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Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico met for more than an hour on Friday morning with North Korea’s vice minister for American affairs, the first stop on a five-day private visit he said was aimed at conveying concerns about North Korean provocations and reducing tensions on the peninsula.
Mr. Richardson said that the vice minister, Ri Yong-ho, indicated that the North was anxious about the mounting hostilities in the region, and that was “a good sign.” But Mr. Richardson cautioned that Friday’s meeting was a preliminary discussion, and that progress, if there was any, would only become evident near the end of his trip.

The latest inter-Korean crisis erupted less than a month ago when the North fired an artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong Island, which lies just eight miles off the North Korean coast, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians there. On Friday, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, who is a South Korean citizen, called the attack “one of the gravest provocations since the end of the Korean War.”

Mr. Richardson was also scheduled to meet on Friday with Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy, weeks after the government allowed American experts to tour a sophisticated uranium-enrichment plant that previously had been concealed from the outside world.

Mr. Richardson, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations who has occasionally traveled to North Korea on unofficial visits, said he had been invited to return several months ago. While the latest trip was approved by the State Department, he was not traveling as an official envoy.

As he arrived at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang on Thursday, a North Korean official greeted him in English, saying “So nice to see you.”

Tensions on the peninsula clearly remained high. North Korea said its attack against the island was provoked by wayward shells from a live-fire drill being held by the South. The govnerment in Seoul said the attack was unprovoked.

Now North Korea’s official news agency has assailed a plan by the South Korean military to stage a live-fire exercise from Yeonpyeong Island, perhaps as early as Saturday.

“The puppet warmongers are contemplating staging madcap naval firing exercises,” said the news agency, K.C.N.A., which also called the new South Korean defense minister “a war maniac keen to ignite a war” and “a puppy knowing no fear of a tiger.”

North Korea does not accept the so-called Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea that officials in Seoul and Washington consider a legal and valid border. The government in Pyongyang has warned that any firing into the waters will provoke another response.

The North’s official Web site, Uriminzokkiri, also warned Friday that “if war breaks out, it will lead to nuclear warfare and not be limited to the Korean Peninsula.” The commentary was cited by the South Korean news agency Yonhap.

Bilateral meetings throughout the region in recent days were part of a busy week of shuttle diplomacy focusing on defusing the crisis.

In Seoul, Sung Kim, the American special envoy to the so-called six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs, met Friday with his South Korean counterpart, Wi Sung-lac.

In Beijing, Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg met Thursday with Dai Bingguo, state councilor in charge of foreign affairs, about China’s call for a resumption of the six-party talks. China, the host of previous talks, is North Korea’s principal ally and aid donor.

“The six-party talks are the only correct channel for settling problems on the peninsula,” said Mr. Dai, quoted by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. Mr. Dai had met with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, last week in Pyongyang.

Leaders in Beijing and Pyongyang are supporting a new round of the six-party talks, while officials in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have so far rejected the idea. The talks were last held in 2008, when North Korea quit the process.

Russia is the sixth member of the group, and in a statement from the Foreign Ministry on Monday, Moscow pointed to “the need to create conditions for the relaunch of the six-nation talks.”

The big set of sand barriers erected by Louisiana's governor to protect the coastline at the height of the Gulf oil spill was criticized by a presidential commission Thursday as a colossal, $200 million waste of BP's money so far.

Precious little oil ever washed up on the berms, according to the commission - a finding corroborated by a log of oil sightings and other government documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered the berms built over the objections of scientists and federal agencies - and secured money from BP to do it - out of frustration over what he saw as inaction by the Obama administration. During the crisis, Jindal boasted that the sand walls were stopping oil from coming ashore, and the idea proved popular in Louisiana.

In its stinging report, however, the commission, appointed by President Obama to investigate the spill, called the project "underwhelmingly effective, overwhelmingly expensive." Still, the panel did concede that the sand might ultimately prove helpful in Louisiana's long-term effort to restore its badly eroded coastline.
Jindal disputed the commission's findings on the berms.

"This report is partisan revisionist history at taxpayer expense," the governor said in a statement. "The report's assertion that the berms did not pass the commission's 'cost benefit analysis' is insulting to the thousands of people whose way of life depends on the health of our working coast."

A BP spokeswoman said the company had no comment.

Over the summer, the state received grudging government approval to build 36 miles of berms, and it has erected roughly 14 miles so far. An estimated 19 million cubic yards of sand has been moved to make the barriers, which rise six feet above sea level and are around 300 feet wide at their base.

BP originally committed $360 million to the project. Of that, $195 million has been spent so far.

Garret Graves, who has been helping coordinate the project for the governor, said the state will press on with the project, but will make the sand barriers deeper instead of extending them lengthwise. He said that will allow them to serve a dual purpose: protecting the shoreline from oil and restoring the coast.

Jindal, a first-term Republican governor and former congressman who has been mentioned as possible presidential hopeful in 2012, has pronounced the sand barriers a "great success."

"We disagree," the commission said in its report. "From a long-term coastal restoration perspective, the berms may indeed be a 'significant step forward,' as Gov. Jindal has claimed, but they were not successful for oil spill response."

The government has said that much of the crude that spewed from BP's well following the April 20 rig explosion was skimmed, burned, collected or dispersed. E-mails, internal reports and a log of oil sightings obtained by AP confirm that very little of the estimated 200 million gallons that gushed from the bottom of the sea has been seen on or recovered from the berms.

In its report, the commission said the National Incident Command - the task force headed for much of the crisis by retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen - was initially skeptical of the plan, but allowed "political considerations" and influence from the White House to affect its posture toward the project.

Rob Young, a coastal scientist at Western Carolina University, said the $360 million could have been better spent on removing oil and restoring damaged lands than on a "back-of-the-napkin kind of project" that so far has amounted to nothing more than drawing a "pencil line of sand."

But Billy Nungesser, president of oil-soaked Plaquemines Parish, said the berm project was absolutely the right decision at the right time.

"It's easier to throw rocks now," he said. "If they let us armor those islands, it will be the start of the coastal restoration that will protect the marshlands that have been so badly damaged."

Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the episode will be a "bit of a blow" to Jindal politically, but shouldn't be too much of a problem if the governor continues to hammer home his argument that the state was taking action when Washington wasn't.

"Half the people will believe him," Cross said.

The claim that the health care overhaul bill reflects a "government takeover of healthcare" has won the "lie of the year" award from the fact-checking website Politifact.com.

The Pulitzer Prize winning website, which is associated with the St. Petersburg Times, noted in announcing the award that "it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover because it relies largely on the existing system of health coverage provided by employers."

"It is true that the law does significantly increase government regulation of health insurance. But it is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies and the free market," the site said.

Politifact noted that it is not weighing in on the validity or effectiveness of the health care law itself, but rather on the truthfulness of the characterization of it. It noted that under the bill a majority of Americans will continue to get health coverage from their employers through private insurance companies, that the government did not take control over hospitals or doctors, and that the law did not include a public option, whereby a government run insurance plan would compete with private companies.

PolitFact editor Bill Adair appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" Friday morning to discuss the award, saying that the health care claim is "ridiculously false."

"The plan relies on private insurance companies (and) in fact private insurance companies are actually going to end up with more business because of the law. It was definitely the most pervasive falsehood of the year," he told NPR's Steve Inskeep.

According to the Politifact report, the claims was first pushed by Republican consultant Frank Luntz, as early as the spring of 2009. In a 28-page memo calling for Republicans to use the phrase, Luntz wrote, "Takeovers are like coups. They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom."

According to PolitiFact, this phrase "government takeover of health care" was "uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections." The phrase appears on incoming House speaker John Boehner's website at least 90 times and shows up more than 200 times on the Repbulican National Committee's website.

"Republicans who maintain the Democratic plan is a government takeover say that characterization is justified because the plan increases federal regulation and will require Americans to buy health insurance," added PolitiFact.

Slate, Factcheck.org and the New York Times have also deemed the claim false.
"Yes, there would be a substantial government-mandated reorganization of this relatively small corner of the private health insurance market," the Times wrote. "But that hardly constitutes a government takeover of American health care."

PolitiFact argues the false claim was reinforced by media coverage, with "government takeover" mentioned 28 times in the Washington Post, 77 times in Politico and 79 times on CNN in 2010. It suggests part of the success of the phrase was tied to the fact that Democrats did not offer a resonant catchphrase of their own.

PolitiFact's 2009 Lie of the Year was the suggestion that the bill included "death panels." The site also offered runners up this year, including claims by Democrats that Republicans were calling for the privatization or phasing-out of Social Security.

Federal prosecutors and the trustee charged with recovering assets in the Bernard L. Madoff bankruptcy announced settlements Friday that would add $7.2 billion to the cash available to compensate victims of Mr. Madoff’s global Ponzi scheme.

Details of the agreements with the estate of Jeffry M. Picower, a Palm Beach philanthropist who died in October 2009, were released in court documents and at a news conference in Lower Manhattan.

The settlements “will return every penny received from almost 35 years of investing with Bernard Madoff,” Mr. Picower’s wife, Barbara, said in a statement released through her lawyer, William D. Zabel of Schulte Roth & Zabel.

The Picower estate will pay $5 billion to the trustee, Irving H. Picard, and $2.2 billion to a federal victims fund to resolve a lawsuit filed last year, according to statements from Mr. Picard and United States attorney for the Southern District, Preet Bharara.
All of the $7.2 billion recovered will be distributed to Madoff customers with valid claims, Mr. Picard said in a statement. He said during the news conference that he expected to make a distribution to victims by the end of the first quarter of next year.

Mr. Bharara praised Mrs. Picower for agreeing to the settlement. “By returning every penny of the $7.2 billion her late
husband received” he said, “Barbara Picower has done the right thing.”

The amount greatly expands the $2.3 billion sum that Mr. Picard had already collected through asset sales and other settlements in the Madoff bankruptcy. The figure represents the difference between the cash that Mr. Picower put into his Madoff account and the amount that he withdrew over the life of the fraud, according to litigation filed last year by Mr. Picard.

Mr. Bharara said the settlement constituted the largest single forfeiture in American judicial history.

Calling the Madoff scheme “deplorable,” Mrs. Picower said in her statement that she was confident that her husband had not been involved but that returning the gains was the right thing to do.

“I believe that this settlement honors what Jeffry would have wanted, which is to return this money so that it can go directly to the victims of Madoff,” she said, adding that she planned to return to “the philanthropic work that was so important to Jeffry and me.”

Ron Stein, president of the Network for Investor Action and Protection, a group set up to assist victims, said that he hoped the success of the recovery efforts would help spare innocent Madoff investors who have also been sued by Mr. Picard.

“It is clear the trustee will exceed expectations in his settlements with the complicit,” Mr. Stein said, “and there is no reason why he should continue to claw back investors who played no role in the fraud.”

The complicated negotiations, which conclude the trustee’s case against Mr. Picower, involved lawyers for Mr. Picard, federal prosecutors working for Mr. Bharara and lawyers at the firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel. Settlement talks were already under way when Mr. Picower, who had suffered from Parkinson’s disease and had a history of heart ailments, was found dead in the swimming pool of his oceanfront Palm Beach mansion on Oct. 25, 2009.

The enormous amount involved is certainly plausible: a confidential letter from Goldman Sachs, requested as part of the protracted settlement talks, confirmed that Mr. Picower had been “a valued client of our Investment Management Division for nearly three decades,” and that during that time, he had generated legitimate investment returns “in excess of $2 billion,” primarily through “self-directed investments in public securities.”

A person with knowledge of the Goldman Sachs research said that there were $4.5 billion in “unrealized gains” in Mr. Picower’s account at the firm at the time of his death.

For such a formidable investor, Mr. Picower had long flown beneath Wall Street’s radar. Before he appeared as one of the largest clients of Mr. Madoff’s fraudulent investment advisory business, he was known in financial circles primarily for his medical technology investments. In 2004, a few years after he took control of Alaris Medical Systems with a stake of roughly $86 million, he sold the company to Cardinal Health for more than $1 billion.

The complaint filed against Mr. Picower last year by Mr. Picard asserted that the profits on his investments with Mr. Madoff were equally stellar — but totally bogus. The complaint, which contended that a sophisticated investor like Mr. Picower should have recognized that Mr. Madoff was operating a fraud, sought the return of $7.2 billion — the amount by which Mr. Picower’s withdrawals from his Madoff accounts exceeded the funds he paid in over the life of the fraud.

Mr. Picard, the trustee, has reported that the cash losses in the Madoff scheme total about $20 billion. If that figure holds, the addition of the Picower billions would mean that eligible investors — those who took less from their Madoff accounts than they put in — could recover almost half their losses.

In this chaotic city of 18 million people, an exhibition of works by Pakistan’s most significant contemporary artists shows just how imbued with violence daily life here is: on the street, in the air and in the debate about the future course of the nation.
Installed in the elegant rooms of the Mohatta Palace Museum, a confection of Mughal architecture in pink stone, the exhibition, “The Rising Tide,” includes more than 40 canvases, videos, installations, mobiles and sculptures made in the past 20 years. Its curator, the feminist sculptor and painter Naiza Khan, said her aim was to show the coming of age of Pakistani art, which blossomed when censorship was lifted after the death of the American-backed Islamic dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq.

Violence was not an intended theme. “I wanted the works to reflect the many strands of the urban condition,” Ms. Khan said in her light-filled studio in an upscale neighborhood here.

But the corrosive impact of Pakistan’s struggle with Islamic militants, its tortured relationship with the United States and the effects of an all-powerful military pervade the show.

The artist Abdullah Syed, for example, assembled a fleet of drones — the pilotless American aircraft that fire missiles at militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas — constructed from the blades of box cutters, the very instruments used by some of the 9/11 attackers. They float on wires just above the viewer’s head, the silvery blades shimmering menacingly in bright light.

A second fleet of drones is constructed from dollar bills folded into the shape of the planes and stapled together in circular patterns that resemble those of an oriental carpet. Called the “Flying Rug,” the paper fleet casts an ominous shadow on a nearby wall.

Mr. Syed, one of several artists in the show pursuing a career abroad, teaches at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “I’m always navigating ideas between the West and here,” he said, perched on a ladder as he hung his killer fleets. The “Flying Rug” takes sides: “I’m saying, ‘To hell with Uncle Sam.’ ”

Though in the West the drones are often seen as an essential element in the fight against terrorism, in Pakistan they are considered imperial interference by the United States, he said. In the show’s catalog Mr. Syed notes that according to one estimate, drones have killed more than 1,000 Pakistani civilians since 2004. Many more civilians have fled the tribal areas and settled in Karachi to escape the attacks, an influx that has sharpened the city’s political tensions.

In recent years work by Pakistani artists has begun appearing in museum shows outside the country — in Paris, London and Dubai. Ms. Khan wanted to bring them home, to show the strength and variety of their projects. Among her choices are Rashid Rana, whose “Desperately Seeking Paradise,” a huge metal cube covered in photographs of the dilapidated residential buildings of Lahore, appeared at the Musée Guimet in Paris recently; and Imran Qureshi and Anwar Saeed, whose works appeared in “Hanging Fire,” a survey of Pakistani art at Asia Society in Manhattan last year.

Mr. Qureshi is a leader in the modern school of Pakistani miniature painting derived from the court painters of the Mughal era. But rather than paint delicate images of princes and princesses, modern miniaturists have expanded their vocabulary. Ms. Khan chose a Qureshi miniature of a missile, painted after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998. Also on display is a large-scale triptych panel by Mr. Qureshi of drips and splotches executed in a lush pomegranate hue. Or is that the color of blood?

Part of what differentiates this exhibition from the recent shows of Pakistani art in New York and Dubai is the inclusion of young people fresh out of the country’s growing number of art schools.

Sara Khan, 24, a recent graduate from the art department at Karachi University, is from the Pashtun ethnic group, whose traditional homeland is in the turbulent tribal areas in northwest Pakistan, where the army is embroiled in fighting militants. To escape the lack of development in the region, many Pashtuns have moved to Karachi in the past 30 years, among them Ms. Khan’s relatives.

Ms. Khan, who was born here and has never been to the tribal areas, doesn’t even speak Pashto. “They call me a fake Pashtun,” she said in an interview.

In her work Ms. Khan uses emblems of Pashtun culture painted in the style of a children’s primer on pages sized to resemble a school exercise book. Among the images: an AK-47 rifle — the standard-issue weapon of the tribal zone — a bullet and a series of domestic items, including bread, milk and eggs.

“Pashtuns are very strong, but I am showing emblems in a soft way,” she said. I am saying, ‘We are not exactly what you think we are.’ ” A simple two-part work by Risham Syed reflects the violence that many urban, middle-class Pakistanis feel. A red wall lamp similar to those that hang in the homes of the well-to-do in Lahore, in northeastern Pakistan, is juxtaposed with a tiny 4-by-6-inch canvas, painted in a brutally realistic style. It shows a lone man in Islamic religious garb futilely trying to damp down a wall of flames that engulf a building.

Ms. Syed, who teaches art at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, seems to be edging close to the question some Pakistanis are raising gingerly about the responsibility of extremist clergy for the wave of suicide bombings in the nation’s cities.

Ms. Khan, the curator, took a year away from her studio in Karachi to put the show together. She felt strongly, she said, that even though fear and violence emerged as central themes in the art, Karachi should be seen as more than just a city of gangland killings and ethnically directed shootings.

“It means a lot to me to bring art center stage at a time when so much is denied in the country,” she said.