WASHINGTON — President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia moved closer to agreement Saturday on a long-stalled arms control treaty that would slash the active nuclear arsenals of both countries by at least one-quarter, officials from both countries said.

CARACAS, Venezuela — The shadowy underworld of Basque exiles in this city is coming under sharp scrutiny after recent arrests in Europe and an indictment this month from one of Spain’s top judges asserting that Venezuelan intelligence officials were involved in training Basque separatists and Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela.

BAGHDAD — Few doubted that the choice of the country’s next prime minister would prove to be one of the most intractable disputes in forging a new government to lead Iraq as the American military withdraws.

REYNOSA, Mexico — The big philosophical question in this gritty border town does not concern trees falling in the forest but bodies falling on the concrete: Does a shootout actually happen if the newspapers print nothing about it, the radio and television stations broadcast nothing, and the authorities never confirm that it occurred?

ROME — As new details emerged on allegations of child sexual abuse by a priest in the Munich archdiocese then led by Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican spoke out on Saturday against what it called an aggressive campaign against the pope in his native Germany.

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least four strong explosions rocked Kandahar on Saturday evening, causing buildings to collapse and killing dozens of people, according to Afghan and American officials.

AMMAN, Jordan — Muhannad Haddad grew up here, went to school here, got a job in a bank here and traveled to foreign countries with a passport from here. Then one day the authorities said he was no longer Jordanian, and with that one stroke they took away his citizenship and compromised his ability to travel, study, work, seek health care, buy property or even drive.

SEOUL, South Korea — Henry Kissinger, the former United States secretary of state, was hospitalized here because of stomach pains on Saturday. But his condition has quickly improved, said a spokesman for Yonsei University’s Severance Hospital in Seoul.

MOSCOW — A month ago, Russia’s biggest challenge in preparing to serve as host for the 2014 Winter Olympics seemed to be just mustering the resources to build the facilities in Sochi, a downtrodden Soviet-era resort town. Now, a new anxiety is gripping the country: if its athletes perform as badly as they did in Vancouver last month, Russia could be humiliated in its own backyard.

Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions — involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery — made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.

Andrée Peel, a highly decorated French resistance figure who helped save dozens of American and British airmen shot down over France during World War II, died on March 5 in the English village of Long Ashton, outside Bristol. She was 105.

THE GUARD

Gilberto Gil promised a “very simple concert” at the Nokia Theater on Thurday night: just a trio with Mr. Gil and his son Bem Gil on guitars, with his longtime arranger Jaques Morelenbaum on cello.

The denizens of “Dear Emissary, ...” might almost be characters in — by turns — a Jane Austen novel, a Fassbinder film or a punk music video. But almost doesn’t count in art, and Walter Dundervill’s new dance-theater work, which opened on Wednesday night at the Chocolate Factory in Queens, largely and pleasurably escapes neat associations to float in its own strange in-between logic.

The Lifetime movie “Who Is Clark Rockefeller?” slips by easily enough. The story of how the German chameleon Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter fooled successive flocks of Americans with his invented personas, culminating in Clark Rockefeller, fictional scion of America’s most blue-blooded family, is a natural for the network.

A woman (Elizabeth DeMent) explodes onto the stage and across it. She punctuates this entry with three identical but peculiar jumps, each one ending pow! with one leg extended sideways and the torso lurching the opposite way. The combination of precision and looseness is arresting. Furious, wild and absolutely focused, the whole body is making a potent gesture. You immediately follow it as both psychological revelation and wildlife documentary.

In the middle of “The Monitor,” the new album by Titus Andronicus, comes the desperate ramble “Theme from ‘Cheers.’ “ It’s an unhappy song, with the earnest, wired singer Patrick Stickles detailing a love affair with an uncompromising mate: New Jersey.

For any choreographer working in New York, reaching the 20-year mark is no small feat. For Jody Oberfelder, such an anniversary is occasion to look back in a two-act program, “Heads or Tales,” which highlights dances created throughout her career. Lesson learned: Perhaps the only thing Ms. Oberfelder cares about more than a cartwheel is a headstand.

The Kronos Quartet is ensconced at Carnegie Hall for a Perspectives series that explores the expansive, stylistically borderless repertory for which this ensemble is known, with master classes and a program by student quartets along the way. The group made a down payment on this minifestival in November, when it performed Tan Dun’s “Ghost Opera” and the pageantlike “Chinese Home” during Carnegie Hall’s festival of Chinese music. But the series got under way in earnest on Thursday evening, with a program of Terry Riley’s music at Zankel Hall.

A few Saturdays ago, a teenage visitor to the Guggenheim Museum, a girl in a black beret, slid open the door to the Aye Simon Reading Room and peered in at a group of people in animated conversation. “Is there something going on in here?” she said.

The choreographer Juliette Mapp, the current guest curator of Danspace Project’s Platform 2010 initiative, has emphasized the importance of presenting an intergenerational array of artists in “Back to New York City.” Next week comes the inimitable octogenarian Elaine Summers; on Thursday night the youngsters had the run of the place, when Katy Pyle and Jen Rosenblit, both in their 20s, presented new work.

CBS edged past Fox in the ratings on Thursday night even as an episode of Fox’s “American Idol” that sent home four contestants garnered the largest audience in prime time. According to Nielsen’s estimates, 19.1 million viewers watched “American Idol” at 8 p.m., but CBS’s back-to-back crime shows “CSI” (16 million) at 9 p.m. and “The Mentalist” (15.4 million) at 10 p.m. won their time slots; CBS’s “Survivor” also earned a solid 12.1 million opposite “Idol.” Fox finished second with a lineup rounded out by “Kitchen Nightmares” (7.6 million). ABC was third with new episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” (11 million) and “Private Practice” (7.9 million). NBC placed fourth as its new series “The Marriage Ref” (6 million) began to lose the luster on its wedding band.

(EDS: SUBS to replace graf 3.)

Signing autographs in late February, Donovan coaxed a queue that zigzagged through the merchandise store, snaked out the door and took up about 300 yards of sidewalk. He has triggered such Facebook pages as “Keep Landon Donovan at Everton!!” (10,240 fans as of Saturday) and “Evertonians Will Never Forget Landon Donovan!!!! USA USA USA!!!!” (1,867 fans). He has done all of this while donning the beloved No. 9 shirt worn by a lineage of Everton stalwarts beginning with the 1920s and William Ralph Dean, who was nicknamed Dixie and whose muscular statue outside the stadium wears an Everton scarf.

LIVERPOOL, England – Beside the gallant park in perhaps the world’s most zealous sports neighborhood, an unanticipated love has sprouted this winter and ripened into wistfulness this weekend.

(Sports of The Times)

(EDS: With BBO-STEPHEN-CRANE)

IT looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

AUSTIN, Tex. — The only thing more challenging than deciphering the names of all the social-minded Web sites battling for attention at the South by Southwest technology conference here — Brizzly, Vicarious.ly, Stalqer, Quora and so forth — would be the chore of signing up for each one individually.

Netflix’s $1 million contest for the best method to improve its movie recommendations was such a research and business hit that, when the winners were declared last September, the company immediately announced plans for another one.

By virtually all accounts, LeBron James is an admirable adult who will bring honor to whatever team signs him for next season.

Is the ESPN documentary “Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks” a hoax? Did the playoff series that it depicts between the Knicks and the Indiana Pacers actually occur or are its claims of a snarling, slicker-heartland rivalry as dubious as U.F.O.’s in Area 51?

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The Japanese television network J Sports is planning a broadcast that features Hideki Matsui, an iconic Japanese baseball star, and Hisanori Takahashi, a left-handed pitcher for the Mets.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.

Last spring, on a green wave in the Mentawais, a chain of islands off the west coast of Indonesia, Jordy Smith performed perhaps the most sublime aerial in the history of surfing, a back flip while spinning one and a half times. Video of the flip, known as a rodeo clown, went viral when Yahoo posted it in June.

River rafting and billiards, sure. But who knew that the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn was a devotee of baseball?

English literature scholars and historians have long known that football played a major role in Stephen Crane’s development of his Civil War novel, “The Red Badge of Courage.” Crane told early reviewers he had been coaching and playing quarterback on a team in northern New Jersey while finishing his manuscript.

LIVERPOOL, England — Beside the gallant city park in perhaps the world’s most zealous sports neighborhood, an unanticipated love has sprouted this winter and ripened into wistfulness this weekend.

TUCSON — The Colorado Rockies stormed into the 2007 World Series, winning 21 of 22 games, but they were not really ready to be there. As quickly as they reached the summit, they tumbled.

To the Sports Editor:

Former President Bill Clinton sat courtside at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, chatting with the Big East commissioner, John Marinatto. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the potential expansion of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.