HONG KONG — The ruling military junta in Myanmar announced a new election law Wednesday that will likely prevent Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s leading opposition figure, from participating in upcoming parliamentary elections.

LONDON — Every Tuesday, Janet Isobel Bishop walks the few blocks from her rented one-bedroom apartment in Notting Hill to a painting course, followed by tai chi lessons. The classes are paid for by the British government, just like the weekly one-hour visits she receives from a caregiver, who also helps her clean her home.

JERUSALEM — Having been removed in favor of Israeli nationalist Jews, members of the Palestinian Ghawi family have been sheltering this winter in a tent on the sidewalk opposite their home of more than five decades in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Counterterrorism forces have shot and killed one of Southeast Asia’s most-wanted Islamic militants, Indonesia’s president said Wednesday.

PARIS — Dutch airport officials announced new security measures on Tuesday, after a Dutch investigative journalist reported smuggling a refilled liquor bottle through the heightened security checks at the airport where a young Nigerian boarded a flight for the United States on Dec. 25 with explosives in his underwear.

NEW DELHI — The upper house of India’s Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women, after the measure stirred two days of political chaos that could whittle the governing coalition’s majority to a dangerously thin margin.

WASHINGTON — China and India formally agreed Tuesday to join the international climate change agreemen reached last December in Copenhagen, the last two major economies to sign up.

PARIS — Israel, widely believed to have nuclear weapons and possessing no oil, said on Tuesday that it intended to develop civilian nuclear plants for energy, offering to build one as a joint project with Jordan, under French supervision.

DOGO NA HAWA, Nigeria — Nightmare images haunt this dusty sun-baked village, fresh memories of tall young men emerging from darkness to slash the unarmed with long knives in a frenzy of ethnic and religious hatred.

TOKYO — Japan ended decades of denials on Tuesday by confirming the existence of secret cold war-era agreements with Washington that, among other things, had allowed American nuclear-armed warships to sail into Japanese ports in violation of Japan’s non-nuclear policies.

ROME — Defending itself against a growing child sexual abuse scandal in Europe, one that has even come close to the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican said Tuesday that local European churches had addressed the issue with “timely and decisive action.”

The CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men” attracted its largest audience in three years on Monday, leading the night’s ratings with 17.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s estimates. CBS won the night over all, benefiting not only from its 9 p.m. ratings for “Two and a Half Men” but also from “The Big Bang Theory,” the night’s second-highest-rated show with 16.3 million viewers, at 9:30. Fox was runner-up on the night, leading the 8 o’clock hour with “House” (12.8 million), which edged ahead of CBS’s other comedies. But Fox’s “24” lagged behind at 9 with 8.9 million viewers. ABC ranked third with its two-hour special, “The Bachelor: Jason and Molly’s Wedding” (9.3 million). At 10, ABC’s “Castle” (9.1 million) outperformed NBC’s “Law & Order” (5.2 million) but trailed CBS’s “CSI: Miami” (11.9 million). NBC placed fourth on the night..

PARIS — There’s something both touching and disturbing at the heart of “Claude Parent: Graphic and Built Works,” a marvelous exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris’s architecture museum, and it has to do with what the show tells us about our diminished cultural expectations.

The Starz cable channel said on Tuesday that it would delay production of the second season of its series “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” so the actor Andy Whitfield, left, who plays the title character, can begin treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Starz said in a news release that Mr. Whitfield “discovered the cancer during a routine checkup” and that his doctors “have stated his condition is very treatable and was detected in its early stages.” Starz began showing “Spartacus,” an action series about that Roman slave turned revolutionary, in January. The show quickly became a hit for the cable channel, drawing record ratings for its debut and seeing its audience grow.

The editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, is negotiating to add a television job to his schedule. He is in final talks to be a host of a new PBS Friday-night public affairs series called “Need to Know,” said executives familiar with the production who wanted to stay anonymous because the contracts had not been signed. The co-anchor for the program, which begins May 7 at 8:30 p.m., is expected to be Alison Stewart, formerly of “The Bryant Park Project,” NPR’s short-lived morning show, and before that anchor of “The Most” on MSNBC. The new series will be produced for PBS by WNET.org of New York from a new street-side studio at Lincoln Center. Mr. Meacham, who won the Pulitzer last year for his book “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” is not leaving the magazine, said a Newsweek spokesman, Frank DeMaria.

ROME — By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended. Caravaggio, who somehow found time to paint when he wasn’t brawling, scandalizing pooh-bahs, chasing women (and men), murdering a tennis opponent with a dagger to the groin, fleeing police assassins or getting his face mutilated by one of his many enemies, has bumped him from his perch.

Sweaty, drinking from a pitcher of beer and spilling his syllables in rapid, often inscrutable fashion, the Alabama rapper Yelawolf was doing the absolute best he could on the stage at Brooklyn Bowl on Monday night, given the circumstances. After he finished playing one of the standout tracks on “Trunk Muzik,” his latest mixtape — an unprintably titled song with a beefy, bellowing chorus, horn stabs and military-march drums — he was vexed.

It was a scene of classic do-it-yourself Brooklyn concert promotion: In a small apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a dozen young workers who could pass for American Apparel models crowded onto sofas one afternoon last week, typing furiously on laptops as they completed preparations for a rapidly approaching indie-rock festival.

The concert presented by Max Lifchitz and his North/South Chamber Orchestra at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday night was billed as a 30th-anniversary gala. Since founding North/South Consonance in 1980, Mr. Lifchitz, a Mexican-born composer, conductor and pianist, has devoted copious effort to promoting the work of composers underserved elsewhere, through a regular series of concerts in New York and on CDs released by North/South Recordings.

Sometimes the only way to take a measure of a band is hearing it play a gig. Most times, actually. But Harvey Milk, from Athens, Ga., seems a special case.

The struggling New York City Opera, operating with a slender financial cushion, announced plans on Tuesday for another stripped down, five-production season but said it would add a series of concert performances.

LONDON — The London theater has hanging over it at the moment a question so pressing that you might think that time — or at least all other entertainment options — had stopped: Will “Love Never Dies,” the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” reawaken its composer’s faltering commercial career?

For a few days last fall, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood celebrated a big victory: The tiny advocacy group had successfully pushed the Walt Disney Co. to offer full refunds to everyone who had bought the company’s popular Baby Einstein videos from June 2004 to September 2009.

Nicola Clark contributed reporting.

(Sports of The Times)

(SUBS to add contributor line; SUBS graf beginning “The indictment said that . . .” to add new detail.)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message through an automatic translation service that the company had licensed.

PARIS — France Télécom’s new management must move quickly “to take charge and encourage radical change” if it is to put an end to a suicide crisis, according to a study commissioned by the company.

After imploring drivers to be more aggressive on the racetrack this season to help rebuild fading fan support, Nascar reinforced that message Tuesday by issuing a slap-on-the-wrist three-race probation to Carl Edwards for deliberately wrecking Brad Keselowski on Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Alex Rodriguez said Tuesday that although federal investigators want to meet with him about his ties to a Canadian doctor who is under investigation for possibly distributing performance-enhancing drugs, he was at ease with the situation.

With Rutgers’ 69-68 loss to Cincinnati on Tuesday night in the first round of the Big East Tournament, the school now faces a decision on the future of Coach Fred Hill.

Calling the state of college sports the most unstable he has seen in 29 years, Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said Tuesday that the Irish were considering giving up their football independence.

Henry Wittenberg, an Olympic gold and silver medalist who became one of America’s greatest amateur wrestlers while he was a New York City police officer, died on Tuesday at his home in Somers, N.Y. He was 91.

HARTFORD — Kalana Greene, Connecticut’s senior guard, does not run up and down a basketball court as much as she bounces on the soles of her blue high-tops, fiercely vaulting from one spot to another, often displaying exquisite timing.

There was no welcome mat for sour thoughts at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday when the Yankees announced that the newest postseason college football game, the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, will be played there on Dec. 30.

For all the athleticism that UConn’s lineup brought into Tuesday’s game against St. John’s, it was the unit’s collective apathy that was most striking on the court.

Under attack again from inside and outside the game and short on star power, the Davis Cup showed why it is worth saving in a memorable first round that ended, most unusually, on a Monday in Chile.

Willie Davis, who succeeded Duke Snider as the center fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers and used his blazing speed to steal 20 or more bases 11 straight years, led the National League in triples twice and set a record of three stolen bases in a World Series game, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Burbank, Calif. He was 69.

Apparently there is room for only one New York City Triathlon group in this town.