MOSCOW — The new Ukrainian president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, put together a coalition in Parliament on Thursday, allowing him to consolidate control over the government and avoid new elections that could have created renewed political instability.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s major coalitions were locked in a surprisingly close race on Thursday, in initial results from elections that deepened divisions across a fractured landscape. Candidates were quick to charge fraud, heightening concerns whether Iraq’s fledgling institutions were strong enough to support a peaceful transfer of power.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s seemingly unending political crisis is likely to reach another moment of tension this weekend with huge opposition rallies that organizers say they hope will paralyze the city and bring down the government.

PONDICHERRY, INDIA — A dark wind blew into this sleepy, coastal town recently — it carried the threat of global terrorism, of bombs and gunmen and unprovoked attacks on soft targets.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military prosecutor charged two Israeli staff sergeants on Thursday with instructing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open several bags the soldiers suspected were booby-trapped during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza just over a year ago.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan met with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani here on Thursday in a show of public friendship, even as the two sides tried to work through underlying tensions over how to deal with the Taliban militants who use the countries’ lawless border region as a sanctuary.

Five days after they were kidnapped in the Port-au-Prince area, two Swiss women, aid workers for Doctors Without Borders, were released unharmed on Wednesday night.

WASHINGTON — At a time of heavy international pressure on Iran, the State Department said on Thursday that the human rights situation there had “degenerated” since the disputed presidential election last year.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile’s new president, Sebastián Piñera, was minutes from being sworn in on Thursday when major aftershocks struck the central coast of this earthquake-ravaged country. But less than an hour after being inaugurated, he appeared on television to announce that troops, relief supplies and even Mr. Piñera himself would be heading immediately to the quake zone.

ABU DHABI—Defense secretary Robert M. Gates met here on Thursday with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates as part of an intensifying American effort to build up defenses with Arab allies and contain Iran’s military might in the Persian Gulf.

TEL AVIV — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. came to Israel early this week to promote new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and tighten the bonds between Israel and the United States. He left Thursday amid increased uncertainty over the nature and timing of those talks and with a sense of unease hanging over the American-Israeli relationship.

Valery Gergiev has been the artistic and general director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg for 22 years. The Mariinsky orchestra, an ensemble that passes on traditions, artistic identity and even instruments from generation to generation, has formed a bond with Mr. Gergiev. When things are working well, the orchestra and the conductor bring out the best in each other.

MILTON AVERY

Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.

Two books on the choreographer Paul Taylor are in preparation. One is a critical study by Angela Kane, whom the Paul Taylor Dance Company lists as its historian; the other is an authorized biography by Suzanne Carbonneau. Both of these scholars have followed Mr. Taylor’s choreography for years, enjoying close access to him and his associates. It’s fair to expect that their treatments will be sensitive, intelligent, responsible.

For the final week of his visit with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, Riccardo Muti is conducting a peculiarly balanced program devoted to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, as enduring a work as you’ll find, and Franck’s Symphony in D minor, a score that has always struck many listeners as diffuse and bombastic. Oddly, at the first performance, on Wednesday evening, Mr. Muti made the Franck seem more vigorous and exciting than the Beethoven.

How German was Otto Dix? The question echoes through the retrospective of Dix’s unforgiving art, the first show of its kind ever held in North America, at the Neue Galerie. The answer delivered by this completely engrossing yet sadly flawed exhibition is: deeply, madly, truly.

Call it a victory for democracy or peer pressure, but either way it’s happening: Betty White, above, the 88-years-young “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Golden Girls” star, will be hosting “Saturday Night Live” on May 8, a pre-Mother’s Day episode also featuring appearances from six “SNL” alumnae. Though a popular Facebook campaign helped build Ms. White’s cause, Lorne Michaels, the “SNL” creator and executive producer, said Thursday that the grass-roots movement wasn’t the sole reason for the booking. “The depth of feeling for her at the show and particularly among the women who are coming back was very deep,” Mr. Michaels said in a telephone interview. He added that he had concerns given the show’s “grueling” schedule, and as a solution invited the former “SNL” performers Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon to appear, too. Ultimately, he said, Ms. White’s age wouldn’t prevent her from participating fully. “Mind you, at our show, Pardo’s 92,” he said, referring to the announcer Don Pardo. “A couple people in wardrobe are older than him. So she’s a spring chicken in our world.”

Beginning with the paranoid, conspiracy-mongering brother on the alien-attack series “Invasion” and continuing with the slacker best friend of the soul-hunting hero on “Reaper,” Tyler Labine has made a specialty of playing lovable misfits who rise to the occasion.

Considering how revolutionary Surrealist photography was in the years before World War II, what with its double-exposing, montaging, solarizing and other techniques, it may seem paradoxical that nostalgia would be the mood suffusing “Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography and Paris” at the International Center of Photography. But it makes sense.

Yves Klein, the radical French artist who died in 1962 when he was only 34, has been something of an enigma to Americans. Individual works have occasionally turned up in museum shows in this country, and Upper East Side galleries like Gagosian, Michael Werner and L&M Arts have displayed his work. In contrast to Europe, where several institutions have held shows of his art, such exhibitions have been rare here.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Franklin Delano Roosevelt hardly did any homework as a Harvard undergraduate. While enrolled in classes like General Paleontology and English Letter Writers, he concentrated on editing the school newspaper, dating debutantes and collecting stuffed birds. His roommate, Lathrop Brown, who later was a one-term congressman from Long Island, managed the football team and earned mostly D’s.

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Editors: To avoid duplication, please note that all these stories are also moving in longer form.

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Years after Charles Ponzi was imprisoned for a fraud that cost victims millions of dollars in 1920, the state of Massachusetts determined it had recovered all the assets it could, and began to distribute them to victims, who stood to receive less than 30 cents for each dollar they invested.

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They are the most wired vehicles on the road, with dashboard computers, sophisticated radios, navigation systems and cellphones.

One curse of the digital age is the need to manage multiple continuing conversations — be they via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, instant messages or text-messaging on your cellphone.

Blame “Minority Report.”

If you’re a recent convert to smartphones, you’re probably still discovering all the amazing things that your new BlackBerry, Android phone or iPhone can do. But one thing you most likely found out right away: the more you do, the shorter your phone’s battery lasts.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Winter Olympics and the coming Paralympic Games here have generally not been blessed with wintry weather. But an elaborate weather forecasting service that has been operating for nearly four years meant that the unwelcome conditions were not a surprise.

Top-seeded Syracuse had squandered a 9-point, second-half lead and trailed No. 8 Georgetown by 6 points with just over five minutes remaining in their Big East tournament quarterfinal when the Orange’s bad day got worse.

It still takes some believing that the Indian Premier League, which starts again Friday, is less than two years old.

CLEARWATER, Fla.

LAKELAND, Fla. — Miguel Cabrera’s locker in the Tigers’ spring training clubhouse is a few feet from the office of Manager Jim Leyland and directly in Leyland’s view.

Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame tackle who anchored the Los Angeles Rams’ Fearsome Foursome, the line that glamorized defensive play in the National Football League, died early Thursday at a hospital in Duarte, Calif. He was 69.

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — The last World Series began with a special kind of misery for fans in Cleveland. The starting pitchers, C. C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee, had been teammates on the Indians just 16 months earlier. Each won an American League Cy Young Award, only to be traded in the swift overhaul of a team that had nearly won a pennant.

LOS ANGELES — As the buzzer sounded, signifying Arizona’s 75-69 loss to U.C.L.A. in the first round of the Pacific-10 tournament, the Wildcats solemnly followed their coach, Sean Miller, off the court in a single-file line.

DORAL, Fla. — As the southeast winds howled across the Blue Monster Course at Doral Resort and Spa, a ball-striking clinic was going on at the W.G.C.-CA Championship. The golfer putting on the exhibition was Robert Allenby, the lean Australian who is perhaps the purest hitter on tour.

So, while Notre Dame elbowed its way back into college basketball’s consciousness by shoving aside Seton Hall in the Big East men’s basketball tournament, it gave everyone time to think. That’s because, in its now distinctive un-mad March style, the Irish create large gaps of unused time between baskets. While the retro style might be pure brilliance by Notre Dame Coach Mike Brey, as some like Yahoo’s Jason King suggest, it was absolutely necessary, writes Stewart Mandel of SI.com, or everyone in Golden Dome land would still be fixating on scrubbing those messy footprints Charlie Weis left all over its football program. Because Notre Dame was going nowhere fast until Brey discovered he could bore opponents into oblivion.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Jose Reyes’s hyperthyroid condition is not considered serious and no medication is being prescribed to treat it, the Mets said Thursday, but he is still a likely candidate to begin the season on the disabled list.