Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

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Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

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H.P. Reports Decline in Revenue and Profit

SAN FRANCISCO — Battling a declining demand for personal computers, Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest maker of PCs, reported lower quarterly earnings on Thursday.

The earnings were significantly higher than analysts had expected, however.

“The turnaround is starting to gain traction as a result of the actions we took in 2012 to lay the foundation of H.P.’s future,” Meg Whitman, the chief executive, said in a statement accompanying the earnings. “I feel good about the rest of the year.”

H.P. said net income fell 16 percent to $1.2 billion, or 63 cents a share, from the year-ago quarter.

The company said revenue fell 6 percent, to $28.4 billion.

Wall Street analysts had expected net income of 71 cents a share and revenue of $27.8 billion, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

H.P., based in Palo Alto, Calif., is one of the world’s largest suppliers of both PCs and computer servers. Demand for PCs has been shrinking, because of the popularity of tablets and smartphones, which H.P. doesn’t make. Servers face shrinking profit margins as more companies look beyond brand names and buy low-priced machines in bulk from Asian vendors.

Under Ms. Whitman, H.P. has focused on restructuring its printers and high-end server business to incorporate more data-analysis software that searches for documents and compiles reports like the energy use of the data center. She has warned, however, that the turnaround may take until 2017. In 2012, the company announced it would lay off 29,000 employees.

H.P.’s earnings announcement comes two days after a report of lower revenue and earnings by Dell Computer, H.P.’s main American rival.

Dell said its first-quarter revenue fell 11 percent, to $14.3 billion, while net income was off 31 percent, to $530 million, or 30 cents a share.

Michael Dell, Dell’s founder, has proposed taking his company private, for about $24.4 billion, to focus on restructuring the company away from the eyes of Wall Street.

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Apple’s Retina display for the next-gen iPad mini is reportedly already in development

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Promises of Tax Cuts Popular With Italian Voters

ROME — In recent days, millions of Italians received an official-looking envelope that boldly read “IMPORTANT NOTICE. Reimbursement of IMU 2012” with a letter inside explaining that an unpopular property tax levied last year would be refunded either through a bank transfer or in cash.

Reading the fine print, however — or noticing the small logo in the corner — Italians discovered that the sender was not the revenue agency but rather the party of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and that the letter was merely a final campaign promise ahead of the national vote this weekend.

The initiative met with howls of protest.

The departing prime minister, Mario Monti, accused Mr. Berlusconi of trying to “buy the votes of Italians with the state’s money.” Luigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party and the front-runner, according to polls, condemned the letter as a “fraud.”

But the letter underscored a cause — promises of lower taxes and tax amnesties — that has taken hold among not only Mr. Berlusconi’s main opponents but also smaller groups that are new to the electoral process and are garnering serious attention.

One of those is Act to Stop the Decline, a pro-business, liberal-libertarian political movement that is participating in the elections for the first time and is advocating for reducing the tax burden on Italians by 5 percent in five years. The difference with other political parties, many say, is that Stop the Decline actually has a credible road map for achieving its objectives — eliminating a regional tax and using money recovered from tax evaders to lower income taxes.

“This is one of the few parties that not only has a program that sets out what it will do, but also how they’re going to go about it.

Other parties are mostly vague,” Aldo Parisi, a bus driver, said Tuesday night at a Rome theater where Stop the Decline staged “An Italian Dinner,” a play dealing with myriad social problems, from youth unemployment to the lack of a welfare system.

One of the group’s other central goals is to reduce Italy’s staggering national debt by 20 percent of gross domestic product in five years.

To this end, the group would sell off state assets and state shares in formerly public companies, and reduce public expenditures.

The play is one of the quirky campaign strategies — also including flash mobs and an adept use of social media — that have propelled Stop the Decline into the public sphere. Founded in a matter of months last summer by a group of Italian economists, mostly university professors abroad, it has garnered 100,000 members and injected tough-economic-love messages into the electoral debate.

“We shared a sense of urgency that people who know the economy have with regards to Italy,” said Oscar Giannino, a journalist turned economic pundit who is the party’s candidate for prime minister.

The economists who founded the party include Michele Boldrin of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; Sandro Brusco of Stony Brook University in New York State; and Andrea Moro of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Nearly two decades of ineffectual policies that slowed Italy’s economic growth into a near standstill convinced them that the country was taking the wrong path, and that they could suggest alternative — and untested — remedies.

The movement is unlikely to make huge inroads in the election, with some polls predicting it will win less than 2 percent of the vote. The big winner is expected to be the Democratic Left, at least in the lower house, followed by what most pollsters say will be the unexpected success of the comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which is mining the deep disaffection that Italians have for their political class. Mr. Monti, who is supported by a centrist coalition, will probably trail Mr. Berlusconi in the vote.

But Stop the Decline was showing strong inroads in Lombardy, one of the swing regions, though the group’s popularity might be dented somewhat by the revelations this week that Mr. Giannino lied about his academic credentials. He resigned as party president but remains the candidate for prime minister.

Even with the resignation, a rare occurrence in Italy, Mr. Giannino has retained a loyal following.

“He has ideas, ideologies, and I think he’ll be a good leader in the future if not now,” said Camilla Beretta, 18, a Milanese student taking university courses in Rome.

“Italy needs new faces, young people, honest people,” she said. “I have to be hopeful. Even if really I am not.”

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Police offer confused testimony in Pistorius case

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — The detective leading the police investigation into Oscar Pistorius' fatal shooting of his girlfriend offered confusing testimony Wednesday, at one point agreeing with the athlete's defense that officers had no evidence challenging the runner's claim he accidentally killed her.

Testimony by Detective Warrant Officer Hilton Botha of the South African Police Service left prosecutors rubbing their temples, only able to look down at their notes as he misjudged distances and acknowledged a forensics team left in the toilet bowl one of the bullet slugs fired at Reeva Steenkamp. However, Botha still poked holes in Pistorius' own account that he feared for his life and opened fire on Valentine's Day after mistaking Steenkamp for an intruder.

The second day of the bail hearing in a case that has riveted South Africa and much of the world appeared at first to go against the double-amputee runner, with prosecutors saying a witness can testify to hearing "non-stop talking, like shouting" between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. before the predawn shooting on Feb. 14. However, Botha later said under cross examination that the person who overheard the argument was in a house 600 meters (yards) away in Pistorius' gated community in the suburbs of South Africa's capital, Pretoria.

Later, prosecutor Gerrie Nel questioned Botha again and the detective acknowledged the distance was much closer. But confusion reigned for much of his testimony, when at one point Botha said officers found syringes and steroids in Pistorius' bedroom. Nel quickly cut the officer off and said the drugs were actually testosterone.

Pistorius' lead defense lawyer, Barry Roux, asserted when questioning the detective — who has 16 years' experience as a detective and 24 years with the police — that it was not a banned substance and that police were trying to give the discovery a "negative connotation."

"It is an herbal remedy," Roux said. "It is not a steroid and it is not a banned substance."

The name of the drug, offered later in court by Roux, could not be immediately found in reference materials by The Associated Press. A spokesman for prosecutors later said it's too early to know what the substance is, as they don't yet have results of forensic testing on the material.

Pistorius, 26, said in an affidavit read in court Tuesday that he and his 29-year-old girlfriend had gone to bed and that when he awoke during the night he detected what he thought was an intruder in the bathroom. He testified that he grabbed his 9 mm pistol and fired into the door of a toilet enclosed in the bathroom, only to discover later to his horror that Steenkamp was there, mortally wounded.

Pistorius, the first Paralympian runner to compete at the Olympics, is charged with premeditated murder in the case.

The prosecution attempted to cement its argument that the couple had a shouting match, that Steenkamp fled and locked herself into the toilet stall of the bathroom and that Pistorius fired four shots through the door, hitting her with three bullets.

Botha said: "I believe that he knew that Reeva was in the bathroom and he shot four shots through the door."

But asked if the police found anything inconsistent with the version of events presented by Pistorius, Botha responded that they had not. He later said nothing contradicted the police's version either.

Nel projected a plan of the bedroom and bathroom in the courtroom and argued that Pistorius had to walk past his bed to get to the bathroom and could not have done so without realizing that Steenkamp was not in the bed.

"There's no other way of getting there," Nel said.

Botha said the trajectory of the bullets showed the gun was fired pointed down and from a height. This seems to conflict with Pistorius' statement Tuesday, because the athlete said that he did not have on his prosthetics and on his stumps and feeling vulnerable because he was in a low position when he opened fired.

Officers also found .38-caliber pistol rounds in a safe, which Botha said Pistorius owned illegally and for which he said the athlete would be charged with a crime. However, Botha also acknowledged investigators didn't take photographs of the ammunition and let Pistorius' supporters at the crime scene take them away.

Botha said the holster for the 9 mm pistol was found under the left side of the bed, the side on which Steenkamp slept. He also implied it would have been impossible for Pistorius to get the gun without checking to see if Steenkamp was there. Roux later argued that Pistorius had suffered an injury to his right shoulder and wore a "medical patch" the night of the killing which forced him to sleep on the left side of the bed.

Steenkamp was shot in the head over her right ear and in her right elbow and hip, breaking her arm and hip, Botha said. However, Roux later asked Botha if Steenkamp's body showed "any pattern of defensive wounds." The detective said no.

Botha also said the shots were fired from 1.5 meters (five feet), and that police found three spent cartridges in the bathroom and one in the hallway connecting the bathroom to the bedroom. However, later on cross-examination by the defense, Botha said he wasn't a forensics expert and couldn't answer some questions.

Police also found two iPhones in the bathroom and two BlackBerrys in the bedroom, Botha said, adding that none had been used to phone for help. Roux later suggested that a fifth phone, not collected by the police, was used by Pistorius to make calls for a hospital and help. After the hearing, Roux told journalists that Pistorius' defense team had the phone, but did not elaborate.

Guards at the gated community where Pistorius lives did call the athlete, Botha said. The detective said that all the athlete said was: "I'm all right."

He didn't hang up, Botha said, and the guards heard him uncontrollably weep.

"Was it part of his premeditated plan, not to switch off the phone and cry?" Roux asked sarcastically.

___

Gerald Imray reported from Johannesburg. Associated Press writer Michelle Faul in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP. Gerald Imray can be reached at www.twitter.com/geraldimrayAP.

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Well: Effects of Bullying Last Into Adulthood, Study Finds

Victims of bullying at school, and bullies themselves, are more likely to experience psychiatric problems in childhood, studies have shown. Now researchers have found that elevated risk of psychiatric trouble extends into adulthood, sometimes even a decade after the intimidation has ended.

The new study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday, is the most comprehensive effort to date to establish the long-term consequences of childhood bullying, experts said.

“It documents the elevated risk across a wide range of mental health outcomes and over a long period of time,” said Catherine Bradshaw, an expert on bullying and a deputy director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at Johns Hopkins University, which was not involved in the study.

“The experience of bullying in childhood can have profound effects on mental health in adulthood, particularly among youths involved in bullying as both a perpetuator and a victim,” she added.

The study followed 1,420 subjects from Western North Carolina who were assessed four to six times between the ages of 9 and 16. Researchers asked both the children and their primary caregivers if they had been bullied or had bullied others in the three months before each assessment. Participants were divided into four groups: bullies, victims, bullies who also were victims, and children who were not exposed to bullying at all.

Participants were assessed again in young adulthood — at 19, 21 and between 24 and 26 — using structured diagnostic interviews.

Researchers found that victims of bullying in childhood were 4.3 times more likely to have an anxiety disorder as adults, compared to those with no history of bullying or being bullied.

Bullies who were also victims were particularly troubled: they were 14.5 times more likely to develop panic disorder as adults, compared to those who did not experience bullying, and 4.8 times more likely to experience depression. Men who were both bullies and victims were 18.5 times more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in adulthood, compared to the participants who had not been bullied or perpetuators. Their female counterparts were 26.7 times more likely to have developed agoraphobia, compared to children not exposed to bullying.

Bullies who were not victims of bullying were 4.1 times more likely to have antisocial personality disorder as adults than those never exposed to bullying in their youth.

The effects persisted even after the researchers accounted for pre-existing psychiatric problems or other factors that might have contributed to psychiatric disorders, like physical or sexual abuse, poverty and family instability.

“We were actually able to say being a victim of bullying is having an effect a decade later, above and beyond other psychiatric problems in childhood and other adversities,” said William E. Copeland, lead author of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

Bullying is not a harmless rite of passage, but inflicts lasting psychiatric damage on a par with certain family dysfunctions, Dr. Copeland said. “The pattern we are seeing is similar to patterns we see when a child is abused or maltreated or treated very harshly within the family setting,” he said.

One limitation of the study is that bullying was not analyzed for frequency, and the researchers’ assessment did not distinguish between interpersonal and overt bullying. It only addressed bullying at school, not in other settings.

Most of what experts know about the effects of bullying comes from observational studies, not studies of children followed over time.

Previous research from Finland, based on questionnaires completed on a single occasion or on military registries, used a sample of 2,540 boys to see if being a bully or a victim at 8 predicted a psychiatric disorder 10 to 15 years later. The researchers found frequent bully-victims were at particular risk of adverse long-term outcomes, specifically anxiety and antisocial personality disorders. Victims were at greater risk for anxiety disorders, while bullies were at increased risk for antisocial personality disorder.

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Boeing to Propose Battery Fixes to F.A.A.

A top Boeing executive plans to meet with the head of the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday to propose fixes for the battery problems that have grounded its innovative 787 jets, industry and government officials said Wednesday.

They said the company feels confident that it has narrowed down the possible ways that the new lithium-ion batteries could fail, increasing the chances that a handful of changes might provide enough assurance that the batteries would be safe to use.

The F.A.A.’s top official, Michael Huerta, is not expected to approve the changes on Friday when he is scheduled to meet with Ray Conner, the president of Boeing’s commercial airplane division. But the meeting could start a high-level discussion and provide Boeing with early guidance on the mix of changes that would be needed to get the planes back in the air.

The government and industry officials agreed that Boeing will ultimately have to redesign at least part of the batteries to eliminate the risk that a short-circuit or fire in one of the eight cells inside could spread to the others, as investigators have said occurred on a battery that caught fire at a Boston airport on Jan. 7.

One important question is how far Boeing will have to go in making the changes before the F.A.A. will let airlines resume flights with the 50 jets that have already been delivered.

The officials said Boeing might have to take some immediate steps to insulate the cells from one another and then make greater changes over time to further eliminate possible ways that the batteries could fail.

Boeing, based in Chicago, would also have to wall off the battery within a sturdier metal container, add systems to monitor the activity inside each cell and create channels to vent any hazardous materials outside the plane.

Until now, most of the public statements by regulators have focused on the need to pin down the cause of the battery problems. But investigators, now weeks into their work, have been able to find only limited clues in the charred remains of the two batteries.

As a result, government and outside experts, working closely with Boeing engineers, have been studying the recent problems and research on lithium-ion batteries carried out since Boeing won approval for its batteries in 2007 and, in essence, trying to come up with a safer design.

Aviation experts said the examination of such changes reflected what could end up being a difficult calculation for safety regulators: Will there be a way to ensure the safety of the batteries if they cannot tell for certain what set off the problems on the two planes?

The F.A.A. and other regulators around the world grounded the new fuel-efficient planes after another one of the jets made an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16 with smoke in the battery compartment.

The lithium-ion batteries weigh less but provide more energy than conventional batteries, and the 787s make greater use of them than other planes. The stakes are substantial for Boeing, which will have to pay penalties to some of the airlines that have been unable to use them. Boeing also cannot deliver more of the planes while they are grounded.

The company has orders for 800 additional planes, which are expected to usher in a new era in aviation. The jets rely as well on lightweight carbon composites and new engines to cut fuel consumption by 20 percent.

Federal and industry officials said Boeing would probably have to spread the eight cells in the batteries farther apart — or increase the insulation between them — to keep a failure in one cell from cascading to the others in the “thermal runaway” that led to the smoke and fire.

Battery experts are also looking into whether vibrations in flight could have added to the risks of unwanted contact between the cells.

But it is not clear how long it will take to make each of these changes and test them to the satisfaction of regulators. So engineers for the F.A.A and Boeing have been discussing which changes would have to be made immediately and which ones could be added later.

Government and industry officials that it was still too early to know if Boeing’s current plans would satisfy regulators and the flying public.

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MTV Fake-Hacks Its Own Twitter Handle, Proving That MTV Is Still Terrible

On Tuesday afternoon, just as the week of the big-brand Twitter hack was getting as old as it was useful to the “victims,” the Twitter feeds of BET and MTV — both owned by the media conglomerate Viacom — were “hacked.” Except they weren’t, in fact, hacked. They were stunt-hacked in a pre-planned, inter-office joke that turned into a viral marketing ploy gone bad.

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On Monday hackers took to Burger King’s Twitter feed in a fake McDonald’s takeover that gained the brand 30,000 followers and a whole lot of social-media brand recognition, almost by accident. By midday Tuesday, Jeep had been “taken over” by hackers posing as Cadillac, and thousands of followers came with the very similar “attack.” But the social-media teams at BET and MTV had already noticed the bump, and had some “fun” in store. Which, because this is Twitter and jokes last about a day, didn’t end up much fun for anyone involved — and because this is MTV, definitely ended up in making the network look even more behind the times than usual.

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We spotted this message (since deleted) from BET’s “social media pugilist”:

RELATED: The New York Times’s Bill Keller Riles Up Twitter

And there was this evidence, from an MTV marketing director’s feed minutes before the reality-TV channel was hacked:

MTV Marketing Director @schoprah tweets about the #MTVhack 4 minutes before the first “hacked” @mtv post:twitpic.com/c563h6

— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) February 19, 2013

And have at these musings that MTV’s social media manger, Tom Fischman, tweeted after Burger King was hacked yesterday:

Is there any real downside to the @burgerking hack? Mistake leaving the account suspended all day, would have seen a nice follower windfall.

— Thomas Fishman (@Tom_Fishman) February 18, 2013

@mcbc Nobody thinks BK tweeted that stuff, doesn’t really reflect on them at all. Just bought them a ton of publicity, sympathy if anything.

— Thomas Fishman (@Tom_Fishman) February 18, 2013

The stunt certainly earned MTV and BET a bunch of publicity — like this post that you’re reading! — but came with the price of Twitter’s scorn … and no real bump in followers to either feed, either up or down:

I knew MTV wasn’t hacked when their content continued to still be complete crap.

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) February 19, 2013

I hope @twitter suspends @mtv and @bet just for being asshats

— Peter Ha (@ThePeterHa) February 19, 2013

It’s days like today that make me hate the Internet.

— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) February 19, 2013

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At War Blog: General Allen's Tenure in Afghanistan

Most Americans probably know of him only as a secondary character in the sweeping drama of David H. Petraeus’s affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. But Gen. John R. Allen, who announced Tuesday that he would retire from the Marine Corps rather than become the top commander of NATO, was for more than a year and a half the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. And when he said farewell to the job recently, he made clear that he wanted to be remembered for more than his bit role in that scandal.

After receiving a medal for his service, just before turning over his command to a fellow Marine, Gen. Joseph Dunford, General Allen surprised some in the audience by declaring unequivocally: “This campaign is successful. We are winning. We are winning.”

During a news conference with a small group of reporters later, General Allen expanded on his confident description of the war – one, polls suggest, that is not shared by many Americans.

“There is no, in the Napoleonic sense, there is no decisive battle,” he said. But he said he saw daily evidence that the Afghan National Security Forces, or A.N.S.F., were getting better. “I see it contributing to the end state, which ultimately is the A.N.S.F. moving into the lead and creating space ultimately for the government of Afghanistan to get up on its feet,” he said.

“We’re not done,” he added. “But I’m comfortable that the trajectory is moving us in the direction we ultimately want to go.”

Asked if widespread corruption by the Afghan government had irreparably undermined its credibility with the people and pushed them toward the Taliban, General Allen acknowledged concerns.

“I think we all have to recognize the limits of the capacity of the Afghan people and the government at this particular moment,” he said. “We’re coming out of 33 years of conflict. Coming out of an environment where the school system was largely decimated or devastated, whichever D-word you want to apply to it.”

The key to the government’s continued stability – and to an international willingness to continue providing it aid – will be its ability to hold a safe and credible presidential election in 2014, General Allen said.

“We’ve reached the point where the rhetoric, while it was encouraging, isn’t enough anymore,” he said. “The rhetoric has to be accompanied by action. The rhetoric has to be accompanied by real and meaningful reform. Reform that reduces the capacity of the criminal patronage networks to grip and weaken institutions of state. Reform that genuinely takes care of the rights of minorities, and particularly the rights of women.”

During his tenure, General Allen had more than his share of crises: a video of Marines urinating on Taliban corpses; the burning of Korans by American soldiers; civilian deaths in allied airstrikes; the massacre of 16 civilians, in which an American soldier has been charged; and a spate of insider attacks by Afghan forces on NATO troops.

He also had to work hard to repair frayed relationships with President Hamid Karzai, who clashed openly with Mr. Petraeus, General Allen’s predecessor as head of international forces in Afghanistan. As The Times’s Matthew Rosenberg noted in a recent article, General Allen established an amicable enough relationship that Mr. Karzai called him to offer condolences while the general was on home leave in Virginia last year for his mother’s funeral.

As Mr. Rosenberg tells it, General Allen had not told anyone in the Afghan government before flying home to bury her. Then, while eating with his family in the Shenandoah Valley, he got a phone call from President Karzai.

“So I’m in the parking lot, it’s just surreal,” General Allen said. “Talking to the president of Afghanistan, who is gripped with emotion saying words to the effect that our mothers are so precious to us.”

A transcript of the interview that accompanied that article, in which General Allen described how he dealt with the Koran burnings, the Panjwai massacre and other crises, can be found here.

As if juggling all that were not enough, General Allen’s reputation came under a cloud when e-mails between him and a socialite in Tampa, Fla., Jill Kelley, emerged during the investigation of General Petraeus’s affair with Ms. Broadwell. After a lengthy review of those e-mails, the Defense Department’s inspector general cleared General Allen of any wrongdoing. The decision allowed President Obama’s nomination of General Allen to become the top NATO commander and head of the United States European Command to proceed.

But during his farewell at his headquarters in Kabul on Feb. 10, General Allen sent what might have been a signal about his plans to retire. He closed his remarks with generous praise of his wife, noting that many generations of her family had served in the military and that she had patiently endured 29 moves with him during 35 years of marriage. General Allen told The Washington Post that he was retiring to help his wife, Kathy, cope with chronic health problems.

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Pistorius: Thought lover an intruder in shooting

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius wept Tuesday as his defense lawyer read the athlete's account of how he shot his girlfriend to death on Valentine's Day, claiming he had mistaken her for an intruder.

Prosecutors, however, told a packed courtroom that the double-amputee known as the Blade Runner intentionally and mercilessly shot and killed 29-year-old Reeva Steenkamp as she cowered inside a locked bathroom.

Pistorius told the Pretoria Magistrate's Court at a bail hearing he felt vulnerable in the presence of an intruder inside the bathroom because he did not have his prosthetic legs on, and fired into the bathroom door.

The Valentine's Day shooting in Pistorius' home in Pretoria shocked South Africans and many around the world who idolized him for overcoming adversity to become a sports champion, competing in the London Olympics last year in track besides being a Paralympian. Steenkamp was a model and law graduate who made her debut on a South African reality TV program that was broadcast on Saturday, two days after her death.

In a major point of contention emerged even during Tuesday bail hearing, prosecutor Gerrie Nel said Pistorius took the time to put on his prostheses, walked seven meters (yards) from the bed to the enclosed toilet inside his bathroom and only then opened fire. Three of the bullets hit Steenkamp of the four that were fired into the door, Nel said.

Pistorius said in his sworn statement that after opening fire, he realized that Steenkamp was not in his bed.

"It filled me with horror and fear," Pistorius said. The 26-year-old Olympian said he put on his prosthetic legs and tried to kick down the door before finally bashing it in with a cricket bat. Inside, he said he found Steenkamp, slumped over. He said he lifted her bloodied body into his arms and tried to carry her downstairs to seek medical help.

But by then, it was too late.

"She died in my arms," the athlete said.

Nel charged Pistorius with premeditated murder and said the athlete opened fire after the couple engaged in a shouting match and she fled to the bathroom.

"She couldn't go anywhere. You can run nowhere," Nel said. "It must have been horrific."

A conviction of premeditated murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in jail.

Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair ruled that Pistorius must face the harshest bail requirements available in South African law. That means Pistorius' lawyers must offer "exceptional" reasons for the athlete to be free before trial, besides simply giving up his two South African passports and posting a cash bond.

Pistorius sobbed softly as his lawyer, Barry Roux, insisted the shooting was an accident and that there was no evidence to substantiate a murder charge.

"We submit it is not even murder," he said. "There is no concession this is a murder."

Pistorius' emotional outbursts again played a part in how the hearing progessed, as it did during an initial hearing Friday. At one point, Nair stopped the hearing after Pistorius wept as Roux read a portion of the athlete's statement describing how Steenkamp bought him a Valentine's Day present, but wouldn't let him open it the night before.

"Maintain your composure," the magistrate said. "You need to apply your mind here."

Pistorius' voice quivered when he answered: "Yes, my lordship."

Affidavits from friends of Pistorius and Steenkamp described the two as a charming, happy couple. The night before the killing, they said, Pistorius and Steenkamp had canceled separate plans in order to spend the night before Valentine's Day together at his home, in a gated neighborhood.

Outside the court, several dozen singing women protested against domestic violence and waved placards urging that Pistorius be refused bail. "Pistorius must rot in jail," one placard said.

As details emerged at the dramatic court hearing in the capital, Steenkamp's body was being cremated Tuesday at a memorial service in the south-coast port city of Port Elizabeth. Six pallbearers carried her coffin, draped with a white cloth and covered in white flowers, into the church for the private service.

South Africa has some of the world's worst rates of violence against females and the highest rate in the world of women killed by an intimate partner, according to a study by the Medical Research Council. Professor Rachel Jewkes of the council said at least three women are killed by a partner every day in this country of 50 million.

Steenkamp campaigned actively against domestic violence and had tweeted on Twitter that she planned to join a "Black Friday" protest by wearing black in honor of a 17-year-old girl who was gang-raped and mutilated two weeks ago.

What "she stood for, and the abuse against women, unfortunately it's gone right around and I think the Lord knows that statement is more powerful now," her uncle Mike Steenkamp, the family's spokesman, said after her memorial.

He said the family had planned a big get-together at Christmas but that had not been possible. "But we are here today as a family and the only one who's missing is Reeva," he said, breaking down and weeping.

Pistorius has lost several valuable sponsorships estimated to be worth more than $1 million a year.

On Tuesday, the athlete was ousted from a pro-gay campaign being launched in Cape Town, organizers said. In a video axed from the campaign, Pistorius says: "You don't have to worry. You don't have to change. Take a deep breath and remember, 'It will get better.'"

And Clarins Group, which owns Thierry Mugler Perfumes, said in an email that "out of respect and compassion for the families involved in this tragedy, Thierry Mugler Perfumes have taken the decision to withdraw all of their advertising campaigns featuring Oscar Pistorius."

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