EUROPE

GERMANY: PARTY BACKS MERKEL Angela Merkel, who is trying to become the next chancellor despite a disappointing election result on Sunday, received a boost from her party, the Christian Democratic Union, which reaffirmed her as its parliamentary leader by a nearly unanimous vote. There has been criticism of her campaign, and she could still suffer a loss of support in the party in the weeks ahead, especially if she proves unable to put together a coalition to form a new government. Richard Bernstein (NYT)

CROATIA: ARREST IN BLAST AT BRITISH EMBASSY A Croatian security guard who was the only person wounded Monday in an explosion at the British Embassy in Zagreb, the capital, was arrested after admitting that he had planted the bomb. Interior Minister Ivica Kirin said the police had ruled out any involvement by a terrorist group but gave no explanation for a motive.

Nicholas Wood (NYT)

FRANCE: CASH INCENTIVES TO HAVE THIRD BABIES France, which has a birthrate of 1.9 children per couple, among the highest in Europe, plans to announce benefits this week to encourage families to have children, including an increased monthly grant for women who take time off from work to have a third child. John Tagliabue (NYT)

AFRICA

SUDAN: UNITY CABINET President Omar el-Bashir announced a new power-sharing cabinet, another step forward in a peace deal signed with southern rebels in January. Awad Ahmed Al-Jaz of the governing National Congress Party will remain in the important post of minister of energy and mining, but after tough negotiations the government agreed to give another influential position, that of minister of foreign affairs, to Lam Akol of the former rebel group the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Marc Lacey (NYT)

MIDDLE EAST

HARIRI INQUIRY MOVES TO SYRIA In a heavily guarded motorcade with helicopters overhead, Detlev Mehlis, the head of a United Nations inquiry into the Beirut car bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February, crossed the Lebanon-Syria border to begin interrogating Syrian officials. He is expected to interview Ghazi Kanaan, the interior minister who until 2002 was the chief of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and Rustum Ghazali, his successor. Hassan M. Fattah (NYT)

ASIA

JAPAN ACCUSES CHINA OF DRILLING IN DISPUTED WATERS In an escalation of their long-running dispute over maritime energy resources, Japan accused China of beginning gas production in a field near their disputed sea border in the East China Sea. Without directly answering the charge, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said China was producing gas in an area that was not in dispute. Japan is concerned that China may draw resources from the Japanese side of the disputed boundary and has criticized China for recently sending warships into the area. Howard W. French (NYT)

INDIA: SEPARATIST REBELS GUN DOWN 11 SOLDIERS In the deadliest such incident in recent months in the country’s troubled northeast, at least 11 Indian soldiers were killed and 5 wounded in a rebel ambush in Manipur State, the army said. The soldiers were returning to their base when guerrillas began firing at them from a hilltop about 20 miles from the state capital, Imphal. An ethnic separatist group claimed responsibility. Hari Kumar (NYT)

UNITED NATIONS

ISRAELI ENVOY LEADS ASSEMBLY SESSION Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, became the first Israeli since Abba Eban 52 years ago to preside over the General Assembly when he took the president’s chair to introduce the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom. Mr. Gillerman was elected one of the Assembly’s 21 vice presidents this year as a delegate from the regional bloc that Israel belongs to, the West European and other states group, which also includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Warren Hoge (NYT)

PARIS, Sept. 20 – The French news media were captivated by Hurricane Katrina, pointing out how the American government’s faltering response brought into plain view the sad lot of black Americans. But this time the French, who have long criticized America’s racism, could not overlook the parallels at home.

“It is true that the devastations of Katrina have cruelly shed light on the wounds of America, ghettoization, poverty, criminality, racial and territorial tensions,” Le Figaro, the conservative daily, said in an editorial on Sept. 8. “In France, those in disagreement ran to pelt the ‘American model’ and the neoconservative president. But have they just looked at the state of their own country?”

Only four days before, a fire had swept an apartment in south Paris, killing 12 people, most of them black. And just days before that, 17 black people died in a single blaze. Since April, 48 people, most of them children and all of them black, have died in four separate fires in Paris.

In neighborhoods like Château Rouge, filled with the hundreds of thousands of nonwhite immigrants, some Arabs but mainly blacks, whom France has absorbed over the years from former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, you feel the anger.

“It could be a coincidence,” said Sissouo Cheickh, bitterly, “but one question the French have to answer is: of 48 people who died, why were 48 black?”

Mr. Cheickh, 28, got a university degree in France, but rather than working for someone else and running into what he and other young blacks say is France’s low glass ceiling, he decided to start his own business. Six months ago he scraped together some money and opened a store.

“You see these fabrics? All from Africa, from my family,” said Mr. Cheickh, who came from Mali, as he gestured toward colorful rolls of cloth.

France has long boasted of itself as the cradle of human rights and a bulwark against racism. It regularly denounced racism in the United States, and the road from Harlem to Paris was wide, inviting talented American blacks like the dancer Josephine Baker, musicians like Sidney Bechet and writers like Richard Wright and James Baldwin.

But French insistence on the equality of man leaves them in a bind, their black critics say, perpetuating the fiction of a society without minorities.

The census in France does not list people by race. Hence, while blacks are thought to number about 1.5 million, of a total population of 59 million, no one really knows the exact number, which is estimated to be far higher.

There are virtually no black people in corporate France, and blacks have almost no political representation. No black person sits in the National Assembly or in a regional parliament, and only a smattering are found in city councils. The European Union finances programs for minorities but not in France, because of its refusal to recognize minorities.

So, today, blacks are not much on the French agenda. After the recent fires, the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, proposed a program of affirmative action and a requirement that résumés conceal a person’s ethnic or racial identity. But the rest of the cabinet, including the minister for equal opportunity, rejected the ideas, saying they offended the fundamental principle of equality.

“The French like to say, ‘Blacks are a social problem, not racial,’ ” said Gaston Kelman, 52, a native of Cameroon who has written widely on France’s black population. “So our institutions have no means to overcome it.”

Until recently, virtually all blacks were on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Gradually, however, a younger generation is, like Mr. Cheickh, gaining education, starting businesses and gradually giving birth to a black middle class. They feel the discrimination they say is rampant in French society and are beginning to resist.

After graduating with a degree in economics and data processing, Claude Vuaki tried his hand at several jobs before deciding to start his own business. Together with his wife, Kibé, he opened a beauty salon in central Paris. But Mr. Vuaki’s search for start-up capital was typical of the black experience. “They said right off, no loan, no money,” said Mr. Vuaki, 52. He and his wife managed to gather some family savings and self-financed their shop.

Now the business is so successful that they plan a second shop, in Nice or Cannes. Mrs. Vuaki travels regularly to the United States to study African-American hairstyles.

Still, Mr. Vuaki remains one of a relatively small minority. Most blacks are employed in menial jobs, in construction or transportation. What encourages people like Mr. Vuaki is that the glass ceiling often felt by young blacks who get an education is not discouraging them, but increasingly prompting them to strike out on their own.

“A lot of people I know want to create something of their own,” he said, often in landscaping, construction and delivery services.

Still, Mr. Kelman said this slight opening is not inhibiting many young Africans with an education to strike off for Britain, Canada and the United States, where they think they will find greater opportunities.

Asked whether the French people are racist, Mr. Kelman replied: “It’s a racism of nuance. Every Frenchman would immediately say, ‘One of my closest friends is black.’ “

Mr. Kelman said government housing and employment policies create an “institutionalized ghetto-building.” He described with a laugh a typical job interview for a black candidate. When the boss realizes the candidate is black, he begins praising the sights and sounds of Africa he discovered on his last vacation there: the broad beaches, beautiful greenery, vast sky. Needless to say, the candidate doesn’t get the job.

In the schools, white pupils are typically encouraged to continue studying while black children are often steered toward vocational studies. The influence of African-Americans, through television, films and sports, is everywhere. Some young blacks turn to Afrocentrism, Mr. Kelman said, others to rappers and others to black Muslim groups. What they don’t turn to is mainstream French society.

“We’re at an impasse,” Mr. Kelman said.

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 22 – As the outer bands of Hurricane Rita raked past with gusty winds and showers, water began seeping into the shattered and empty Lower Ninth Ward through makeshift dike repairs on Thursday, and the Army Corps of Engineers expressed concern about just how reliably a weakened levee system could protect this devastated city against a tidal surge along Lake Pontchartrain.

Little more than 24 days after Hurricane Katrina killed at least 832 people in Louisiana, Hurricane Rita was expected to scour New Orleans with winds that could reach tropical force as it headed toward landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border.

At the least, two to four inches of floodwater are expected here in a city that sits largely below sea level, Mayor C. Ray Nagin said on Thursday, adding that he had been reassured by the corps that the city’s mended levee system could withstand an expected storm surge of three to five feet.

“If it’s any higher than that, then you can have water pushed into the city,” Mayor Nagin said at a news conference. “Then the pumping capacity becomes really challenged.”

Five thousand troops from the National Guard and the 82nd Airborne Division are preparing to secure New Orleans against another storm, and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has called for an additional 30,000 soldiers. Mayor Nagin said he was watching weather reports with a kind of paranoia now that Hurricane Rita had made a turn that could take it farther east than previously expected.

City employees, once upbeat about the rebuilding process in a city that still lacks drinking water and has only limited electricity, have grown anxious about the prospect of being hit by even the periphery of a second powerful storm, the mayor said.

“People are struggling with the fact, ‘Why such powerful storms back to back?’ ” Mayor Nagin said. “We’re talking to people and trying to get them to focus on the task at hand. Maybe we’ll be spared this time.”

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where two gaping breaches in the Industrial Canal levee submerged and splintered one of the poorest sections of the city, four to eight inches of water began seeping back into some abandoned and destroyed neighborhoods by noon on Thursday. Small waterfalls of leakage could be seen several feet below the top of the repaired levee as wind pushed rising water from Lake Pontchartrain through the Industrial Canal.

This was to be expected, said Chad Rachel, a civil engineer with the corps, after an inspection of the repaired breaches. There did not appear to be any erosion of the compacted clay base of the patched dike, he said, adding that he felt certain the large, interlocking stones atop the base would be able to withstand the expected storm surge.

“We don’t expect any problem with a catastrophic breach,” Mr. Rachel said.

By dusk, however, water had continued to rise, and Maj. Barry Guidry of the Army offered a direr assessment after examining the leaking at the Industrial Canal. “The levee’s going to cave in,” Major Guidry said. “In the middle of the night, this thing is going to be gone.”

Even if heavy flooding did happen again in the Lower Ninth Ward, this might serve as a kind of safety valve that could prevent water from submerging more inhabitable parts of the city, police officials said.

“This is a graveyard already,” said Sgt. Bryan Lampard of the New Orleans police, who was in the Lower Ninth Ward searching for bodies or the rare possibility of a survivor. “This area is not coming back anytime soon.”

Houses were shoved off their foundations and splintered in this ruined section of the city. Cars were turned upside-down. The damage resembled that on the Mississippi Coast more than it did many other parts of New Orleans. About the only thing salvageable from most of these houses was a hammer, said Eric Baum, a spokesman for a federal search-and-rescue team from Miami.

Rescuers left the area as the water continued to seep in but said they had nearly completed their search for bodies. Only about 20 were recovered in the Lower Ninth Ward, said Capt. Tim Bayard, who is in charge of the recovery effort for the New Orleans police. This suggested, Mayor Nagin said, that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina, once predicted to be in the thousands, now seemed to be “much lower than anyone imagined, which I’m thankful for.”

At the breached 17th Street Canal, which flooded the Lakeview section of New Orleans, a crew from the Army Corps of Engineers finished shoring up sandbags and metal pilings that jutted above the side of the levee like rusty dominoes. The levee was no longer leaking, but a direct hit by even a greatly diminished Hurricane Rita, or storm surges of more than 10 or 12 feet from Lake Pontchartrain could wash out the makeshift plugs, said Robert Foret, a quality assurance officer with the corps.

“We have saturated levees right now, so this is all guesswork,” Mr. Foret said.

The plugging of breaches in the 17th Street Canal and London Avenue Canal to protect against a storm surge has required a tradeoff, Mayor Nagin said. Water might be kept from coming into the city, he said, but it will be more difficult to force out from the midtown area because the improvised repairs have left three of the city’s most powerful pumps unavailable, he said.

“Everybody’s on pins and needles right now,” Mr. Foret said.

Ten buses were available near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center to take residents out of the nearly empty east bank of New Orleans, but only one or two people decided to evacuate what is essentially a ghost town on Wednesday, Mayor Nagin said.

He cautioned that Hurricane Rita was a dangerous storm, and although New Orleans did not figure to bear the brunt of the hurricane, the city could not let its guard down.

If the storm made a significant turn eastward, Mayor Nagin said, “we have a whole other ballgame.”

BATON ROUGE, La.

After 18 years of military service on active duty and in the Louisiana Air National Guard, Staff Sgt. Michael Sorjonen thought the mission sounded routine: rescue a handful of people from the roof of a two-story Holiday Inn.

But as the Black Hawk helicopter approached the flooded hotel in the New Orleans East area on Sept. 2, he was stunned by what he saw on its balcony.

“For a minute, we sort of looked at each other and didn’t say anything,” Sergeant Sorjonen said. “It was something – something you wouldn’t expect to see here. Something you wouldn’t want to see here.”

Hundreds of people were crowded onto the balcony, with barely an inch to spare. Some were weeping, some waving hotel towels. Others were on the verge of passing out from the heat and days of privation.

Even having his helicopter fired upon in Iraq paled in comparison, Sergeant Sorjonen said.

Three days earlier, Sergeant Sorjonen, 37; his wife; and their cat and two dogs fled their home in Slidell, La., a small city across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, as Hurricane Katrina approached. He had no idea what condition his house was in, or whether it was even there anymore.

Now, in the half-light of dawn, he had to guess whether his helicopter would fit on the roof and whether the crew would be greeted as rescuers – or as authorities who had responded with too little, too late.

“We were concerned we might get overrun,” he said. “So I told the pilot, ‘If you see me running back toward you, get ready to go, and I’ll dive in. We’ll come back.’ “

That was not necessary. By the time the four-member crew had finished the rescue – 10 hours and 25 or 30 trips later – they had ferried about 420 people to safety. They included people in wheelchairs, several amputees and at least eight pets.

As for his house, Sergeant Sorjonen said he flew over it a few days later. His neighbor’s 50-foot pine had fallen on the roof. “It hit his house first, so that slowed it down,” he said, smiling.

TIMOTHY WILLIAMS