LOST INNOCENCE

Israeli fire hit a house in the Gaza Strip on Monday while a family was eating breakfast, killing six Palestinians, including four children and their mother.

Israel challenged the account, describing the deaths as tragic and saying they occurred when an aircraft fired at two militants carrying bags filled with munitions that detonated and destroyed the home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

"They have wiped out my family," said the children's father, Ahmed Abu Meateq.

"This aggression does not serve efforts being exerted to achieve calm, and it obstructs the peace process," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement carried by WAFA news agency.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Hamas Islamists controlling the Gaza Strip bore overall responsibility for casualties among non-combatants because gunmen "operated among civilians."

They said four children -- siblings whose ages ranged from 1-1/2 to 5 years old -- and their mother were killed in the house during what the Israeli military described as an operation against rocket launching crews and snipers.

A 17-year-old Palestinian civilian who was passing by the home was also killed in the explosion.

eparately, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian gunman from Islamic Jihad during fighting in the town, the group said.

Another Palestinian militant was shot dead later in the day, according medical workers.

The Israeli military said aircraft and a tank unit fired at groups of gunmen that tried to approach troops in the town but no houses were targeted.

Hamas's armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, said it fired 3 rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot in response to the Beit Hanoun killings. There were no reports of casualties.

Hamas described deaths in Beit Hanoun as a "war crime."

After the latest violence, leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine traveled from Gaza to Cairo for talks with Egyptian intelligence officials on a possible ceasefire with Israel.

Israel has balked at entering into a formal agreement with Hamas but has said it would have no reason to attack in the Gaza Strip if Palestinians stopped their rocket fire.

While representatives of various Palestinian resistance groups were heading to Cairo Monday, April 28, to discuss a truce, Israeli occupation forces killed at least seven people in Gaza, including four young siblings.

An Israeli tank fired a shell a one-storey Palestinian house in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun while the family was having breakfast.

The bombing immediately killed four siblings whose ages ranged from 1 to 5 years old.

The victims were identified as Mussab Abu Maateq, one, Hana Abu Maateq, three, Rudeina Abu Maateq, four, and Saleh Abu Maateq, five.

Their mother died of her critical wounds in hospital, doctors at the Kamal Oudwan hospital said.

Nine other people were wounded in the Israeli attack, including two other siblings who are in life-threatening conditions.

A Palestinian resistance fighter was killed in an exchange of fire with the invading Israeli occupation troops in the area.

A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli occupation forces Sunday in nearby Beit Lahiya.

An air and ground blitz unleashed by Israel against Gaza in February claimed the lives of more than 129 people, including more than 40 children, toddlers and newborn babies, as well as 13 women.

The onslaught came one day after Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened to turn the sealed off Strip into a "bigger holocaust" for the Palestinians.

At least 443 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed since the US-hosted Annapolis peace conference in November.

The latest Israeli aggression came as representatives of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), headed to Cairo.

Hamas last week offered Israel a six-month truce, including an end to rocket fire into Israel, if Israel lifted an embargo on the territory.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday gave his unconditional support to Egypt's mediation efforts.

A proposal put forward by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit stipulates a ceasefire, the opening of the border crossings, a lifting of the blockade and finally the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israel has been closing the Gaza Strip's exits to the outside world since last June.

It has completely locked down the coastal area, home to nearly 1.6 million people, since January.

COLORED JUSTICE?

A Queens judge on Friday acquitted three detectives charged in the shooting of Sean Bell, who died on his wedding day in a hail of 50 police bullets. He said that prosecutors had failed to prove their case and that wounded friends of the slain man had given testimony that he did not believe.

The top-to-bottom acquittals of Detectives Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper were delivered by Justice Arthur J. Cooperman in an essay form bearing little resemblance to a standard jury verdict, and were met with silence as spectators looked at one another to be sure they had grasped what he was saying.

The detectives seemed to exhale deeply with relief. Detective Oliver — who reloaded his gun to fire a total of 31 shots — closed his eyes and cried.

Except for a few scuffles outside the Queens Criminal Court building and shouted, the day passed peacefully amid calls for calm delivered by the mayor, the police commissioner and other officials. Still, the Rev. Al Sharpton, a spokesman for the Bell family, called for street protests and said people should get themselves arrested, “whether it is on Wall Street, the judge’s house or at 1 Police Plaza.”

Legal hurdles remain for the officers: federal authorities said they would now investigate the case, and the Police Department is mulling internal charges. A $50 million lawsuit against the city, filed last year by Mr. Bell’s fiancée, who had two children with him, and the two men wounded in the shooting, may now begin moving forward.

The shooting of Mr. Bell, 23, outside a nightclub in Jamaica, Queens, early on Nov. 25, 2006, the morning of the day he was to be married, lasted seconds, but offered a glimpse of what it is to live in a neighborhood where black men and women are stopped and frisked at a higher rate than elsewhere in the city.

But the case never became the racially charged lightning rod of Amadou Diallo, killed in 1999 in a hail of 41 shots. This was due in part to the race of the officers — two of the three on trial were black — and to the response of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who reached out to the victim’s family in a stark contrast to the response of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after Mr. Diallo was killed.

Further, trial testimony showed that Mr. Bell may have played some role, however unwitting, in the shooting, as he was drunk by legal standards when he pressed down on the accelerator of his fiancée’s Nissan Altima and struck Detective Isnora in the leg in an attempt to flee.

Justice Cooperman, who heard the case without a jury in State Supreme Court in Queens, listed his reasons for throwing out much of the testimony from Mr. Bell’s group, including the number of times that witnesses were caught changing their story on the stand and the witnesses who had interests in the outcome because of the lawsuit against the city. Those issues, criminal backgrounds and the demeanor of the mostly young men on the witness stand “had the effect of eviscerating the credibility of those prosecution witnesses,” he said.

As for the detectives, the judge made it clear that he believed their versions of events over those of the young men involved, including Detective Isnora’s statement that he had overheard Mr. Bell’s friend Joseph Guzman twice say that he was going to get a gun.

“The court has found that the incident lasted just seconds,” Justice Cooperman said. “The officers responded to perceived criminal conduct; the unfortunate consequences of their conduct were tragic.”

But rather than call the shooting justified, the judge said that the prosecution failed to prove it was unjustified, as was its burden. Indeed, his ruling was far from approving of the detectives’ conduct during the undercover vice operation that night. “Questions of carelessness and incompetence must be left to other forums,” he said. He never mentioned the high number of shots fired, or the fact that Detective Oliver had fired 31 of them.

Similar statements came from the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, whose office prosecuted the case. He said the trial “revealed significant deficiencies in supervision, tactical planning, communications and management accountability — insufficiencies that need to be addressed.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who called the incident “inexplicable” and “excessive” in the days following the shooting, expressed sorrow for Mr. Bell’s family.

The verdict came 17 months to the day after five officers pointed their pistols at the car Mr. Bell was driving and opened fire. The shooting followed a confrontation between Mr. Bell and a stranger outside the Club Kalua, where Mr. Bell had attended his bachelor party. During the confrontation, Detective Isnora said, he heard the threat about getting the gun.

In the events that followed, Mr. Bell’s car struck the detective’s leg and, twice, a police van. Detective Isnora said he saw Mr. Guzman reach for his waistband, shouted “Gun” and fired. The three detectives who were brought to trial fired 46 of the 50 rounds, killing Mr. Bell and wounding Mr. Guzman and Trent Benefield, another friend of Mr. Bell’s.

The detectives each spoke briefly at a press conference at the Detectives Endowment Association on Friday afternoon, variously thanking God, their families, lawyers and Justice Cooperman. “This is the start of my life back,” said Detective Cooper, who seemed to be fighting back tears.

Mr. Bell’s parents, William and Valerie Bell, were sitting where they had been sitting, side by side, throughout the seven-week trial. Mrs. Bell had been looking toward the floor and blinking furiously during the verdict, and finally began to cry, covering her face while her husband stared straight ahead, looking at no one and shaking his head.

A woman sitting behind them broke the silence when she asked, “Did he just say ‘not guilty’?”

Court officers hurried the three detectives out a back door.

As news of the acquittals rippled through clots of supporters of the Bell family, Mr. and Mrs. Bell led a column of friends and relatives, including Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, out of the courthouse. No one, including Mr. Sharpton, spoke, and the spectators on Queens Boulevard fell into a column and followed behind.

Mr. Brown, the district attorney, said he accepted the verdict, calling Justice Cooperman “one of this county’s most respected and learned jurists.”

He was asked if, in hindsight, he had any misgivings about the reading of the grand jury testimony of the three detectives from 2007 into the record during the trial. The readings were widely seen as something of a coup for the defense, with the detectives’ accounts of the panic and uncertainty surrounding the shooting coming across without the detectives having to undergo cross-examination.

The lead prosecutor, Charles A. Testagrossa, an assistant district attorney, recalled criticism of the prosecution strategy of calling almost all the available witnesses, whether they were helpful or harmful to the prosecution.

“It’s very easy for people who are observing the trial to say, ‘Gee, you called this witness, and not this witness,’ ” he said. “If you think that criticism could have made us work any harder, be more committed to obtaining a conviction in this case, then you had a right to criticize us. But the fact of the matter is, knowing how hard all of the members of this team worked,” the criticism meant nothing.

Then he quoted one of his own witnesses, a stripper who appeared early in the trial: " 'It is what it is.' "

They felt angry and defiant and sad. Mostly, they felt empty.

“We just all gasped, like, ‘Wow, how could you throw out this whole case?’” said Les Paultre, the father of Nicole Paultre Bell, who was to marry Mr. Bell the day he was fatally shot by the police outside the strip club where his bachelor party had been held. “That’s basically what the judge did. He just threw out this whole case.”

After Justice Arthur J. Cooperman read his verdict to the packed courtroom, a momentary silence was followed by sobs and words of disbelief from Mr. Bell’s relatives and supporters.

Later they headed to a cemetery on Long Island and bowed their heads over red flowers that marked Mr. Bell’s grave.

Ms. Paultre Bell and her parents then retreated to their home a block from the beach in Far Rockaway, while their chief spokesman, the Rev. Al Sharpton, voiced outrage at the verdict in a radio program broadcast from the headquarters of the National Action Network, an organization he founded.

Mr. Sharpton, who has led protests over police shootings for decades, promised to lead protests — he said he expected some people to be arrested — possibly on Wall Street, in front of 1 Police Plaza, and perhaps outside the judge’s home, starting as soon as Saturday. He also talked of a possible boycott, though he did not specify whom or what might be boycotted.

“We’re going to demonstrate to the government that New Yorkers will not take this abortion of justice lying down,” Mr. Sharpton said.

He took particular umbrage at what he contended was Justice Cooperman’s mention of the criminal history of the victims, and his comment that he found details of the testimony of Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, Mr. Bell’s friends who survived the shooting, unbelievable.

“The fact is, judge, he was shot,” Mr. Sharpton practically spat. “Duh, does it take a genius to figure out that a victim now has to give you a clinical definition of when he was shot? Maybe he didn’t remember because he was in pain and maybe he didn’t remember where because he was in the middle of running for his life.”

Mr. Sharpton also argued that Justice Cooperman’s ruling set the table for federal civil rights charges.

“People with records,” he said, “do not lose their right to not be shot by police.”

Some of Mr. Bell’s supporters who had gathered outside the courthouse on Friday morning said the judge’s decision was the latest in a string of verdicts that condoned the killing of an innocent black man by a New York police officer. Two of the detectives who faced trial over Mr. Bell’s killing are black.

“We got the door slammed in our faces is how a lot of people feel,” said Michael Hardy, a lawyer who represents Mr. Benefield, Mr. Guzman and Ms. Paultre Bell in a civil suit that is pending against New York City. Mr. Hardy added, “It tells you that no matter what, because of who you are and the community you come from, you will get nothing.”

When Justice Cooperman pronounced the men not guilty in State Supreme Court in Queens, Ms. Paultre Bell, 23, jumped up and sped out of the courtroom, weeping. A number supporters followed, even as court officers urged them to remain in their seats until the judge had stepped down.

Outside, hundreds of people spilled into the street. “They’re murderers,” one man yelled, referring to the detectives. “They’re going to rot in hell where they belong.”
Someone held a sign that read: “People’s Verdict: Guilty.”

At one point, Mr. Guzman sat on a stoop outside the courthouse, head in hands.

Harold James, who had organized the bachelor party that preceded Mr. Bell’s death, scowled.

“Don’t talk to me, man,” he said. “It’s not a good day.”

Led by Mr. Sharpton, the Bell family, Mr. Guzman and Mr. Benefield left the courthouse without comment. As they rounded Queens Boulevard toward a parking lot, reporters and photographers swarmed around them.

One of the Bell supporters got into a shoving match with an Associated Press photographer. The supporter’s friends tried to restrain him and police officers rushed to regain order.

Hours later, outside Mr. Sharpton’s headquarters in Harlem, three young black men staged a protest, one of them dressed as a Klansman with “N.Y.P.D.” written on the sheet draped over his head. Members of Mr. Sharpton’s organization asked the men to leave, saying, “We don’t need this.” But the men refused to go, and there was arguing for 10 minutes until they finally left.
Earlier, at Nassau Knolls Cemetery and Memorial Park in Port Washington, Ms. Paultre Bell, who took Mr. Bell’s name after his death, took a call on Mr. Sharpton’s cellphone from Gov. David A. Paterson and placed flowers on Mr. Bell’s grave. “She promised they wouldn’t stop fighting for justice,” Mr. Sharpton said later.

Throughout Friday afternoon, several people came and went from Ms. Paultre Bell’s home, including Mr. Guzman, who declined to speak with reporters. Miles away in Jamaica, Mr.

Benefield, wearing a T-shirt bearing Mr. Bell’s picture, sat on a bench with friends in the courtyard of his housing complex.

Earlier, Mr. Benefield told reporters that he was going to fight on, insisting the officers had committed a crime and “have to pay a price.”

Ms. Paultre Bell’s father said that the family received a taunting telephone call Friday afternoon and that the caller identification suggested it came from someone at the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a police supervisors’ union. The association’s president, Edward D. Mullins, said he would investigate. “If it happened in our office, I want to know who did it,” he said.

Ms. Paultre Bell, Mr. Guzman, Mr. Benefield and Mr. Bell’s parents, William and Valerie, are expected to speak at Mr. Sharpton’s headquarters Saturday.

“We’re not going to give up,” Ms. Paultre Bell’s father said on Friday afternoon. “We’re going to keep pushing forward because Sean did not die in vain, and these young men should not have been stopped in the first place.”

Criminal verdicts almost always contain either one word or two. The Sean Bell verdict ran 1,164 words, a methodical and unusual look into a judge’s examination of the burden of proof by the people of the County of Queens.

“The court did not view the victims or the N.Y.P.D. as being on trial here,” Justice Arthur J. Cooperman said in a packed courtroom Friday in delivering his verdict on the detectives charged in Mr. Bell’s death. But much of the most damning language was indeed directed at the victims, both at behavior that the judge saw as fomenting the tension that led to the shooting, and then at statements on the stand that he found dubious.
In his words the judge clearly favored the testimony of the detectives, given before a grand jury last year, over that of prosecution witnesses and, in particular, the two men wounded in the shooting, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield.

The decision is notable for what it does not mention: one of the most explosive elements of the trial, the fact that 50 bullets were fired at three unarmed men, 31 of them by Detective Michael Oliver, who reloaded in the middle of the fusillade.

At the same time, Justice Cooperman makes it clear that it was his job to decide whether prosecutors proved their case — that the officers were not justified when they opened fire — and not whether they had performed their jobs poorly. That, he wrote, would be up to others to decide.

The verdict, in its cool, unadorned style, is a lesson in witness credibility and its key role in eliminating reasonable doubt. In contrast to much of the heated testimony, the verdict is written without flourish or pontification, beginning with a reminder to the gallery to keep quiet and recognition of the difficulty of the last two months.

“In many ways, this trial was a hardship,” Justice Cooperman said.

The first hint of which way the verdict was heading may have come, to some alert ears, soon after, when the judge seemed to pause to point out that “establishments known as ‘strip clubs’ often generate criminal activity including prostitution and narcotics.” If he had decided to convict the detectives, it would seem unlikely that he would point out valid reasons they had for being at Club Kalua that night.

“An objective consideration of the proof ruled out sympathy and prejudice and any other emotional response to the issues presented,” he said.
He said he leaned on evidence that suggested what was going through the detectives’ minds and not Mr. Bell’s. “What the victims did was more pertinent to resolving the issues of fact than what may have been in their minds,” he said.

He suggested that whatever the police did wrong that night should be determined elsewhere: “Carelessness and incompetence are not standards to be applied here, unless the conduct rises to the level of criminal acts.”

The judge focused on testimony on two key moments: the argument between Mr. Bell and a stranger, Fabio Coicou, outside Club Kalua, and the seconds before Detective Gescard F. Isnora opened fire. In doing so, the judge said, he was aware that witnesses recalling the same event might tell it a little differently. “However,” he wrote, “where there are significant inconsistencies related to important facts, they should be considered.”

What Justice Cooperman found in the testimony of the 50 prosecution witnesses were myriad significant inconsistencies. And he listed them among the reasons he found the prosecution’s case to have failed: “Prior inconsistent statements, inconsistencies in testimony among prosecution witnesses, the renunciation of prior statements, criminal convictions, the interest of some witnesses in the outcome of the case, the demeanor on the witness stand of other witnesses and the motive witnesses may have had to lie and the effect it had on the truthfulness of a witness’s testimony.

“These factors,” he continued, “played a significant part in the people’s ability to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and had the effect of eviscerating the credibility of those prosecution witnesses. And, at times, the testimony just didn’t make sense.”

The judge seemed to single out the two key prosecution witnesses, Mr. Guzman and Mr. Benefield. Of the former, the judge simply stated that he believed what Detective Isnora said, that he had heard Mr. Guzman tell someone to get him his gun, a claim Mr. Guzman denied.
Justice Cooperman was harsher on Mr. Benefield, calling his credibility “seriously impeached.” He said Mr. Benefield’s claims to have been shot while running away were contradicted by forensic evidence.

By four-fifths of the way through the ruling, the judge still had not disclosed his verdict, but it was becoming clearer how he would rule. “The police response with respect to each defendant was not proved to be criminal,” he said, “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He followed with a finding on a critical element in the prosecution’s failure to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. “The people have not proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that each defendant was not justified in the actions that each took,” he wrote.

The verdict’s style surprised listeners who were expecting a rundown of the indictment’s eight counts, with “guilty” or “not guilty” attached to each defendant’s name.

JEWISH LE CARRE

On Tuesday a former United States Army mechanical engineer was put under arrest on charges that he spied for Israel over 20 years ago had touched a nerve with Washington.

Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, was to be charged with slipping classified documents about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defense missiles to an Israeli Consulate employee who also received information from convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

Kadish acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews, and said he acted out of a belief that he was helping Israel. A U.S. citizen, Kadish was scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Manhattan Tuesday, where he was facing four counts of conspiracy, including allegations that he conspired to disclose U.S. national defense documents to Israel, and that he acted as an agent of the Israeli government.

According to the criminal complaint, the activities occurred from 1979 through 1985 while Kadish worked at the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center in Dover, New Jersey.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said: "We know nothing about it. We heard it from the media." The Prime Minister's Bureau said Israel was not familiar with the details of the case, and was examining the issue. Israeli officials fear that the case might strain Israel-U.S. relations. Kadish was accused of taking home classified documents several times and letting the Israeli government worker photograph them in Kadish's basement.

The documents included information about nuclear weapons, a modified F-15 fighter jet, and the U.S. Patriot missile air defense system, the complaint said. According to the complaint, the Israeli government worker often provided Kadish with lists of wanted classified national defense documents. Prosecutors also allege Kadish conspired to hinder a communication with a law enforcement officer, and making a materially false statement to a law enforcement officer.

Those charges stem from a conversation in which Kadish was allegedly told by the Israeli contact to lie to U.S. law enforcement agents and tell them that he didn't remember many of the relevant details. A day later, Kadish lied to FBI agents about his communications with the Israeli worker.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials and various documents, Kadish got in touch with his Israeli contact after Israel agreed in 2004 to secretly acknowledge to American officials that Pollard was not an isolated case, thereby confirming longtime American suspicions that Pollard was not the only American spy working for Israel.

The complaint said Kadish did not appear to receive any money in exchange for his suspected spying, just small gifts and restaurant meals. The complaint noted that Pollard was charged in November 1985 with espionage-related offense after he provided classified information to the same Israeli worker, among other people.

PEACE POPE

Pope Benedict XVI paid a solemn visit to the site of the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York before celebrating a huge mass at Yankee Stadium to close a historic US visit.

The pope pleaded for an end to sectarian hatreds as he prayed Sunday at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers stood before hijackers rammed passenger planes into the skyscrapers, killing nearly 3,000 people.

"We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here," Benedict beseeched God after blessing the ground in all four directions. "Heal the pain of still-grieving families."

"Bring peace to our violent world ... turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred," he said.

The pope had arrived at the former World Trade Center site in his white Mercedes-Benz popemobile, which drove slowly down a ramp that straddles the hole in the ground where the twin skyscrapers used to stand.

He descended some three-quarters of the way down the ramp and walked the final few meters (yards) to kneel in silent prayer.

Then, as a blustery wind blew, he lit a white candle within a glass tube, before intoning his prayer and blessing the ground.

As a solo cellist played, Benedict spoke to 24 survivors and relatives of those who perished in the attacks by Al-Qaeda hijackers.

Tom Riches, who carried his firefighter brother's body out of the site, had returned to be there with Benedict.

"Since that day, it's always been sacred to me," Riches told the Sun Sentinel newspaper. "Him blessing the ground there will make it official."

They found the remains of Firefighter Jimmy Riches in the rubble of the World Trade Center on March 25, 2002. A brother, Tom Riches, then just 17, walked down into the pit, and he and his father and his other two brothers carried Jimmy out on a stretcher.

On Sunday morning, six years later, Tom Riches walked once again into the hole. There, about 10 yards from where they found Jimmy that day, he met Pope Benedict XVI. The pope visited the site on the last day of his six-day visit to the United States, to bless the ground that Tom Riches had long considered sacred.

Tom Riches said it was always hard going back to ground zero. Sunday morning was no different. “I was a little emotional at first, and then when he came down, it got very calm and peaceful,” he said of the pope’s arrival.

Countless prayers and blessings have been uttered at the place where two 110-story towers once stood. But Sunday, on a foggy, chilly spring morning, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church stepped onto the bedrock where 2,750 people were killed, adding his own prayers, sprinkling holy water and meeting 24 rescue workers, survivors and relatives of 9/11 victims.

Pope Benedict rode down a flag-lined construction ramp that led into the base of ground zero, seated in his white Popemobile, just after 9:40 a.m. He walked the last quarter of the way down, to a small rectangular pool where the family members and others had gathered. He prayed silently, lighted a single candle and delivered a prayer into a microphone, referring to ground zero as “a scene of incredible violence and pain.”

Tom Riches and the other guests were introduced individually to the pope by Cardinal Edward M. Egan, head of the New York archdiocese. Tom Riches knelt before the pope, kissed his ring and spoke briefly to him.

“I told him to bless my brother’s memory and my family, and I thanked him for coming down there,” Tom Riches said. “He said, ‘God bless you.’ ”

In his coat pocket, Tom Riches carried the Mass card from his brother’s funeral. On one side is a picture of a smiling Jimmy; on the other side is a passage of poetry that reads, in part: “Grieve not ... nor speak of me with tears ... but laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you.” The funeral was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where the pope celebrated Mass on Saturday morning.

Jimmy’s father, James J. Riches, 57, a veteran firefighter who retired last year as a deputy chief, watched the ceremony on Sunday from the top of the hole at ground zero. He watched the pope walk on the same ramp near West and Liberty Streets that he and his sons had walked carrying Jimmy’s body. One of Tom Riches’s friends had submitted his name to the archdiocese, and of more than 1,100 people whose names were sent in, he was one of 24 selected to attend the service.

“It’s not the lottery you want to be in,” James Riches said. “We don’t want to be in this lottery, but fate has it that way.”

Jimmy was a free spirit, a bartender turned crime fighter turned firefighter. He was a New York City police officer before joining the Fire Department in 1999.

“What was the saying we said at his funeral? It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years,” James Riches said. “And he packed 100 years into 29 years.”

The three younger boys had looked up to Jimmy, especially Tom, the youngest. It was Jimmy who was Tom’s godfather. It was Jimmy who, when they found his remains in what used to be the lobby of the north tower, was found next to a woman who was on a stretcher when she died.

“He was that kind of kid,” James Riches said. “He helped the underdog. He wouldn’t leave somebody behind.”

Jimmy would have turned 30 on Sept. 12, 2001. Part of the street in Brooklyn where James Riches and the boys’ mother, Rita, live and where Jimmy grew up — Bay Eighth Street, in Dyker Heights — was renamed Firefighter Jimmy Riches Way. The high school and the college Jimmy attended — Xavier High School in Manhattan and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina — have scholarships in Jimmy’s name.

By Sunday afternoon, the significance of Tom Riches’s meeting with the pope had not yet sunk in. He and his father rushed from interview to interview. His cellphone kept ringing. “I need time to think about it, you know,” he said.

For his father, the pope’s visit reaffirmed the spirituality and the divinity of a place that these days looks more like a crane-crowded construction site than the ruin of Sept. 11, 2001. “We knew that Jimmy died there, and that’s where he breathed his last breath,” James Riches said. “That’s where his soul left his body, and it means a lot to us.”

One of Tom Riches’s brothers, Danny, is a firefighter who works out of Jimmy’s firehouse, in Ladder 114 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Danny has Jimmy’s old locker. Tom Riches’s other brother, Timothy, is a firefighter in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Tom Riches is also a firefighter, like his father and his brother Jimmy before him.

Some victims' relatives had hoped the pope would specifically bless the hundreds of people killed at ground zero whose remains were never identified.They also wanted him to pray for the removal and burial of any remains that may have been taken to the Fresh Kills garbage dump on Staten Island.The pope's prayers weren't that specific, however, disappointing some of the victims' relatives.Rosemary Cain, whose firefighter son George perished on Sept. 11, 2001, wanted Benedict to address the desire of some families to keep searching for remains at both ground zero and the dump so they can be buried properly."Nothing about Fresh Kills was addressed. Nothing about the inhumanity to the remains was addressed," she said. "I know the souls will not rest peacefully until they are buried with respect and dignity."The World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial sued the city in 2005, claiming that officials rushed the cleanup at ground zero and failed to deliver on a promise to sift debris taken to the dump to find body parts, remains and personal belongings. More than 1,700 bone fragments have been recovered in just the past two years in and around ground zero.While Cain was appreciative of the pope's visit, she also was saddened at not being able to attend in person. "It broke my heart not to be there," she said.

He greeted survivors, fire and police workers, and relatives of some of the 2,749 people who died there.
The Pope prayed for the rescuers and victims, as well as "those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred".
He later celebrated Mass at New York's Yankee stadium, concluding what analysts describe as a successful trip.
His visit has dominated the American media, and demand for the 55,000 tickets for Sunday's Mass far outstripped supply, reported the BBC's David Willey in New York.
Candour
There was a party atmosphere among the tens of thousands gathered at the Yankee Stadium, with clergy and lay members of the Church alike taking part in the Mexican waves which rippled through the crowd ahead of the pontiff's arrival.
Congregants stood and clapped as the song Lean on Me was performed by guitarist Jose Feliciano on the white, purple and yellow platform in the middle of the baseball pitch.
As the Pope arrived the crowds cheered and waved yellow and white handkerchiefs, the official papal colours.

Earlier, after arriving in the popemobile at Ground Zero, Pope Benedict knelt in silent prayer, and rose to light a memorial candle, and blessed with holy water what he called "the scene of incredible violence and pain".
He requested "eternal light and peace" for those who died, not only in New York but at the Pentagon in Washington DC and in a Pennsylvania field on 11 September 2001.
"God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world," he said. "Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred."
The Pope then met 24 people with ties to the tragedy, exchanging a few words with each.

In a personal address on Saturday, Benedict told youths at a New York rally about growing up under the "monster" of Nazism.
With a candour that correspondents say has been a hallmark of this visit, he spoke publicly for the first time about being forced to join the Hitler Youth and being conscripted into the Nazi army.

NOT ENOUGH FOOD?

Four years ago, Dennis Avery warned that, as Western governments fell head over heels for biofuels, passing laws forcing consumers to buy them, "U.S. farmers, who should be exporting food to densely populated Asian countries with rising incomes, will instead turn their corn into ethanol . . . without benefit to the environment."

As growers worldwide cashed in for biofuels, he predicted in 2006, there would erupt a "clash between food and forests." Farmers would clear new swaths of land for fuel crops, predicted Mr. Avery, president of the Center for Global Food Issues, affiliated with Washington's Hudson Institute. "I knew it would be bad, but never so quickly". In barely a half-decade, biofuels have turned from the darling of environmentalists and policymakers - confident that petrol made from corn, soybeans or other plants would not just relieve us of our dependency on Arab oil, but reduce CO2 emissions in the process - to the target of blame for massive economic upheaval and environmental destruction.

The UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food labeled biofuels a "crime against humanity," for burning crops that could be used to fight hunger, as fuel. "The farms have been put to biofuel production creating a shortage of food and therefore creating a problem of high prices," said Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, president of the African Union. As he spoke, violent demonstrations over rising food costs in Haiti had killed five people and wounded 40 more, mirroring similar riots in Mexico, Egypt and Cameroon.

It hasn't helped that green groups now say the promise of lower carbon emissions has not materialized -- or at least the reductions (corn-based ethanol is said to produce between zero and 30% less CO2 than good old fashioned fossil fuels) don't justify the devastating ripple effects -- while the powerful push for more plant energy has led to a rapid rise in environmentally-stressful fertilizer usage, and worldwide deforestation.

Canada and the U.S. have not yet flagged in their support for corn-based fuel (Ottawa plans for roughly half our fuel supply to contain 10% ethanol by 2010; the U.S. requires fuel producers to quintuple their biofuel usage by 2022). The federal government shored up half a billion dollar in ethanol subsidies.

The industry itself insists it's being unfairly fingered for problems it hasn't caused, though Gordon Quaiattini, Canadian Renewable Fuels Association president admits he is suddenly facing a major public relations problem. "We need to get the facts out, and we probably haven't done a very good job in doing that. Rising food prices come from energy prices. All those skeptical academic studies are flawed. Conspiracy theorists, I suspect, would argue that maybe it's the oil industry promoting some of this stuff. I don't have hard evidence of that, but I have anecdotal evidence" he says. Even biofuel critics agree there are positive varieties of the stuff, namely Brazilian sugarcane cellulosic ethanol. But Brazilian growing conditions can't be replicated in other climates. Brazil itself can't solely supply the world's biofuel, even if it burns down every acre of rainforests.

Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving.

For the first time in decades, the spectre of widespread hunger for millions looms as food prices explode. Two words not in common currency in recent years — famine and starvation — are now being raised as distinct possibilities in the poorest, food-importing countries.

Unlike past food crises, solved largely by throwing aid at hungry stomachs and boosting agricultural productivity, this one won't go away quickly. Prices are soaring and stand every chance of staying high because this crisis is different.

A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous. Even with concerted global action it will take years to fix the problem.

In February, stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two.

Yesterday in Rome, Jacques Diouf, director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said the cereal-import bill for the poorest countries is expected to rise 56 per cent this year, on top of the 37 per cent recorded last year. The UN's donor countries, he said, need to come up with as much as $1.7-billion (U.S.) to implement quick-fix food programs, such as topping up the World Food Programme, whose emergency food-buying power has been clobbered by the rising prices. Its budget shortfall, the difference between the food it intended to buy and can now afford, is $500-million.

Sir John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian official and emergency relief co-ordinator, said this week that soaring food prices threaten political stability. The UN and national governments are especially worried about potentially violent situations in Africa's increasingly crowded urban areas.

How did it come to this? Surging food prices, now at 30-year highs, are actually a relatively new phenomenon. In the mid-1970s, prices began to fall as the green revolution around the world made farms dramatically more productive, thanks to improvements in irrigation and the widespread use of fertilizers, mechanized farm equipment and genetically engineered crops. If there was a crisis, it was food surpluses — too much food chasing too few stomachs — and dropping produce prices had often disastrous effects on farm incomes.

By 2001, the surpluses began to shrink and prices reversed. In the past year, the price curve has gone vertical. The UN's food index rose 45% in the past nine months alone, but some prices have climbed faster. Wheat went up 108% in the past 12 months; corn rose 66%.

The price of Thai medium-quality rice, a global benchmark, has more than doubled since the end of 2007. This week it reached a record $854 a tonne, which helps explain why World Food Programme trucks carrying rice in certain parts of Africa have come under attack.

Food prices in the first three months of 2008 reached their highest level in almost 30 years, the UN says. That's double-digit inflation prompting countries such as Egypt, Vietnam and India to eliminate or reduce rice exports to keep a lid on prices and prevent rioting. But, by reducing global supply, this only increases prices for food-importing countries, many of them in West Africa.

Throughout history, the world has seen food shortages and famines triggered by drought, war, pestilence, crop failures and regional overpopulation. In the Chinese famine between 1958 and 1961, an estimated 30 million people died from malnutrition. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, severe food shortages hit India and parts of southeast Asia. Only the shipment of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain from the U.S. prevented a humanitarian disaster. Drought, violent conflict, economic incompetence, misfortune and corruption created deadly famines in Ethiopia and Sudan in the first half of the 1980s.

The food shortages were alleviated through aid or investment in farming and crop productivity. The UN and agriculture experts predict years of pain and severe shortages, possibly famine in the worst-hit countries. The reason: High prices are likely to persist for years.

Swelling population explains only part of the problem. The world's population, estimated at 6.6 billion, has doubled since 1965. But population growth rates are falling and there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet. Why millions may go hungry is because prices are so high, food is becoming unaffordable in some parts of the world. African countries exist on the equivalent of $1 a day. As much as 70% of that income goes to food purchases, compared with about 15% in the U.S. and Canada. As prices, but not incomes, rise, malnutrition sets in.

The dramatic price rises have been driven by factors absent in previous food shortages. They include turning food into fuel, climate change, high oil and natural gas prices (which boost trucking and fertilizer costs), greater consumption of meat and dairy products as incomes rise and investment funds, whose billions of dollars of firepower can magnify price increases.

Driven by fears of global warming, biofuel has become big business in the U.S., Canada and the European Union. The incentive to produce the fuels is overwhelming because they are subsidized by taxpayers and come with content mandates.

Next week, Britain will require gasoline and diesel sold at the pumps be mixed with 2.5-per-cent biofuel, rising to 5.75 per cent by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020, in line with European Union directives. Ontario's ethanol-content mandate is 5 per cent. As the content requirements rise, more land is devoted to growing crops for fuel, such as corn-based ethanol. In the EU 15 per cent of the arable land is expected to be devoured by biofuel production by 2020.

Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year.

Severe weather has clobbered crop production among some big exporting countries. Drought in Australia, the third largest wheat exporter after the U.S. and Canada, has pushed wheat production down by half since the 2005-06 crop year. Statistics Canada said Canadian wheat production fell 20.6 per last year. Exports, as a result, are expected to fall by six million tonnes in the 2007-08 year.

The UN has predicted that climate change could reduce production in developing countries by 9 to 21 per cent by 2080 and that sub-Saharan Africa could lose more than 30 per cent of its main crop, maize. Southern Asia could see millet, maize and rice production fall by 10 per cent. The challenge is to offset the losses with higher crop yields on arable land less affected by climate change.

Mr. Ofon, of Standard Chartered Bank, said rising demand in the face of production shortfalls does not fully explain the dramatic price increases. Investors are the other driver. They have discovered they can make money from food commodities as easily as they can in oil, gold or nickel. But Mr. Currie of Goldman Sachs dismisses the theory that funds are pushing prices higher than they would be otherwise. The rally in food prices is being caused by demand exceeding production, resulting in dwindling food stockpiles.

New irrigation systems are inevitable in Africa and have the potential to boost crop production dramatically. The problem with using more fertilizer is cost. Fertilizers such as urea are derived from natural gas, and gas prices have climbed, too. The price of urea has almost tripled since 2003, to $400 a tonne.

The Food and Agriculture Organization yesterday forecast a 2.6-per-cent rise in cereal production in 2008.

Cutting back on ethanol production alone would go some way to restoring supply-demand balance in the food markets. "If we decide to do something about it, we can just use less food for fuel," he said.

But everyone — analysts, economists, agriculture experts, the UN — thinks it's impossible to boost production quickly, because of land and water shortages and competition from biofuels.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap on Saturday ordered the National Food Authority (NFA) to intensify the distribution of government-subsidized rice stocks in the country’s 12 highly populated areas to help ongoing efforts to stabilize the staple’s price and make affordably priced rice available to the “poorest of the poor.”

Yap said the areas where he ordered the NFA to increase the distribution of government-subsidized rice sold at P18.25 per kilo are Metro Manila, Baguio City, Lucena City, Legaspi City, Albay, Tacloban City, Bacolod City, Cebu City, Dumaguete City, Davao City, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga City and General Santos City.

Yap also said a food production masterplan is being formulated by the Agriculture department with experts from the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) and the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, along with the recently-formed Eminent Persons Group, which was formed to help oversee the implementation of Malaca­ñang’s P43.7-billion package of intervention measures for the country’s agriculture sector.

GAMES OF SHAME

Paris' Olympic torch relay descended into chaos Monday, with protesters scaling the Eiffel Tower, grabbing for the flame and forcing security officials to repeatedly snuff out the torch and transport it by bus past demonstrators yelling "Free Tibet!"

The anti-Chinese demonstrations ignited across the capital with unexpected power and ingenuity, foiling 3,000 police officers deployed on motorcycles, in jogging gear and even inline skates.

Chinese organizers finally gave up on the relay, canceling the last third of what China had hoped would be a joyous jog by torch-bearing VIPs past some of Paris' most famous landmarks.

Thousands slowed the relay to a stop-start crawl, with impassioned displays of anger over China's human rights record, its grip on Tibet and support for Sudan despite years of bloodshed in Darfur.

Five times, the Chinese officials in dark glasses and tracksuits who guard the torch extinguished it and retreated to the safety of a bus — the last time emerging only after the vehicle drove within 15 feet of the final stop, a track and field stadium. A torchbearer then ran the final steps inside.

Outside, a few French activists supporting Tibet had a fist-fight with pro-Chinese demonstrators. The French activists spat on them and shouted, "Fascists!"

In San Francisco, where the torch is due to arrive Wednesday, three protesters wearing harnesses and helmets climbed up the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables. The banners read "One World One Dream. Free Tibet" and "Free Tibet." They later climbed down.

In all, seven people were charged with conspiracy and causing a public nuisance, with the three climbers facing additional charges of trespassing, said Mary Ziegenbien, a spokeswoman with the California Highway Patrol.

On Tuesday, China condemned protests as "despicable," blaming them on groups seeking to split Tibet from the country.

The 17.4-mile route in Paris started at the Eiffel Tower, headed down the Champs-Elysees toward City Hall, then crossed the Seine before ending at the Charlety track and field stadium.

Throughout the day, protesters booed trucks emblazoned with the names of Olympic corporate sponsors, chained themselves to railings and hurled water at the flame. Some unfurled banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs from the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral. Others waved signs reading "the flame of shame."

The Interior Ministry said police made 18 arrests.

Officers sprayed tear gas to break up a sit-in by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the route. Police tackled protesters who ran at the torch; at least two activists got within arm's length before they were grabbed by police. Near the Louvre, police blocked a protester who approached the flame with a fire extinguisher.

One detained demonstrator, handcuffed in a police bus, wrote "liber" on her right palm and "te" on the other — spelling the French word for "freedom" — and held them up to the window.

With protesters slowing down the relay, a planned stop at Paris City Hall was canceled. Earlier, French officials hung a banner declaring support for human rights on the building's facade.

A spokesman for the French Olympic Committee, Denis Masseglia, estimated that a third of the 80 athletes and other VIPs who had been slated to carry the torch did not get to do so.

On a bus carrying French athletes, one man in a track suit shed a tear as protesters pelted the vehicle with eggs, bottles and soda cans.

The chaos started at the Eiffel Tower moments after the relay began. Green Party activist Sylvain Garel lunged for the first torchbearer, former hurdler Stephane Diagana, shouting "Freedom for the Chinese," before security officials pulled him back.

"It is inadmissible that the games are taking place in the world's biggest prison," Garel said later.

Outside parliament, as the torch passed, 35 lawmakers protested, shouting "Freedom for Tibet."

"The flame shouldn't have come to Paris," said Carmen de Santiago, who had "free" painted on one cheek and "Tibet" on the other.

Pro-Chinese activists carrying national flags held counter-demonstrations.

"The Olympic Games are about sports. It's not fair to turn them into politics," said Gao Yi, a Chinese doctoral student in computer science.

France's former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch was extinguished along the route, the Olympic flame itself still burned in a lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights. A Chinese official said that flame was used to re-light the torch each time it was brought aboard the bus.

Pro-Tibet advocate Christophe Cunniet said he and other activists were detained after they waved Tibetan flags, threw flyers and tried to block the route. Cunniet said police kicked him, cutting his forehead. "I'm still dazed," he said.

At least one athlete, former Olympic champion Marie-Jose Perec, was supportive of the demonstrators. "I think it is very, very good that people have mobilized like that," she told French television.

But other athletes and sports officials were bitterly dismayed.

"A symbol like that, carried by young people who want to deliver a message of peace, should be allowed to pass," said the head of the French Olympic Committee, Henri Serandour. "These games are a sounding board for all those who want to speak about China and Tibet. But at the same time, there are many wars on the planet that no one is talking about."

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies agreed. "We respect that right for people to demonstrate peacefully, but equally there is a right for the torch to pass peacefully and the runners to enjoy taking part in the relay," she said.

China's Foreign Ministry assailed the demonstrations. "We express our strong condemnation to the deliberate disruption of the Olympic torch relay by Tibetan separatist forces," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a Web statement. "Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world."

Jiang also disputed reports that the torch had to be extinguished several times, calling them false. "To protect the security and dignity of the Olympic torch under the circumstances there, the modes of relay were temporarily changed," she said.

Jiang also denied that authorities were in any way forced to extinguish the torch, implying it was their decision to put it out.

Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists and 37 people were arrested.

Beijing organizers criticized the London protests as a "disgusting" form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists.

"The act of defiance from this small group of people is not popular," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee. "It will definitely be criticized by people who love peace and adore the Olympic spirit. Their attempt is doomed to failure."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that was still the case.

Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 85,000-mile journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics.

The round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and is meant to highlight China's rising economic and political power. Activists have seized on it as a platform for their causes.

The relay also is expected to face demonstrations in New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4.

France's interior minister has defended the way police handled the widely disrupted Olympic torch relay in Paris.

Michele Alliot-Marie says the 18 arrests Monday show that officers did their job of protecting the flame and torchbearers while letting protesters express themselves.

The interior minister told Europe-1 radio on Tuesday that the start-and-stop procession a day earlier posed problems, including "fights" among some spectators.

Meanwhile, the No. 2 Chinese Embassy official in France says the disruptions were a "fiasco" for protesters supporting Tibetan independence.

Ku Xing said on RTL radio the protesters couldn't grab the flame or fully stop the relay as they had hoped. Ku called the disruptions an "indignation."

China dubbed its Olympic torch relay the “Journey of Harmony,” a 21-nation promotional tour for the most expensive Games the world has seen and for a host nation eager to showcase its rising wealth and diplomatic clout.

But what was supposed to be a majestic procession through the French capital resulted in waves of chaos on Monday, as human rights groups used the event to assail China’s record on rights and make the Olympic Games an increasingly delicate political challenge for the governing Communist Party.

China has spent eight years and tens of billions of dollars preparing to host the Summer Games, which Beijing has envisioned as a kind of coming-of-age party to showcase its rapid growth.

But the outbreak of violent unrest in Tibet and a continuing crackdown there by Chinese security forces has emboldened China’s critics, a diverse coalition of rights groups whose demands are often ignored in China and played down by Western leaders eager to promote Chinese trade and investment.

Passing through Paris under armed guard, the torch was extinguished several times, and police officers moved it aboard a bus to protect it as demonstrators swarmed the security detail. Chinese Olympic organizers abruptly canceled the last leg, as well as a stop at City Hall, where a banner proclaimed, “Paris Defends Human Rights Everywhere in the World.”

About 3,000 police officers — on foot, horseback, inline skates, motorcycles and even boats on the Seine — had been deployed in an attempt to prevent a repetition of scenes played out in London on Sunday, when the relay turned into a tumult of scuffles and dozens of arrests.

The torch ceremonies have focused attention on causes that have languished on the world’s back burner for decades. At the International Campaign for Tibet, telephones have rung continually with calls from news media outlets, politicians and people wanting to sign petitions and hold events, said Jan Willem den Besten, the Dutch campaign coordinator.

“What is most dramatic is to see how broad and deep the support has become,” Mr. den Besten said. “You almost have to feel sorry for the Chinese because it’s turned completely against the public image they wanted to present.”

In San Francisco, where the torch is to arrive on Wednesday, several protesters scaled the vertical suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled two large banners reading, “One World, One Dream,” and “Free Tibet 08.” At least seven people were arrested.

At the same time, the city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, was huddling with the police to consider last-minute changes to the torch’s route and new security measures, said Nathan Ballard, a city spokesman. “If adjustments to the route for safety reasons are necessary, then adjustments will be made,” said Mr. Ballard, who said the mayor had been in contact with American and Chinese officials and with protest groups.

Also on Monday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton joined a small but growing number of leading political figures in the United States and Europe who have called for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Games.

In Paris, at the Trocadéro, opposite the Eiffel Tower, human rights organizations like Amnesty International and press freedom groups like Reporters Without Borders protested side by side with representatives of a banned underground Chinese democracy party, Taiwan nationalists and proponents of independence for the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in western China.

“We all have the same problem,” Can Asgar, a leader of the Uighur diaspora in Munich, yelled into a microphone at the Trocadéro.

“Freedom for Uighurs. Freedom for Tibet. We must fight together.”

The Eurostar train from London to Paris on Sunday evening carried a large contingent of advocates moving from one protest to the next, including Tibetan nuns who had been jailed in China for 12 years and Tibetan athletes who live in Switzerland and call themselves Team Tibet. Busloads of protesters arrived from Belgium and the Netherlands.

The range of China’s opponents was so thoroughly covered that it included a protest by Amnesty International on behalf of a blind Chinese human rights lawyer who is in prison in Beijing.

Paris became a scene of disarray. At least one protester came within a yard of the swarm of police officers and Chinese Olympic officials crowding around the torchbearer. On several occasions, officers tackled protesters. The police said about 20 people had been arrested.

A man identified by the police as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for Stéphane Diagana, the president of France’s athletics league and a former world hurdles champion, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.

Again and again, protesters interrupted the procession. On a street along the Seine, demonstrators forced officers to retreat with the torch onto a bus to continue along the route, the police said. Around the same time, the flame went out. The torch went out more than four times, according to the French Olympic Committee, as the police repeatedly moved it aboard the bus, including the final stretch between City Hall and the stadium that houses the French Olympic Committee’s offices.

In Beijing on Monday, a spokeswoman for the city’s Olympic organizing committee — speaking before the disruptions in France — vowed that the relay would continue on its international route. “The torch represents the Olympic spirit, and people welcome the torch,” said Wang Hui, the spokeswoman. “The general public is very angry at this sabotage by a few separatists.”

Meanwhile, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, used a meeting of national Olympic committee representatives in Beijing on Monday to criticize the London protests, but also to call for a rapid and peaceful solution to the confrontations in Tibet.

He rejected the idea of boycotting the Games.

“The torch relay has been targeted,” Mr. Rogge said in a speech to the Association of National Olympic Committees, according to Reuters. “The I.O.C. has expressed serious concerns and calls for rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet.”

“Violence for whatever reason is not compatible with the values of the torch relay and the Olympic Games,” he said. “Some people have played with the idea of boycotts. As I speak today, there is no momentum for a general boycott.”

But after the meeting, the leader of the Norwegian Olympic Committee, Tove Paule, said in an interview that the torch relay should be reconsidered.

“The International Olympic Committee may have a bigger problem when the torch relay continues, if we get more of these demonstrations,” Ms. Paule was quoted as saying by NRK, the Norwegian public broadcaster, Reuters reported.

When the flame moves to San Francisco on Wednesday, it will be the sixth stop on its monthlong international tour.

Amnesty International and several other rights groups have pledged to rally along the route of the torch, which is scheduled to be run six miles along the city’s scenic waterfront. A heavy law enforcement presence is expected, with local police officers supplemented with officers from other California cities and state and federal agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration said it would also enact a low-altitude, no-flight zone over the route.

Ngodup Tsering, the president of Tibetan Association of Northern California, said he expected several thousand protesters to converge on San Francisco, which he hoped would not escalate into the type of scrum seen in Paris on Monday.

“We are trying to educate our people, to remind them that they are here to be nonviolent,” said Mr. Tsering, whose group is based in Berkeley, Calif. “We have to be prepared, and very calm and nonviolent.”