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The mysterious trickle of disappearing items continued for months, and passengers at Kennedy Airport complained until the airline's officials installed a video camera in the luggage hold. Then, the authorities said, they found the culprits.
Seven baggage handlers working on contract for the airline, which regularly flies between New York and Israel, were seen rifling through the bags that they were hired to load and unload onto the airline's 747 aircraft, officials said.
They filled their pockets and their pant legs with cash, jewelry, cameras and computers — and even stole a $5,000 Seiko watch and a Sony PlayStation, officials said.
"When air travelers check their luggage with an airline, there is an implicit trust that their bags and their contents will meet them at their destination," the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said in a statement on Friday. "It is always disheartening as a traveler to find that trust to be broken."
The baggage handlers were identified as Tristan Bredwood, 22; Udhoo Doodnauth, 27; Julio Salas, 44; Dashawn Schooler, 25; Romaine Smith, 25; Oshaine Christie, 22; and Nkosi Cunningham, 24. None have entered pleas.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Cunningham were released on their own recognizance but ordered to return to court in the fall. The rest remained held, with bail set at $1,000. The authorities said the suspects admitted to stealing many of the items, some of which were later recovered from their homes and cars.
They were all arrested Wednesday, arraigned Thursday night in Queens Criminal Court and variously charged with third- and fourth-degree larceny, third-, fourth-, and fifth-degree criminal possession of stolen property, fourth-degree criminal mischief, petty larceny and attempted petty larceny.
Seamus Heaney, the 1995 Nobel laureate in literature, who was often called the greatest Irish poet since Yeats, died on Friday in Dublin. He was 74.
His publisher, Faber & Faber, announced the death. The Irish poet Paul Muldoon, a longtime friend, said that Mr. Heaney was hospitalized after a fall on Thursday. Mr. Heaney had suffered a stroke in 2006.
In an address, President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland, himself a poet, praised Mr. Heaney's "contribution to the republics of letters, conscience and humanity." Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, said that Mr. Heaney's death had brought "great sorrow to Ireland, to language and to literature."
A Roman Catholic native of Northern Ireland, Mr. Heaney was renowned for work that powerfully evoked the beauty and blood that together have come to define the modern Irish condition. The author of more than a dozen collections of poetry, as well as critical essays and works for the stage, he repeatedly explored the strife and uncertainties that have afflicted his homeland, while managing simultaneously to steer clear of polemic.
Mr. Heaney (pronounced HEE-nee), who had made his home in Dublin since the 1970s, was known to a wide public for the profuse white hair and stentorian voice that befit his calling. He held lectureships at some of the world's foremost universities, including Harvard, where, starting in the 1980s, he taught regularly for many years; Oxford; and the University of California, Berkeley.
As the trade magazine Publishers Weekly observed in 1995, Mr. Heaney "has an aura, if not a star power, shared by few contemporary poets, emanating as much from his leonine features and unpompous sense of civic responsibility as from the immediate accessibility of his lines."
Throughout his work, Mr. Heaney was consumed with morality. In his hands, a peat bog is not merely an emblematic feature of the Irish landscape; it is also a spiritual quagmire, evoking the deep ethical conundrums that have long pervaded the place.
"Yeats, despite being quite well known, despite his public role, actually didn't have anything like the celebrity or, frankly, the ability to touch the people in the way that Seamus did," Mr. Muldoon, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the poetry editor at The New Yorker, said in an interview on Friday. "It was almost like he was indistinguishable from the country. He was like a rock star who also happened to be a poet."
Mr. Heaney was enraptured, as he once put it, by "words as bearers of history and mystery." His poetry, which had an epiphanic quality, was suffused with references to pre-Christian myth — Celtic, of course, but also that of ancient Greece. His style, linguistically dazzling, was nonetheless lacking in the obscurity that can attend poetic pyrotechnics.
At its best, Mr. Heaney's work had both a meditative lyricism and an airy velocity. His lines could embody a dark, marshy melancholy, but as often as not they also communicated the wild onrushing joy of being alive.
The result — work that was finely wrought yet notably straightforward — made Mr. Heaney one of the most widely read poets in the world.
Reviewing Mr. Heaney's collection "North" in The New York Review of Books in 1976, the Irish poet Richard Murphy wrote: "His original power, which even the sternest critics bow to with respect, is that he can give you the feeling as you read his poems that you are actually doing what they describe. His words not only mean what they say, they sound like their meaning."
Mr. Heaney made his reputation with his debut volume, "Death of a Naturalist," published in 1966. In "Digging," a poem from the collection, he explored the earthy roots of his art:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Though Mr. Heaney's poems often have pastoral settings, dewy rural romanticism is notably absent: instead, he depicts country life in all its harsh daily reality. His poem "A Drink of Water" opens this way:
She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field:
The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter
And slow diminuendo as it filled,
Announced her. I recall
Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel
Of the brimming bucket, and the treble
Creak of her voice like the pump's handle.
Mr. Heaney was deeply self-identified as Irish, and much of his work overtly concerned the Troubles, as the long, violent sectarian conflict in late-20th-century Northern Ireland is known.
James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 30, 2013
In an earlier version of this article, Enda Kenny, the prime minister of Ireland, was described incorrectly. He is a man.
Two former United States Open champions, both strong-willed competitors and veterans of the spotlight, carried on late into Friday night in one of the most dramatic contests of the early stages of the Open.
After a day of mostly tidy business as usual, the prime-time matchup of sixth-seeded Juan Martín del Potro and Lleyton Hewitt was highly anticipated, even if it did not have the current brand name figures of the sport. It was still the charismatic del Potro, the winner here in 2009, and Hewitt, a perennial contender whose backward cap and spunkiness fans have come to adore.
Their performance surpassed its billing. Hewitt, 32, from Australia, outlasted del Potro, 6-4, 5-7, 3-6, 7-6 (2), 6-1.
"It's an amazing feeling," Hewitt said. "I love being out in that atmosphere, soaking up every second of it."
From the outset, both players seemed to nestle into their comfort zones. Hewitt was serving to win the second set, ahead by 5-4, but he double-faulted to bring the game back to deuce — a severe miscue that cost him. Del Potro wound up winning the game and rallied to take the set, 7-5.
From there, it was back and forth, neither player sustaining momentum for more than a game or even a point. Del Potro struggled with his backhand, but his powerful forehand was crisp. Hewitt, who won here 12 years ago, played like the grizzled bulldog he has become known as.
"He's a great champion and a great fighter," del Potro said of Hewitt. "For the second round, it's a really difficult player."
Two hours and 45 minutes into the match, it could not have been tighter: both players had 105 points. After del Potro won the third set, he fought off two break points to hold serve and even the fourth set at 3-3. Both players wound up exchanging breaks and the set went to a tiebreaker.
There, Hewitt played at his sharpest, jumping ahead, 6-0, before winning, 7-2. He committed only four unforced errors in the fifth set, and del Potro fell flat.
"I just kept fighting and putting it out there," Hewitt said. "I kept coming at him the whole night. I felt like I was seeing the ball well. Felt like I played a good game plan."
Earlier in the evening, the defending champion, Andy Murray, became the highest seed to drop a set at the Open, and for a moment it looked as if Leonardo Mayer of Argentina could push the match to its brink.
But the third-seeded Murray rebounded with a fourth set more typical of him, beating Mayer, 7-5, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1, at Louis Armstrong Stadium.
Against the hard-hitting Mayer, Murray made seven unforced errors, while Mayer was superb with his forehand and turned up the intensity of his serves, notching five aces. The match stretched well past two hours.
"I was a bit frustrated at points in the match," Murray said. "I was doing quite a lot of the running for a lot of it, and wasn't getting quite as much depth on my returns. You don't feel like you're dictating the match. It can be a little frustrating."
Top-seeded Novak Djokovic needed a tiebreaker to win the first set in a 7-6 (2), 6-2, 6-2 victory over Benjamin Becker of Germany. Djokovic admitted he had trouble adjusting to the winds and conditions early in the match, but it hardly sounded like cause for alarm.
"It was very tough," he said. "It was a lot of unforced errors, very windy conditions. You couldn't really read and predict where the ball is going to go, so you have to be very alert. At the start I had difficulty with my footwork. But, you know, I won the set, and after that, it was much, much better."
Also advancing was No. 12 seed Tommy Haas, who beat the qualifier Yen-Hsun Lu, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (3). Haas, 35, is playing in the rare over-30 crowd, now enthusiastically joined by Li Na.
Years ago, the symptoms started. Forrest Gregg would drag his left foot when he walked. He would thrash and kick and scream in the night, a nightmare running in his head. He would comb his hair with his right hand while his left hand trembled.
His wife, Barbara, denied it all at first, then took him to a doctor, who diagnosed Parkinson's disease and attributed it to Gregg's football career.
Two years later, Gregg, a Hall of Fame offensive tackle, spends his days exercising, reading and resting. He is constantly exhausted. He sleeps 14 hours a day, Barbara said. He cannot sweep the driveway anymore. He cannot fly-fish the way he used to. His children call him every night to converse, to try to keep him sharp.
This year, Gregg joined more than 4,500 other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the N.F.L. over concussions. A $765 million settlement in the case was announced Thursday. When reached by phone Friday, Gregg spoke slowly and sounded tired.
"I'm glad to see it happen," he said. "It serves a lot of purpose, and the people who really need to be taken care of will be taken care of."
He had been worried about his health and his family's future, he said, and the settlement eased that a bit. That seemed to echo the early public sentiment from many former players with degenerative diseases: their time may be short, and the settlement ensures some compensation without a long legal battle.
But others, like Eleanor Perfetto, the widow of the former offensive lineman Ralph Wenzel, were more torn. She said she felt relieved that the suit was ending and that players like Gregg would be helped, but also disappointed that there would be no admission by the N.F.L. regarding a link between the players' concussions and their illnesses.
Perfetto devoted much of her life to her husband, who was found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as C.T.E., and Alzheimer's disease. Wenzel deteriorated in the last decade of his life as he argued his case against the N.F.L.
"We'll never know what they knew when," Perfetto said. "There is satisfaction, though, in knowing that they did settle, and it's a sizable settlement, and that tells you there was considerable merit to the suit."
Thomas Jones, one of the youngest plaintiffs at 35, feels similarly. He said he felt lucky that he had not had serious health problems. When he feels down, or has mood swings, or forgets the topic of a conversation, he fears it is because of the countless concussions he sustained during his career, he said.
Jones said he had made arrangements to donate his brain to the Sports Legacy Institute, a Boston nonprofit organization, for research. He is also shopping around a documentary series he produced, "The N.F.L.: The Gift or the Curse?" One of the episodes in the series, which examines off-the-field issues, is about concussions and their effects.
The settlement was fine, he said, but he was still disturbed.
"You can't buy your brain back," Jones said. "That's the problem. Everybody looks at the money — not the actual issue. There are family members dealing with these players that have problems walking, that don't even remember their names."
As part of the settlement, retired players will not have to prove that they had concussions or that concussions led to their neurological problems. They will need to prove only that they have neurological issues. The Hall of Fame running back Floyd Little, who says he has memory problems, told The Post-Standard in Syracuse that it was insulting for players to have to prove their level of disability.
"You have to prove it?" Little asked. "What the heck is that? I have to go humble myself? How can you prove that you've suffered? Guys aren't going to do it."
The settlement does little to change the science of evaluating and addressing concussions. In the proposed deal, the league agreed to spend $10 million on unspecified research, a pittance given the expense of doing large-scale, long-term studies that specialists say are needed to determine critical issues like who might be predisposed to developing neurological problems from head trauma.
"This does not change anything from a medical perspective or how patients are treated or will be treated in the future," said Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, the director of Michigan NeuroSport at the University of Michigan and an associate professor of neurology.
"This is largely a legal issue," added Kutcher, who directs the N.B.A.'s concussion program. "While $10 million is a nice sum, it is not going to make any significant difference."
A big population study, Kutcher said, would probably cost about $8 million a year for 15 years.
Perfetto, Wenzel's widow, who was formerly a senior director at Pfizer and recently became a professor in the school of pharmacy at the University of Maryland, said $10 million was a "pathetic number."
Perfetto also took offense that the settlement had separate tiers for different disabilities: paying up to $3 million for those with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, up to $4 million for the estates or families of players who committed suicide and were found to have C.T.E., and up to $5 million for those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
"I'm not quite sure how they can differentiate these things from one another," she said, "or why they would ever put a different price tag on one versus another, indicating some different level of devastation. I can't imagine that."
Perfetto, along with some retired players, also worried that there would not be enough money left for younger retirees, like Jones, once those with the most debilitating conditions were paid.
Sol Weiss, a lead counsel on the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, said that while the amount in the settlement was important, expediency was also critical.
"I've got a lot of clients who are hurting and need the money, a lot of young players who don't have insurance now," he said. "The resolution is a compromise, but all in all, the settlement is fair."
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 30, 2013
A summary with an earlier version of this article misstated the dollar amount of the settlement in a lawsuit against the N.F.L. over concussions. It was $765 million, not $765.
By Courtesy of NBC
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Obama Makes Remarks on Syria: President Obama said that he had not made a final decision about Syria, but that he was not considering any military action that would require a long-term campaign or troops on the ground.
United Nations weapons inspectors left Syria for Lebanon on Saturday as the Obama administration made an aggressive and coordinated push to justify a military intervention on the grounds that American credibility was at stake.
The inspection team left after spending the past four days in Syria, an effort that has been a factor in the planning for when an American cruise missile strike could be carried out. An Associated Press crew saw the team enter Lebanon at its Masnaa border crossing with Syria.
The team's departure came as the Obama administration was grappling with the British Parliament's vote against an attack on Syria, a stunning blow to White House plans for a broad coalition to punish President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for a mass killing in the suburbs of Damascus last week. Still, President Obama and his top aides gave every indication that they were in final preparations for an attack that could pull the United States into a grinding civil war that has already claimed more than 100,000 lives.
As the Pentagon was making its preparations, opposition officials in Damascus said the government had been moving troops, equipment and truckloads of paper files into civilian areas. "We assume that Assad had been doing this to protect his strategic assets from U.S. cruise missile strikes," said Dan Layman of the Syrian Support Group, which supports the opposition to Mr. Assad.
Privately, some American officials acknowledged mistakes over the past week in their buildup for a strike, not least misjudging the toxic politics of taking military action in the Middle East. It is unclear when Mr. Obama realized that the British vote would go against him, but it was not until Friday afternoon that the White House released what it said was evidence of chemical weapons use by the Assad forces — nearly 24 hours after Parliament had voted rather than beforehand, when it might have been used to build a coalition against Mr. Assad.
Deprived of the support of Britain, America's most stalwart wartime ally, the Obama administration scrambled behind the scenes to build international support elsewhere for a strike that might begin as early as this weekend. Officials were still holding out hope that at least one Arab country might publicly join the military coalition.
The White House got a boost on Friday from an ally that has had a long, tortured diplomatic relationship with the United States, and that vehemently opposed the American-led war in Iraq. In France, President François Hollande offered vigorous support for military action in Syria, saying that the Aug. 21 attack "must not go unpunished." The French endorsement led Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday to praise France as "our oldest ally" — a reference to a partnership that goes back to the American Revolution and a not so subtle dig at the country's neighbor across the English Channel.
Late on Friday, the Russian government condemned the threats of military action and said any strike not authorized by the United Nations Security Council would be a violation of international law. "Even U.S. allies are calling for a 'pause' to wait for the completion of work by the group of United Nations experts to get an objective picture of what happened," Aleksandr K. Lukashevich, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.
Mr. Kerry said the United Nations could not respond to the Syrian chemical weapons attack because of Russia's veto authority on the Security Council, which prevents the Council from galvanizing "the world to act, as it should."
Mr. Kerry also said that the decisions made in other countries were not foremost on the president's mind. "President Obama will ensure that the United States of America makes our decisions on our own timelines, based on our values and our interests," he said in forceful remarks from the State Department that presented the administration's rationale for an attack.
Reporting was contributed by Michael D. Shear, David E. Sanger and Robert Worth from Washington, David M. Herszenhorn from Moscow, and Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong.
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Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Venus Williams lost in three sets to Jie Zheng of China, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (5), Wednesday night at Louis Armstrong Stadium.
Maybe Venus Williams has been trying to tell us something with her braided purple hair this week, 16 years after she first appeared on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court with colorful beads flowing and a fascinated world watching. Could she be subliminally tying a ribbon around her storied tennis career?
"I've had a tough set of circumstances to work through this year, especially this year, last year and the year before," she said, combining a smile with a sigh.
The years have flown by like the blur her forehand can still be when she has enough energy to crank it up. But Williams, 33, has struggled with an autoimmune disease that saps her strength and a chronic back injury that compels us to approach her every United States Open match as if it could be her last.
She went out of this year's tournament after missing an easy volley at 5-5 in a third-set tiebreaker and losing a 3-hour, 2-minute second-round match to Jie Zheng of China, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (5), on Wednesday night in the Louis Armstrong Stadium. She gave it the good fight, but early exits have become the norm. For now, possibly forever, Williams's best chance of getting back on Ashe may be with her sister, Serena, in the doubles draw.
Instead of dwelling on what comes next, it would seem timely to take a contextual look back to when she first showed herself in New York — and was just what Arthur Ashe would have ordered on the day the stadium named for him opened for business.
August 25, 1997. Williams played the second match, defeating Larisa Neiland of Latvia in three sets. At 17, she wasn't the only African-American woman on tour — Chanda Rubin, in fact, lost the first match played on Ashe.
But this was before Serena bounded onto the Grand Slam scene and when Venus alone was heralded as tennis's untapped resource, its socio-economic game-changer.
Her mother, Oracene, said that day that her daughter was not overly thrilled with the prospect of being cast as the great urban athlete crashing the coveted country club. Venus, she added, had even called Althea Gibson to ask for advice on how to avoid the inevitable onslaught of clichés.
"She's going to have to handle it," Oracene said, "because that's the way it's going to be."
That is how it has been as Venus — and Serena in her take-no-prisoners-entitled-kid-sister way — came to be the reflection of women's tennis for a decade and a half. In the process, it has become increasingly clear that they have helped to remake the racial composition of their sport at home in the way it was once hoped Tiger Woods would for golf.
These days, when people think about the future after the still-dominant Serena, it is typically a woman of color who is mentioned first. The talk is about Sloane Stephens, 20, and ranked No. 15; and Madison Keys, who lost in the first round but may have the most potential of all because of her (5 feet 11 inches) size and serve. And it will now be about Victoria Duval, a 17-year-old Haitian-American, who on Tuesday sent home the 2011 champion, Samantha Stosur.
Another African-American, 18-year-old Sachia Vickery, won her first match on Tuesday and later said she took up tennis after watching the Williams sisters when she was 5.
Preparing to step on a practice court on Wednesday morning, 17-year-old Taylor Townsend — who won the Australian Open junior girls' title and was a finalist at Wimbledon — said she, too, had grown up on Venus and Serena:
"It was great to see African-American people in the sport, especially when you found out that there was at one point only Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson," said Townsend, a lefty who was treated last year for a severe iron deficiency and is playing doubles this week. "I've been looking up to them for so long, and now the best thing is that they are still here so a young player like me can learn from them."
It's only fair warning that Serena may not always be in the giving mood — witness her middle school feuding after Stephens beat her this year at the Australian Open. Stephens reported that Serena stopped following her on Twitter.
That's Serena, who, at 31, is competing with the sport's all-timers now as much as she is with contemporary opponents. Venus is only 16 months older but has become tennis's grande dame. She would feel even older if she'd heard Townsend do the quick math when told that Venus had played the day Ashe opened.
"I was, like, 1," Townsend said.
She did recall watching Venus play Serena on television in one of those made-for-Williams Saturday night finals, in 2001 or 2002 — "the greatest match I ever watched."
Of course it was. It was a spectacle that convinced her — a black girl in Atlanta — that tennis was a potential career choice.
Asked about her historical role, Venus said, "It makes me motivated to do more and also makes me happy that, you know, a whole new set of people and demographics all over the world are being introduced to this game."
Given a chance, she didn't go much further with the theme. It's a complicated subject, just as it was in 1997. Tennis remains a sport that demands daunting financial investment, and Richard Williams's home schooling of his daughters remains an anomalous story for the ages.
When Taylor Townsend and the others first tuned in, what they saw was the height of an amazing sisters' rivalry that would later become one-sided as Serena surged and Venus's Grand Slam trophy count stopped at seven. But the measure of Venus's career must also include the young girls whose childhood visions of her no doubt compare to how she recalled Ashe — whom she had met once — on that unforgettable day in 1997.
"Tall, graceful," she said. Right to the end.
Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto Agency
Protesters against Western intervention in Syria outside Downing Street in London last week.
LONDON — The prospect of an imminent Western military strike on Syrian government targets appeared to encounter a delay on Wednesday when Britain signaled it would first await the findings of a United Nations inquiry into the suspected use of chemical weapons in an attack that killed hundreds near Damascus last week, and then hold a separate parliamentary vote, which could be days away.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who runs a coalition government, is facing political difficulties from legislators mindful of the experience in Iraq, when assurances from Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction proved inaccurate and a false pretext for war.
Mr. Cameron bowed on Wednesday to pressure from the opposition Labour Party and to some within his own coalition who want to allow United Nations weapons inspectors a chance to report their findings and for the United Nations Security Council to make one more effort to give a more solid legal backing to military action against Damascus.
As Mr. Cameron ran into difficulties, the Syrian government, which has denied accusations by a range of Western and Arab countries that it used chemical weapons in the Aug. 21 attack, moved abruptly to prolong the inspectors' visit, announcing that it had evidence of three previously unreported chemical weapons assaults that it said had been carried out by insurgents and should be investigated by the inspectors.
If they look into those accusations, the inspectors could remain in Syria well past this weekend, beyond their original mandate.
The developments slowed the momentum the United States and Britain had been building for military intervention in the Syrian conflict, which began more than two years ago as a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and has since become a civil war that has left more than 100,000 people dead and destabilized the Middle East.
The American and British governments have said that the evidence is already persuasive that Mr. Assad's forces used chemical munitions on civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta last week, committing what the Obama administration has called a moral atrocity that cannot go unanswered.
The United States could still act without Britain's support, but the Obama administration has actively sought to build a consensus for a military strike, and Britain is America's closest ally. While expectations had been building that a strike could happen by the weekend, another few days may make no difference to what has been advertised as a short, sharp punishment for the use of chemical weapons, not an effort to oust Mr. Assad.
The British signal that it would not rush to military action came late Wednesday when Mr. Cameron's government, aware of the sensitivities created by the legacy of the run-up to the Iraq war a decade ago, said unexpectedly in a motion to be voted on by Parliament on Thursday that a separate vote on military action would be required. That vote may not take place until next week.
The text of the motion states that "a United Nations process must be followed as far as possible to ensure the maximum legitimacy for any such action," and that the secretary general "should ensure a briefing to the United Nations Security Council immediately upon the completion of the team's initial mission."
Mr. Cameron's pullback came as Britain moved to introduce a Security Council resolution that would authorize military action in Syria — a measure that Russia, the Syrian government's most important backer, quickly signaled it would block, as it has done several times.
After an informal meeting among the five permanent Council members at United Nations headquarters in New York, no further action on the resolution was taken. "This isn't going anywhere," a Western diplomat said.
The Russians argued that it was premature to even talk about such a resolution while United Nations inspectors were on the ground in Syria.
Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger reported from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Michael R. Gordon from Washington, Alan Cowell from London, Steven Lee Myers from Moscow, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva and Marlise Simons from The Hague.
Before the N.F.L. regular season begins next Thursday, the league will get a clearer picture of what may be its biggest worry: the lawsuit brought by more than 4,500 retired players alleging that the N.F.L. intentionally misled them about the dangers of head injuries.
In the coming days, Judge Anita B. Brody of United States District Court is expected to rule on the league's motion to dismiss hundreds of cases that were consolidated. Brody, from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, could toss out some of the claims of negligence and fraud. She could disqualify some plaintiffs, including retirees with advanced dementia and other problems, as well as the families of stars like Junior Seau, who committed suicide.
Brody could also order the sides to continue working with a mediator, as they have been since July, to reach a settlement, although the league and the retired players are unlikely to reach an agreement until they get more clarity from Brody about the scope of the case, legal experts said.
Regardless of Brody's decision, the case, the most visible of its type, may provide a framework for similar lawsuits brought by football players and other athletes who say that a league failed to protect them adequately.
And given the stakes — billions of dollars in potential damages, a risk of lasting harm to the N.F.L.'s image and a possibility of Congressional intervention — her ruling will be widely watched and most likely appealed, perhaps by both sides.
"It has to be in the Mount Rushmore of things that keep Roger Goodell awake at night," the lawyer Scott A. Andresen said, referring to the N.F.L.'s commissioner.
Andresen, who teaches sports law at Northwestern University, added that he would not be shocked if the case eventually went to the Supreme Court.
But the dispute is a long way from reaching that point. Possible appeals could take many months. A potential discovery period could take even longer, involving depositions of key league officials and an extensive search for documents that might illustrate what the league knew, and when, about the dangers of concussions.
It is also a thorny case that in some ways echoes suits brought against the tobacco industry and settlements paid to New York workers who developed respiratory illnesses after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The N.F.L. has denied accusations that it deliberately misled players about head injuries, saying that it relied on the best science available at the time to create policies on concussions. The N.F.L. has also argued that any disputes should be governed not by the courts but by the collective bargaining agreements signed by the league and its players union.
If the judge lets any of the claims proceed, the plaintiffs still must prove that their medical problems were at least partly the result of head hits sustained in the N.F.L. That is a high hurdle given that almost all of them played football at the youth, high school and college levels, where they could have also sustained concussions.
The players involved in the suit vary widely in age and professional experience. Some played on practice squads and never participated in a game. Many were linemen, linebackers or running backs; others were punters or kickers.
The plaintiffs signed a variety of contracts and played under different rules on head injuries. Some played part or all of their careers when collective bargaining agreements were not in effect. Some have Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or advanced dementia, while others have symptoms that they say may worsen without proper medical monitoring.
Brody could dismiss negligence claims by players who were in the league while collective bargaining agreements were in effect. She could also allow players with only substantial injuries to pursue claims. The fraud claims may be the hardest to justify dismissing, legal experts said, because they focus on decisions the N.F.L. made, not a player's medical history.
The complexity of the case "would be a really good reason for the court to engage in behavior to encourage a settlement," said Paul Haagen, a director of the Center for Sports Law and Policy at Duke University. If the case balloons, Congress could weigh in by calling for stricter safety standards, he added.
The chances of a quick settlement, though, are complicated by the plaintiffs' competing agendas. Some older retirees may want money as soon as possible, while younger players facing many more years of medical bills might want to hold out for more.
"Unfortunately, there's a lot of us that don't have 10 years to find out what the decision is," the former fullback Kevin Turner said in April after oral arguments in the case were heard. Turner, 44, who played for the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, was found to have A.L.S., also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2010.
The N.F.L. still must clarify how much of any settlement its insurance companies will cover. Several of them have argued in court that they do not have to indemnify the N.F.L. because of the policies they wrote. Larry Schiffer, a lawyer representing Alterra America Insurance, which wrote one policy for one year for the N.F.L., told the judge that a settlement could cost $2.5 billion, a figure some legal experts consider conservative.
The cases involving the insurers' obligation to indemnify the league are unlikely to be resolved until after the underlying case with the retired players is clarified. But the league may be reluctant to settle with the players before it knows how much of any settlement its insurers might cover.
"If the N.F.L. knows its insurers would pay most of it, they're more likely to settle," said Mark Conrad, the director of the sports business program at Fordham. "But if the insurers try to opt out and the league has to pay most it themselves, they're less likely to settle."
Reuters
United Nations chemical weapons experts on Wednesday met with residents of a neighborhood that was said to be the target of a chemical attack last week.
WASHINGTON — The evidence of a massacre is undeniable: the bodies of the dead lined up on hospital floors, those of the living convulsing and writhing in pain and a declaration from a respected international aid group that thousands of Syrians were gassed with chemical weapons last week.
And yet the White House faces steep hurdles as it prepares to make the most important public intelligence presentation since February 2003, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made a dramatic and detailed case for war to the United Nations Security Council using intelligence — later discredited — about Iraq's weapons programs.
More than a decade later, the Obama administration says the information it will make public, most likely on Thursday, will show proof of a large-scale chemical attack perpetrated by Syrian forces, bolstering its case for a retaliatory military strike on Syria.
But with the botched intelligence about Iraq still casting a long shadow over decisions about waging war in the Middle East, the White House faces an American public deeply skeptical about being drawn into the Syrian conflict and a growing chorus of lawmakers from both parties angry about the prospect of an American president once again going to war without Congressional consultation or approval.
American officials said Wednesday there was no "smoking gun" that directly links President Bashar al-Assad to the attack, and they tried to lower expectations about the public intelligence presentation. They said it will not contain specific electronic intercepts of communications between Syrian commanders or detailed reporting from spies and sources on the ground.
But even without hard evidence tying Mr. Assad to the attack, administration officials asserted, the Syrian leader bears ultimate responsibility for the actions of his troops and should be held accountable.
"The commander in chief of any military is ultimately responsible for decisions made under their leadership," said the State Department's deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf — even if, she added, "He's not the one who pushes the button or says 'go' on this."
Administration officials said that communications between military commanders intercepted after Wednesday's attack provided proof that the assault was not the result of a rogue unit acting against orders. It is unclear how much detail about these communications, if any, will be made public.
In an interview on Wednesday with the PBS program "NewsHour," President Obama said he still had not made a decision about military action. But he said that a military strike could be a "shot across the bow, saying 'stop doing this,' that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term."
The bellicose talk coming from the administration is unnerving some lawmakers from Mr. Obama's party, who are angry that the White House seems to have no inclination to seek Congress's approval before launching a strike in Syria.
"I am still waiting to see what specifically the administration and other involved partners have to say about a potential military strike, but I am concerned about how effective such an action could be," said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "I am worried that such action could drag the United States into a broader direct involvement in the conflict."
Despite the Obama administration's insistence that the graphic images of the attack go far in making a case for military action in Syria, some experts said that the White House had its own burden of proof.
Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that whatever evidence the administration put forward would be the American intelligence community's "most important single document in a decade."
The Obama administration, Mr. Cordesman said, needs to use intelligence about the attack "as a key way of informing the world, of building up trust in U.S. policy and intelligence statements, and in moving U.S. strategic communications from spin to convincing truth."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 28, 2013
An earlier version of this article reversed the percentage of respondents in a Quinnipiac University poll last month who said they were in favor of, and opposed to, providing weapons to rebel forces in Syria. Twenty-seven percent were in favor of providing the weapons, and 59 percent were opposed to it.
PHOENIX — First, the men cursed him, loyalists of Iraq's Mahdi Army militia furious at the slender barber who dared to sketch pictures of nude women. Then, they spat on him, blindfolded him and punched him as they took him through a busy neighborhood market in his native Baghdad, where someone grabbed a pair of scissors and cut his long hair.
The abuse did not end there for the barber, Bassim al-Shaker, who was beaten so badly that he spent two weeks recuperating in a hospital. But he is much more than a barber. In June, he was in Italy, his oil paintings gracing the Iraq Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. In July, he arrived here in the American West, one of six foreign artists plucked from their countries to share their knowledge and create.
For Mr. Shaker, 28, the experience is as much about liberation as it is about escape.
In Baghdad, he used to paint in the middle of the night to avoid the unnerving cacophony of sirens, horns and explosions that punctuates the city's daytime rhythms. He dreaded walking the streets, a stage for deadly suicide bombings. He feared for his life, as the men who tortured him got out of prison this year and vowed to go after him to seek revenge, thinking it was because of him that they had wound up behind bars.
Mr. Shaker's journey from Iraq to Arizona began on a clear spring morning in Baghdad, when he found himself racing through an alley, jumping across rooftops and climbing over fences to escape his pursuers, eventually finding temporary harbor in a house behind an Iraqi Army blockade. Artists here and there came to his rescue, rekindling old connections to figure out a way to keep him alive.
He left his home country for a city that is home to one of the largest Iraqi communities in the United States — most of them refugees to whom this is a first stop, the rest transplants who chose to move here because of its familiar desert climate and reasonable cost of living. Mr. Shaker came as neither. He is an artist on a business visa, fueled by the freedom to put on canvas "whatever is in my heart," he said.
Much of it is colored by a lifetime of wars, repression and sanctions, which is pretty much all that he has known. From an apartment in the building where he has been staying — close to the light-rail train that takes him to the Arizona State University Art Museum, the international artists' host in neighboring Tempe — he has been working on a portrait of a wrinkly man wearing a kaffiyeh, the traditional headdress of men in Iraq. He is using black and white oil paints "because life in Iraq is black and white," lacking the joy that, to him, bright colors would represent.
On a recent morning, stylish in blue sunglasses and skinny jeans, Mr. Shaker said he made his living cutting hair in Baghdad, but art has always been his calling. His father tools leather. Some of his uncles are musicians — one plays percussion and another plays oud, the pear-shaped guitar. When he was in elementary school, he used to lose himself in the arts-and-crafts room, drawing his "expression of life," he said.
He spoke through an interpreter, Layal Rabat, 30, who was born into a Christian family in Syria and who, like Mr. Shaker, has uneasy feelings about religion. Mr. Shaker is a Sunni Muslim by virtue of his blood ties and tradition, but, by self-definition, "I'm not Muslim, I'm not Christian, I'm not anything," he said, and that is as much as he was willing to say about it.
To Mr. Shaker, Ms. Rabat has been the safe bridge into a world of new discoveries, like happy-hour drinks at the Lost Leaf, a bar, gallery and concert hall off Roosevelt Street, the aorta of this city's arts scene.
"Anything that's forbidden is desired," he said, a nod to the types of things he could not do in Baghdad, but always wanted to, like having a beer with friends or setting his imagination free to take his art wherever he wants.
Mr. Shaker said he had just returned to Baghdad from Cairo this spring when three men began chasing him after they spotted one another in a busy alley.
The drawings that got him in trouble were sketches of the Venus de Milo, practice for the entrance exam at Baghdad University's College of Fine Arts. He kept them on a notepad next to the barbershop's water cooler, where the militiamen found them when they stopped by for haircuts.
In Cairo, Mr. Shaker was one of eight budding artists attending a series of workshops sponsored by Sada (Echo) for Contemporary Iraqi Art, a nonprofit project founded in 2010 to foster artistic practices in a country whose arts scene has been choked by rising religious fundamentalism and years of unrest.
Once he was back in Baghdad, his pursuers forced him into hiding in the house behind the army blockade. He was there for about a month, confined to a small second-floor room, "eating and sleeping," he said, "like a prison."
Concerned about Mr. Shaker's safety, Sada's founding director, Rijin Sahakian, an Iraqi expatriate who had hired him in 2010 to manage the group's activities in Baghdad, contacted Gordon Knox, director of the university art museum, for whom she had worked curating an exhibition of Iraqi artists in California. She knew Mr. Knox had started a residency program for foreign artists in Phoenix and wondered if Mr. Shaker could join.
"He's obviously very talented," Ms. Sahakian said in a telephone interview from Beirut, Lebanon, where she lives, "but we were also focused on saving his life."
Mr. Shaker is unique among the artists in the residency program because of his past and circumstances. Other residents, current and former, have come from places like Portugal, England, Denmark and Mexico.
They live and work in the same building downtown, called Combine Studios, and they meet graduate students at Arizona State's school of arts for an exchange of sorts — "enriching to both," Mr. Knox said.
Mr. Shaker is finishing an installation for a gallery, and he is plotting his next project: painting an American flag on the side of a shipping container that sits on an empty lot nearby, replacing the stars with the black-and-gold eagle in the Iraqi coat of arms. It is, he said, the ultimate symbol of the countries he carries under his skin.
His visa expires at the end of the year, but he has tried not to dwell on it. Once he goes back to Baghdad, he will move to a different neighborhood, he said, hoping that a new address in a new part of town will be enough to keep him safe.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 29, 2013
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect name and location of a bar and gallery that Bassim al-Shaker visits. It is the Lost Leaf, not the Loose Leaf, and is off Roosevelt Street, not Roosevelt Avenue.
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ATLANTA — Even before someone carefully removed a windowpane from a secluded Buckhead home here one rainy June night and slipped away with a 1734 silver mug that had belonged to George II, it was clear to detectives that a meticulous thief with a singular obsession was stealing the great silver pieces of the Old South.
Blane Nordahl after his arrest in Hilliard, Fla., Monday morning. He was charged with burglaries in Atlanta.
Lonnie Mason, a retired New Jersey detective, suspected that a series of thefts in the South might be the work of an old nemesis.
For months, exquisite sterling silver collections had been disappearing, taken in the dead of night from historic homes in Charleston, S.C., and the wealthy enclaves of Belle Meade, Tenn. Nothing else was touched.
The police in different states did not at first connect the thefts, some of which initially went unnoticed even by the owners. But as the burglaries piled up, a retired New Jersey detective watching reports on the Internet recognized a familiar pattern.
He called an Atlanta detective and said, "Let me explain how your burglaries occurred."
Early Monday, outside an apartment building in the tiny northern Florida town of Hilliard, the police arrested Blane Nordahl, 51, the man they believe is connected not only to the recent Southern silver burglaries but also to 30 years' worth of antique silver thefts in several states.
He was charged with burglaries in Atlanta and will most likely face charges in other states.
"I'm just relieved it's over," said Lonnie Mason, the retired New Jersey detective who made a career out of chasing — and twice capturing — Mr. Nordahl, whose skill as a thief is so notorious it has earned him his own Wikipedia page and the nickname "burglar to the stars."
In one of the biggest recent hauls in which Mr. Nordahl is a suspect, a thief disabled the alarm at the Cooleemee Plantation House in North Carolina and walked away with silver spoons forged by Paul Revere and a coffee and tea set that a slave had once buried for safekeeping when Union soldiers moved through during the Civil War.
Detectives who chased Mr. Nordahl for decades say he is responsible for crimes that have had him in and out of prison since the 1980s. He might ultimately be responsible, they say, for more than 500 burglaries that netted him several million dollars' worth of some of the best domestic silver pieces in the country.
They include 120 pairs of salt and pepper shakers taken from Ivana Trump's Greenwich, Conn., home in 1996 and the priceless collection of period silver in the Edgewater mansion in the Hudson Valley where Richard Hampton Jenrette, a Wall Street financier and restorer of historic homes, was robbed in 2002.
Mr. Nordahl's first burglary arrest was in New Jersey in 1983. He has had dozens since.
"He doesn't abuse drugs and he doesn't abuse alcohol," said Mr. Mason, in an interview Monday from his home near the Jersey Shore. "This is his high. This and trying to beat the police."
One of a string of girlfriends whom the police persuaded to help them pursue Mr. Nordahl told Mr. Mason that "he would be 80 years old and still running down the street with his cane and a piece of silver in his hand. He is just fascinated with this stuff."
Mr. Nordahl is barely 5 foot 4 with a muscular build and the ability to squeeze into homes through small spaces. Over the years he developed a routine that he rarely varied, the police say, tracking his targets through architectural magazines, in libraries and by scouting rich neighborhoods.
He learned to gently pry the putty from windows and disable alarms, the police say, often stacking molding from a door neatly nearby or replacing the glass so victims would sometimes not know they were burglarized until a holiday rolled around and it was time to pull out the good silver.
Mr. Nordahl, whose father, David, is a noted painter, has a deep knowledge of the artistic and cultural value of silver, the police said. In previous cases, he was specific about his haul, leaving behind other valuables and knives with hollow silver handles or trays made of silver plate.
Those signatures are what made Mr. Mason think that the nation's most notorious silver thief had gotten back into the game after being released on parole in 2010.
Mr. Nordahl, who had been in prison six years, had headed to Florida, where he had a sister. So Mr. Mason would occasionally search for reports of silver thefts in Florida.
When he found nothing, he expanded his search to other states in the South and in February found a rash of silver thefts in the Atlanta area and other states. He set to work.
By the end of March, Mr. Mason had become the adviser to a team of 24 members of law enforcement agencies in six Southern states who worked on the case through the summer.
Alan Blinder contributed reporting.
The New York Times
The police standing guard last month in a Uighur neighborhood in the Xinjiang region, where violence flared in late June.
HANERIK, China — The blood has long since been hosed away, but weeks after Chinese security forces opened fire on a crowd of Muslim protesters, killing what local residents said were scores of young men, there is a palpable fear on the streets of this dusty farming township in Xinjiang, the restive borderland region in China's far west.
Those not detained in the police sweep that followed the violence say they have been threatened with labor camp if they speak about what happened on the afternoon of June 28, when hundreds of villagers, angered by the detention of a young imam, tried to march to the prefectural capital four miles to the south.
"We're all too afraid to talk about it," said one elderly man near Hanerik's outdoor market just after sunrise one recent morning. Another man drew a finger across his throat and apologized for his silence before speeding away on a scooter.
But in interviews with rights advocates, exile groups and residents in Hotan, the prefectural capital, a fuller picture has emerged of what many here have described as one of the most serious outbreaks of violence since ethnic rioting four years ago claimed nearly 200 lives in Urumqi, the regional capital.
Although the state media said that no one died during the confrontation between villagers and armed police officers, numerous sources say that dozens were shot dead on the highway that connects Hanerik to Hotan, which the Chinese call Hetian. Exile groups say the death toll may exceed 100.
"One thing is certain — the truth bears little resemblance to what the government says happened that day," Dilxat Rexit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, said from Sweden. "The Chinese are trying their best to impose a cover-up."
For weeks after, cellphone service in and around Hotan was cut, and much of the city was subjected to a curfew. Most residents still have no Internet access. The authorities have also disabled WeChat, a popular messaging app.
An ancient Silk Road oasis and bustling jade-trading hub, this city of 360,000 has been flooded with soldiers and paramilitary police; during Friday afternoon prayers, helicopters hover noisily overhead as soldiers with machine guns and German shepherds stand sentinel at Unity Square. It is here, in the shadow of a towering statue of Mao Zedong, that Uighur assailants fatally stabbed three Chinese pedestrians on the same day as the police shootings in Hanerik, according to Radio Free Asia, a news service financed by the United States government that employs Uighur reporters.
"People here are just boiling over with anger," said a Uighur professor who, like all those interviewed in the area, requested anonymity for fear of arrest.
The situation highlights the growing challenge to Beijing's administration of resource-rich Xinjiang, which borders several Central Asian nations, as well as Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Experts say hard-line policies aimed at maintaining stability are only deepening longstanding grievances among Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people increasingly alarmed by the migration of Han Chinese lured by jobs and economic incentives.
But tighter religious restrictions have incited much of the violence since 2009, analysts say. Civil servants may not fast during the holy month of Ramadan; college students must attend weekly political education classes; and armed police officers frequently raid unauthorized religious schools.
Perhaps most incendiary are campaigns against women who wear head scarves and young men with beards. The crackdown, which the local authorities describe as a battle against religious extremism, is an expression of Beijing's fears that the militant Islamism that has destabilized Pakistan and Afghanistan could complicate its efforts to turn Xinjiang into a regional trading hub.
This summer, a dozen or more instances of bloodshed claimed scores of lives, mostly in the fertile crescent of southern Xinjiang, the Uighur heartland. Last Tuesday, more than two dozen people were shot dead in what the authorities called "an antiterror" operation in Kashgar Prefecture; earlier this month, at least three others were shot dead and 20 wounded outside a police station in Aksu Prefecture after officers opened fire on demonstrators demanding the release of those arrested for "illegal religious activities," according to The Global Times, an English publication of People's Daily, in an article later removed from the Internet.
Farther north, in Turpan Prefecture, exile groups say at least 46 people were killed on June 26 during a clash between the police and demonstrators. A week before the Hotan shootings, seven Han laborers working on a dam project outside the city were hacked to death, officials say.
Much of the violence goes unreported in the Chinese news media, but the cases that are publicized are invariably described as "terror attacks" carried out by "separatists," some of whom, the government says, have been trained abroad. Analysts have cast doubt on such assertions, noting that the suspects are often armed with rudimentary weapons like knives.
The central government has become increasingly alarmed by its inability to stanch the unrest. In the days after the violence in Hotan, President Xi Jinping held a special meeting in Beijing and senior leaders were dispatched to calm jittery Xinjiang residents. "We will step up actions to crack down upon terrorist groups and extremist organizations and track the wanted," said Yu Zhengsheng, the Chinese leader in charge of ethnic and religious affairs, Xinhua reported.
But residents say the Hanerik shooting victims were unarmed civilians simply seeking an end to heavy-handed policing. The seeds of the confrontation were planted in mid-June, when the authorities detained Mettursun Metseydi, the young imam of an unauthorized mosque on the rural edge of Hanerik. Mr. Metseydi had been drawing increasing crowds with sermons that condemned the government's religious restrictions, most pointedly on head coverings.
The rules imposed fines on Hotan taxi drivers who picked up veiled women and prohibited doctors from treating women who refused to remove head scarves, a number of residents said. "The imam said that forcing women to remove their veils during police checks was a humiliation," said a teacher whose cousin attended the mosque.
Shi Da contributed research.
Barton Silverman/The New York Times
If Matt Harvey needs Tommy John surgery he will not pitch again until 2015.
More than any other player, Matt Harvey symbolized the tentative notion that the Mets might actually be nearing a renaissance. If the team rose to prominence next season, the thinking went, it would surely be following his bullish lead.
But on Monday, in a jarring turnaround, Harvey instead became the latest example of the team's almost relentless misfortune.
Harvey had a magnetic resonance imaging test to address persistent discomfort in his right forearm, and it showed, to his shock and the Mets' profound dismay, that the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow was partially torn.
Harvey, a 24-year-old flame-throwing right-hander, ascended this season to baseball's loftiest tiers, starting the All-Star Game for the National League, hearing his name mentioned as a Cy Young Award candidate and, on three occasions, coming close to a no-hitter or perfect game. He became a national celebrity, with television appearances and magazine covers and curiosity with just about every facet of his life.
But the discovery of the ligament tear made of all that irrelevant and raised the dire and very real prospect that Harvey will require Tommy John surgery, a procedure that could sideline him for the 2014 season.
"It's unfortunate from Matt's point of view and it's unfortunate from the standpoint of the organization — there's no question about it," General Manager Sandy Alderson said at a Monday afternoon news conference at Citi Field as he delivered the sobering news. "On the other hand, these are the kinds of things that happen in the game. The successful teams, the successful organizations, respond to these setbacks. That's exactly what we intend to do."
Alderson added, "This is not a career-ending injury under any stretch of the imagination."
But whether Harvey will ever again be as dominant as he was for much of this season remains to be seen. And when he will pitch again is not clear, either.
Harvey was not placed on the disabled list Monday, or officially declared out for the reminder of the season, but those almost seemed like technicalities as the Mets, and the pitcher, confronted the main issue before them — whether he might try to avoid surgery and pitch through the partial tear. Tommy John surgery has become an almost inevitable outcome for such tears, and putting off the surgery might only delay his return to full health.
But at least for the moment, the Mets and Harvey will wait. Alderson said that Harvey could have more tests done on his elbow over the next 10 days and that a decision will be made in coming weeks as to what the next course of action should be and whether surgery will be scheduled.
Whatever the ultimate outcome, the announcement of the injury brought Harvey's enchanting season to a dead halt. It also raised uneasy questions about how diligent the Mets had been in addressing his physical issues as the season progressed.
At Monday's news conference, Harvey disclosed that for the last month or two — he was not sure about the time frame — he had felt some tenderness around the forearm muscles of his pitching arm. It was not unusual to him, he said, and he regularly received treatment to address it, always feeling limber enough to pitch.
But the discomfort reached a new level during his outing on Saturday afternoon, when he gave up an uncharacteristically high 13 hits to the Detroit Tigers in a generally flat appearance. After that game, Harvey said, he informed the team's medical staff that the discomfort in his forearm had grown worse and that he wanted to be examined. That led to Monday's M.R.I. and the distressing news for the Mets.
"It was the last thing I was expecting when I went in this morning," Harvey said. "I haven't had shooting pains down my hands or in my elbow at all. It's mostly been forearm tightness. It's something obviously I could pitch through."
Mark Blinch/Reuters
Derek Jeter, left, congratulating Alex Rodriguez, who hit his 650th career homer to tie the game.
TORONTO — Derek Jeter was back on the field playing alongside Alex Rodriguez in a game for the first time all season Monday, facing a Toronto Blue Jays team the Yankees had thrashed and battered in almost every previous encounter in 2013. Jeter managed to remain healthy and Rodriguez even homered in the game. What could possibly go wrong to prevent a win?
Phil Hughes is the short answer, but he had help from Ichiro Suzuki, the usually gifted outfielder who dropped a catchable ball for an error that led to three runs in the fifth inning as the Blue Jays beat the Yankees, 5-2, at Rogers Centre.
There was little that Jeter or Rodriguez could have done when Suzuki needlessly jumped for a deep fly ball off the bat of Edwin Encarnacion. The ball bounced off Suzuki's glove and Jose Reyes scored for the Blue Jays, the first of their runs in that inning.
Had there been a trapdoor in the right-field wall for Suzuki to crawl through, he might have availed himself of the quick exit back to the team hotel.
"If I could have just gone straight home from right field I would have," he said through his interpreter. "I was that embarrassed."
And so after a spirited win Sunday against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Yankees were unable to construct a momentum-building winning streak, even against the last-place Blue Jays.
"Toronto's got a good team," Jeter said. "They're not going to lay down and let us walk over them. They have a lot of pride over there and they have a great team."
But entering Monday's game, the Yankees had won 12 of the 13 games against the Blue Jays this season, including a four-game sweep at Yankee Stadium last week that had helped them pull three and a half games back of the second wild-card spot in the American League.
But R. A. Dickey, who pitched well last week at the Stadium only to lose on an eighth-inning home run by Alfonso Soriano, came back with another laudable effort Monday. He allowed two runs, only one earned, over six and a third innings.
Dickey gave up an opposite-field home run to Rodriguez on an 0-1 pitch in the fifth that evened the score, 2-2. It was Rodriguez's 3rd home run of the season and the 650th of his career. With 10 more he will tie Willie Mays on the career list, and be in position to collect a $6 million bonus from the Yankees.
Hughes was doing fine until Reyes's one-out double in the fifth. Then Ryan Goins singled to right, followed by Suzuki's botched play, which at least would have been a sacrifice fly to drive in Reyes. Then Adam Lind doubled off Hughes to score Goins. Moises Sierra added a sacrifice fly to score Encarnacion, giving the Blue Jays a 5-2 lead.
Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said the error changed the complexion of the inning, noting that Hughes could have escaped having allowed only three runs in five innings. Girardi said, though, that he considered the outing a respectable one, even in an uphill climb in the race for a playoff spot with only 31 games to play.
Hughes, to his credit, did not accept Girardi's bailout, and what else could he really say after falling to 4-13?
"It didn't happen that way," Hughes said. "You can think about hypotheticals, but errors are part of the game and I have to find a way to get out of the inning and battle right there and I didn't do the job. What could have, should have happened is irrelevant."
With four or five potential starts left for each starter, the Yankees may decide to remove Hughes from the rotation in favor of David Huff, who came on in relief and threw three and a third scoreless innings. Huff, who has allowed only one earned run in 122/3 innings, was also instrumental in last week's sweep of the Blue Jays when he threw five scoreless innings in relief of a 4-2 win in the third game of the series.
Girardi said the Yankees had not discussed dropping Hughes from the rotation. But when he was asked if Huff's relief performances had given him something to ponder, Girardi said he was impressed with the left-hander, who made 52 starts for the Cleveland Indians from 2009 to 2012.
"Obviously, you're thinking all the time," Girardi said.
Before the game there was excitement about the return of Jeter, making his third separate return from the disabled list, this time because of a strained right calf muscle. He went 0 for 3 with a walk and hit into a double play, but said he encountered no difficulties with his calf. "It was good," he said. "We lost, but there were no problems."
Before the game Jeter spoke in restrained tones about his latest comeback, saying he was "excited, looking forward to it, anxious, happy."
Whether the 39-year-old Jeter can make it to the end of the season healthy is unknown. He said the recent muscle injuries were, he believes, an indirect result of the broken ankle he sustained last Oct. 13 in Game 1 of the A.L. Championship Series. His inability to do his usual off-season conditioning probably led to quadriceps and calf problems.
"I will try to do as much as I can to keep them strong this last month," he said. "But all I can do is go out and play this last month and hope that everything is fine. I can't change anything that's happened. I wish I had more time to do things, but I didn't and we are where we are. So let's move forward and hopefully there's no more issues."
Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A court spokesman announced the end of Bo Xilai's trial in Jinan, China, on Monday. A conviction is considered a near certainty.
JINAN, China — Concluding a trial that has riveted China, Bo Xilai, the former elite Communist Party official, attacked elements of the prosecution's case on Monday and said his former top deputy and his wife, both of whom provided evidence against him, had a passionate relationship.
Mr. Bo said the charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power against him were deeply flawed because they depended on evidence from his wife, Gu Kailai, and his former top deputy, Wang Lijun, who he asserted were themselves involved with the abuses Mr. Bo was accused of committing — and with each other.
Mr. Wang and Ms. Gu "were stuck together as if by glue," he said in his closing comments.
Mr. Bo's final testimony added to the soap opera-like twists in a trial that provided an unusual showcase of how China manages its legal system. Mr. Bo, 64, who was stripped of his membership in China's ruling Politburo last year, is nearly certain to be found guilty. But he was given considerable latitude to defend himself in extended and colorful testimony, according to censored transcripts of the trial that were circulated by the court and that appeared widely in state media, which praised the proceedings as progress for the rule of law in China.
The trial was carefully stage-managed by the ruling Communist Party to focus on narrow criminal charges brought against Mr. Bo rather than on the broader political struggle that culminated in his purge. Neither Mr. Bo nor the prosecutor referred to serious tensions that moving against a Politburo member, who hailed from a prominent revolutionary clan, caused for the party during a year of political succession.
Mr. Bo's oratory, starting from his defiant remarks on Thursday, may have given spectators the impression that he was free to speak his mind, and also won him sympathizers. But the trial transcripts substituted drama for completeness. Mr. Bo appeared to limit his own comments to addressing the prosecution's claims and did not, as he might have done, use his knowledge as a party leader to reveal how the families of other powerful party leaders had amassed far more wealth than he was accused of acquiring. Sensitive remarks were struck from the record.
In previous days, testimony showed that Mr. Bo's wife and son had taken lavish gifts from a billionaire; that Ms. Gu had told Mr. Wang, who was the police chief of Mr. Bo's metropolitan region, Chongqing, that she poisoned a British businessman; and that Mr. Bo had punched or slapped Mr. Wang in the face after Mr. Wang confronted him with that news two months later.
The trial was the most closely watched in China since that of the Gang of Four, which included Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, was broadcast live on television in 1980. It is taking place in the social media age, and the party is learning to harness the power of microblogs for information control. Journalists in Jinan to cover the trial were barred from the courtroom and sat in hotel rooms for hours reading transcripts released via the court microblog.
The most explosive revelation of the trial came when Mr. Bo asserted in his closing speech that Mr. Wang had had a final falling out with Mr. Bo and fled to a nearby American Consulate in February 2012 in large part because of tensions that boiled over from his infatuation with Ms. Gu. The wife and the police chief had been close for years, Mr. Bo said, ever since a young tycoon, Xu Ming, introduced Mr. Wang to Ms. Gu. Mr. Wang won Ms. Gu's confidence when he investigated Ms. Gu's suspicions that she had been poisoned, and he became a fixture in the Bo household.
"Because he and Gu Kailai were stuck together as if by glue, Gu Kailai took him at his word, and Wang Lijun infiltrated my household because of his association with Gu Kailai," Mr. Bo said. "So now such a serious thing has occurred." He added, "The two had an extremely special relationship, and I was so sick of it."
Mr. Bo said that Mr. Wang harbored an enduring "secret love" for Ms. Gu, and that "his emotions were twisted; he could not free himself." Mr. Wang expressed his feelings in one or more letters to Ms. Gu, Mr. Bo said. One day, Mr. Wang told her of his love and slapped himself eight times in front of her.
"You're a little abnormal," Ms. Gu told Mr. Wang, according to Mr. Bo.
"I used to be abnormal, but now I'm normal," Mr. Wang said.
Then Mr. Bo suddenly walked into the room and took the letter or letters away, he said. "He knew my character," Mr. Bo said. "He harmed my family. He harmed my basic feelings. That's the true reason for his defection."
Patrick Zuo contributed research from Jinan, and Mia Li from Beijing.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 27, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the date when Wang Lijun fled to an American Consulate after his final falling out with Bo Xilai. It was February 2012, not late 2011.
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Matt Harvey's record fell to 9-5 as his E.R.A. crept up to 2.27.
The indicators were plain: sliders that spun but did not swerve, fastballs that whizzed but failed to explode, changeups that floated along capricious paths.
Even Matt Harvey, it turns out, is susceptible to fatigue.
Harvey, the Mets' ace, gave up 13 hits Saturday afternoon — the most any pitcher on the team has allowed this season — as his team fell, 3-0, to the Detroit Tigers at Citi Field. Despite the hits total, it was a fine start: he allowed only two runs over six and two-thirds innings. But Harvey was markedly unhappy after the game, acknowledging he was tired but blaming himself for being unable to discover a workaround.
"I'm getting pretty tired, but so is everybody," said Harvey, who is trying to finish his first full major league season. "You have to work through it and have to deal with it. It's a long season, and you need to figure out how to get things done. My performance the last couple starts has been pretty terrible."
Terrible would be an overstatement. Harvey threw his first complete-game shutout earlier this month.
Since then, though, he has lost his untouchable aura. He gave up four runs and eight hits during an Aug. 13 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. And he threw only 86 pitches during a scrappy outing Aug. 18 against the San Diego Padres.
The entire game Saturday seemed a struggle, too, as the hits piled up and the runners packed the bases.
Harvey gave up a run-scoring double in the second inning to Max Scherzer, the opposing starter, whose last hit came during the 2009 season. Austin Jackson's infield single later that inning sent home the only other run Harvey allowed. The Tigers added a run on a ninth-inning sacrifice fly.
The Mets' hitters went silent against Scherzer, who notched 11 strikeouts while improving his record to 19-1.
"As we've seen the last couple nights, we're taking strikes and swinging at balls," Mets Manager Terry Collins said. "That's not the approach you want."
Collins praised Harvey's resilience. On paper and on the scoreboard, he gave his team a chance to win.
But Collins said it was obvious from the early innings that Harvey was not at full strength.
Earlier this season, Harvey's slider — 93 miles per hour and sharp — seemed almost unfair to hitters. In his last few starts, though, it has not had the same bite.
"What we saw today is a guy who's working as hard as he can, but you're seeing the effect of his first full season up here," Collins said.
"It's a grind, and he's doing the best he can."
Collins has long emphasized the club's desire to have Harvey and Zack Wheeler, the Mets' other young pitching star, make it through a complete season. It is important, the Mets reason, that the two understand simply what it feels like, what a physical test it can be, to pitch this long.
Harvey pitched 1691/3 innings last year between Class AAA and the major leagues. With Saturday's start included, he is at 1781/3 innings this season. The next month, then, will be uncharted territory, a chance for him to ascertain his bodily limitations and explore ways to succeed beyond pure physicality.
"Everything's a learning process," Harvey said. "I've never been through this before, so obviously paying attention to it and figuring out ways to move past it is all part of learning and growing as a ballplayer."
INSIDE PITCH
Third baseman David Wright completed some basic running drills at Citi Field as he continued to rehabilitate a strained right hamstring, which has kept him on the disabled list since Aug. 3.
