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Dr. Deepak Srivastava discussing stem cell work with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. Related Times Topics: Stem Cells Guidelines proposed by the National Institutes of Health to carry out an order made last month by President Obama would allow research with federal financing only on stem cells derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics. The money would still be prohibited for stem cell lines created solely for research purposes and for embryos created through a technique known as therapeutic cloning. During the campaign last year, President Obama said he supported "therapeutic cloning of stem cells," a policy his administration rejected Friday. A White House spokesman, Reid Cherlin, said the president "directed N.I.H. to formulate the best method for moving forward with stem cell research, both ethically and scientifically," in an independent process. Many scientists praised the new guidelines as an expected compromise. "I think it's a big step forward," said Richard O. Hynes, a cancer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "although there are aspects of stem cell research that will still be outside federal funding." Others called the proposed rules a sellout. "I'm disappointed," said Dr. Irving Weissman, the director of the Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute at Stanford University. Dr. Weissman accused the health institutes of "putting this ideological barrier in the way" of treating disease. Abortion opponents predicted that the administration would soon embrace less restrictive stem cell policies. "This is clearly part of an incremental strategy to desensitize the public to the concept of killing human embryos for research purposes," said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee. The acting director of the health institutes, Dr. Raynard S. Kington, said that in writing the guidelines, officials had taken into account ethical considerations and "broad public support" for the use of discarded embryos from fertility clinics. "As science changes," Dr. Kington said, "we will take note of that and, when appropriate, reconsider the guidelines." Sitting on more than $10 billion in stimulus money, health institute officials have been eager to expand financing for stem cell research. Under restrictions put in place by President George W. Bush, just 21 stem cell lines have been eligible for federal financing. But researchers using private money have created more than 700 stem cell lines, some with specific diseases or mutations, many of which may now be eligible for federal financing. Some scientists said new rules requiring that donors be informed of all options could render too many new cell lines ineligible. And the rules could make ineligible for future federal financing even some cell lines approved by Mr. Bush. Dr. George Q. Daley, the director of the stem cell transplantation program at Children's Hospital Boston, said his team had used private financing to create 15 stem cell lines from poor-quality embryos that clinicians had told couples they should discard. Not all couples may have been told that they could donate the weakened embryos to other couples, a requirement under the new guidelines. "My major concern," Dr. Daley said, "is grandfathering all those medically important lines" made under less stringent consent policies, including some approved by Mr. Bush. The announcement on Friday is likely to kick off a rush of applications from scientists eager for federal support for stem cell research. The health institutes has approved 20 such proposals for financing, although the projects have been delayed until the stem cell guideline is finalized. In fiscal year 2008, the health institutes financed 260 research projects, at a cost of $88 million, that involved stem cell lines approved by Mr. Bush. "In a relatively short period of time, we're likely to greatly increase the number of stem cell lines eligible for federal funding," Dr. Kington said. "Ultimately, this will have a significant impact on human health and disease." The new guidelines will be published next week in the Federal Register, and the health institutes then will accept comments for 30 days. The rules are to be final by July 7. Some in Congress have promised to introduce legislation that would allow financing of more stem cell lines. Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said in a statement that the proposed legislation would "promote all forms of ethical stem cell research." A statement from Representative Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware, said there was "opportunity for more expansive guidelines." Staff members for both lawmakers said they could not describe details of the legislation or whether it would seek to legalize federal financing of research using embryos created by therapeutic cloning. Mr. Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee said the DeGette and Castle legislation would almost certainly undermine the few restrictions left in place by Mr. Obama. Many scientists believe that the development of matched organs for transplantation would be possible only with therapeutic cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer, a process by which genetic material from a patient is placed in the nucleus of an egg to produce embryonic stem cells that are an identical genetic match. "You can't even apply for funding now if you have a cell line derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer that faithfully reproduces, say, juvenile diabetes," Dr. Weissman said. But Dr. Kington said this cell transfer process had never been successfully carried out in human cells. And other scientists have suggested that if scientists create 1,000 or more genetically distinct stem cell lines, organs could be grown that would be a close enough genetic match to avoid rejection by patients' immune systems.

WASHINGTON - President Obama presented a far-reaching set of proposals on Monday that are aimed at the tax benefits enjoyed by companies and wealthy individuals harboring cash in offshore accounts. These steps, he said, would be the first in a much broader effort to fix a "broken tax system." Mr. Obama made the announcement in the Grand Foyer of the White House, standing alongside Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, Douglas Shulman. His remarks echoed the sentiment he voiced again and again during the presidential campaign when he pledged to crack down on overseas tax evaders. The proposed tax overhaul, which will be detailed later this week when the White House presents its formal budget, could help raise $210 billion in revenue over 10 years, the administration estimates. While most Americans pay their fair share of taxes, Mr. Obama said, "there are others who are shirking theirs, and many are aided and abetted by a broken tax system." Multinational corporations, he said, paid an average tax rate of just 2 percent on their foreign revenue. And some wealthy individuals hide their fortunes in foreign tax havens. The president thus set up a frontal clash with big business over the tax advantages enjoyed by companies with extensive overseas operations. Large multinational companies like Microsoft, General Electric and Cisco Systems have been bracing for such an initiative from the Obama administration. Critics of the approach say that it could lead not to the administration's hoped-for repatriation of taxes but rather to job losses or higher prices as companies try to compensate for a greater tax burden. Martin Regalia, chief economist of the United States Chamber of Commerce, challenged the administration's reasoning. "The United States is the only major industrialized country which double-taxes the overseas earnings of our companies," he said in a statement. By limiting companies' ability to defer tax payments, he said, "you limit the ability of U.S. companies to compete, you impede growth in the U.S. economy, and you cause the loss of jobs - both at the companies directly impacted and companies in their supply chains." Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he supported tax reform and efforts to crack down on tax evaders. But, he added, "I cannot endorse a plan that gives preferential treatment to foreign companies at the expense of U.S. companies." He called the plan "a significant tax increase on companies representing 44 percent of total U.S. private employment" and said that in the depths of recession, it seemed "particularly harmful to our shared goal of creating more American jobs rather than driving them overseas." President Obama addressed some of the concerns Monday, saying that "I want to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world" but that the way to do that was "not to reward companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits" abroad. One proposed change would restrict companies from deferring the payment of taxes on profit earned overseas. Administration officials said the plan would keep businesses from taking deductions against their taxes by inflating the amount of foreign taxes they paid. Mr. Obama raised the idea frequently during his presidential campaign. In his remarks to Congress in February, as he outlined his priorities for the year, he pledged to make the tax code more equitable by "finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas." The White House said that Mr. Obama is seeking to shut down overseas tax havens in an attempt to "close the international tax gap." Mr. Geithner noted that the Group of 20 industrial countries had agreed this year to act against tax havens like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Monaco. Amid such rising pressure, 10 countries have agreed to adopt new international standards, he said. "For years, we've talked about shutting down overseas tax havens," Mr. Obama said. "That's what our budget will finally do." The president said he hopes to remove the competitive advantage for companies that invest and create jobs overseas, working to replace their tax advantages with incentives to produce jobs in the United States. American multinational corporations paid only $16 billion in taxes to the United States on $700 billion in foreign earnings - an effective tax rate of 2.3 percent - in 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the White House. It distributed a statement that said that nearly one-third of all foreign profit reported by such corporations in 2003 came from three small low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland. About 200 companies and trade associations have signed a letter stating that the proposed tax changes would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals. Cisco Systems, which sells Internet products and services, said in a statement that a change in the tax deferral measure "would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the U.S." and place the company at a disadvantage against foreign competitors not subject to American taxes. Among other companies, Google, the giant Internet search company, said it was monitoring the situation. "At this point it is too early to evaluate the potential effect on Google's operations as there will likely be multiple proposals considered," Google said in a statement. In his presidential campaign last year, Mr. Obama often criticized provisions in the tax code that allowed American companies with overseas operations to defer paying taxes on corporate profits, providing that they placed the money back into their foreign subsidiaries. In his remarks on Monday, the president called for an end to that practice, as well as the closure of loopholes that allow companies and individuals to legally avoid paying billions in taxes through hidden accounts. The White House said the administration would raise $103.1 billion over 10 years by removing a rule that allows companies to take immediate deductions for overseas expenses while deferring tax payments on profit there, and eliminating loopholes that permit businesses to claim inflated credit against American taxes for foreign taxes paid. Of this, $74.5 billion would go to "make permanent a tax credit for investment in research and innovation within the United States," the White House statement said. The administration also said it would raise $95.2 billion over 10 years by tightening requirements on income shifted from one foreign subsidiary to another in a lower-tax country, making it more difficult for financial institutions and individuals to hide money in offshore accounts, and hiring 800 new I.R.S. staff to tighten international enforcement. Many of the tax proposals will require Congressional approval and, if passed, none would take force before 2011.

The youngest son of the ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has begun an apprenticeship in the country's most powerful governing agency, a South Korean news report said. Kim Jong-un, in his mid-20s and lately considered by many analysts in Seoul as a likely successor to his father, was recently given a low-ranking job at the National Defense Commission, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, quoting anonymous sources in its report. Yonhap saw the move as an indication that an active grooming of the son as the next leader has begun. His father was similarly prepared decades ago by assuming low-level jobs with the ruling Workers Party of Korea. Mr. Kim took over the North Korean helm when his father, President Kim Il-sung, died in 1994. Like most news about the inner workings of the Kim family, the latest report could not be independently confirmed. South Korean media often carry conflicting reports about the Kim family. Yonhap had earlier reported that Kim Jong-un would be elected to the rubber-stamp Parliament in March as a way to speed up his apprenticeship. That didn't happen. Media reports about Mr. Kim's three known sons, especially about Jung-un, have spiked in recent weeks. Mr. Kim, who reportedly suffered a stroke in August, is said to be focusing now on securing a succession of power for one of his sons. Earlier this month, the Parliament re-elected Mr. Kim as chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission. Two of his most trusted aides - Oh Geung-nyeol, a general, and Jang Seong-taek, Mr. Kim's brother-in-law - also were elected to the commission. The appointments of Mr. Oh and Mr. Jang have led to reports about their possible roles in choosing Mr. Kim's successor, or in one of them becoming the leader himself in the post-Kim era. But those reports, too, were based mostly on conjecture by outside analysts. Experts often vary widely in their theories about Mr. Kim's motives. Only a few years ago, many analysts, as well as news outlets in South Korea, had dismissed Mr. Jang, believing him to be persona non grata in the regime because he had suddenly disappeared from the public scene. But about a year ago, he returned to politics. Meanwhile, little is known about Mr. Kim's youngest son. Officials and analysts believe he was born in late 1983 or early 1984. He reportedly liked basketball and looked and acted like his father. As a teenager, he studied at the International School of Berne in Switzerland. Mr. Kim has three known sons by two women. The oldest, Kim Jong-nam, 37, was once considered the undisputed successor. But he reportedly fell out of his father's favor when he was caught sneaking into Japan on a fake Dominican Republic passport in 2001. He told Japanese authorities that he had planned to visit Tokyo's Disney resort. After Kim Jung-nam's apparent disgrace, the middle son, Kim Jong-chol, 27, was cited as a favorite candidate for several years. Mr. Kim's former Japanese sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto, said in his memoir that the leader considers his second son "girlish." And recent South Korean and Japanese news reports have said that he is chronically ill.

THE BASICS Blending the styles of an art installation with a boutique hotel, the Rough Luxe has distressed walls, contemporary art and reclaimed furniture alongside crisp linens and slick bathrooms. Set in a row of Georgian town houses minutes from St. Pancras International Station, the nine-room hotel was salvaged from the remains of one of the area's many nondescript guesthouses. Last year, during a renovation, layers of wallpaper and paint were peeled away, leaving in their wake an organic collage of original handpainted mosaic wallpaper and plaster. The designer, Rabih Hage, decided to stop there. The effect is almost industrial, like the interior of a guerrilla warehouse art gallery. The hotel's small reception area, the only public space other than the breakfast room, sets the tone with a giant photograph of Gilbert and George, a contemporary art duo based in England, hovering over a 1970s built-in cabinet. THE LOCATION King's Cross is a chaotic transportation hub where five major roads intersect beside a tangle of rail and subway routes. The immediate surrounds, riddled with budget food chains and dingy hotels, thrives on the transient population of commuters and tourists. But the arrival of the Eurostar at St. Pancras International in 2007 - central London's gateway to Europe, with Paris just over two hours away - is helping to transform the area. Set among the back streets of Grays Inn Road and Swinton Street are a smattering of destination restaurants. Acorn House (69 Swinton Street; 44-207-812-1842; www.acornhouserestaurant.com), where painstakingly sourced local ingredients are whipped together by trainee chefs, is very popular. Despite pockets of gentrification, the area still has enough edge to stave off the well-dressed specter of predictability. Scala (275 Pentonville Road; 44-207-833-2022; www.scala-london.co.uk), a trendy music and dance spot, hosts regular late-night parties. THE ROOMS At the Rough Luxe, no two rooms are alike, each having been individually styled by Mr. Hage, the hotel's designer. Arranged around my comfortable bed, amply coated in fine linens, the artwork - by Aki Kuroda, a Japanese painter - provided flashes of bright red against the scabrous wall. Much of the antique furniture found throughout the hotel was purchased at an auction of the Savoy Hotel's throwaways. Several rooms have photographs of palatial interiors by Massimo Listri, which creates an enlarging effect, similar to a mirror, to what are comfortably-sized doubles, but definitely on the small side. THE BATHROOM Three rooms come with a private bathroom, including mine (Room 5), and it had a giant photograph of an eccentrically dressed Philippe Starck posing against a bright orange wall. Most of the bathrooms have a luxurious feel with glass-encased showers and rainfall shower heads, and chrome faucets over marble basins. Room 8's en-suite bathroom has a spectacular freestanding copper bathtub. AMENITIES In a hotel that deliberately forgoes substance in favor of style, there are few added extras. Indeed, the television sets in each room are retro 1980s collectors' items, with a penchant for static. But Leo Rabelo, the affable general manager, was on permanent call for dinner recommendations and sightseeing advice. A Continental breakfast, included in the price of the room, was a treat delivered from Ottolenghi, a popular international deli and restaurant in Islington, and served on a table made of salvaged wood from Brighton Pier. THE BOTTOM LINE Many hotels claim to be original, but Rough Luxe actually is. Those wanting to be pampered need not apply. The emphasis here is on experience rather than indulgence. And the location is certainly one to watch - King's Cross may not be as vibrant as Shoreditch or Soho, but there's every chance that it will be. The rates, starting at GBP155 a night, or $232.50 at $1.50 to the pound, seem a little more luxe than rough, but if the hotel were set in a more salubrious corner of London, no one would balk at being charged double. Rough Luxe Hotel, 1 Birkenhead Street, London WC1; 44-207-837-5338; www.roughluxe.co.uk.

ON a rainy day in the late 17th century, an enterprising agent of the British East India Company named Job Charnock sailed along the Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges that flows from high in the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal, and pitched a tent on its swampy banks. The company bought three riverside villages. Soon they would become a port - flowing with opium, muslin and jute - and then, as the capital of British India until 1912, draw conquerors, dreamers and hungry folk from all over the world. Calcutta, India's first modern city, was born. Over the years, it acquired many names: City of Palaces, Black Hole, Graveyard of the British Empire. In 2001, it was christened Kolkata - slower, rounder, ostensibly more Bengali-sounding. To me, it has always been the city of green shutters. They are a singular fixture of old Calcutta houses. They glow in the steamy heat of the afternoon. Trees sometimes sprout from moldy ledges. I left Calcutta when I was small and promptly forgot what I knew, such is the thick velvet curtain the immigrant child draws over memory. Every few summers, when my family returned for holidays, I would be escorted from one relative's house to another, scolded for being too thin, and force-fed heaps of sweets. On Park Street, I would be invariably accosted by a hungry, barefoot child. The only thing more confounding than going to Calcutta was coming home to suburban Southern California; how do you explain the city of dreadful night (Rudyard Kipling's phrase, not mine) to friends who had spent the summer listening to Olivia Newton-John? In the last four years, over several reporting trips there, the city has revealed itself to me slowly, opening one sleepy eye at a time. Calcutta today is as parochial as it is modern. It lives in the past as much as it lets its past decay. India's first global city, it is littered with the remains of many worlds: the rickshaws that the Chinese brought; an Armenian cemetery; dollops of jazz left by Americans in the war years. It is as much a walker's city as a talker's: It has great eavesdropping potential, even if you understand only English, and it is perfectly acceptable to start up a conversation with strangers, whether about the rain or Shakespeare. Best of all, in Calcutta, you can eat the world. The royal chefs who decamped here from the Mughal court of north India brought a cardamom-laced mutton rezala stew. The British Raj offered a canape of cheese and pineapple. From Baghdad, David Nahoum's Jewish forefathers brought the cheese-filled sambusa to Calcutta's New Market. FOR the traveler with limited time, the best way to explore Calcutta is roughly to trace the route of the Hooghly, meandering on and off the main thoroughfares by foot, tram and subway, known here as the Metro. This is not a luxury destination. It is more a journey through the grimy layers of time. History is inscribed on every lane, like tattoos on an aging diva. Calcutta was once quite a diva. You could start by boarding a tram at the Esplanade, just north of the Oberoi Grand Hotel, and head north on College Street, now renamed Bidhan Sarani. The last time I tried, the tram crawled through traffic and then stopped crawling entirely. The power had gone out. If you get out near College Street, as I did, make your way through the dense alleys of books (mostly used textbooks, but a careful hunt on Calcutta's streets can turn up jewels, such as a Chinese Communist children's book of manners, translated into English, which I once procured) to the Indian Coffee House. Built in the late 1800s as the Albert Hall to commemorate a visit of the prince consort, it eventually became the city's most venerable institution of revolutionary chatter and flirt. There is still plenty of flirt. The waiters don't chatter. They scowl under their white caps, thick black dirt in the stiff creases. They complain that no one orders anything. A cashier told me last summer that the cafe had been posting losses for more than 25 years. I guiltily ordered the fritter-like vegetable pakoras. Calcutta from the start has confronted some of the most acute debates of modernity. Over three centuries, the folly and ingenuity of global capitalism have left their mark on my city, and then, too, so have the Communists, who have been elected to power for an uninterrupted 31 years. Now New India pokes its finger into Calcutta's languid belly. The old houses are making way for tall glass and steel, their Calcutta Deco details tossed away like fish-heads. Flury's, once a classic European patisserie, serves American-style lasagna instead of the white bread cucumber sandwiches of my childhood. The hammer and sickle remains the refrain of Calcutta graffiti, interrupted now by posters for English classes, the hammer and sickle, you might say, of Indian aspiration today. "Great cities get old and somehow renew themselves," said Mani Sankar Mukherji, whose remarkable 1962 novel, "Chowringhee," chronicled life inside a roaring midcentury Calcutta hotel. Calcutta, he confessed, cannot be called a great city. Pradip Kakkar, who, with his wife, Bonani, leads a citizens' lobby called Public, short for People United for Better Living in Calcutta, was somewhat more generous. "Calcutta is newing itself," he said. Public has campaigned to remove billboards that obscure heritage buildings and save the wetlands that naturally drain and clean Calcutta's waste. Calcutta has no sewage treatment plant. The wetlands, Mrs. Kakkar said, are like the city's kidney. They are also a sanctuary of cormorants and wagtails, where fishermen and farmers grow food on a patchwork of ponds and fields. Around the corner from the Coffee House on College Street stands Presidency College, founded by Indian philanthropists in 1817 as a center for the teaching of European thought. Around the College Square water tank are three buildings testifying to Calcutta's melting pot heritage: the Baptist Mission, in the so-called Indo-Saracenic architectural style; the Mahabodi Buddhist temple, founded by a Sri Lankan monk; and the Bengal Theosophical Society, one of the world's first esoteric East-meets-West religious movements. A short tram ride north along College Street takes you to Bethune College, created in 1849 as the city's first school for girls, a remarkable feat, considering that most privileged Indians secluded their women in purdah at the time. My own grandmother, a lawyer's daughter, could study only until the age of 13. On the south side of the college is the family-owned Girish Chandra Dey and Nakur Chandra Nandy, makers of nothing else but the celebrated Bengali shondesh. To its detractors, including me, the shondesh, made of sweetened slow-stirred cheese, resembles cement. To its fans, it is proof of divine love, eaten at any time of day, and always when there is something to celebrate. Pranab Nandy, 46, a fifth-generation confectioner, sat cross-legged in a dhoti and ribbed white undershirt on an unseasonably warm day in January. He seemed not the least worried about New Indian tastes cutting into his business. "Demand remains. It will always remain," he said. "Whenever there is happiness, there must be shondesh." In winter the shondesh is sweetened with palm syrup, and it had arrived from the countryside this afternoon in terra-cotta pitchers. Mr. Nandy, without stirring from his perch, ordered his latest creations to be fetched - one stuffed with coconut and nuts, another with a truffle-like injection of palm syrup, a third dunked in syrup. The Nandy workshop's green walls were plastered with Hindu goddess posters. Men sat on the floor, crafting each shondesh from wooden molds. Not that the Nandys have eschewed New India. They now have an outlet inside an air-conditioned supermarket. From Mr. Nandy's shop, the walker (unless burdened with sacks of shondesh, as I was) could head north and then west into the heart of the erstwhile Black Town, where Indians rich and poor were concentrated in the starkly segregated days of the empire. There is no evident city planning. The roads are so narrow it is difficult for cars to navigate; they flooded then and still do. Chitpur Road was the nerve center of Black Town. The mansions on and off this boulevard, now called Rabindra Sarani, are a whimsical mixture of West and East - introverted toward courtyards according to Indian architectural tradition and boasting fabulous Western facades with Corinthian pillars and nymphs on the pediments. Black Town was built by those whom Krishna Dutta, in her book "Calcutta: A Literary and Cultural History," calls the Bengali compradors, who "patronized Indian classical music and the European arts, held lavish feasts and paid court to the British." They are lyrically skewered in Amitav Ghosh's novel "Sea of Poppies." The mansions are in varying stages of ruin. The height of kitsch is the Marble Palace, open to the public with a pass from the government tourism office and stuffed with crystal chandeliers and stone lions. Geoffrey Moorhouse, in his book, "Calcutta: The City Revealed," says it looks "as if they had been scavenged from job lots on the Portobello Road on a series of damp Saturday afternoons." The family home of Rabindranath Tagore is on Dwarkanath Tagore Lane. The unsung mansions sit on the smaller lanes, occupied by fragments of families. Old saris hang out to dry on the balconies and dogs snooze at the feet of faux-Venus statues. Off Chitpur Road, a lane takes you to the potters' colony, Kumartoli (ask directions to find your way), a unique open-air workshop where gods and goddesses are molded by hand, traditionally using dust from the thresholds of nearby brothels. The city's powerful prostitutes union objects to this practice now. Kumartoli is busiest in fall, in the run-up to the Hindu festival season. A variety of artisans hang on along Chitpur Road: makers of traditional perfumes, embroidered tunic sellers, purveyors of wigs, a row of musical instrument shops (at N. N. Mondal's, Yehudi Menuhin got his violin repaired in 1952) and Chinese shoemakers. These lanes were also where the city savaged itself in the summer of 1946, just as the British were preparing to leave and India was about to be partitioned. Hindus cut Muslim throats; Muslims cut Hindu throats; Gandhi rushed to the city and launched a hunger strike. Every family, mine included, bore witness to the carnage, or took part in it. Behind the green shutters, there are stories. A good place to stop and ponder the past is the ground-floor bar of the Broadway Hotel, on Ganesh Chandra Avenue. The afternoon light pours in golden soft through the shutters. Across the street, above a gas station, is a hidden gem, called Eau Chew, where Joseph and Josephine Huang serve a fabulous fish in black bean sauce. WHITE Town, or the center of British business and government, emerged around its own drinking-water tank and became known as Dalhousie Square. It has since been christened B.B.D. Bag, for the three young gunmen - Binoy, Badal and Dinesh - who stormed the British administrative office, the Writers Building, in 1930 and shot dead the British inspector of prisons. A black statue of the trio faces the Writers Building, now the headquarters of the Communist government of West Bengal state. Modernity continues to be debated. Protests erupted here against a plan to build the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, in a factory on the city outskirts. Peasants revolted, and the Nano is being built elsewhere. Calcutta has another guerrilla hero: Subhas Chandra Bose, who broke away from Gandhi's nonviolent movement to raise an army against the British. The central narrative of his erstwhile family mansion on Elgin Road, now a museum of Bose memorabilia, is his "great escape" from house arrest. Red footsteps on the balcony mark how he tiptoed out on a January night in 1941. The gray Wanderer in which he was driven away sits in the driveway. In one gallery is an extraordinary collection of photographs, including Netaji - "respected leader" as he is known - shaking hands with Hitler in 1942; apparently, he took help where he could get it. Every guidebook will opine on the sights of Dalhousie Square, which the World Monuments Fund lists on its 100 most endangered heritage sites. I recommend a visit to the General Post Office and the adjacent Postal Museum, for their collection of old stamps and the brass buckles of the "dak" runners, or postmen, who carried letters on foot. Calcutta's first foreigners often died young, sometimes before they received mail from across the ocean. The Returned Letter Office housed the letters to the dead. It stands on the southeast corner of the square. Park Street Cemetery, a short taxi ride from Dalhousie Square, offers more proof of the pestilence that hovered over the imperialists. The museum inside the Victoria Memorial is an archive of imperial ambition. Across the river is another kind of archive: the Indian Botanic Garden, said to house trees from five continents but its collection is poorly marked, the benches are broken and it seems better suited for canoodlers than botanists. Much of White Town is in sad shape. A mysterious fire claimed a significant portion of the headquarters of MacKinnon Mackenzie, a prominent managing agent for British industry in Calcutta. Bow Barracks, a red-brick row of onetime army barracks and home now to Chinese and biracials known here as Anglo-Indians, is due to be demolished. Groups like Public are goading the city to start saving its past. St. Andrew's Church, built by Scots in 1818, has been illuminated as a means of drawing investment and tourists to the heart of the city. "No longer is there an anxiety that we have to be anticolonial," the city's municipal commissioner, Alapan Bandyopadhyay, gamely said. South Calcutta has two attractions, and they are worth exploring by Metro. The Kalighat Temple is a tableau of faith, blood and hustle. Devotees prostrate themselves before the dark goddess, goats meet their death and touts, some in holy men's garb, home in on tourists. The poor squat on the street at lunchtime, for a bowl of rice. It is hard to imagine a worse fate than to be poor in Calcutta. Hunger still stalks the city. The Tollygunge Club is farther south. Built as a private Raj-era mansion, it housed the family of Tipu Sultan, another deposed Indian king from southern Mysore, and then became a whites-only club in 1895, with a racecourse as its main attraction. Indians broke the color bar in 1964 but soon came to be seen as class enemies. A Maoist guerrilla shot dead the club director in 1971. He was sitting in his second-floor office at the time, the windows of the Palladian mansion facing south, to catch the breeze. Today, it is primarily a golf club. Jackals have built their dens here. They seem to like to watch golf. What the newing of Calcutta, as Mr. Kakkar puts it, will do to the soul of Calcutta is a matter of argument. Aveek Sen, a photography critic at The Telegraph, a Calcutta-based daily, was glum. "All the things that Calcutta is known for are on an irreversible - "he stopped to find the word, and then made a downward motion of the hand. Bengali theater is long past its glory days, he said. So too the Academy of Fine Arts, once a proud icon of Calcutta modernism, though several private galleries have opened in the last couple of years. The city's biggest cultural event is an annual book fair, but new foreign books and journals, easily available in Delhi, are hard to come by here. Mr. Sen often spirits away to Delhi. He said the cultural life of Calcutta was "stifling." "In Calcutta, people get used to deprivation and turn it into a virtue," he concluded. Then he paused, offering a peephole into the soul of Calcutta. "I'm saying all these dreadful things about my city. But I love living here."

Slovenia's dramatic win over Russia Wednesday, and to a lesser extent Ireland's narrow loss to France, capped off a grueling two-year qualifying period that saw some of the smallest countries in the world kick some of soccer's biggest names in the teeth. After a century of near domination from the likes of Brazil, Italy and Germany, international soccer is entering the era of the Cinderella. It may not happen this time around, but given the increasing flow of talent, training and information across borders, it's almost certain that a small upstart nation blessed with good athletes and better luck will make a legitimate run at the world's most coveted trophy. Russia's Yuri Zhirkov, right, fights for the ball with Slovenia's Valter Birsa Wednesday. Wednesday near Paris, Ireland nearly pulled off the greatest win in its soccer history. As retired French star Zinedine Zidane watched in the crowd, the Irish exerted intense pressure on the 2006 finalists, missing four point-blank chances, one from two yards off the left foot of John O'Shea, the Manchester United defender. Striker Robbie Keane also missed from close range in the 73rd and 90th minutes. The misses would prove crucial in extra time, as French star Thierry Henry controlled a free kick from near midfield, tapping it twice with his hand before flicking a cross to the goal line that William Gallas headed into the net. Despite intense protests from Irish goalkeeper Shay Given, Swedish referee Martin Hansson allowed the score, giving France its one-goal edge. Russia wasn't so fortunate, losing 1-0 to tiny Slovenia. Greece, the European Champion just five years ago, barely got by Ukraine 1-0 after the first leg of their match ended in a scoreless tie. Portugal, without the world's top player, Cristiano Ronaldo, beat Bosnia-Herzegovina. The increasingly global nature of the professional game has reshaped the soccer world, which, like the rest of the globe, is significantly flatter than it was a generation ago. Every player on the pitch for Slovenia Wednesday plays outside the country professionally. Likewise, Uruguay, which has just five players on its roster playing in the domestic league, advanced to South Africa with a win over Costa Rica. The Ukraine has Andriy Shevchenko, formerly of Chelsea, the top team in the English Premier League, and Dmytro Chygrynskiy, who plays for Barcelona. Bosnia's Edin Dzeko, Sejad Salihovic and Vedad Ibisevic play in the German Bundesliga, while Miralem Pjanic plays in France's Ligue 1. Come June, Chelsea's Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou will make the Ivory Coast a formidable opponent in South Africa. Internazionale's Samuel Eto'o, who played for Barcelona last year, should do the same for Cameroon's Indomitable Lions. And no one will have a pleasant afternoon facing Ghana, led by Chelsea's Michael Essien and Fulham's John Pantsil. "The playing field is so much more level because all these players now know how to train," says Tommy Smyth, the soccer analyst. "You don't have to be a coach anymore to bring back home the advantages and the knowledge of the top leagues. It's like the kid going and then coming back from the big cities to the country and telling everyone what it's all about and how they do things there." France's William Gallas celebrates the win over Ireland. Players' increased international fluidity has grown along with the growing influence of money in soccer. The English Premier League's best teams, for example, now have just a few players from the U.K., leading some to call for FIFA, soccer's international governing body, to enact rules limiting the number of international players each pro team can have. A player can only switch World Cup teams if he is a citizen—naturalized or by birth—of his new country and has never played a top-level international match for his previous country. Warren Barton, a former English national team player, said he and his teammates in the mid-1990s would feel confident going into a game against a country like Nigeria, even if they expected a physical test. "The concentration wouldn't be there" on the lesser teams, said Mr. Barton, now an analyst on the Fox Soccer Channel. "But there's no game that is a given now. We learned that the hard way in England, believing we had some divine right to play but sitting on the sidelines of some major tournaments." England, which failed to qualify for the 2008 European championship, has punched its ticket for South Africa. But plenty of other teams and stars once widely considered potential favorites to play in South Africa won't be there. Sweden's Zlatan Ibrahimovic is perhaps the biggest star on the sidelines, after his team fell one point short of getting to a final qualifying match. The Czech Republic, led by Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, also won't be making the trip. Alexi Lalas, the former star of the American national team, said the absence of former stalwarts like Sweden and the Czech Republic emphasizes how European teams are at a disadvantage because the continent's 53 teams, many with rich soccer traditions, have to battle for 13 of the 32 spots in the World Cup. "There is so much quality, so you see so many good teams on the brink," Mr. Lalas said. "It's not surprising, but it is a little disappointing. It's the World Cup, so you want all the best teams and the best players competing for the biggest prize." But the depth now extends beyond Europe. Argentina, coached by the iconoclastic and unpredictable Diego Maradona and featuring some of the world's greatest players, such as Lionel Messi and Carlos Tévez, is a two-time world champion and usually one of the favorites. But Argentina barely made the cut, losing four of five qualifying matches at one point, including a stunning 1-0 defeat to Paraguay, before squeaking out one-goal victories over Peru and Uruguay in October. John Skipper, executive vice president of content at ESPN, which will broadcast the World Cup in the U.S., said he was pulling for Portugal and Mr. Ronaldo to make it to South Africa but that a theme of the South African telecasts would be international soccer's new-found unpredictability. "Our one-sentence pitch is 'One Game Changes Everything,' " Mr. Skipper says. "That encompasses both the the importance of the event and the importance of every game. It's always possible that the team no one expects to get beat gets beat."

Everyone knows the grim news - unemployment in the United States has jumped to 8.5 percent, a 25-year high, and is racing toward double digits. Since November, the nation has lost more than three million jobs. But not everyone knows the brighter side to the equation: deep in the maw of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, millions are still being hired. So, while 4.8 million workers were laid off or chose to leave their jobs in February, employers across the country hired 4.3 million workers that month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "The best thing you can say about these numbers is it speaks to the dynamism of the U.S. economy, and the net negative number that we all traffic in masks that," said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG, a research and trading firm. "Ninety out of 100 people who know the number - 650,000 were lost in February - think that means no one was hired and 650,000 were fired." In February - before the economy started to show the first faint signs of a possible recovery - there were three million job openings nationwide. And despite large new job losses likely to be announced Friday, there are still millions of job openings. Who is hiring? Hospitals, colleges, discount stores, restaurants and municipal public works departments. I.B.M. is hiring more than 700 people for its new technical services center in Dubuque, Iowa, while the Cleveland Clinic has 500 job openings, not just for nurses but also for pharmacy aides and physical therapists. And after President Obama's stimulus package kicks into gear, state, local governments and road-building contractors are expected to hire more. Zachary Schaefer has hired 72 people since February for the Culver's hamburger and frozen custard restaurant that he and several partners just opened in Surprise, Ariz. "The amount of applicants who are qualified is definitely up," he said. "Whereas before we were counting on a lot of high school applicants, now there are a lot more middle-age people applying." Eddie Hamm, a former construction worker, was unemployed for five months when he drove by the site where the Culver's was under construction. Mr. Hamm, 29, applied for a job there, and now he's a "fry guy." "I'm just happy I got hired - I didn't want to stay home, not doing anything," he said, hardly complaining that he is earning half the $15 an hour he made in construction. "I don't look at it like I'm making $7.50. I look at it - I'm having a job in a down time, and it's a job where I can move up." Economists and job counselors advise the unemployed that there are definitely jobs to be had, even if there aren't nearly enough to go around. With 13.2 million people out of work, there are 4 1/3 unemployed Americans for every job opening. "You're facing more competition for every job you apply for, but the reality is there is a lot of hiring going on," said Andrew M. Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "You're never going to find anything unless you apply." Even industries that have taken a beating are doing plenty of hiring. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction companies hired 366,000 workers in February, and manufacturers hired 249,000. Retailers hired 536,000 workers in February, but that was down 25 percent from the previous February. Some job openings are to replace retirees, some to replace employees who left for other jobs, but many openings result from expansion. Companies that are still growing are blessed with talented applicants. "It's easier to hire in a recession - we have about five applications for every position," said Howard Glickberg, principal owner of Fairway Market, the well-known grocery company based in Manhattan. Fairway just hired 350 people for its month-old store in Paramus, N.J., the first Fairway outside of New York State. The company plans to add 1,200 more workers over the next two years by opening stores in Queens; Pelham Manor, N.Y.; and Stamford, Conn. "What you have to be afraid of is hiring someone who can't find something better at the time, and when they find something better they leave you," Mr. Glickberg said. "I want to hire someone who will make a career of it." The nation's largest private-sector employer, Wal-Mart Stores, is also hiring aplenty. Wal-Mart, with 1.4 million workers nationwide, hires several hundred thousand workers each year because of employee turnover, and expects to increase its domestic work force by nearly 50,000 this year, thanks to plans to open 150 new stores. Shawnalyn Conner is running a hiring center for a Wal-Mart store that will open on June 17 in Weaverville, N.C., near Asheville. She plans to hire 350 workers. "The biggest comment that we get from people is that they're looking for a company that's growing, and Wal-Mart offers that," said Ms. Conner, who, as the top manager of the new store, has hired 77 people so far. Gisel Ruiz, senior vice president for the people division of Wal-Mart U.S., said the company had a hiring program for former junior military officers, often for jobs as assistant store managers. With many veterans having a hard time landing jobs, Wal-Mart hired 150 former officers last year. The health care industry has held its own in hiring. The University of Miami medical school, which runs three hospitals, has 250 openings and is hiring about 35 people a month, compared with 100 a month in good times. Cleveland Clinic has 500 job openings, compared with 2,000 during better times. "We have a hiring freeze on, but even when there's a hiring freeze, we need to maintain our head count," said Joe Patrnchak , Cleveland Clinic's chief human resources officer. "We have 40,000 people, and you're going to have some openings." He is encountering an unusual snag in hiring people. "A challenge we have now is people from other areas are having problems selling their homes," Mr. Patrnchak said. "People aren't quite as mobile nowadays." The University of Miami medical school is also facing an unexpected problem. "There's a flood of applicants, but even so, it's harder to find really good, experienced people," said Paul Hudgins, its associate vice president for medical human resources. "We're seeing people hunkering down and saying they're going to stay where they are." The recession has encouraged people to cling to their jobs. Just 1.5 percent of workers voluntarily quit their jobs in February, the lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting those numbers eight years ago. Like many educational institutions, Washington University in St. Louis continues to hire. It has 175 job openings in admissions, residential life and other areas. There is a flood of job applicants, and Ann Prenatt, vice chancellor for human resources, said that has pros and cons, the advantage being that the university does not have to offer large premiums as often to draw coveted applicants.