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The president also praised a column by Eli Lake of Bloomberg View, which criticized the selective leaking of intercepted communications between Mr. Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey I. Kislyak. Mr. Lake went on to suggest, however, that Mr. Flynn had been sacrificed to protect other officials, potentially including the president himself.

Having preserved the Union and saved white workers from competing with slave labor, the North could magnanimously acquiesce to such Confederate meretriciousness and the concomitant irrelevance of the country’s blacks. That interpretation served the North too, for it elided uncomfortable questions about the profits reaped by the North from Southern cotton, as well as the North’s long strategy of appeasement and compromise, stretching from the Fugitive Slave Act back to the Constitution itself.

for my community, the message has long been clear: the Civil War is a story for white people—acted out by white people, on white people’s terms—in which blacks feature strictly as stock characters and props. We are invited to listen, but never to truly join the narrative, for to speak as the slave would, to say that we are as happy for the Civil War as most Americans are for the Revolutionary War, is to rupture the narrative. Having been tendered such a conditional invitation, we have elected—as most sane people would—to decline.

With a firm foothold in the public memory and in the academic history, the comfortable narrative found its most influential expression in the popular media. Films like Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind revealed an establishment more interested in the alleged sins perpetrated upon Confederates than in the all-too-real sins perpetrated upon the enslaved people in their midst. That predilection continues. In 2010’s The Conspirator, the director Robert Redford’s Mary Surratt is the preferred victim of political persecution—never mind those whose very lives were persecution.

“It was because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise,” said Foote, neglecting to mention the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-­Nebraska Act, and the fact that any further such compromise would have meant the continued enslavement of black people.

Wilson executed a familiar act of theater—urging the country’s white citizens away from their history, while continuing to act in the spirit of its darkest chapters. Wilson’s ideas were not simply propaganda, but notions derived from some of the country’s most celebrated historians. James McPherson notes that titans of American history like Charles Beard, Avery Craven, and James G. Randall minimized the role of slavery in the war; some blamed the violence on irreconcilable economic differences between a romantic pastoral South and a capitalistic manufacturing North, or on the hot rhetoric of radical abolitionists.

The celebrated Civil War historian Bruce Catton best sums up this sense when he refers to the war as “a consuming tragedy so costly that generations would pass before people could begin to say whether what it had bought was worth the price.” All of those “people” are white. For African Americans, war commenced not in 1861, but in 1661, when the Virginia Colony began passing America’s first black codes, the charter documents of a slave society that rendered blacks a permanent servile class and whites a mass aristocracy. They were also a declaration of war.

African Americans understood they were at war, and reacted accordingly: run­ning away, rebelling violently, fleeing to the British, murdering slave-catchers, and—less spectacularly, though more significantly—refusing to work, breaking tools, bending a Christian God to their own interpretation, stealing back the fruits of their labor, and, in covert corners of their world, committing themselves to the illegal act of learning to read. Southern whites also understood they were in a state of war, and subsequently turned the ante­bellum South into a police state

In our present time, to express the view of the enslaved—to say that the Civil War was a significant battle in the long war against bondage and for government by the people—is to compromise the comfortable narrative. It is to remind us that some of our own forefathers once explicitly rejected the republic to which they’d pledged themselves, and dreamed up another country, with slavery not merely as a bug, but as its very premise. It is to point out that at this late hour, the totems of the empire of slavery—chief among them, its flag—still enjoy an honored place in the homes, and public spaces, of self-professed patriots and vulgar lovers of “freedom.” It is to understand what it means to live in a country that will never apologize for slavery, but will not stop apologizing for the Civil War.

For the portion of the country that still honors, or traces its ancestry to, the men who fired on Fort Sumter, and thus brought war, the truthful story of the Civil War tells of a defeat richly deserved, garnered in a pursuit now condemned. For the blameless North, it throws up the failed legacy of appeasement of slaveholders, the craven willingness to bargain on the backs of black people, and the unwillingness, in the Reconstruction years, to finish what the war started.

For realists, the true story of the Civil War illuminates the problem of ostensibly sober-minded compromise with powerful, and intractable, evil. For radicals, the wave of white terrorism that followed the war offers lessons on the price of revolutionary change. White Americans finding easy comfort in nonviolence and the radical love of the civil-rights movement must reckon with the unsettling fact that black people in this country achieved the rudi­ments of their freedom through the killing of whites.

Confronted with the realization that the Civil War is the genesis of modern America, in general, and of modern black America, in particular, we cannot just implore the Park Service and the custodians of history to do more outreach—we have to become custodians ourselves.

So far Mr. Romney’s most nuanced line of attack was laid out in the introduction to a campaign white paper last fall written by Eliot Cohen, a historian and security expert who worked for Condoleezza Rice in the State Department, that the “high council of the Obama administration” views the “United States as a power in decline,” a “condition that can and should be managed for the global good rather than reversed.” It also alleged a “torrent of criticism, unprecedented for an American president, that Barack Obama has directed at his own country.”

I’m not sure that anyone knows if the candidate has a strong view of his own on this.” Another adviser, saying he would be “cashiered” if the campaign caught him talking to a reporter without approval, said the real answer was that “Romney doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office” and for now was “just happy to leave the impression that when

Obama says he’ll stop an Iranian bomb he doesn’t mean it, and Mitt does.”

Top doctoral programs have far more applicants than they can accept, and many excellent students don’t apply, either because they do not have a high enough level of specialized skills or because they do not want to risk the terrible job market for college teachers. Such students would form a natural pool for non-college teaching

, the greatest intellectual challenge of teaching at any level is to find ways of presenting the content effectively. Our current system seems often to assume that K-12 teachers will need the guidance of “experts” to tell them how to do this. There’s considerable doubt as to the existence of the alleged expertise.

So why not make use of all this talent to develop an elite class of professionals — like those who teach in our colleges — and give them primary responsibility for K-12 education?

Moreover, it’s important that teachers be — as they now often are not — credible authority figures, a status readily supported by the justified self-confidence and prestige of an elite professional.

There are also many excellent students with no interest in the advanced research that is the focus of doctoral programs who would prefer non-college teaching to less intellectually engaging and less socially useful work

Attracting an elite professional class of K-12 teachers requires more than just higher salaries. We also have to eliminate the oversize classes, lack of discipline and inane bureaucracy that can take the joy out of teaching and will drive away the best college graduates. Can we afford all this? The first response is that we need to overcome our self-destructive aversion to raising taxes to pay for what we desperately need

Instead, Ukraine struck a deal with Russia in December, which has seen big cuts in the price of gas imports from Russia. Moscow also supported Ukraine's finances with a $15bn purchase of government bonds.

Some 10,000 people are estimated to have gathered for this latest rally - considerably fewer than the peak of the campaign in December which saw crowds estimated at 200,000.

"The authorities are pretending they cannot hear us. I know it's hard for us, but we have enough strength to win," Mr Klitschko told the crowd.

The last major opposition protest at the end of December was given further impetus by an attack on activist and journalist Tetyana Chornovol, who was severely beaten up on Christmas Day.

She had accused Mr Yanukovych of corruption over his financing of his official residence outside Kiev.

Mr Yanukovych denied any allegation of corruption and called for an investigation into the attack on Ms Chornovol.

American officials say that his government has facilitated the group’s rise not only by purchasing its oil but by exempting some of its headquarters from the airstrikes that have tormented other rebel groups.

Violence has damaged pipelines and other infrastructure, aggravating energy shortages and leaving the country heavily dependent on imports from its allies.

The Western-backed rebel groups do not appear to be involved in the oil trade, in large part because they have not taken over any oil fields.

The scramble for Syria’s oil is described by analysts as a war within the broader civil war, one that is turning what was once an essential source of income for Syria into a driving force in a conflict that is tearing the country apart. “Syria is an

Oil has proved to be a boon for the extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who have seized control of most of the oil-rich northern province of Raqqa. The group typically sells crude to middlemen who resell it to the government but sometimes sells it directly to the government, said Omar Abu Laila, a spokesman for the rebels’ Supreme Military Council.

“Selling the oil brings in more cash, so why not sell it to the regime, which offers higher prices?” he asked.

While other American officials discounted the possibility of tactical military cooperation between the group and Mr. Assad’s government, they said that Syrian intelligence had almost certainly infiltrated opposition groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Nusra Front, to track their activities.

Mr. Assad’s government has become increasingly dependent on its foreign allies and imports most of its fuel from Iran and Iraq, while Hezbollah smuggles diesel and gasoline over the border from Lebanon, according to regional oil experts.

But local tribal leaders objected, saying that would simply invite government airstrikes to destroy the plant. So they brokered a deal to keep a limited amount of gas flowing so the area would not be bombed, Mr. Abdy sa

Recently, however, most of the area’s rebel brigades have left the administration of the wells to an Islamic legal commission set up to run local affairs, he said.

Like the college-admissions officer of his nightmares, he just finds race too useful as shorthand to refrain from giving "special treatment" based on skin color. But only when the "special treatment" unfairly disadvantages blacks -- never when it advantages them.

I nevertheless find it perverse that he insists on the scrupulous treatment of young black males as individuals anytime they would benefit from group preferences, and then, when they'd most benefit from being treated as individuals rather than dark-skinned objects of suspicion, he prejudges all young black males based on statistics about the racial group to which they belong.

For Hanson, it is a miscarriage of justice worth lamenting if an Asian-American applicant to UC Berkeley loses a spot to a black applicant due to racial preferences

What is the likely result of that injustice? The Asian-American applicant must attend UCLA or UCI.

What are the consequences of racial-profiling, the form of individuality-effacement Hanson defends? Countless innocent black men -- that is to say, the vast majority who will never rob or assault anyone -- walking around under constant, unjust suspicion from fellow citizens and law enforcement; heightened racial tension across America; prejudice passed down across generations; and some innocent blacks killed while under wrongful suspicion.

Some plaintiffs even assert that practically all the loans should never have been included in some bonds issued in 2006 and 2007. For instance, in litigation against Bear Stearns, private investors, after doing analyses of the underlying mortgages, have asserted that 80 to 100 percent of the loans did not meet minimum standards, according to a survey of court filings by Nomura bank.

But what else can you call an environment where workers are totally controlled by an employer?

They're forced to live in squalor, they are indeed pushed to work in extreme heat, often left without enough water for very long hours and then they go home to cook food in unhygienic conditions, live 8, 10, 12 to a room, and even if they want to leave, if they've just had enough, they can't go because the employer has to sign an exit visa or sign the papers to allow them to work for a better employer."

Britain's Guardian newspaper last week which alleged that thousands of Nepali migrant workers are enduring dire conditions, and that 44 died over the space of nine weeks this summer.

Suresh Man Shrestha, secretary of the Ministry of Labor in Nepal, told CNN that the return of the bodies of migrant laborers to Nepal from overseas already is a daily occurrence.

But it's also important to focus on the fact that currently these activities that are going on, or that have been reported about, are actually illegal under the company laws, (which) very clearly criminalize these actions, and as soon as the government or the relevant authorities take a look at them action is taken

Those from India and Nepal make up the bulk of the estimated 1.2 million migrant workers in Qatar, it says.

Figures attributed to "representatives of the (Nepali) community" support the Qatari figures, indicating that in total 276 Nepalis died in Qatar last year and 151 through September this year. Of the deaths last year, half were put down to "natural causes" and a fifth, or 55, to workplace accidents.

The officials said "roughly 400,000" Nepali migrants are in Qatar.

Some laborers told the paper they were denied access to free drinking water despite the summer heat.

Shrestha gave three reasons for the tragically high death toll among Nepali laborers, who quit the Himalayan kingdom on the promise of better paying jobs to help support their families.

Rights group Human Rights Watch said in February that Qatar "has not delivered on its pledges to improve migrant workers' rights."

"The issues that are being raised are not part of my culture," he said. "We unequivocally are outraged. We definitely do not accept these cultures happening within our society and we are taking action about it."

"The issue is in terms of finding a system of enforcement to enforce these policies. The government has been taking actions towards it (but) this can't happen overnight."

The issue of foreign extremists using London as a base is particularly sensitive here. In the days surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence agencies of some other European countries derisively labeled the British capital Londonistan — a reference to the ease with which Islamic militants were able to operate there.

Since Mr. Morsi was overthrown, jihadists operating mostly in the northern Sinai have carried out hundreds of bombings, assassinations and at least one attack using a rocket-propelled grenade.

The British inquiry followed behind-the-scenes pressure from Egypt and Saudi Arabia for Britain to outlaw the organization — but an official said the aim of the inquiry was “not about establishing evidence to proscribe” the group. Mr. Morsi, along with hundreds of his followers, is facing trial in Egypt on an array of charges.Last month, when Saudi Arabia branded the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, the group’s response came in a statement from its London office, which said it was surprised and distressed by the Saudi decree.

"I was wrong," he said. "I acted on my emotions."

Yanukovych did not answer several questions about whether he would support Russia — which has deployed tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border — moving into Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians, the justification Putin used to take Crimea.Continue reading the main story Why movie streaming sites so fail to satisfy Also in Tech » Apple's war on Samsung has Google in crossfire At Mozilla, a chief's support of gay marriage ban causes conflict Continue reading the main story Advertisement (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Russia’s flair for “maskirovka” — disguised warfare — has become even more evident under Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer whose closest advisers are mostly from that same Soviet intelligence agency.

The Kremlin insists that Russian forces are in no way involved, and that Mr. Strelkov does not even exist, at least not as a Russian operative sent to Ukraine with orders to stir up trouble. “It’s all nonsense,” President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday during a four-hour question-and-answer session on Russian television. “There are no Russian units, special services or instructors in the east of Ukraine.” Pro-Russian activists who have seized government buildings in at least 10 towns across eastern Ukraine also deny getting help from professional Russian soldiers or intelligence agents.But masking the identity of its forces, and clouding the possibilities for international denunciation, is a central part of the Russian strategy, developed over years of conflict in the former Soviet sphere, Ukrainian and American officials say.

What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized, and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.”

Another character in Ukraine’s case against Russia is Mr. Strelkov, the alleged military intelligence officer who Kiev says took part in a furtive Russian operation to prepare for the annexation of Crimea and, more recently, in insurgent action in Slovyansk.No photographs have yet emerged of Mr. Strelkov, but the Security Service of Ukraine, the successor organization to what used to be Ukraine’s local branch of the K.G.B., has released a sketch of what it says is his face.

In the recording, a man nicknamed “Strelok” — who the Ukrainian agency says is Mr. Strelkov — and others can be heard discussing weapons, roadblocks and how to hold on to captured positions in and near Slovyansk with a superior in Russia.

Military analysts say the Russian tactics show a disturbing amount of finesse that speak to long-term planning.“The Russians have used very specialized, very effective forces,” said Jacob W. Kipp, an expert on the Russian military and the former deputy director of the United States Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.“They don’t assume that civilians are cluttering up the battlefield; they assume they are going to be there,” he said. “They are trained to operate in these kind of environments.”

Hyon was a longtime Kim family loyalist who spent years working under North Korea's former leader Kim Jong Il as a high-ranking military official.

A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said the government considered the execution to be another display of "fear politics" in North Korea.

Hyon was seen nodding off during a meeting organized by Kim Jong Un

During 2014, Hyon was promoted again to the National Defense Commission (NDC), described as a supreme organ of the state which has authority over the Ministry of People's Armed Forces and Ministry of People's Security.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been accused of ordering the executions of as many as 15 top officials so far this year. However, during a rare trip by CNN to Pyongyang last week, a top official dismissed the allegation as "malicious slander."

North Korea is one of the most closed and repressive countries on Earth.

"Kim Jong Un has shown a ruthless side that we haven't seen since his grandfather consolidated power back in the 50s and 60s -- going after rivals and potential rivals and having them executed."

The Justice Department is also preparing to resolve accusations of foreign currency misconduct at UBS. As part of that deal, prosecutors are taking the rare step of tearing up a 2012 nonprosecution agreement with the bank over the manipulation of benchmark interest rates, the people said, citing the bank’s foreign currency misconduct as a violation of the earlier agreement.

The guilty pleas, scarlet letters affixed to banks of this size and significance, represent another prosecutorial milestone in a broader effort to crack down on financial misdeeds. Yet as much as prosecutors want to punish banks for misdeeds, they are also mindful that too harsh a penalty could imperil banks that are at the heart of the global economy, a balancing act that could produce pleas that are more symbolic than sweeping.

While the S.E.C.’s five commissioners have not yet voted on the requests for waivers, which would allow the banks to conduct business as usual despite being felons, the people briefed on the matter expected a majority of commissioners to grant them.

In reality, those accommodations render the plea deals, at least in part, an exercise in stagecraft. And while banks might prefer a deferred-prosecution agreement that suspends charges in exchange for fines and other concessions — or a nonprosecution deal like the one that UBS is on the verge of losing — the reputational blow of being a felon does not spell disaster.

The action against UBS underscores the threats that Justice Department officials issued in recent months about voiding past deals in the event of new misdeeds, a central tactic in a plan to address the cycle of corporate recidivism. Leslie Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, recently remarked that she “will not hesitate to tear up a D.P.A. or N.P.A. and file criminal charges where such action is appropriate.”

The Justice Department negotiations coincide with the banks’ separate efforts to persuade the S.E.C. to issue waivers from automatic bans that occur when a company pleads guilty. If the waivers are not granted, a decision that the Justice Department does not control, the banks could face significant consequences.

For example, some banks may be seeking waivers to a ban on overseeing mutual funds, one of the people said. They are also requesting waivers to ensure they do not lose their special status as “well-known seasoned issuers,” which allows them to fast-track securities offerings. For some of the banks, there is also a concern that they will lose their “safe harbor” status for making forward-looking statements in securities documents.

it seemed probable that a majority of the S.E.C.’s commissioners would approve most of the waivers, which can be granted for a cause like the public good. Still, the agency’s two Democratic commissioners — Kara M. Stein and Luis A. Aguilar, who have denounced the S.E.C.’s use of waivers — might be more likely to balk.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and other liberal politicians have criticized prosecutors for treating Wall Street with kid gloves. Banks and their lawyers, however, complain about huge penalties and guilty pleas.

lingering in the background is the case of Arthur Andersen, an accounting giant that imploded after being convicted in 2002 of criminal charges related to its work for Enron. After the firm’s collapse, and the later reversal of its conviction, prosecutors began to shift from indictments and guilty pleas to deferred-prosecution agreements. And in 2008, the Justice Department updated guidelines for prosecuting corporations, which have long included a requirement that prosecutors weigh collateral consequences like harm to shareholders and innocent employees.

“The collateral consequences consideration is designed to address the risk that a particular criminal charge might inflict disproportionate harm to shareholders, pension holders and employees who are not even alleged to be culpable or to have profited potentially from wrongdoing,” said Mark Filip, the Justice Department official who wrote the 2008 memo. “Arthur Andersen was ultimately never convicted of anything, but the mere act of indicting it destroyed one of the cornerstones of the Midwest’s economy.”

After years of deferred-prosecution agreements, the pendulum swung back in favor of guilty pleas in 2012

In pursuing cases last year against Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, prosecutors confronted the popular belief that banks had grown so important to the economy that they could not be charged

Yet after prosecutors announced the deals, the banks’ chief executives promptly assured investors that the effect would be minimal.“Apart from the impact of the fine, BNP Paribas will once again post solid results this quarter,” BNP’s chief, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, said.Brady Dougan, Credit Suisse’s chief at the time, said the deal would not cause “any material impact on our operational or business capabilities.”

rebels complained that the United States has refrained from contributing air support to help them fend off simultaneous attacks by the government and the Islamic State.

Western officials have sought to play down the significance of the militant group’s recent gains, including Palmyra, the strategically placed World Heritage site in Syria, and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province.

Neither American officials nor Syrian insurgents have provided proof of such direct coordination, though it has long been alleged by the insurgents.

The latest attacks are part of a pattern, he said, in which Islamic State fighters have taken advantage of opportunities to attack rival insurgents when they are weak and under government bombardment.

In December 2014 it was announced he would be prosecuted over allegations that he incited racial hatred against the country's Moroccan community.

There were widespread protests in 2006 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

He added that Mr. Rahim had been under investigation because he was “communicating with and spreading ISIS propaganda online.”

, F.B.I. agents said Mr. Rahim, 26, had been under surveillance since at least late May, when he bought three knives on Amazon.com.

Mr. Rahim was focused on a “planned victim in another state” who was not identified. But in a subsequent conversation on June 2, Mr. Rahim called Mr. Wright and told him he was going to “go after” the “boys in blue,” a reference to police officers.

Mr. Rahim was a religious mentor to his nephew David Wright, who was also known as Dawud Wright, Mr. Rivero said.

On Tuesday, an F.B.I. agent and a police officver approached Mr. Rahim around 7 a.m. on Tuesday outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, a middle-class Boston neighborhood. Officials said that after the law enforcement officials identified themselves, Mr. Rahim confronted them with a large military-style knife.

After the shooting Tuesday, Mr. Rahim was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Mr. Wright as a tall, quiet man who weighed as much as 400 pounds.

Mr. Rahim’s relatives had initially argued that he was shot in the back, insisting that the shooting was unjustified.

“They were dressed in Army camouflage and carrying a battering ram,” said Jim Brennan, 48, a bricklayer, who lives across the street. He said the officers had carried out several small brown paper bags labeled “evidence,” but he could not tell what was in them. He said they did not carry out any large items, such as a computer