries.”

Indeed, some of the biggest yachts are owned by Russians. Roman A. Abramovich, the tycoon, owns at least three, and has another under construction, the 540-foot Eclipse, which according to Monaco newspapers will be outfitted with twin helicopter landing pads and a submarine.

The high price of oil, whose byproduct diesel oil is used in yachts, did not seem to worry anyone in this rarefied crowd. “I would say this market can withstand a lot of fluctuations as the economy worsens,” said Diane M. Byrd, executive editor of Power & Motoryacht, the trade publication. “It’s a small group of owners, a handful of people, and it’s still growing.”

Nor did the anemic United States dollar appear to be having much influence on the flow of orders. Westport Yachts of Seattle, Wash., which showed a 164-foot, $29 million yacht, said that of five 112-foot yachts it would build next year, all have been sold. Of five 130-foot-yachts, three were sold.

It may even be helping, since foreign buyers can now more easily afford a purchase with their stronger currency. Scott Sirach, a company official, said of the 130-foot boats that one was for delivery to South America, two to Europe and one was on its way to Dubai. “We’re on time and on budget,” he said. “Most companies cannot do that.”

What did seem to be creeping into the business is an awareness of the environment. In a narrow display area, Lance Sheppard offered a foam and fiberglass product that replicates wood like teak, hence sparing the forests. “These days it’s hard to get all types of veneers,” said Mr. Sheppard, marketing director of Digital Veneer, a unit of the SMI Group, a Whangarei, New Zealand, company. “A lot of teak is illegally lumbered, some by the Chinese, in Burma and Nepal.”

But the boat that dripped green, in spirit if not color, was a 164-foot yacht built by the Italian yard Mondo Marine. Renato Polo, a company official, listed the yacht’s environmental assets: devices to recuperate its used water, filters on its twin diesel engines to capture particles from the exhaust, a hull covering that is benign to its marine environment, filtered glass to diminish the heat on board and hence reduce the need for air-conditioning.

The $34 million yacht was built for Luciano Benetton, of the clothing chain whose ads have promoted social causes, and Mr. Benetton named it Tribù (Italian for tribe), for his large family. Mr. Benetton gave the yacht five spacious bedrooms, each with its own bath, plus two exercise rooms and a sauna. The master bedroom features a baby grand piano, since Mr. Benetton’s companion is a pianist. The galley, with Mr. Benetton’s wine cellar next to it, would probably suffice for a small restaurant.

Asked how much the environmental features would add to the bill for such a boat, Mr. Polo replied, “On a boat of this size, the difference in cost is laughable.”

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

Published: October 2, 2007

The Clinton campaign kept the figure a secret throughout Monday as her leading rival, Senator Barack Obama, announced that he had raised $19 million for the primaries and another $1 million for the general election.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have been vying aggressively against each other for donors and fund-raising bragging rights this year. Mr. Obama had raised slightly more money than Mrs. Clinton during the second quarter, April through June; in recent weeks Clinton advisers and donors had asserted that he was probably on track to beat her again because his campaign was publicizing his success at recruiting new donors.

Mr. Obama announced Monday that he had attracted more than 93,000 new donors over the last three months and that he met his goal for this period of signing up more than 350,000 donors overall this year.
The Clinton campaign said this morning that it had drawn more than 100,000 new donors over the last three months, and declared, in a statement from campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, that it had raised “substantially more than any other candidate in the race.”

Clinton advisers attributed the fundraising success to Mrs. Clinton’s steady performance as a candidate this summer and fall, including her well-reviewed appearances in the presidential debates and her emergence, in many opinion polls, as the leading candidate in the Democratic field. The campaign also had a busy calendar of fund-raising events, including successful receptions in the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket this fall, as well as in California. It was unclear this morning how much of the $27 million in total dollars was raised online.

In a message to donors, Ms. Solis Doyle said: “This is the moment when you showed that America is ready for change and that you are ready to make history. This is the moment when your dedication defied the skeptics.”

Mrs. Clinton’s success came in spite of weeks of embarrassing
headlines for her campaign in August and September about one of her
top donors, Norman Hsu, who was revealed to be a con man and fugitive
from the law in California. Mr. Hsu, who is now facing new criminal charges related to his business practices and Democratic fund-raising tactics, raised and contributed nearly $900,000 for Mrs. Clinton this year.
The Clinton campaign returned about $850,000 to the individual donors
that Mr. Hsu solicited, and gave the rest — money that Mr. Hsu had
given her over the years — to charity.

The Clinton campaign also made its announcement on the same day that
Mr. Obama is set to deliver a foreign policy address, in Chicago, on
the fifth anniversary of his speech opposing a possible invasion of
Iraq. Mr. Obama has cited that 2002 speech as evidence for Democrats
that he has better judgment than Mrs. Clinton, who voted this month
five years ago to authorize military action against Iraq.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, released a statement after the Clinton camp made its announcement.

“More than 350,000 Americans have already signaled the kind of change they want in Washington by contributing to the Obama campaign,” Mr. Burton said. “We have raised a historic $74.9 million in dollars available for primary spending, without transferring one cent from any other campaign fund and with no money from federal lobbyists or PACs.”

Mrs. Clinton has raised more than $60 million for the primaries, and contributed another $10 million from her Senate account, putting her roughly on par with the amount of money Mr. Obama has raised for the primaries, $74.9 million.

A fundraising analyst, Costas Panagopoulos of Fordham University, said this morning that the Clinton fund-raising total is likely to convey an impression of superiority to voters than Mr. Obama will have to battle against.

“Clinton’s blow-away third quarter fundraising total is likely to have, among other things, a profound psychological effect on voters,” Mr. Panagopoulos said. “It will give the impression of growing Clinton strength — both in terms of dollars and number of donors.”

“Obama also raised impressive sums,” he added, “but he may be seen as languishing relative to previous quarters. Obama’s lackluster third quarter intake, relative to previous quarters, reflects, at least in part, waning enthusiasm for his candidacy and diminishing prospects for an Obama victory.”

The prisoners arrived at the army’s Beituniya checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, after a two-hour journey from the Ketziot prison in southern Israel.

They got off Israeli buses, kissed the asphalt, and then boarded a Palestinian bus. An ecstatic crowd of waiting relatives clapped and waved Palestinian flags.

Israel was expected to free 30 other prisoners in the Gaza Strip on Monday, but the release was delayed without explanation.

Most of the prisoners slated for release Monday are from the West Bank, which is controlled by Abbas and his government of moderates. The others are residents of Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas since June, when they defeated the forces of Abbas’ Fatah movement and took control of the coastal territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced the release — the second since July — as part of his strategy to support Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas. The prisoners are mostly members of Fatah, along with several who belong to smaller Palestinian factions. None belong to Hamas.

Israel is holding around 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, and their release is a central Palestinian demand. While many of those freed Monday were serving time for militant activity, none was convicted of killing or injuring Israelis.

Among those released was 66-year-old Rakad Salim, who served five years of an eight-year sentence for distributing millions of dollars from the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Palestinian militants and their families. His relatives and supporters held up pictures of Saddam and kissed and hugged him after he got off the bus.

”I feel that I am a new man, enjoying my freedom,” said a smiling Salim. ”This release is not enough, but we hope it is the beginning of emptying all the (Israeli) prisons.”

The prisoners later traveled to a security compound in Ramallah, where they laid a wreath at the tomb of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

In Gaza, Israeli troops shot and wounded a 14-year-old who was waiting with hundreds of Palestinians at the Erez crossing for their relatives to be released, medics and witnesses said.

The Israeli troops began firing from watchtowers when the Palestinians began approaching a no man’s zone separating Gaza from Israel, the witnesses said. The military said troops opened fire at Palestinians who approached army positions at Erez and ignored warning shots.

Hamas called Monday’s prisoner release insignificant.

”We congratulate the prisoners,” said Mohammed al-Mudhoun a senior aid to Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza. ”We consider this … a humiliation for the leadership in Ramallah that considers this humble number a great achievement.”

Palestinians with relatives in Israeli prisons gathered at the Red Cross offices in Gaza City, holding photographs of their loved ones.

One mother, Fatima Kaisi, said her 24-year-old son, Mohammed, is serving a 250-year sentence for involvement in the radical militant group Islamic Jihad.

”I’m happy for the mothers who are getting their sons back today, but the leaders have to know that there are hundreds of mothers and families still waiting to meet with their loved ones,” Kaisi said.

Israeli troops killed two Hamas militants in Gaza on Monday in a gunbattle, Hamas said. The Israeli military said troops shot two armed Palestinian militants who attacked soldiers just inside Gaza. One soldier was slightly wounded by gunfire, the military said.

Olmert and Abbas are slated to meet Wednesday. The two leaders are trying to draft a joint vision of a peace deal to be presented at a peace conference expected to be held in November in Annapolis, Md.

The Palestinians want a detailed framework agreement, while Israel wants a statement that is shorter and more vague.

But even with peace efforts gaining speed, Israeli officials said they were determined to open the new West Bank police headquarters in an area just east of Jerusalem known as E-1.

The U.S. has blocked past Israeli efforts to develop the five-square-mile area. Plans envision 3,500 homes, hotels and an industrial park.

The E-1 project, if completed, would effectively cut off eastern Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ hoped-for capital, from the West Bank hinterland. Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups accuse Israel of trying to consolidate control over West Bank land east of Jerusalem, with the help of a separation barrier and new highways.

Israel’s public security minister, Avi Dichter, told the Haaretz daily that police officers would move to the new building by the end of 2007. Haaretz quoted Dichter as saying Israel was not seeking U.S. consent.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that Israel is undermining fledgling peace efforts.

Federal immigration authorities yesterday unveiled 100 new questions immigrants will have to study to pass a civics test to become naturalized American citizens.

The redesign of the test, the first since it was created in 1986 as a standardized examination, follows years of criticism in which conservatives said the test was too easy and immigrant advocates said it was too hard.

The new questions did little to quell that debate among many immigrant groups, who complained that the citizenship test would become even more daunting. Conservatives seemed to be more satisfied.

Bush administration officials said the new test was part of their effort to move forward on the hotly disputed issue of immigration by focusing on the assimilation of legal immigrants who have played by the rules, leaving aside the situation of some 12 million illegal immigrants here.

Several historians said the new questions successfully incorporated more ideas about the workings of American democracy and better touched upon the diversity of the groups — including women, American Indians and African-Americans — who have influenced the country’s history.

Would-be citizens no longer have to know who said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” or who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But they do have to know what Susan B. Anthony did and who the speaker of the House of Representatives is.

Alfonso Aguilar, a senior official at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that designs and administers the test, said it was not intended to be punitive.

“We don’t seek to fail anyone,” said Mr. Aguilar, an architect of the test.

Immigration officials said they sought to move away from civics trivia to emphasize basic concepts about the structure of government and American history and geography. In contrast to the old test, which some immigrants could pass without any study, the officials said the new one is intended to force even highly educated applicants to do reviewing.

“This test genuinely talks about what makes an American citizen,” said Emilio Gonzalez, the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, speaking at a news conference in Washington.

The $6.5 million redesign was shaped over six years of discussions with historians, immigrant organizations and liberal and conservative research groups. The questions were submitted to four months of pilot testing this year with more than 6,000 immigrants who were applying for naturalization.

The agency will begin to use the revised test on Oct. 1, 2008, leaving a year for aspiring citizens to prepare and for community groups to adjust their study classes.

The overall format has not changed. Legal immigrants who are eligible to become citizens must pass the civics exam as well as a test of English proficiency in reading and writing. In a one-on-one oral examination, an immigration officer asks the applicant 10 questions of varying degrees of difficulty selected from the list of 100. To pass, the applicant must answer 6 of those 10 questions correctly. The questions released yesterday will remain public along with their answers.

Immigrants are eligible to become citizens if they have been legal permanent residents for at least five years (or three years if they are married to a citizen) and have “good moral character” and no criminal record.

In the pilot runs of the revised test, Mr. Aguilar said, the pass rates improved over the current tests, with 92 percent of participants passing on the first try, as opposed to 84 percent now. At least 15 questions were eliminated as a result of the pilot because they proved too difficult. For example, a question about the minimum wage was dropped because test takers were confused between federal and state rates, Mr. Aguilar said.

In the new test, the pilgrims have been replaced by “colonists,” and they are the subject of fewer questions, while slavery and the civil rights movement are the subject of more. A question was added asking what “major event” happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

The new test drops questions about the 49th and 50th states, but adds one about the political affiliation of the president. There are no questions about the White House. Instead, one question asks where the Statue of Liberty is.

In a statement today, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, one of the groups consulted in shaping the new test, denounced it as “the final brick in the second wall.” The group said the test included “more abstract and irrelevant questions” that tended to stump hard-working immigrants who had little time to study.

But several historians said the test appeared to be fair.

“People who take this seriously will have a good chance of passing,” said Gary Gerstle, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University. “Indeed, their knowledge of American history may even exceed the knowledge of millions of American-born citizens.”

John Fonte, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, called the new test “a definite improvement.” But he said it should have included questions about the meaning of the oath of allegiance that new citizens swear. “I would like to see an even more vigorous emphasis on Americanization,” he said.

About 55 percent of the applicants who participated in the pilot test were from Latin American countries. Some Latino groups noted yesterday that no question on the new test refers to Latinos.

Mr. Aguilar said that the test was not intended to be a comprehensive review, but rather to include “landmark moments of American history that apply to every single citizen.”

Naturalizations have surged in recent years, to 702,589 last year from 537,151 in 2004, according to official figures. In July the fees to become a citizen increased sharply, to $675 from $405.

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Blackwater is now the focus of investigations in both Baghdad and Washington over a Sept. 16 shooting in which at least 11 Iraqis were killed. Beyond that episode, the company has been involved in cases in which its personnel fired weapons while guarding State Department officials in Iraq at least twice as often per convoy mission as security guards working for other American security firms, the officials said.

The disclosure came as the Pentagon said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had sent a team of officials to Iraq to get answers to questions about the use of American security contractors there.

The State Department keeps reports on each case in which weapons were fired by security personnel guarding American diplomats in Iraq. Officials familiar with the internal State Department reports would not provide the actual statistics, but they indicated that the records showed that Blackwater personnel were involved in dozens of episodes in which they had resorted to force.

The officials said that Blackwater’s incident rate was at least twice that recorded by employees of DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other United States-based security firms that have been contracted by the State Department to provide security for diplomats and other senior civilians in Iraq.

The State Department would not comment on most matters relating to Blackwater, citing the current investigation. But Sean McCormack, the department’s spokesman, said that of 1,800 escort missions by Blackwater this year, there had been “only a very small fraction, very small fraction, that have involved any sort of use of force.”

In 2005, DynCorp reported 32 shootings during about 3,200 convoy missions, and in 2006 that company reported 10 episodes during about 1,500 convoy missions. While comparable Blackwater statistics were not available, government officials said the firm’s rate per convoy mission was about twice DynCorp’s.

The State Department’s incident reports have not been made public, and Blackwater refused to provide its own data on cases in which its personnel used their weapons while guarding American diplomats. The State Department is in the process of providing at least some of the data to Congress. The administration and industry officials who agreed to discuss the broad rate of Blackwater’s involvement in violent events would not disclose the specific numbers.

“The incident rate for Blackwater is higher, there is a distinction,” said a senior American government official who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss a delicate, continuing investigation. “The real question that is open for discussion is why.”

A Blackwater spokeswoman declined to comment.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, has gained a reputation among Iraqis and even among American military personnel serving in Iraq as a company that flaunts an aggressive, quick-draw image that leads its security personnel to take excessively violent actions to protect the people they are paid to guard. After the latest shooting, the Iraqi government demanded that the company be banned from operating in the country.

“You can find any number of people, particularly in uniform, who will tell you that they do see Blackwater as a company that promotes a much more aggressive response to things than other main contractors do,” a senior American official said.

Today, Blackwater operates in the most violent parts of Iraq and guards the most prominent American diplomats, which some American government officials say explains why it is involved in more shootings than its competitors. The shootings included in the reports include all cases in which weapons are fired, including those meant as warning shots. Others add that Blackwater’s aggressive posture in guarding diplomats reflects the wishes of its client, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

Still, other government officials say that Blackwater’s corporate culture seems to encourage excessive behavior. “Is it the operating environment or something specific about Blackwater?” asked one government official. “My best guess is that it is both.”

In a rambling and defiant 40-minute speech to the opening session of the General Assembly, he said Iran would from now on consider the nuclear issue not a “political” one for the Security Council, but a “technical” one to be decided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the matter belonged with the nuclear agency indicated his preference to work with Mohamed ElBaradei, its director.

Dr. ElBaradei has been at odds with Washington, and some European powers, who have accused him of meddling in the diplomacy by seeking separate accords with Iran, and in their eyes undercutting the Security Council resolutions.

“Today because of the resistance of the Iranian nation, the issue is back to the agency, and I officially announce that in our opinion, the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. A senior Bush administration official said after the address that the only person who thought that the issue was closed was Mr. Ahmadinejad.

As the Iranian president moved to speak, the United States delegation left, leaving only a note-taker to listen to the speech, which occurred just hours after President Bush had spoken from the same podium about the need for nations to live up to the rights guaranteed by the United Nations.

In a barely disguised barb, Mr. Ahmadinejad asserted, “Unfortunately human rights are being extensively violated by certain powers, especially by those who pretend to be their exclusive advocates.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s declaration that the nuclear issue was closed comes just as the Bush administration is seeking to turn up the pressure on the country, both through the United Nations Security Council and in concert with European powers.

“In the last two years,” the Iranian president said, “abusing the Security Council, the arrogant powers have repeatedly accused Iran and even made military threats and imposed illegal sanctions against it.”

In recent weeks, American and French officials have described an emerging strategy of broadening the number of banks, mostly in Europe, that have refused to lend new capital to Iran, making it difficult for the country to invest in new oil facilities or other infrastructure.

“We want more banks, and now suppliers, to assess the risk” of dealing with Iran, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, said in a meeting on Tuesday with editors and reporters of The New York Times.

The issue now, he said, is “at what point the regime, or elements of the regime, say ‘this policy is taking us into a ditch.’”

Administration officials insist that despite Mr. Ahmadinejad’s high profile in New York this week, he is being marginalized at home. If true, it makes it hard to assess whether he was speaking for the rest of the Iranian leadership with his declaration.

Only last month, Iran’s leaders reached an agreement with Dr. ElBaradei to answer questions that nuclear inspectors have been raising for years about possible connections between Iran’s nuclear program and military projects. Inspectors are in Iran this week, seeking further answers to questions that Iran has refused to discuss.

But even if Iran answers all the outstanding questions, it could still be in violation of the Security Council resolutions. Those resolutions call on the country to cease enriching uranium.

The enrichment has continued, though not yet on a scale large enough to produce a bomb’s worth of material in the near future. Mr. Hadley refused to speculate on how much time the United States and its allies had to stop the program before Iran had enough material to manufacture a weapon.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, as he has in the past, argued that Iran’s nuclear program was solely for civilian purposes and fell within the legal requirements of the atomic energy agency.

The Security Council powers believe that Iran’s real purpose is to build nuclear weapons, and it has backed up that conviction with two resolutions and economic sanctions against the Tehran government.

Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the permanent members of the Security Council, have been holding meetings in various capitals this fall to see if sterner measures are needed to gain compliance.

France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, told the General Assembly in a speech earlier Tuesday that allowing Iran to build a bomb would be an “unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world.”

He said the Security Council should not relax its guard while it continued to negotiate with Tehran. “Firmness and dialogue go hand in hand,” he said. “And I weigh my words carefully.”

To that, Mr. Ahmadinejad had his own reply. “The decisions by the United States and France are not important,” he said during his address. “What is important is that our nuclear program is within the rules of the I.A.E.A. and our program as such will continue.”

Without mentioning the United States by name, Mr. Ahmadinejad used his speech to carry out a full-scale assault on the country as power-mad and godless. He said its leaders “openly abandon morality” and act with “lewdness, selfishness, enmity and imposition in place of justice, love, affection and honesty.”

“Certain powers,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to Washington, were “setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations, intercepting private mail.”

In answer to questions at a news conference about having proposed the extinction of Israel, he said he was instead proposing a referendum of all people living in the Palestinian territories and Israel, which he referred to as the “illegal Zionist regime” to see what their choice of country would be.

He said countries had been eliminated peaceably before, and he cited the case of the Soviet Union.

“What befell the Soviet Union?” he said. “It disappeared, but was it done through war? No. It was through the voice of the people.”

Asked by an Israeli journalist about the possibility that Iran was helping Syria acquire nuclear knowledge, he said, “Next question.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad was not alone in attacking the United States. So did Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua. Saying that Washington’s actions against Iran were like those of “God telling people what is good and bad,” he proposed that the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America join him in a march against the forces of “global capitalist imperialism.”

Late Tuesday, Hugo Chávez, the outspoken Venezuelan president who called Mr. Bush a devil last year from the General Assembly podium, announced in Caracas that he was no longer planning to come to New York to deliver his country’s speech on Wednesday.

He said instead that he planned to travel shortly to Saudi Arabia to defend the price of oil. “To $100,” said Mr. Chávez. “That is where we’re headed.”

By WARREN HOGE

Published: September 26, 2007