Suzy Favor Hamilton, a Former Olympian, Discusses Her Escort Job and Depression

So it came as a shock Thursday when Favor Hamilton, 44, told the Web site The Smoking Gun that for the past year, her life as a real estate agent, mother and motivational speaker had also included work as a $600-an-hour prostitute for an escort service in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities. She called the behavior “a huge mistake.”

The disclosure, while startling, followed admissions by Favor Hamilton in recent years that her stellar running career and her personal life had sometimes been troubled. Since retiring, Favor Hamilton has said she felt enormous pressure as an athlete, not only to win but to be perfect.

And she has said that she struggled with family tragedy, self-doubt and an eating disorder while trying to succeed in a sport that gains significant attention once every four years during the Summer Olympics, where winners are celebrated, usually briefly, and where losers are quickly forgotten after putting enormous effort into one moment.

At the 2000 Sydney Games, Favor Hamilton later said, she fell on purpose in the homestretch of the 1,500 meters when she realized she could not win the gold medal. She told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last summer that she had developed postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, now 7, and was taking Zoloft, an antidepressant. Still, she seemed upbeat in the interview, saying, “I feel better than I’ve ever felt.”

On Thursday, though, Favor Hamilton made one more personal revelation about a secret life. In postings on Twitter, Favor Hamilton wrote that she began “escorting” because it provided “coping mechanisms” and “escape” from a life in which she continued to feel depressed and struggled with her marriage.

“I realize I have made highly irrational choices and I take full responsibility for them,” Favor Hamilton wrote. “I am not a victim here and knew what I was doing.”

She added: “I do not expect people to understand, but the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression. As crazy as I know it seems, I never thought I would be exposed, therefore never hurting anybody.

“I have been seeking the help of a psychologist for the past few weeks and will continue to do so after I have put things together. I cannot emphasize enough how sorry I am to anyone I have hurt as a result of my actions and greatly appreciate the support from family and those closest to me. I fully intend to make amends and get back to being a good mother, wife, daughter, and friend.”

During her career, Favor Hamilton posted five of the nine fastest 1,500-meter times by an American woman. But her girl-next-door glamour was complicated by a troubling aspect of competition. In the interview with The Journal Sentinel in July, Favor Hamilton described herself as a “pleaser and perfectionist” who struggled with the pressure to win and with “demons in your brain telling you you’re not good enough, you’re not fast enough, you need to be better.”

After finishing second at a national high school cross-country championship in the mid-1980s, Favor Hamilton told the newspaper, she developed an eating disorder, apparently believing that she could run faster if she were lighter. Eating problems persisted into her freshman year at Wisconsin. Eventually, she had a spectacular college career, then competed in three Olympics but never challenged for a medal, seemingly ill-equipped to run events that required multiple rounds.

At the 1992 Barcelona Games, Favor Hamilton did not advance beyond the first heat of the 1,500 meters. She was also eliminated in the first round of the 800 at the 1996 Atlanta Games, a result that was devastating for someone who felt a need for perfection.

“Your whole life, you’re told how great you are, from your coaches to your friends to your parents’ friends,” Favor Hamilton said in the July interview. “I had to be the perfect child, in my mind. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. I never blamed anybody. It’s just the way society is.”

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Syrian Airstrikes Reportedly Kill Dozens at Bakery

The attack, and the number of casualties, could not be immediately confirmed. A local activist said he ran to the bakery soon after he heard a warplane and then explosions and the sound of ambulances. “There were bodies everywhere,” the activist, Samer, said.

Photographs he took after the attack showed bodies in a heap on a bloody sidewalk outside a low-slung building, which was damaged but still standing. Amateur video of what the activists said was the aftermath of the attack showed a man sitting near a motorcycle, his arm twisted around his back, struggling to stand as people around him screamed. Roughly a dozen people could be seen on the ground, covered in dirt or debris from the building; some were wounded, and several appeared to be dead. Armed men wearing camouflage outfits were helping to move the bodies, which were placed in bunches on truck beds.

The reasons for the attack were unclear, but activists speculated that it was a government response to the arrival in Halfaya of rebel fighters. The rebels occupied the town last week after embarking on a broad offensive to seize territory around the city of Hama, where the government has kept tight control after suppressing protests in the city last year. In days of fighting, civilians have been caught between the warring sides, a volatile development in a part of the country where members of Syria’s many sects live among one another in neighboring villages.

Human rights groups have accused the government of indiscriminate attacks on or near bakeries in the past, especially in the northern city of Aleppo. In a three-week period in the summer, Human Rights Watch documented 10 separate bombings on bakeries in the city.

The attack on Sunday occurred as the international envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, arrived in the capital, Damascus, where he was expected to meet with President Bashar al-Assad. His visit had been rumored but not previously announced, signaling concerns about security as the fighting between opposition fighters and the government intensified in the capital.

Mr. Brahimi made no public comment on Sunday, and the Syrian information minister said during a news conference that he had no knowledge of the envoy’s visit. Mr. Brahimi traveled by land from Beirut because of fighting between the rebels and government forces near the airport in Damascus, Lebanese airport officials told The Associated Press.

His visit was likely to increase speculation about a deal to remove Mr. Assad from power. The talk has grown as rebel forces have claimed gains near government strongholds.

Russia, one of Syria’s most reliable allies, has recently sent signals that it is distancing itself from the Syrian president. On Saturday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said several countries in the region had offered Mr. Assad asylum, but he added that Moscow would not mediate on their behalf.

It was the third visit to Syria by Mr. Brahimi since he took his post in August, and it occurred as fighting grew worse in the eastern and southern suburbs of Damascus, where rebel commanders say they are trying to establish staging grounds for attacks on the capital.

Central Syria has become the latest front in the war, with the rebels attacking government checkpoints and other positions in an effort to disrupt the military’s supply lines and to push south from opposition strongholds in northern Syria. The offensive has led to growing fears for civilians in the area.

On Friday, a group of rebel fighters posted a video in which they threatened to shell Christian villages unless residents forced government loyalists to leave. Local church leaders have pleaded for peace and an end to sectarian strife.

Before the bombing on Sunday, Halfaya had been repeatedly shelled from loyalist positions in a nearby village, activists said.

In some photographs that Samer, the activist, said he took at the bakery, one fighter, with his hands resting on his head, stared in shock at the bodies around him. Another carried body parts. Bystanders searched for survivors under the rubble. Another man picked up a piece of bread lying next to someone’s slippers.

In amateur video apparently shot in a hospital, doctors tended to bleeding men lying on the floor, a teenage boy slumped against a wall and a woman lay on her side on a gurney. Antigovernment groups said 60 to 90 people were killed, but the toll was impossible to confirm. The bakery was one of three in the city, activists said. When word spread on Sunday that a flour shipment from Turkey had come in, people began lining up around noon, waiting for their turn at its windows for bread after a stretch of days when the bakeries had been idled.

After the bombings, rebel fighters released a statement vowing revenge.

Hala Droubi contributed reporting from Jidda, Saudi Arabia.

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Cape Cod Times Apologizes for Reporter’s Fabrications

The article, written by Karen Jeffrey, a longtime reporter, told of a Ronald Chipman, 46, and his family from Boston. The Chipmans apparently were oblivious to Veterans Day until they saw the parade. Ms. Jeffrey described the family in detail, including a scene in which the parents used their smartphones to find information about the holiday, creating a “teachable moment” for themselves and their children.

Maybe it was the tidiness of the tale. Or the notion that adults were unfamiliar with Veterans Day. But the article did not ring true to the editor and she set out to find the Chipmans. She searched several databases but turned up nothing. She reported her finding to the editor in chief, Paul Pronovost.

Mr. Pronovost asked the editor — whom he would not name to protect her privacy — to check other recent articles by Ms. Jeffrey. After more people in the articles could not be found, he then asked Ms. Jeffrey for help in locating the Chipmans. Ms. Jeffrey said she had thrown out her notes.

“That’s when the alarm bells went off,” Mr. Pronovost said. He ordered a full review of her work. For three days, three editors pored over a public-records database called Accurint. They examined voter rolls and town assessor records. They checked Facebook profiles and made phone calls. And they concluded that, over the years, Ms. Jeffrey had written dozens of articles that included people who did not exist.

The next day, Dec. 5, Mr. Pronovost and the publisher, Peter Meyer, wrote a front-page apology to their readers.

“In an audit of her work, Times editors have been unable to find 69 people in 34 stories since 1998, when we began archiving stories electronically,” they wrote.

“Jeffrey admitted to fabricating people in some of these articles and giving some others false names,” they added. “She no longer works at the paper.”

The episode shocked those at The Cape Cod Times, which has a daily circulation of 36,000 and Sunday circulation of almost 40,000.

Before the apology appeared, Mr. Pronovost told newsroom staff members what had happened. “Some people had no idea at all, and some probably were shocked by the scope of what we were talking about,” he said in a recent interview in his office here. And some “just simply couldn’t believe” that Ms. Jeffrey would do such a thing.

Ms. Jeffrey, 59, who had been at the paper since 1981, was perceived as reliable. She had covered the police and courts for many years, and there were no questions raised about the people in those stories. It was only her features — about parades, a Red Sox home opener, a road race — that contained fabrications.

Ms. Jeffrey has not made any public statements and did not respond to several requests for comment. Mr. Pronovost said, “I did ask ‘why’ but she didn’t have an answer.”

Her falsifications puzzled some precisely because they involved the easy articles.

“You go to the parade, you get a quote, you put it in the story,” said Matt Pitta, the news director at Qantum Communications, which owns four radio stations in Hyannis and competes with The Cape Cod Times, which is owned by News Corporation. “It’s not like trying to get a quote from an indicted politician who won’t speak to you.”

Many people also wondered how her fabrications could have gone on for 14 years without being discovered. Of course, nonexistent people do not call up to complain. But Mr. Pronovost said that her editors saw no red flags.

Among those most surprised were the law enforcement officers who worked with Ms. Jeffrey.

“She was always fair and accurate,” said Sheriff James M. Cummings of Barnstable County, which includes Cape Cod. Learning that she had fabricated stories, he said, was “like a punch in the gut.”

Detective Lt. Bob Melia of the Massachusetts State Police said that Ms. Jeffrey was a good reporter. “She reported it like it is,” he said. “If we asked her, ‘Can you keep that information out?’ she would say, ‘No, I can’t, it has to be part of the story.’ We respected her.”

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Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Commander in Gulf War, Dies at 78

The general, who retired soon after the gulf war and lived in Tampa, died of complications arising from a recent bout of pneumonia, said his sister Ruth Barenbaum. In 1993, he was found to have prostate cancer, for which he was successfully treated.

In Operation Desert Storm, General Schwarzkopf orchestrated one of the most lopsided victories in modern warfare, a six-week blitzkrieg by a broad coalition of forces with overwhelming air superiority that liberated tiny Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, routed Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and virtually destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, all with relatively light allied losses.

Winning the lightning war was never in doubt and in no way comparable to the traumas of World War II and the Korean conflict, which made Eisenhower and MacArthur into national heroes and presidential timber. But a divisive Vietnam conflict and the cold war had produced no such heroes, and the little-known General Schwarzkopf was wreathed in laurels as the victor in a popular war against a brutal dictator.

A combat-tested, highly decorated career officer who had held many commands, served two battlefield tours in Vietnam and coordinated American landing forces in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, he came home to a tumultuous welcome, including a glittering ticker-tape parade up Broadway in the footsteps of Lindbergh, MacArthur and the moon-landing Apollo astronauts.

“Stormin’ Norman,” as headlines proclaimed him, was lionized by millions of euphoric Americans who, until weeks earlier, had never heard of him. President George Bush, whose popularity soared with the war, gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Congress gave him standing ovations. Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary knight. European and Asian nations conferred lavish honors.

In his desert fatigues, he was interviewed on television, featured on magazine covers and feted at celebrations in Tampa, Washington and other cities. He led the Pegasus Parade at the Kentucky Derby in Louisville and was the superstar at the Indianapolis 500. Florida Republicans urged him to run for the United States Senate.

Amid speculation about his future, a movement to draft him for president arose. He insisted he had no presidential aspirations, but Time magazine quoted him as saying he someday “might be able to find a sense of self-fulfillment serving my country in the political arena,” and he told Barbara Walters on the ABC News program “20/20” that he would not rule out a White House run.

Within weeks, the four-star general had become a media and marketing phenomenon. Three months after the war, he signed a $5 million contract with Bantam Books for the world rights to his memoirs, “It Doesn’t Take a Hero,” written with Peter Petre and published in 1992. Herbert Mitgang, reviewing the book for The New York Times, called it a serviceable first draft of history. “General Schwarzkopf,” he wrote, “comes across as a strong professional soldier, a Patton with a conscience.”

All but drowned out in the surge of approbation, critics noted that the general’s enormous air, sea and land forces had overwhelmed a country with a gross national product equivalent to North Dakota’s, and that while Iraq’s bridges, dams and power plants had been all but obliterated and tens of thousands of its troops killed (compared with a few hundred allied casualties), Saddam Hussein had been left in power.

Postwar books, news reports and documentaries — a flood of information the general had restricted during the war — showed that most of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard, whose destruction had been a goal of war planners, had escaped from an ill-coordinated Marine and Army assault, and had not been pursued because of President Bush’s decision to halt the ground war after 100 hours.

“The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf” (1995), by Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times and the retired general Bernard E. Trainor, portrayed a White House rushed into ending the war prematurely by unrealistic fears of being criticized for killing too many Iraqis and by ignorance of events on the ground. It cast General Schwarzkopf as a second-rate commander who took credit for allied successes, blamed others for his mistakes and shouted at, but did not effectively control, his field commanders as the Republican Guard slipped away.

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

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World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens in China

HONG KONG — China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Florida, or from London across Europe to Belgrade.

Bullet trains traveling 300 kilometers an hour, or 186 miles an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours.

Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country.

Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009, during the global financial crisis, and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.

The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers per line has kept a lid on unemployment even as private-sector construction has slowed down because of limits on real estate speculation. And the national network has helped reduce toxic air pollution in Chinese cities and curb demand for imported diesel fuel, by freeing up a lot of capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks.

But the high-speed rail system has also been controversial in China. Debt to finance the construction has reached nearly 4 trillion renminbi, or $640 billion, making it one of the most visible reasons total debt has been surging as a share of economic output in China, and approaching levels in the West.

Each passenger car taken off the older, slower rail lines makes room for three freight cars, because passenger trains have to move so quickly that they force freight trains to stop frequently. But although the high-speed trains have played a big role in allowing sharp increases in freight shipments, the Ministry of Railways has not yet figured out a way to charge large freight shippers, many of them politically influential state-owned enterprises, for part of the cost of the high-speed lines, which haul only passengers.

The high-speed trains are also considerably more expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi, compared with 426 renminbi for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi.

Worries about the high-speed network peaked in July 2011, when one high-speed train plowed into the back of another near Wenzhou in southeastern China, killing 40 people.

A subsequent investigation blamed flawed signaling equipment for the crash. China had been operating high-speed trains at 350 kilometers an hour, and it cut the top speed to the current rate in response to that crash.

The crash crystallized worries about the haste with which China has built its high-speed rail system. The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little more than four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines.

China’s aviation system has a good international reputation for safety, and its occasional deadly crashes have not attracted nearly as much attention. Transportation safety experts attribute the public’s fascination with the Wenzhou crash partly to the novelty of the system and partly to a distrust among many Chinese of what is perceived as a homegrown technology, in contrast with the Boeing and Airbus jets flown by Chinese airlines.

Japanese rail executives have complained, however, that the Chinese technology is mostly copied from them, an accusation that Chinese rail executives have strenuously denied.

The main alternative to trains for most Chinese lies in the country’s roads, which have a grim reputation by international standards. Periodic crashes of intercity buses kill dozens of people at a time, while crashes of private cars are frequent in a country where four-fifths of new cars are sold to first-time buyers, often with scant driving experience.

Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou take about three hours and 15 minutes. But air travelers in China need to arrive at least an hour before a flight, compared with 20 minutes for high-speed trains, and the airports tend to be farther from the centers of cities than the high-speed train stations.

Land acquisition is the toughest part of building high-speed rail lines in the West, because the tracks need to be almost perfectly straight, and it has been an issue in China as well. Although local and provincial governments have forced owners to sell land for the tracks themselves, there have been disputes over suddenly valuable land near rail stations, with the result that surprisingly few stores and other commercial venues have sprung up around some high-speed stations through which tens of thousands of travelers move every day.

Zhao Xiangfeng, a farmer in Henan Province, said a plan to build a minimall on his and six other farmers’ land near a station had been shelved indefinitely after he and three of the other farmers refused to lease the land for anything close to what the village leadership offered. He said he worried that local leaders might try strong-arm tactics against the farmers to force them to lease the land and revive the project.

The southern segment of the new high-speed rail line, from Guangzhou as far as Wuhan, has been open for nearly three years and already suffers from heavy congestion, which could limit the number of seats available for travel all the way to Beijing during peak hours. Regular travelers on the route said in interviews that the 800-seat trains are often sold out as many as 10 trains in advance on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, even though the trains travel as often as every four minutes, and even lunchtime trains at midweek are often full as well.

Mia Li in Beijing contributed research.

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Port Strike Averted After Partial Deal With Dockworkers Union

The mediator said the two sides had agreed to extend the existing contract by 30 days, to Jan. 28, to give them time to try to reach an agreement on the remaining issues, including what the companies say are antiquated work rules. Late Friday, the two sides issued a new announcement, saying they had agreed to extend the contract an additional week, to Feb. 6, creating a new potential strike deadline.

The partial agreement means that the union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, will not carry out its threat to have 14,500 dockworkers go on strike this Sunday at 14 ports along the East and Gulf Coasts.

In a statement on Friday, George H. Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said the two sides had reached an agreement in principle on a particularly contentious issue, known as container royalty payments.

The shipping companies share those payments with union members for each ton of cargo handled.

The union had for months denounced the companies’ proposal to freeze those payments for current longshoremen and eliminate them for future employees. No details about the agreement were disclosed.

“What I can report is that the agreement on this important subject represents a major positive step toward achieving an overall collective bargaining agreement,” Mr. Cohen said. “While some significant issues remain, I am cautiously optimistic that they can be resolved in the 30-day extension period.”

After the talks broke off on Dec. 18, Mr. Cohen persuaded the two sides to return this week for a last-minute round of bargaining. They have been negotiating on and off since March.

The United States Maritime Alliance, a group of shipping companies and terminal owners, said it paid $211 million in container royalties to the dockworkers last year, averaging $15,500 for each eligible union member.

James A. Capo, the alliance’s chairman, said the royalty payments amounted to $10 an hour on top of what he said were already generous wages. “This issue seems to have dwarfed anything else,” Mr. Capo said in an interview this week.

But in the days before the strike deadline, Harold J. Daggett, the union’s president, said, “We have repeatedly asked them to leave this item alone.”

The maritime alliance, known as USMX, said the longshoremen earned $124,000 a year on average in wages and benefits, including the royalty payments. Union officials said those figures were exaggerated and put average annual wages at $75,000 before benefits, for what they described as dangerous jobs moving heavy cargo. Under the current contract, most longshoremen earn $32 an hour.

The container payments were created in the 1960s to compensate the longshoremen because many were losing their jobs as seaports embraced automation and the use of standardized, 40-foot-long containers to ship goods.

Largely as a result of those trends, the number of longshoremen employed in the Port of New York and New Jersey, the busiest East Coast port, has dropped to 3,500 from 35,000 in the 1960s.

The shipping companies view the royalty payments as a relic of decades past, intended for longshoremen who worked in the 1960s and 1970s. But the union still sees the payments as a core part of wages and as an important way to share productivity gains with members. The payments come to $4.85 a ton, the union said.

As the strike deadline approached, Mr. Daggett said, “USMX seems intent on gutting a provision of our master contract that I.L.A. members fought and sacrificed for years to achieve.”

Representatives of the maritime alliance and shipping companies declined to discuss the agreement on the royalty payments or other aspects of the talks, saying that Mr. Cohen had urged the two sides not to talk to the news media.

Matthew Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, applauded the announcement but said a contract extension did not provide the level of certainty that retailers and other industries were looking for to ensure that their goods would continue to pass through the ports. “We welcome today’s news that a contract extension has been reached,” he said in a statement. “However, we continue to urge both parties to remain at the negotiating table until a long-term contract agreement is finalized.”

Mr. Shay’s federation and more than 100 other business groups wrote to President Obama last week, urging him to invoke his emergency powers under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to prevent a strike. Labor experts said Mr. Obama would have been caught between fears that a strike would damage the already-fragile economy and worries that blocking it would anger allies in the labor movement.

In addition to reaching a master contract for the 14 ports, the two sides need to negotiate individual agreements for the ports, many of which involve work rules that the shipping companies are eager to change, calling them inefficient and costly.

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$1,200 a Pound, Truffles Suffer in Heat

But during the year-end holidays, the main order of business is fresh truffles, especially the black or Périgord truffle, Tuber melanosporum. The prized mushrooms are used to stuff Christmas turkeys, chickens or capons, Mr. Manzanares said, making Dec. 24 typically the biggest truffle-eating night of the year in France.

But it is also becoming an increasingly expensive tradition. Black truffles and other types of truffles are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global climate change on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the last dozen years.

At Truffes Folies, in the chic Seventh Arrondissement of Paris, black truffles are selling for the equivalent of about 2,000 euros a kilogram, or more than $1,200 a pound — living up to their traditional nickname, “black diamonds.”

Of course, few people buy black truffles by the pound. Still, even a single black truffle big enough for bits to be slipped under the skin of a turkey, the rest added to the stuffing, can easily cost 100 euros.

“This hasn’t been a great year for truffles,” Mr. Manzanares said in his shop, which includes a small restaurant. He said some customers had switched to lesser varieties like the summer truffle, Tuber aestivum, also known as the Burgundy truffle, which sells for about 400 euros a kilogram when in season. The current substitute is more likely to be the winter truffle, Tuber brumale, which sells for about 900 euros a kilogram.

Like fine wine, truffles are a global luxury with an appeal to the wealthy that keeps prices high even with Europe in recession. Stanley Ho, the Macau billionaire, paid $330,000 at a charity auction in 2010 for nearly 1.3 kilograms of Italian white truffles, a variety more treasured than even the black truffle.

There are various reasons for what has been a decline over decades in the harvest of black truffles from southern France, Spain and Italy, including shrinking forests and changes in land use. In France alone, the annual black truffle harvest has fallen from about 1,000 tons in the 1930s to about 50 tons now.

The painstaking nature of truffle gathering also adds to the cost. Despite gradual improvement in cultivation techniques, the subterranean fungi are still sniffed out by trained dogs and then carefully dug by hand from the tangle of tree roots in which they grow.

But now, a team of scientists writing in the British journal Nature says that part of that decline appears to be linked to climate change. They found that the French and Spanish black truffle harvest correlated closely with summer rains, and that the truffle habitat had suffered over the last few decades from hotter summers and less precipitation. That trend is expected to continue, according to most climate models.

The scientists said that the exact reasons hotter, drier summers should reduce yields was unknown, but it may be that the fungus and its host trees, mostly oaks and hazelnuts, end up competing for water when rainfall is scarce. “If we know the reason, maybe we can adapt and compensate,” said Ulf Büntgen, the paleoclimatologist who led the study.

Scientists will be watching to see whether the truffle harvest will continue its steep decline if — as climate forecasts hold — Mediterranean basin summers keep getting hotter and drier.

While Mr. Büntgen’s team predicted a continued drop in the Mediterranean truffle yield, they held out the possibility that other, more northerly regions might become increasingly hospitable growing areas, in the same adaptive phenomenon that has led some French Champagne producers to start looking north to England as a possible future site for vineyards.

Mr. Büntgen said the summer truffle was already being found north of the Alps more frequently than in the past.

The researchers noted that Italy’s black truffle yields had not shown a climate-related falloff, which they speculated was because the habitat of Tuber melanosporum there has traditionally received twice the rainfall of other places it grows and thus has a built-in buffer against the effects of changing climate.

To be conclusive about any of this, though, Mr. Büntgen said much more research would be necessary to have better data about cultivation and harvests. “The mushroom people in general, and the truffle people in particular, are not good about sharing information,” he said, a tendency complicated by what he called a huge black market in truffles.

The truffle market is indeed notoriously opaque, with just one family-owned company, Urbani Tartufi, based in Spoleto, Italy, controlling about three-quarters of the truffle trade.

Olga Urbani, a company spokeswoman, said the price Urbani charged its customers, which included restaurants and hotels, had risen from about 150 euros a kilogram for black truffles 12 years ago to about 1,500 euros a kilogram now, as the harvest declined by about two-thirds. The trends are similar for the Italian white truffle and the summer truffle, she said.

Forecasting a future of fewer truffles, Ms. Urbani said, the company set a strategy about decade ago to diversify from a “pure truffle” business toward what she called the “democratization” of the fungus by making relatively inexpensive truffle products — sauces and the like — for a broader clientele.

Back in his shop, which was redolent with the earthy aroma of mushrooms, Mr. Manzanares reflected on his decades in the truffle business.

“Twenty years ago, people bought a lot more because it wasn’t nearly so expensive,” he said. “Today it really is a luxury product.”

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Bolivia Reduces Coca Plantings by Licensing Growers

President Evo Morales, who first came to prominence as a leader of coca growers, kicked out the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2009. That ouster, together with events like the arrest last year of the former head of the Bolivian anti-narcotics police on trafficking charges, led Washington to conclude that Bolivia was not meeting its global obligations to fight narcotics.

But despite the rift with the United States, Bolivia, the world’s third-largest cocaine producer, has advanced its own unorthodox approach toward controlling the growing of coca, which veers markedly from the wider war on drugs and includes high-tech monitoring of thousands of legal coca patches intended to produce coca leaf for traditional uses.

To the surprise of many, this experiment has now led to a significant drop in coca plantings in Mr. Morales’s Bolivia, an accomplishment that has largely occurred without the murders and other violence that have become the bloody byproduct of American-led measures to control trafficking in Colombia, Mexico and other parts of the region.

Yet there are also worrisome signs that such gains are being undercut as traffickers use more efficient methods to produce cocaine and outmaneuver Bolivian law enforcement to keep drugs flowing out of the country.

In one key sign of progress in Bolivia’s approach toward coca, the total acres planted with coca dropped 12 to 13 percent last year, according to separate reports by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. At the same time, the Bolivian government stepped up efforts to rip out unauthorized coca plantings and reported an increase in seizures of cocaine and cocaine base.

“It’s fascinating to look at a country that kicked out the United States ambassador and the D.E.A., and the expectation on the part of the United States is that drug war efforts would fall apart,” said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. Instead, she said, Bolivia’s approach is “showing results.”

Still, there is skepticism. “Our perspective is they’ve made real advances, and they’re a long way from where we’d like to see them,” said Larry Memmott, chargé d’affaires of the American Embassy in La Paz. “In terms of law enforcement, a lot remains to be done.”

Although Bolivia outlaws cocaine, it permits the growing of coca for traditional uses. Bolivians chew coca leaf as a mild stimulant and use it as a medicine, as a tea and, particularly among the majority indigenous population, in religious rituals.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Rojas placed a few dried leaves into his mouth and watched the sun set over his coca field, slightly less than two-fifths of an acre, the maximum allowed per farmer here in this region, known as the Chapare.

“This is a way to keep it under control,” he said, spitting a stream of green juice. “Everyone should have the same amount.”

Mr. Rojas is a face of a changing region. He makes far more money growing bananas for export on about 74 acres than he does growing coca. But he has no intention of giving up his tiny coca plot. “What happens if a disease attacks the bananas?” he asked. “Then we still have the coca to save us.”

The Bolivian government has persuaded growers that by limiting the amount of plantings, coca prices will remain high. And it has largely focused eradication efforts, of the kind that once spurred strong popular resistance, outside the areas controlled by growers’ unions, like in national parks.

The registration of thousands of Chapare growers, completed this year, is part of an enforcement system that relies on growers to police one another. If registered growers are found to have plantings above the maximum allowed, soldiers are called in to remove the excess. If growers violate the limit a second time, their entire crop is cut down and they lose the right to grow coca.

Growers’ unions can also be punished if there are multiple violations among their members.

“We have to be constantly vigilant,” said Nelson Sejas, a Chapare grower who was part of a team that checked coca plots to make sure they did not exceed the limit.

But there is still plenty of cheating. Officials say they are going over the registry of about 43,000 Chapare growers to find those who may have multiple plots or who may violate other rules.

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky contributed reporting from Ivirgarzama, Bolivia.

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DealBook: Exchange Sale Reflects New Realities of Trading

Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

On a warm day in Boca Raton, Fla., the host of a reception for an annual financial conference was not a big bank or a powerful exchange as in years past, but a young firm based in Atlanta.

Guests who gathered at the oceanfront resort were surprised. They were greeted with bottled ice water that carried the company’s logo, and as they left, were invited to grab iPod Shuffles.

That event, some four years ago, was the Wall Street equivalent of a coming-out party for the firm, IntercontinentalExchange, or ICE, an electronic operator of markets for derivatives and commodities. Now, the markets upstart is announcing itself to a much larger world with an $8.2 billion deal to buy the symbolic cradle of American capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange.

The takeover illustrates starkly how trading in commodities and derivatives has become much more lucrative than trading in the shares of companies. Warren E. Buffett warned in 2003 that the “derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle,” and that the genie, even after a global financial crisis, was not going back. Currently, derivatives — financial bets tied to underlying assets like oil prices or interest rates, among other things — are a $600 trillion market. Even the parent of the N.Y.S.E. attracted its suitor largely because of its ownership of Liffe, a major derivatives exchange in London.

For many, the Beaux-Arts New York Stock Exchange, and images of traders looking despondent or exuberant on its floor, represent what making money is all about. Yet Wall Street itself has found it more profitable to bet on fluctuations in natural gas or corn or on interest rates. The financial industry often does so electronically and through platforms in cities as scattered as London, Chicago and Atlanta. The biggest bonuses each year are typically for traders who reaped rich gains on these often complex financial products.

That change, decades in the making, has left the New York exchange, with roots going back 220 years, in an increasing difficult position as trading volumes slump and profit margins stay razor thin. While its acquirer has pledged to keep a dual headquarters in the exchange building in Lower Manhattan, as well as in Atlanta, the center of power in finance long ago migrated elsewhere.

The success of the newly combined companies hinges on the derivatives business. ICE is hoping that a greater share of derivatives trading will go through its clearinghouse operations, which act as backstops in case one party defaults. It is being aided by the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul, which is forcing Wall Street banks to push their derivatives trades into clearinghouses and regulated exchanges.

“For the past decade, our solutions made our markets increasingly electronic and increasingly clear,” Jeffrey C. Sprecher, chief executive of ICE, said this month. “Today, financial reform is imposing that vision on many markets through a rule-making process.”

While Dodd-Frank compliance is still in its early days, and the volume of derivatives trading remains depressed amid broader economic uncertainty, the law is ultimately expected to cement ICE’s business model into the regulatory code.

“Despite the complaints, there’s no question that at the end of the day, Dodd-Frank will be a financial boon to exchanges,” said Bart Chilton, a Democratic member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives.

Still, such a development will not do much for the traditional business of the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Sprecher said on Thursday that he was committed to keeping the floor of the exchange open. But according to people briefed on his plans, he intends to use the stock trading operation and its steady cash-generating abilities to finance future deals and expansion efforts.

Nowhere have the changing fortunes of ICE and the parent of the New York exchange, NYSE Euronext, been more apparent than in their value on the stock market. In April 2011, when ICE first tried to acquire NYSE Euronext in league with Nasdaq OMX, it was worth about $1.5 billion less than the New York company. Just over a year later, ICE was worth nearly $4 billion more than NYSE Euronext, even with less than a third of its revenue.

ICE was founded in 2000 by Mr. Sprecher, who began his career developing power plants. In the 1990s, he saw that many power companies and financial firms wanted to hedge their investments in energy with financial contracts, but the market for these contracts was disorganized and opaque.

Mr. Sprecher bought an obscure exchange for buying and selling electricity in Atlanta and turned it into ICE with financing from BP and Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Banks were drawn to the idea of a standardized place to buy and sell derivatives tied to the value of oil and other commodities. But they also hoped to create a competitor to the virtual monopoly position being built up by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in futures trading.

“You talk to people in Chicago, they basically think that ICE is just a front for the banks,” said Craig Pirrong, an expert in futures trading and director of the Global Energy Management Institute at the University of Houston.

As the company grew through a quick series of acquisitions, Mr. Sprecher won a reputation for being the “enfant terrible” of the energy industry, with a “sharp eye for identifying opportunities and seizing on them in a very aggressive way,” Dr. Pirrong said.

Early on, ICE sought to move all trading onto computers, allowing firms to buy and sell contracts 24 hours a day. Soon after buying the International Petroleum Exchange in London, ICE shut down its trading floor.

“They were a technology company from Day 1,” said Brad Hintz, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein.

ICE also decided to fashion its own clearinghouse, rather than tap an outsize firm. It expanded through acquisitions, planting the seeds for growth in 2008, when it took over the Clearing Corporation, home to a popular derivative known as a credit-default swap.

The Dodd-Frank overhaul may provide additional benefits for ICE. Under the law, exchanges must turn over public and private information to outside data warehouses, which will, in turn, share the information with regulators. Sensing an opportunity, ICE created its own warehouse, named ICE Trade Vault.

ICE and its Chicago rival, CME Group, have also moved in recent months to convert swaps trades, which are facing more scrutiny under Dodd-Frank, into old-fashioned futures contracts. Futures trading is lucrative territory for the exchanges in part because they can shut out competitors.

“The reality is that there are incentives to convert swaps into futures, where there’s less competition,” said Richard M. McVey, chief executive of MarketAxess, an independent trading platform that is expanding into the swaps business. “There’s no requirement for CME and ICE to open their futures clearinghouses to other exchanges.”

Despite its growing prominence, ICE has a small footprint in Washington. With only two full-time lobbyists, the company relies on Mr. Sprecher to communicate with regulators.

“Jeff is the company,” one official said, though others said he had loosened his grip over the last year or so.

He is well received, officials say, in part because he has embraced some reforms. Unlike executives of other exchanges and financial firms, Mr. Sprecher did not resist an effort in 2009 by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to close certain loopholes.

Officials recall him saying, “Tell me what the rules are, and I’ll make money with them.”

Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.
Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesTraders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

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Kings 106, Knicks 105: Knicks Fight Back Against Kings, Only to Be Blindsided at the Buzzer

But they did not lose their composure when trailing by double digits, as they have on recent occasions. They did not panic. They did not quit. But two nights after watching J. R. Smith seal a win for them on a last-second jumper in Phoenix, the Knicks found themselves Friday on the other side of a buzzer-beater when Sacramento’s James Johnson made an open 3-pointer as time expired to give the Sacramento Kings a 106-105 victory.

“Karma comes back around quickly,” Smith said. “It’s a bad feeling.

“No matter who we play, we have to play with a sense of urgency and pride.”

The loss denied the Knicks the largest comeback victory in franchise history, which remains a 26-point rally against Milwaukee in 2004.

Johnson, who was mobbed by his Kings teammates, finished with 17 points as the Knicks walked slowly to the locker room, their heads down. Johnson’s game-winning basket was his first 3-pointer of the season. He was 0 for 11 before Friday’s game.

“I thought it was short, honestly, from the angle I had,” Tyson Chandler said of Johnson’s jumper. “I knew he got it off in time. I was just curious about his feet. And then I saw the replay and he obviously had both feet behind the line.”

When the Knicks thought about the final 30 seconds of the game, they were disappointed with how they couldn’t execute simple things.

Jason Kidd knew he should have made a better pass to Chandler for an alley-oop dunk. Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins deflected the pass, which created a turnover. On defense, Steve Novak knew he could have made a game-winning steal. Instead, a pass by John Salmons made it to Johnson. And Smith knew he had a chance to block Johnson’s 3-pointer before time expired.

“That’s the toughest way to lose,” Novak said. “You’d rather lose by 40 than to lose on a game-winner. That’s going to sting for a while.”

Smith scored a game-high 28 points and Chris Copeland added 23. Chandler (21 points, 18 rebounds) was solid on both ends of the floor.

The Knicks were without Anthony for a second straight game because of a hyperextended knee, as well as Felton, who is expected to miss a month with a broken finger. With Amar’e Stoudemire, Rasheed Wallace and Iman Shumpert also sidelined, the Knicks were down to a 10-man team, and they looked in the first half as if they could have used another 10 to relieve them.

They were down by 21 at halftime.

“That first half we had was just unacceptable,” Novak said. “We gave their shooters way too much freedom.”

But the Knicks found a new burst of energy in the second half, chipping away at the Kings’ lead and eventually pulling in front about midway through the fourth quarter when Kidd hit a 3-pointer for a 97-95 lead.

But Kidd also helped put the Kings in position to win. His foul on Isaiah Thomas in the fourth quarter sent Thomas to the line, where he made both free throws to cut the Knicks’ lead to 105-103. Then, Kidd’s pass was intercepted with 16 seconds left. The Knicks never got the ball back.

“I had Tyson wide open,” Kidd said. “It was an easy pass. I just turned it over and they capitalized on it.”

The Knicks (21-9) surrendered 71 points in the first half as the Kings (10-19) shot 59.5 percent from the field and made 10 3-pointers. But as disappointing as the first half was for them, the Knicks said they showed character in rallying to take the lead.

“Losses like this build character,” Chandler said. “It hurts right now, but I feel like we won’t find ourselves in this situation again.”

He continued: “It shows how good we can be defensively. We dug ourselves a hole. To me, there’s no reason that we can hold a team to 35 points in the second half and can’t do it in the first. I was proud of the guys, though. This one burns, but we battled our hearts out.”

REBOUNDS

With five injured players, Coach Mike Woodson said he almost felt as if he had no choice but to hope Amar’e Stoudemire would be ready to play his first game of the season Tuesday against the Portland Trail Blazers. Stoudemire will be re-evaluated by a knee specialist Saturday before he participates in another practice. Woodson plans to have Stoudemire practice Sunday and Monday. “Those two practices will give us some indication of where he is,” Woodson said. “I’m going to put him through a full practice in terms of running up and down and banging some with him, too. Hopefully, there will be no setbacks, and he’ll be ready to go New Year’s Day.” ... Rasheed Wallace, who has a stress fracture in his left foot, also hopes to return to practice in the next few days. Woodson said he expected Wallace to see some minutes against the Trail Blazers. “I’m very antsy about it,” Wallace said of returning to the court. “Very antsy, especially when we play big games like we did against the Lakers. The nail-biter against Phoenix the other night. It’s not up to me, though. It’s up to the doctors.”

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Knicks 99, Suns 97: Hobbled by Injuries, Knicks Win on Last Shot

“When I was walking on the court, I was like, “Man, you’re going to make it, you’re going to make it,’ ” Smith said. “I was mentally really trying to get my form ready before I even thought about taking it.”

Catch the ball cleanly, he thought. Square your shoulders to the basket, he reminded himself. Believe in yourself.

Smith ran to the left corner of the court, received Jason Kidd’s pass, turned his body, jumped high in the air and faded away from the Phoenix Suns’ P. J. Tucker.

Buzzer sounds. Swish. Game over.

Smith’s difficult jumper as time expired gave the Knicks a 99-97 victory over the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday night, a much-needed lift for a weakened team. It was the second game-winner by Smith this month. His previous one, the first game-winner of his career, came on Dec. 5 against the Charlotte Bobcats.

And both final-second shots by Smith came with Carmelo Anthony not on the floor; Anthony missed Wednesday’s game because of a hyperextended knee.

Tyson Chandler called Smith’s basket an incredible one to watch from his perspective near the basket.

“Knowing J. R., it’s almost better for him to take a tough shot,” Chandler said. He added: “It seems like he makes the tougher shots with the guy is draped all over him. He does it in practice.”

After Smith made his shot, all of his teammates hugged him on the court.

“It was big just to see how hyped my teammates were, especially Tyson and Jason,” he said. “They’ve seen big shots hit before, so for them to be excited was great.”

Even before Smith’s last-second shot, the Knicks learned what it is like when their best player, Anthony, and their main point guard, Raymond Felton, are not playing. Minutes piled up for everyone else. Roles were expanded. And fitness was tested.

Throughout the game, Smith was erratic, Steve Novak was off target from long distance, and Chandler was fatigued.

Coach Mike Woodson put his trust in Smith and Kidd, a 39-year-old veteran, who gave one of his better all-around performances of the season. Kidd had 23 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists. His final assist of the game was the inbounds pass on Smith’s buzzer-beater.

“Kidd was big,” Woodson said. “He nearly had a triple-double. Here he is almost 40 years old still playing like that. It’s incredible.”

Early in the fourth quarter, Woodson realized that the Knicks needed to outscore the Suns rather than beat them with defense. So in a bold move, Woodson left Chris Copeland (14 points) and Novak, who are not known for defense, in the game for much of the fourth quarter.

What the Knicks lacked most was the ability to track Jared Dudley, who scored a season-high 36 points for the Suns (11-18).

With 34.5 seconds left, Dudley was fouled by James White, who started for Anthony after Anthony hurt his left knee Tuesday. Dudley made both free throws to give the Suns a 97-95 lead. After a timeout, Woodson wanted the ball in Kidd’s hands. But Kidd passed up a tough shot and gave the ball to Smith, who drained a turnaround 17-foot jumper.

“He set the table with a tough shot to tie the game,” Kidd said. He added about Smith’s late-game confidence, “He likes that moment and he’s done it twice for us.”

The Suns followed with a turnover as Sebastian Telfair dribbled out of bounds with a second left. That set the stage for Smith’s shot.

“When Coach was drawing up the play, he looked at me and said, “We’re going to you,’ ” Smith said of Woodson. “That was big for him to show confidence in me. That gave me the extra emphasis to make the shot.”

This victory by the Knicks (21-8) came in difficult circumstances.

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West Antarctic Warming Faster Than Thought, Study Finds

A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience reports that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming, making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth.

“The surprises keep coming,” said Andrew J. Monaghan, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who took part in the study. “When you see this type of warming, I think it’s alarming.”

Of course, warming in Antarctica is a relative concept. West Antarctica remains an exceedingly cold place, with average annual temperatures in the center of the ice sheet that are nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing.

But the temperature there does sometimes rise above freezing in the summer, and the new research raises the possibility that it might begin to happen more often, potentially weakening the ice sheet through surface melting. The ice sheet is already under attack at the edges by warmer ocean water, and scientists are on alert for any new threat.

A potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is one of the long-term hazards that have led experts to worry about global warming. The base of the ice sheet sits below sea level, in a configuration that makes it especially vulnerable. Scientists say a breakup of the ice sheet, over a period that would presumably last at least several hundred years, could raise global sea levels by 10 feet, possibly more.

The new research is an attempt to resolve a scientific controversy that erupted several years ago about exactly how fast West Antarctica is warming. With few automated weather stations and even fewer human observers in the region, scientists have had to use statistical techniques to infer long-term climate trends from sparse data.

A nearby area called the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts north from West Antarctica and for which fairly good records are available, was already known to be warming rapidly. A 2009 paper found extensive warming in the main part of West Antarctica, but those results were challenged by a group that included climate change contrarians.

To try to get to the bottom of the question, David H. Bromwich of Ohio State University pulled together a team that focused on a single temperature record. At a lonely outpost called Byrd Station, in central West Antarctica, people and automated equipment have been keeping track of temperature and other weather variables since the late 1950s.

It is by far the longest weather record in that region, but it had intermittent gaps and other problems that had made many researchers wary of it. The Bromwich group decided to try to salvage the Byrd record.

They retrieved one of the sensors and recalibrated at the University of Wisconsin. They discovered a software error that had introduced mistakes into the record and then used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps.

The reconstruction will most likely undergo intensive scientific scrutiny, which Dr. Bromwich said he would welcome. “We’ve tested everything we could think of,” he said.

Assuming the research holds up, it suggests that the 2009 paper, far from overestimating warming in West Antarctica, had probably underestimated it, especially in summer.

Eric J. Steig, a University of Washington researcher who led the 2009 work, said in an interview that he considered his paper to have been supplanted by the new research. “I think their results are better than ours, and should be adopted as the best estimate,” he said. He noted that the new Byrd record matches a recent temperature reconstruction from a nearby borehole in the ice sheet, adding confidence in the findings.

Much of the warming discovered in the new paper happened in the 1980s, around the same time the planet was beginning to warm briskly. More recently, Dr. Bromwich said, the weather in West Antarctica seems to have become somewhat erratic. In the summer of 2005, the interior of West Antarctica warmed enough for the ice to undergo several days of surface melting.

Dr. Bromwich is worried that this could eventually become routine, perhaps accelerating the decay of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but the warming is not fast enough for that to happen right away. “We’re talking decades into the future, I think,” Dr. Bromwich said.

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260 in Illinois Clergy Call for Legal Gay Marriage

“We dedicate our lives to fostering faith and compassion, and we work daily to promote justice and fairness for all,” the leaders wrote in the letter, which was released Sunday. “Standing on these beliefs, we think that it is morally just to grant equal opportunities and responsibilities to loving, committed same-sex couples.

“There can be no justification,” they continued, “for the law treating people differently on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

This is not the first time members of the clergy have endorsed same-sex marriage, but the public nature of the letter and the number of signatures made it an especially strong statement.

The timing is also significant: State Senator Heather A. Steans and State Representative Greg Harris, both Democrats, plan to introduce a bill next month to legalize same-sex marriage. Ms. Steans said they would not put the legislation, the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, up for a vote unless they were confident it would pass. She added that the Senate, at least, was “definitely within striking distance” of the 30 votes needed for passage and that she hoped the letter would help persuade undecided legislators to support the bill.

Many of the 260 Christian and Jewish leaders who signed the letter said they had long supported same-sex marriage and were excited to make their views more public.

“It’s not a religious right — it’s a civil right,” said the Rev. Kevin E. Tindell, a United Church of Christ minister at New Dimensions Chicago. “It’s a matter of justice, and so as a Christian, as a citizen, I feel that it’s my duty.” Mr. Tindell, who is gay, is raising three children with his partner of 17 years.

The Rev. Kim L. Beckmann of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who lives in the Chicago area, said she was drawn into the movement “as my gay and lesbian parishioners were welcomed into our congregation.”

“I have participated in blessings of these unions for longer than we’ve even been talking about marriage,” she said. “I’m thrilled to take this step.”

Laurie Higgins, cultural analyst for the Illinois Family Institute, which opposes same-sex marriage, criticized the branding of the issue as a matter of “equality” and “inclusion.”

“All adults, regardless of their sexual proclivities, are entitled to participate in the sexually complementary institution of marriage,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Those who identify as homosexual choose not to participate in it.”

The letter, Ms. Higgins said, “is signed quite obviously by faith leaders who have adopted radical, ahistorical, heretical theological views.”

“Their views are informed not by careful exegesis, but by personal desire and political convictions,” she said.

Signatories of the letter said one of their motivations was to challenge the assumption that religion went hand in hand with opposition to same-sex marriage.

The Rev. Kara Wagner Sherer of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chicago said it was a way for religious leaders to say, “I’m a faithful Christian or a Jew or Muslim, and I think that marriage equality is important.”

“It doesn’t have to be a faith issue,” she said. “We understand our Scripture in a different way.”

The Episcopal Church endorsed same-sex marriage in July. Other denominations, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Roman Catholic Church, have reaffirmed their opposition.

Ms. Steans said she and Mr. Harris had been careful to ensure that the Illinois legislation would protect religious freedom. Under the proposed law, she said, “no faith has to solemnize a marriage they don’t want to.”

She added, though, that she had long believed that many religious leaders would like to conduct same-sex marriages, and that with the release of the letter, it was “very heartening to see that that will be the case.”

Ms. Beckmann, the Lutheran minister, also cited the leeway for denominations and congregations to choose whether to ordain same-sex marriages.

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About New York: One Boy’s Death Moves State to Action to Prevent Others

The action by New York has elated sepsis researchers and experts, including members of a national panel who this month formally recommended that the federal government adopt standards similar to what the state is planning.

Though little known, sepsis, an abnormal and self-destructive immune response to infection or illness, is a leading cause of death in hospitals. It often progresses to severely low blood pressure, shock and organ failure.

Over the last decade, a global consortium of doctors, researchers, hospitals and advocates has developed guidelines on early identification and treatment of sepsis that it says have led to significant drops in mortality rates. But first hints of the problem, like a high pulse rate and fever, often are hard for clinicians to tell apart from routine miseries that go along with the flu or cold.

“First and foremost, they need to suspect sepsis,” Dr. Mitchell M. Levy, a professor at Brown University School of Medicine and a lead author of a paper on the latest sepsis treatment guidelines to be published simultaneously next month in the United States in a journal, Critical Care Medicine, and in Europe in Intensive Care Medicine.

“It’s the most common killer in intensive care units,” Dr. Levy said. “It kills more people than breast cancer, lung cancer and stroke combined.”

If started early enough, the treatment, which includes antibiotics and fluids, can help people escape from the drastic vortex of sepsis, according to findings by researchers working with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, the global consortium. The tactics led to a reduction of “relative risk mortality by 40 percent,” Dr. Levy said.

Although studies of 30,000 patients show that the guidelines save lives, “the problem is that many hospitals are not adhering to them,” said Dr. Clifford S. Deutschman, director of the sepsis research program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

About 300 hospitals participate in the study, and the consortium has a goal of having 10,000. “The case is irrefutable: if you take these sepsis measures, and you build a program to help clinicians and hospitals suspect sepsis and identify it early, that will mean more people will survive,” Dr. Levy said.

At a symposium in October, the New York health commissioner, Dr. Nirav R. Shah, said that he would require state hospitals to adopt best practices for early identification and treatment of sepsis. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to make it a major initiative in 2013, said Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for the governor. “The state is taking unprecedented measures to prevent and effectively treat sepsis in health care facilities across the state and is looking at a wide range of additional measures to better protect patients,” Mr. Vlasto said.

In April, Rory Staunton, a sixth grader from Queens, died of severe septic shock after he became infected, apparently through a cut he suffered while playing basketball. The severity of his illness was not recognized when he was treated in the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center. He was sent home with a diagnosis of an ordinary bellyache. Hours later, alarming laboratory results became available that suggested he was critically ill, but neither he nor his family was contacted. For an About New York column in The New York Times, Rory’s parents, Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton, publicly discussed their son’s final days. Their revelations prompted doctors and hospitals across the country to seek new approaches to heading off medical errors.

In addition, Commissioner Shah in New York convened a symposium on sepsis, which included presentations from medical experts and Rory’s parents.

At the end of the meeting, Dr. Shah said that he had listened to all the statistics on the prevalence of the illness, and that one had stuck in his memory: “Twenty-five percent,” he said — the portion of the Staunton family lost to sepsis.

He said he would issue new regulations requiring hospitals to use best practices in identifying and treating sepsis, actions that, he said, he was taking “in honor of Rory Staunton.”

The governor’s spokesman, Mr. Vlasto, said that “the Staunton family’s advocacy has been essential to creating a strong public will for action.”

Dr. Levy said New York’s actions were “bold, pioneering and grounded in good scientific evidence,” adding, “The commissioner has taken the first step even before the federal government.”

Dr. Deutschman said that initiatives like those in New York were needed to overcome resistance among doctors. “You’re talking about a profession that has always prided itself on its autonomy,” he said. “They don’t like to be told that they’re wrong about something.”

The availability of proven therapies should move treatment of sepsis into a new era, experts say, comparing it to how heart attacks were handled not long ago. People arriving in emergency rooms with chest pains were basically put to bed because not much could be done for them, said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, the president of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Dr. Tracey, a neurosurgeon, has made major discoveries about the relationship between the nervous system and the runaway immune responses of sepsis.

If physicians and nurses were trained to watch for sepsis, as they now routinely do for heart attacks, many of its most dire problems could be headed off before they got out of control, he said. The Stauntons have awakened doctors and nurses to the possibility of danger camouflaged as a stomach bug.

“We are with sepsis where we were with heart attack in the early 1980s,” Dr. Tracey said.

“If you don’t think of it as a possibility, this story can happen again and again. This case could change the world.”

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

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Doomsday Prophecy Prompts Rumors of Violence in Schools

Predictions of doomsday have come and gone repeatedly without coming true. But the latest prophecy, tethered to the Mayan calendar and forecasting that the world will self-destruct on Friday, has prompted many rumors of violence, with a particular focus on school shootings or bomb threats.

With students and parents already jittery after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., last week, rampant posts on Facebook and Twitter have fed the hysteria, and police departments across the country have been inundated with calls. Overwhelmed with the task of responding to threats and unconfirmed reports, districts in Bend, Ore., Stafford County, Va., Wake County, N.C., and Oak Creek, Wis., have sent out letters to parents trying to tamp down the panic.

In three counties in Michigan, Genesee, Lapeer and Sanilac, administrators were spending so much time dealing with reports of planned violence that the superintendents decided to send 80,000 students on their winter holiday break two days early.

“We hate canceling school more than anything,” said Matt Wandrie, the superintendent of the Lapeer Community Schools, north of Detroit. “We’re not doing this because we think there’s an imminent threat to our students. We’re doing this because we’ve been doing nothing but policing.”

Mr. Wandrie said that students and parents were passing on rumors they had picked up online — “It was like ‘my niece’s neighbor’s daughter says there’s going to be gun violence at school on Friday,’ ” he said — and added that students were overheard in the hallways saying things like “Let’s go out with a bang on Friday.”

“If you’ve got students who are disenfranchised or unstable or members of a community who really believe this end of the world stuff,” he said, “whether I think it’s credible or not, as a fairly logical person and human being, I’m not going to take that risk.”

Similar rumors prompted about 50 parents to call the police department in Oak Creek, the town in Wisconsin where a gunman shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in August.

Chief John Edwards said his department investigated every call but found that they seemed to be repeating a version of the same rumor that had gone viral online. He said that there was “no credible evidence” of a real threat.

On Wednesday morning, Chief Edwards visited Oak Creek High School to talk to faculty and students over the public address system, advising them that police officers stationed on campus would practice a “zero tolerance” policy for anyone making a threat. “So if anyone makes comments about violence, you will be arrested,” he said. “There will be no warnings.”

Randy Bridges, the superintendent of the Stafford County Public Schools in Virginia, posted a letter to parents on the district’s Web site telling parents that the rumors of violence accompanying the end of the world were “reportedly unfounded and national in scope.”

“I ask that each of you help stop the rumors spreading throughout our community by refusing to share these rumors with others,” Mr. Bridges wrote. He offered links to a source on “How to Talk to Kids about the World Ending in 2012 Rumors” and NASA’s Web site, which promises that Friday “won’t be the end of the world as we know.”

Officials said that previous prognostications of the end of the world, including a prediction of what was called the rapture in May 2011, have not generated the same kind of frenzy in schools.

“I’ve been an officer 19 years, and never have I seen the climate in our area the way it is right now,” said Sgt. Scott Theede of the Grand Blanc Township Police Department in Michigan. “I believe students and parents and everybody are a little bit more on edge as a direct result of what happened last week.”

Contributing to the worry in Grand Blanc was an incident on Wednesday, when a 15-year-old high school student sent a text message to his mother that he had heard shots at school and was hiding in a closet. After the mother called 911, the police responded and found that the boy was playing what he called “a joke.”

The police are considering pressing criminal charges against the boy. But Chief Steven Solomon said that what most surprised him after the police had investigated the call on Wednesday was that students seemed more occupied with their cellphones than with their lessons. “Twitter was lit up,” he said, “and there were so many texts flowing freely among parents, friends and family members during the school day.”

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Russian Official Says Adoption Ban Violates Treaties

The warning, which was made by Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets in a letter to Mr. Putin last week and became public on Tuesday, quickly widened a split over the measure at the highest levels of the Russian government. Russian lawmakers are pushing the ban as retaliation for a new American law punishing Russian citizens accused of violating human rights.

In her letter, Ms. Golodets said the proposed ban, which has already been approved by the lower house of Parliament, would violate the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which took effect in 1980, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which went into force in 1990. Russia is a party to both agreements, though the United States is not. She also said such a ban would violate Russian federal law.

The letter was first reported by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, and it drew a sharp response from Russia’s commissioner of children’s rights, Pavel Astakhov, a longtime advocate of restricting international adoptions.

“Russia will not violate any international legal standards,” Mr. Astakhov told the RIA Novosti news agency on Tuesday.

He added, “And we can see that children handed over to the United States are not protected.”

The adoption ban was proposed as a response to the new American law barring Russian citizens accused of human rights abuses from traveling to the United States and from owning real estate or other assets there. Critics of the Russian law say that it will most hurt orphans, who are already suffering in Russia’s deeply troubled child welfare system.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said the president had not seen the letter, and Mr. Peskov expressed annoyance at having the government’s internal discussions debated in public. “It is not always pleasant to learn about official correspondence from the media,” he told Russian news agencies.

From the outset, the proposed ban has divided officials at the highest levels of the Russian government. Several senior officials, including the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who had a personal hand in negotiating the adoption agreement with the United States, have spoken out against it.

At first, lawmakers proposed a bill that would impose sanctions on American judges and others accused of violating the rights of adopted Russian children in the United States. A number of cases involving the abuse or even deaths of adopted Russian children in recent years have generated publicity and outrage in Russia.

The Russian bill was named for Dimitri Yakovlev, a toddler who died of heatstroke in Virginia in 2008 after his adoptive father left him in a parked car for nine hours. The father, Miles Harrison, was acquitted of manslaughter by a judge who ruled that the death was an accident.

Mr. Astakhov, the children’s rights commissioner, on Tuesday reiterated his criticism that international adoptions are overly driven by profit motives. He said that international adoptions in Russia alone are a $1.5 billion business, and that each adoption costs $30,000 to $50,000. The Russian law would bar adoption agencies that work with Americans from operating in Russia. Nearly 1,000 Russian children were adopted by parents from the United States in 2011, more than from any other country.

Russia’s upper house of Parliament, the Federal Assembly, is expected to approve the bill this week, which would send it to Mr. Putin for his signature.

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At Least 2 Firefighters Near Rochester Shot Dead at Fire Scene

William Spengler, 62, shot and killed himself after a gunfight with a police officer in Webster, a Rochester suburb, Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said.

"It was a trap set by Mr. Spengler, who laid in wait and shot first responders," Pickering told a news conference.

Separately, a police officer in Wisconsin and another in Texas were shot and killed on Monday, according to police and media reports.

The attacks on first responders came 10 days after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history that left 20 students and six adults dead at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and intensified the debate about gun control in the United States.

Spengler was convicted of manslaughter in 1981 for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer, according to New York State Department of Corrections records. After prison he spent eight years on parole.

"We don't have an easy reason" for the attack on the firefighters, Pickering said, "but just looking at the history ... obviously this was an individual with a lot of problems."

Spengler opened fire around 5:45 a.m. after two of the firefighters arrived at the house in a fire truck and two others responded in their own cars, Pickering said.

Pickering appeared to wipe tears from his eyes at an earlier news conference when he identified the dead firefighters as Lieutenant Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka. Chiapperini was also a police lieutenant.

The injured firefighters, one of whom was in critical condition, were identified as Joseph Hofsetter and Theodore Scardino. Off-duty Police Officer John Ritter was hit by gunfire as he drove past the scene.

Pickering said police had found several types of weapons, including a rifle used to shoot the firefighters. As a convicted felon it was illegal for Spengler to own guns.

Police had not had any contact with Spengler in the "recent past," Pickering said.

Four houses were destroyed by the fire and four were damaged, Pickering said.

COPS TARGETED

Police Officer Jennifer Sebena, 30, was found dead on Monday in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb of Wauwatosa, police said.

Sebena was on patrol between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. and wearing body armor when she was shot several times, police said. She was found by another officer after she did not respond to calls from the police dispatcher.

In Houston, Texas, an officer with the Bellaire Police Department died after a shootout at around 9 a.m. and a bystander was also killed, according to local media reports.

A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department was not immediately available for comment. A police officer answering the telephone confirmed media reports but declined further comment. A suspect was in the hospital, according to reports.

Before Monday's killings, the Washington-based National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reported that 125 federal, state and local officers had died in the line of duty this year.

Forty-seven deaths were firearms-related, 50 were from traffic-related incidents, and 28 were from other causes, it said.

(This story is corrected with spelling of gunman's name throughout, Spengler not Spangler)

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by David Brunnstrom and M.D. Golan)

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The Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012

For more than a decade, the so-called major labels, such as they still exist, have been paying a heavy price for long years of excess and shortsighted management. Some have maintained a core quality, often surrounded by layers of crossover pandering and superstar indulgence.

But as our honor roll suggests, these days most of the action lies elsewhere: with the latter-day stalwart Harmonia Mundi and upstart labels like Avie and Cedille; with big American orchestras recording for small international labels (the New York Philharmonic for Dacapo, the Minnesota Orchestra for Bis); with performing institutions issuing their own recordings (the Berlin Philharmonic; the Boston Symphony, Mariinsky and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras; John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists).

To add to the industry’s uncertainties, we keep hearing that the CD is doomed, however much — as the list clearly shows — it continues to dominate our listening habits.

Be all of that as it may, our critics had little difficulty compiling a small treasury of excellent recordings. We allowed each critic to choose up to five CDs, DVDs or downloads and made a conscious attempt to spread the wealth, sorting out duplications. (I, for one, could happily have doubled up on two of the Bach recordings listed, Mr. Gardiner’s motets and Andras Schiff’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” but was just as content to trawl more broadly.)

Happy listening.

BACH: MOTETS Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Soli Deo Gloria SDC 716; CD). Few choirs sing Bach with such loving attention to the text and such exquisitely floating textures. None are more persuasive in revealing the sensuality, delight and even playfulness Bach brought to these motets, which are among the most personal expressions of his faith. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

BACH: ‘ST. MATTHEW PASSION’ Vocal soloists; Berlin Radio Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Simon Rattle (Berliner Philharmoniker BPH120011; DVD). A tenor kneeling at the feet of the violist da gamba; a solo violinist locking eyes with a bass-baritone, as they pass melodic material back and forth; two choirs, face to face, in dialogue: the DVD of Peter Sellars’s 2011 “ritualization” of the “St. Matthew Passion” by the Berlin Philharmonic captures great musicians at their most vulnerable, bringing raw emotion and social relevance to this canonic work. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

BACH: ‘THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER,’ BOOKS 1 AND 2 Andras Schiff, pianist (ECM New Series 2270-73; four CDs). If only as a record of Mr. Schiff’s current approach to this inexhaustible work — its lyricism achieved without the use of the sustaining pedal — this recording would be invaluable. But it also stands on its own, both energetic and restrained. The approach is precise and, in its way, traditional, but each phrase feels natural and fresh. ZACHARY WOOLFE

BRAHMS: SERENADES Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas McGegan (Philharmonia Baroque Productions PBP-05; CD). These are the first period-instrument accounts of the two serenades that I’ve encountered, though that is the least of their charms. More to the point, they rank among the finest recorded performances of these underrated works, perhaps second only to Istvan Kertesz’s classic versions with the London Symphony Orchestra, on Decca. JAMES R. OESTREICH

BRITTEN: VOCAL WORKS Nicholas Phan, tenor; Myra Huang, pianist; other artists (Avie AV2258; CD). The young tenor Nicholas Phan again proves himself an affecting interpreter of Britten’s music. His new recording, “Still Falls the Rain,” offers seldom-heard Britten works, including “The Heart of the Matter” (revised by Peter Pears), for tenor, horn, piano and narrator (the actor Alan Cumming). ANTHONY TOMMASINI

CHOPIN: PIANO WORKS, VOLUME 2 Louis Lortie, pianist (Chandos 10714; CD). There is not exactly a shortage of Chopin discs by exemplary pianists. But Louis Lortie offers a worthy addition with his elegant interpretations of the four ballades, the Opus 57 Berceuse, the Opus 60 Barcarolle and six nocturnes. His passionate readings are notable for both their poetic introspection and their tempestuous virtuosity. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

DVORAK: SYMPHONY NO. 8 Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, conducted by James Levine (BSO Classics download; bso.org/Merchandise/Detail/43876). If there is a recording of anything that ends more excitingly, I don’t know it. And these are not cheap thrills but an eloquent culmination earned throughout by the brilliant response of the young professionals at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s training camp in 2008 to Mr. Levine’s big-league demands. JAMES R. OESTREICH

MOZART: ‘DON GIOVANNI’ Vocal soloists; Mahler Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Deutsche Grammophon 477 9878; three CDs). The impressive cast for this “Don Giovanni” includes Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in the title role, with Luca Pisaroni (Leporello), Joyce DiDonato (Donna Elvira), Diana Damrau (Donna Anna) and other fine artists, brought together in a wondrously fresh performance conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ANTHONY TOMMASINI

MOZART: ‘LA FINTA GIARDINIERA’ Vocal soloists; Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, conducted by René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi HMC 902126.28; three CDs). Mr. Jacobs’s careening, crisp recordings of Mozart’s operas are idiosyncratic joys, and his “Finta Giardiniera” brings out both the farce and the melancholy in a long-overlooked work. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra plays with wit and snap, and the cast is as vigorous as the conducting. ZACHARY WOOLFE

NIELSEN: SYMPHONIES NOS. 2, 3 New York Philharmonic, conducted by Alan Gilbert (Dacapo 6.220623; CD). Alan Gilbert is in the midst of an exciting project with the New York Philharmonic to perform and record Carl Nielsen’s complete symphonies and concertos. The first release in the series is terrific, with pulsing and insightful accounts of the Second Symphony (“The Four Temperaments”) and the Third (“Sinfonia Espansiva”). ANTHONY TOMMASINI

NONO: ‘LA LONTANANZA NOSTALGICA UTOPICA FUTURA’ Miranda Cuckson, violinist; Christopher Burns, electronics (Urlicht AudioVisual UAD-5992-SE; two CDs). Played with assured mystery by the accomplished Ms. Cuckson, Luigi Nono’s 1988-89 work swerves from ethereal to violent and back again. The violinist interacts with previously taped material, including both her own playing and studio sounds, and wanders during a live performance, a spatial element captured in the surround-sound version on one of the discs in this set. At times Ms. Cuckson even sings, hauntingly — a part of the score seemingly ignored by previous interpreters. ZACHARY WOOLFE

PUCCINI: ‘LA BOHÈME’ Vocal soloists; Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, conducted by Eivind Gullberg Jensen (Electric Picture EPC01; DVD). The intellectually charged but dazzlingly theatrical director Stefan Herheim deconstructed the traditional sets of the Norwegian National Opera’s previous production of “La Bohème,” creating a mixture of old and new with a sober twist: Mimi dies of cancer at the start, and the opera is reconfigured as Rodolfo’s surreal, moving refusal to admit it. ZACHARY WOOLFE

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO. 7 Mariinsky Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev (Mariinsky MAR0533; CD). I named Mr. Gergiev’s Philips recording of the epic “Leningrad” Symphony with the two orchestras he led then, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Orchestra, a best of 2003. His conception of the work seems only to have deepened since, and the St. Petersburg orchestra’s sound, neither diluted nor amplified, lies closer to the heart of the music. JAMES R. OESTREICH

SIBELIUS: SYMPHONIES NOS. 2, 5 Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Osmo Vanska (Bis SACD-1986; CD). This is a poignant document: a longtime also-ran ensemble makes a persuasive bid to be ranked among the world’s greatest, absolutely luxuriating in its music director’s great specialty, only to have its current season seriously foreshortened, if not entirely wiped out, by labor-management strife. JAMES R. OESTREICH

VIVALDI: ‘L’ORACOLO IN MESSENIA’ Europa Galante, conducted by Fabio Biondi (Virgin Classics 50999 6025472 6; two CDs). Fabio Biondi conducts the excellent period-instrument orchestra Europa Galante in a fiery, vivacious performance of a pasticcio opera that was popular in its day, then forgotten. It is presented here in a reconstruction by Mr. Biondi with an excellent cast, including Magnus Staveland, Vivica Genaux, Ann Hallenberg, Romina Basso and Xavier Sabata. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

VIVALDI: ‘TEUZZONE’ Vocal soloists; Le Concert des Nations, conducted by Jordi Savall (Naïve OP 30513; three CDs). Joined by his gleaming, vibrant instrumental ensemble and a cast endowed with the brilliant agility that Vivaldian style requires, Mr. Savall serves both the glitter and the emotion of a work unheard for centuries. The drama, set at the ancient Chinese court, is surprisingly nuanced, and the energy is endless. ZACHARY WOOLFE

‘BACH AND BEYOND,’ PART 1 Jennifer Koh, violinist (Cedille Records CDR 90000 134). The violinist Jennifer Koh is known as both a masterly Bach interpreter and a champion of contemporary repertory. As part of her “Bach and Beyond” series, she pairs alluring performances of Bach’s Partitas Nos. 2 and 3 with Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2 and works by Kaija Saariaho and Missy Mazzoli. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

‘BAROQUE CONVERSATIONS’ David Greilsammer; pianist (Sony Classical 88697929692; CD). The elegant Israeli pianist David Greilsammer excels at juxtaposing old and new music to find common ground between pieces written centuries apart. On this exciting recording, contemporary scores by Morton Feldman, Helmut Lachenmann, Matan Porat and Nimrod Sahar are surrounded by Couperin, Rameau, Handel and other Baroque composers. ANTHONY TOMMASINI

‘DARKNESSE VISIBLE’ Inon Barnatan, pianist (Avie AV2256; CD). Each piece on this recording by the brilliant and thoughtful pianist Inon Barnatan was inspired by a literary work: Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” and “La Valse”; Debussy’s “Suite Bergamasque”; Ronald Stevenson’s fantasy on music from Britten’s “Peter Grimes”; and, the title work, Thomas Adès’s “Darknesse Visible.” Each receives a superb performance. ANTHONY TOMMASINI

‘FERNE GELIEBTE’ Christian Gerhaher, baritone; Gerold Huber, pianist (Sony Classical 8869935432; CD). The German baritone Christian Gerhaher, who took master classes with the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, would make his mentor proud with this recording of lieder by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Haydn and Berg. Mr. Gerhaher’s mellifluous voice is aptly complemented by the supple touch and deeply expressive playing of Gerold Huber, his superb pianist. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

‘MEANWHILE’ Eighth Blackbird (Cedille 90000 133; CD). The adventurous ensemble Eighth Blackbird has entranced listeners in recent years with its theatrical interpretations of new music. Its performances on disc are equally electric, with dynamic interpretations of works including Philippe Hurel’s kaleidoscopic “... à mesure,” Stephen Hartke’s quirky “Meanwhile: Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays” and Philip Glass’s “Music in Similar Motion.” VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

‘TERPSICHORE: MUSE OF THE DANCE’ Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra, directed by Skip Sempé (Paradizo PA0011; CD). Michael Praetorius, that liveliest and most entertaining of Renaissance masters, supplies most of the music, and Doron Sherwin, the incomparable cornetto virtuoso best known for his work with the ensemble L’Arpeggiata, provides much of the improvisational charge. JAMES R. OESTREICH

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