LONDON — Virtually since the moment Gordon Brown took office as prime minister in mid-2007, the epithets clinging to British politics have been those of vacillating fortunes and decline — knife-edge, seesaw, about-face, climb-down — all feeding a clamor for elections to sweep the uncertainty away.

MEXICO CITY — The Dominican authorities said Friday that they had arrested Jorge Aníbal Torres Puello, who acted as a legal adviser for a group of American church members who were detained in Haiti on child abduction charges, even though he himself was wanted on trafficking charges in the United States and El Salvador.

WATERFORD, Ireland — When two North African men under investigation in an alleged terrorist plot to kill a Swedish artist appeared in the gray pillared courthouse here this week, many native Waterford residents reacted as much with puzzlement as dismay, as if Islamic extremism had no conceivable place amid the tranquillity of this quiet old harbor town.

BAGHDAD

The first Chinese trial involving organ trafficking could take place next month in Beijing, according to a report in China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. Four men have been charged with paying living people for organs and then reselling the organs. If found guilty, the men would be sentenced to at least five years in prison. China Daily reported that last year, about a third of 10,000 organ transplants in China involved living donors, almost six times the number in 2008.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Inside this city’s earthquake-cracked psychiatric hospital, a schizophrenic man lay naked on a concrete floor, caked in dust. Other patients, padlocked in tiny concrete cells, clutched the bars and howled for attention. Feces clotted the gutter outside a ward where urine pooled under metal cots without mattresses.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The tribal elders had traveled many hours to reach a windswept Afghan military base on the capital’s outskirts to sign their names to a piece of paper allowing them to bring their countrymen home from American detention.

In recent weeks, the Iranian authorities have released dozens of high-profile opposition figures who were arrested after the disputed presidential election in June, rights advocates said Friday.

MOSCOW — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that proposals offered by the Israeli government to settle a diplomatic dispute with the United States were “useful and productive,” though it was not clear how close Israel had come to meeting American demands.

MEXICO CITY — Dominican authorities announced Friday that they arrested Jorge Torres Puello, who acted as a legal adviser for a group of American church members detained in Haiti on child abduction charges even though he himself was wanted on trafficking charges in the United States and El Salvador.

WASHINGTON — The leading candidate to succeed Gen. Ray Odierno as the top American commander in Iraq is Lloyd J. Austin III, an Army lieutenant general who has done two tours in Iraq and currently serves as a senior aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, senior military and civilian officials say.

In John Neumeier’s ballet adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” the title character undergoes an extreme physical ordeal so that she might live on land. As the orchestra plays a stomping series of cataclysmic chords, a malevolent sea witch wrenches off the mermaid’s fluid blue costume and leaves her almost naked and shivering onstage. With one of her newly acquired human limbs grotesquely contorted over her shoulder, the former mermaid looks like an insect that’s been flayed alive.

IN the first two seasons of the AMC drama “Breaking Bad,” Jesse Pinkman has been party to acts of larceny, blackmail, murder and other felonies; lost his girlfriend as a result of her drug abuse; and fallen back so hard on his own addiction that he eventually ended up in rehab. As Jesse, a seedy, selfish drug maker and dealer endures these hardships, Aaron Paul, the 30-year-old actor who plays him, could hardly be happier.

IN Ted Danson’s hands vanity is the most adaptable — and advantageous — of sins.

Grahamstown, South Africa

MAASTRICHT, NETHERLANDS — The art market says more about the real mood among the actors of the world economy than opinion polls, and the European Fine Art Fair is its most important reflection.

Oprah Winfrey is the big-name narrator of “Life,” an 11-part nature documentary that begins Sunday on Discovery, but the real stars are the camera operators who captured the simply amazing footage, going to rain forests, deserts and just about every other kind of environment to do it.

Jane Sherman, a writer who not only chronicled the excitement of early-20th-century American dance but also lived through it as a performer, died on Tuesday at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood, N.J. She was 101.

Charles Muscatine, a scholar who transformed Chaucer studies by turning attention to the French models for Chaucer’s poetry, and who pursued a side career as an educational reformer after becoming embroiled in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, died on March 12 in Oakland, Calif. He was 89 and lived in Berkeley.

AUSTIN, Tex. — In the blog-accelerated time zone that the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference occupies, the cycle of buzz turns so fast that bands caught up in it can find themselves in the paradoxical state of being brand-new and old hat at the same time.

“It’s a different world today,” sighed an audience member as dancers, some in shiny, silvery bodysuits or leggings, gently coaxed the public to join an improvised piece full of balloons and good will. It was Thursday night at Danspace Project after a presentation of film and work by Elaine Summers, one of the original members of the Judson Dance Theater.

Jazz vibraphonists are often firecrackers, crisp and kinetic even when in an introspective mood. Chris Dingman had some moments like that at the Jazz Gallery in the South Village on Thursday night. But in one of the first prominent showcases for his five-piece band, Waking Dreams, he was largely the picture of accommodation and restraint, projecting a kind of adaptive humility.

The New York Times said in editorials for Saturday, March 20:

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SAN FRANCISCO — Pointing to internal YouTube e-mail messages, Viacom said in a court filing that the video site’s founders turned a blind eye when users uploaded copyrighted clips so they could amass a big audience and sell the company quickly.

BUFFALO — Missouri guard Zaire Taylor likes to describe his team’s up-tempo style of play as more “organized chaos” than “helter-skelter.” He believes his Tigers operate best in the open floor, capitalizing on run-outs to the rim and pouncing on turnovers.

MILWAUKEE — Minnesota blocked a lot of Xavier shots but did not make enough of its own Friday afternoon and fell to the Musketeers, 65-54, in a first-round N.C.A.A. tournament game in the West Region. Jordan Crawford led Xavier with 28 points but he did much more than score. In addition to his shooting skills, Crawford, a sophomore from Detroit, showed a well-rounded mix of passing, dribbling and rebounding.

Xavier has finally elbowed its way into the tiny group of elite teams in women’s college basketball. The Musketeers, however, have not given up the light touches developed along the way, like dancing in layup lines or rapping in the locker room moments before Kevin McGuff, their coach, gives a steely pregame speech.

SPOKANE, Wash. — For a little more than a half, Maryland, a co-champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, struggled to put away a team that had a losing record in Conference USA.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Marco G. is yelling, because he wants to, because he needs to and because if he stops, someone at the Izod Center just might fall asleep. You’re not supposed to sleep at a professional basketball game.

BUFFALO —

BUFFALO — With one crisp crossover, the Syracuse point guard Scoop Jardine sent the message that No. 16-seed Vermont did not belong on the same court as the top-seeded Orange (29-4) Friday. Nick Vier, the defender on the play, was stood up, stumbled and left helpless as Jardine finished strong to the basket. The feeling of domination remained throughout Syracuse’s 79-56 win.

SPOKANE, Wash. — For weeks, Purdue’s bandwagon had emptied. Everyone from a doubting N.C.A.A. tournament selection committee to President Obama — who, like countless others, picked the Boilermakers to be upset in the first round — had persistently downgraded their chances.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — On a day when the N.C.A.A. tournament put the madness back in March, it did not seem to matter to New Mexico that it nearly frittered away a 14-point lead, that the star forward Darington Hobson injured his wrist or that the Lobos did not score a basket from the field over the final seven minutes.

BUFFALO — There was a sense of balance to Gonzaga’s attack Friday night. Matt Bouldin, the Bulldogs’ shaggy-haired shooting guard, powered his way past Florida State’s defenders and reached the paint on drives. Once inside, he joined forces with forward Elias Harris and center Robert Sacre to power up for points. Those three players totaled 43 points.

SPOKANE, Wash. — Texas A&M, making an annual habit of making the tournament and reaching the second round, did it again on Friday by easing past Utah State, 69-53, at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena.