Historically, my breed is used to herd fish in shallows or carry messages from ships to the nearby shore, and I have tried to show the American people that I will continue that tradition, both leading (the fish) and communicating (the messages). I have succeeded more than I have failed, but there have been lapses. Remember when I bit that reporter’s microphone? I had a sudden urge to get that thing. I thought it was a fish. Even thinking about it now makes me jumpy. Another time the president almost tripped over my leash, and even though that wasn’t technically my fault, I take full responsibility.

My time in the White House thus far has had one driving theme: we all share the same world. There have been those who have criticized my willingness to sniff in an exploratory manner around hostile breeds from foreign lands. But remember, we are all one species, from the tiniest Chihuahua to the mightiest mastiff. I have tried to practice this openness closer to home as well, by spending more time with Joe Biden’s German shepherd puppy, despite our considerable difference in temperament and bite force.

The press likes to play a game where it compares my record with that of other presidential pets. I find that premature and unhelpful. Other presidential pets came to power in different times, and faced different challenges.

Still, I would like to remark briefly upon the pet to whom I am most often compared. Fala came to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in November 1940, and quickly captured the national imagination. But Fala lived in a time when there was an understanding between the press and politicians, and many of his peccadilloes (his habit of eating garbage, his eye for the ladies) were simply overlooked.

By comparison, consider the way that the news media scrutinized Buddy, the Clintons’ Labrador. Before his untimely death by car accident in 2002, Buddy was persistently maligned by rumors that he did not get along with Socks the cat, as if that were his fault. (Cats, need I remind you, are jerks.)

In the end, while it is all well and good to compare this dog with that dog, any honest and forthright White House pet must acknowledge that we are all standing in the long shadow cast by Dash, the brilliant, charming, perfect-tailed collie mix owned by President Benjamin Harrison’s wife, Caroline. Dash responded to voice commands with great efficiency, never demonstrated undue unruliness and still found time to pursue his own interests. I use his example to remind myself that there is always room for improvement, and that we should never fail to aspire to perfection, even as we know that we cannot reach it. Excuse me: I must chase a ball.

O.K., I’m back. As we head into the second hundred days of my administration, I feel more pride and pleasure than ever at the prospect of serving the American people and finding ways to make this nation, and this planet, a better place for our children and our children’s children. I am speaking metaphorically here, of course, as I am neutered.

This has been a rewarding but difficult time for our nation, yet I remain confident of our prospects so long as I spend every day with at least three feet on the ground — four is a little optimistic, if you know what I mean. Thank you.

“No one has written your destiny for you,” he said, directing his remarks to “all the other Barack Obamas out there” who might one day grow up to be president. “Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!”

Mr. Obama spoke for 45 minutes to an audience of several thousand people, most of them black, clad in tuxedos and ball gowns, who had gathered in a ballroom of the Hilton New York to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s largest civil rights organization.

He was one part politician and one part black preacher as he spoke in lilting cadences, his voice quiet at times, thundering at others, in unusually personal terms. At one point, when his audience shouted back at him, repeating his words, he threw back his head and laughed, saying, “I’ve got an amen corner back there.”

Mr. Obama spoke directly about his own upbringing, crediting his mother (who was white) with setting him straight, and departing from his prepared text to talk about how his life might have turned out had she not. “When I drive through Harlem and I drive through the South Side of Chicago and I see young men on the corners,” he said, “I say there but for the grace of God go I.”

It was an unusual moment for a president who has sought to transcend race and has only reluctantly embraced his unique place in history. Six months into his presidency, Mr. Obama has seemed more comfortable embracing his identity as the first black American president overseas than at home, as was the case during his trip to Ghana last week, when he declared, “I have the blood of Africa within me.”

At home, though, Mr. Obama has largely avoided talking about himself in racial terms. As a candidate, he jumped into the issue of race relations when his campaign was threatened by the controversial remarks of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and delivered a pointed speech to black fathers on Father’s Day in 2008.

But the White House was low-key in preparations for the N.A.A.C.P. event. When a reporter tried to cast the speech as Mr. Obama’s first to the black community, the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, demurred, saying, “I think the first speech to black America and the first speech to white America, the first speech to America was the Inaugural Address.”

But there was no mistaking Thursday night that Mr. Obama was speaking directly to black America. In part, it was a policy speech.

Mr. Obama told his audience what it wanted to hear on housing, the criminal justice system, education, health care, and jobs — all issues central to the N.A.A.C.P.’s agenda.

Even as he urged blacks to take responsibility for themselves, he spoke of the societal ills — high unemployment, the housing and energy crisis — that have created the conditions for black joblessness. And he said the legacy of the Jim Crow era is still felt, albeit in different ways today.

“Make no mistake, no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America,” Mr. Obama said, by African-American women who are paid less for the same work as white men, by Latinos “made to feel unwelcome,” by Muslim Americans “viewed with suspicion” and by “our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights.”

Mr. Obama paid particular attention to education, declaring that more than 50 years after the Supreme Court’s landmark segregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, “the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across this country” as African-American students lag behind white classmates in reading and math.

The organization’s president, Benjamin T. Jealous, said afterward that the address “was the most forthright speech on the racial disparities still plaguing our nation” Mr. Obama has given since moving into the White House.

But as much as a policy speech, it was a personal one. Details of the address were closely held, partly because Mr. Obama was still working on it through the afternoon.

Aides said he intended to make the case for personal responsibility — a frequent theme of his presidency — in the context of the civil rights movement and how it has shaped his own life. But he also wanted to send a message to black parents, and especially to black children.

“They might think they’ve got a pretty jump shot or a pretty good flow,” Mr. Obama said, “but our kids can’t all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court justice. I want them aspiring to be president of the United States of America.”

These students may not realize it, but they’re tackling some of the country’s biggest problems. Over the past 35 years, college completion rates have been flat. Income growth has stagnated. America has squandered its human capital advantage. Students at these places are on self-directed missions to reverse that, one person at a time.

Community college enrollment has been increasing at more than three times the rate of four-year colleges. This year, in the middle of the recession, many schools are seeing enrollment surges of 10 percent to 15 percent. And the investment seems to pay off. According to one study, students who earn a certificate experience a 15 percent increase in earnings. Students earning an associate degree registered an 11 percent gain.

And yet funding lags. Most people in government, think tanks and the news media didn’t go to community college, and they don’t send their children to them. It’s a blind spot in their consciousness. As a result, four-year colleges receive three times as much federal money per student as community colleges. According to a Brookings Institution report, federal spending for community colleges fell six percent between 2002 and 2005, while spending on four-year colleges increased.

Which is why what President Obama announced this week is so important. He announced a $12 billion plan to produce 5 million more community college grads by 2020.

If the plan were just $12 billion for buildings and student aid, it wouldn’t be worth getting excited about. The money devoted to new construction amounts to about $2 million per campus. With new facilities costing in the tens of millions, that’s not a big deal.

Nor is increased student aid fundamentally important. I’ve had this discussion with my liberal friends a thousand times, and I have come to accept that they will never wrap their minds around the truth: lack of student aid is not the major reason students drop out of college. They drop out because they are academically unprepared or emotionally disengaged or because they lack self-discipline or because bad things are happening at home.

Affordability is way down the list. You can increase student aid a ton and you still won’t have a huge effect on college completion.

What’s important about the Obama initiative is that it doesn’t throw money at the problem. It ties money to reform and has the potential — the potential — to spur a wave of innovation.

People who work at community colleges deserve all the love we can give them, since they get so little prestige day to day. But the fact is many community colleges do a poor job of getting students through. About half drop out before getting a degree.

Most schools have poor accountability systems and inadequately track student outcomes. They have little information about what works. They have trouble engaging students on campus. Many remedial classes (60 percent of students need them) are a joke, often because expectations are too low.

The Obama initiative is designed to go right at these deeper problems. It sets up a significant innovation fund, which, if administered properly, could set in motion a spiral of change. It has specific provisions for remedial education, outcome tracking and online education. It links public sector training with specific private sector employers.

Real reform takes advantage of community colleges’ most elemental feature. These colleges educate students with wildly divergent interests, goals and abilities. They host students with radically different learning styles, many of whom have floundered in traditional classrooms.

Therefore, successful reform has to blow up the standard model. You can’t measure progress by how many hours a student spends with her butt in a classroom chair. You have to incorporate online tutoring, as the military does. You have to experiment with programs like Digital Bridge Academy that are tailored to individual learning styles. You have to track student outcomes, as the Lumina Foundation is doing. You have to build in accountability measures for teachers and administrators.

Maybe this proposal, too, will be captured by the interest groups. But its key architects, Rahm Emanuel in the White House and Representative George Miller, have created a program that is intelligently designed and boldly presented.

It’s a reminder that the Obama administration can produce hope and change — when the White House is the engine of policy creation and not the caboose

First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.

Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.

Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.

Let’s start by talking about how Goldman makes money.

Over the past generation — ever since the banking deregulation of the Reagan years — the U.S. economy has been “financialized.” The business of moving money around, of slicing, dicing and repackaging financial claims, has soared in importance compared with the actual production of useful stuff. The sector officially labeled “securities, commodity contracts and investments” has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007.

Such growth would be fine if financialization really delivered on its promises — if financial firms made money by directing capital to its most productive uses, by developing innovative ways to spread and reduce risk. But can anyone, at this point, make those claims with a straight face? Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increased risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.

Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.

And Wall Streeters have every incentive to keep playing that kind of game.

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.

And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.

I won’t try to parse the competing claims about how much direct benefit Goldman received from recent financial bailouts, especially the government’s assumption of A.I.G.’s liabilities. What’s clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government’s provision of a financial backstop — an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.

You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we’re to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.

Now the last time there was a comparable expansion of the financial safety net, the creation of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s, it was accompanied by much tighter regulation, to ensure that banks didn’t abuse their privileges. This time, new regulations are still in the drawing-board stage — and the finance lobby is already fighting against even the most basic protections for consumers.

If these lobbying efforts succeed, we’ll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster a few years down the road. The next crisis could look something like the savings-and-loan mess of the 1980s, in which deregulated banks gambled with, or in some cases stole, taxpayers’ money — except that it would involve the financial industry as a whole.

The bottom line is that Goldman’s blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It’s good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it’s bad news for almost everyone else.

    虽然理智上我知道老人没有这个权力，也知道这样做不可能根本解决问题，但感情上我还是属于叫好派一类。而且我从理智上认为，“愤怒的石头”并非来自民间，而是来自法律，因为法律在相关问题上表现得不够文明、不够有力，等于向社会扔了一块块愤怒的、野蛮的石头。如果相关的法律不及时修正，愤怒的石头还会层出不穷地出现。事实上在此之前，北京已经有非常有修养、知识水平非常高的老教授向小区乱停车的不文明行为施以砸车、划车身等愤怒的石头之先例了。

    在我的生活经验中，除了少数极有修养的文明绅士文明淑女，中国内地绝大多数汽车司机是不让行人的。不仅是在没有红绿灯的地方和行人抢道，即使在北京最繁华的交通要道，比如国贸，即使是行人的绿灯亮着，路这边右拐的车辆和马路对面左拐过来的车辆仍然在肆无忌惮地和过马路的行人抢道。如果你也学一学那位兰州老人，拿一块愤怒的石头砸将过去，我敢肯定一天下来被砸的车辆肯定不止几百辆。至于汽车抢红灯的事情，那也是随时随地都在发生着的事。

    对于这种不管他人生命安全与交通规则、一秒钟也要和行人争抢的人，单单指责交通管理部门不严格执法是不公平的。特别是在有安装摄像头的地方，司机的每一次交通违章都是桩桩件件记录在案的，该扣分的扣分，该罚款的罚款。

    但问题往往正在这里，法律对交通违章的处罚实在太低，以至于违章的成本不外乎扣分和罚款，即使违章撞死撞伤人，也仅仅是交通肇事罪，处罚也比较轻。甚至如杭州那样在闹市街头飙车撞死人，也只是以交通肇事罪起诉。其实无论是酒后驾驶以及闯红灯、在不合适的时间和地点飙车，都已经对社会的公共安全造成的潜在的、随时有可能发生的危害，应该马上以危害公共安全治罪才是。我们的国家也已经逐渐成为一个车轮上的国家，但是我们的汽车文明和行车道德还非常非常的落后，甚至还出现过像沈阳那样的行人“违章撞了白撞”一类恶法。而在西方一些国家和地区，酒后驾车甚至有可能被以故意谋杀论罪。至于像多数国家和地区汽车无论在什么情况下都是对行人无条件“礼让三先”的汽车文明汽车道德，而是离我们的司机的普遍修养相差十万八千里。

    汽车文明作为一项马路上的文明，最能检验一个国家和地区的文明程度。多年来，我国交通事故每年死亡人数都在十万人上下，是所有安全生产领域死亡人数最多的。中国汽车技术研究中心主任赵航去年的3月15日 在“中国汽车安全主题巡展”北京启程仪式上指出，中国是世界第二大汽车消费国和第三大汽车生产国。中国的汽车保有量虽然不是世界第一，但交通事故最近十几年一直是世界第一。2006年，中国的交通事故致死率达到17.2%，万车死亡率高达6.2人，远远高于其他国家。有效减少道路交通事故，是一项非常紧迫的任务。显然，从汽车的“法律文明”入手，加重对汽车司机的约束，无疑是构建汽车文明的提纲挈领之举。

Mr Erdogan's description of the riots in Xinjiang as "a kind of genocide" is an irresponsible and groundless accusation. The fact that 137 of the 184 persons killed in the riots are Han Chinese speaks volumes for the nature of the event.

There is no doubt that the riots were plotted by Uygur separatists outside the country to split the unity of different ethnic groups in the region. The rioters just attempted to sow seeds of animosity between the Uygur and the Han Chinese, which they expected would carry forward their conspiracy of separating Xinjiang from China.

Turning a blind eye to what the Chinese government has done to restore order in Urumqi, Mr Erdogan said "we have difficulty understanding how China's leadership can remain a spectator in the face of these events".

Chinese leaders are the last people who want to see happenings like these in the largest ethnic autonomous region. The harmony of different ethnic groups has been the top priority of what both the central and local governments have been making unremitting efforts to consolidate for many years. And, so has been the steady improvement of living standards of ethnic minority groups all over the country.

These are evidenced by the preferential policies of the central government for ethnic minority groups. For example, the family planning policy applies only to the Han Chinese and never to ethnic minority groups. Candidates for national college entrance examinations from ethnic minority groups get an extra 20 points for their enrollment.

It is quite common in the increasingly globalized world for people from different ethnic groups to live together in the same land. So it is insensitive and ridiculous to interpret the co-inhabitance of the Uygur and Han Chinese in Xinjiang as the Han people's assimilation of the Uygur ethnic group.

Actually, the Uygur people have also spread across the country during the past three decades, in pursuit of their fortune. It is the economic reform that has made such migration possible. So how can Mr Erdogan accuse the Chinese government of assimilating the Uygur ethnic group?

It is the rioters' venting of racial hatred, the atrocities committed by them and the rumors spread by separatists that have created misunderstanding between the Uygur and Han communities. As a result, people from both communities suffered great loss of lives and property. Obviously, such turmoil is in the interest of neither community. Nor is it in the interest of the region's economy. More than 80,000 tourists cancelled or delayed their trips to the region last week.

The efforts the central and local governments have been making to restore order and clear the misunderstanding between the Uygur and Han communities are what local residents of different ethnic groups really want and need for leading a peaceful and happy life.

Mr Erdogan's remarks, which constitute interference in China's internal affairs, are the last thing the Uygur and Han Chinese would find helpful when they are looking forward to lasting peace.

Sixteen-year-old Wang Mingya, a Han, is full of gratitude to a group of youngsters about his age, who stopped the mob from attacking him. He only knows they were Uygur. "I might have died were it not for the young Uygurs," he recalled.

That night, numerous ordinary Uygur citizens of Urumqi extended a life-saving hand to compatriots who were in harm's way. Some of those saved know their saviours' names. Others do not.

To all those who came to the rescue of the unfortunate victims, or even attempted to assist them, we extend our heart-felt gratitude, and hold them in the highest esteem. Their noble deeds lent a touch of humane warmth to that otherwise frightening night. For those innocent citizens fleeing for their lives, the sanctuaries they had provided were lifelines in a maze of death.

In those dark hours of July 5, they offered hope for the otherwise hopeless. In the days after, they will serve as invaluable sources of goodwill between the Uygur and Han communities now more or less estranged by misunderstanding.

Some people want to see the Uygur and Han people pitted against each other. But we saw the very opposite in the heart-warming episodes in that nightmarish bloodbath.

Just like what a Uygur retiree told the two Han workers he had saved from the streets, those ruthless, murderous lot were "only a small number who do not represent all Uygurs".

We urge all non-Uygur residents of Urumqi, and beyond, to take serious note of such stories, and rethink their perceptions of the July 5 tragedy. All of us should be grateful to the kind and brave Uygur compatriots who showed sympathy for the innocent victims.

Together the different communities of Urumqi have gone through the darkest moments in the city's recent history. It would be sad if they fell out in the grip of biases and external incitement.

A landmark began with the "Sun Zhigang incident" in 2003, in which Sun, a young Hubei native, was beaten to death in a Guangzhou detention center in Guangdong province. The heated Internet discussion in the wake of Sun's case finally resulted in the abolition of the country's regulations on sending migrant people without temporary local residence permits back to their hometown in a compulsory manner. This new trend has also been reflected in the handling of such cases involving forced labor in unlicensed brick kilns, extorted confession from suspects, re-verification of the fake South China tiger photograph, supply of contaminated milk powder and the mass incident in Weng'an, Guizhou province.

Thanks to the rapid growth of Internet, people have deeply felt the power of information. Due to its nature, speed and low cost, Internet is destined to become the main point for convergence of public opinion in the 21st century. It could even become the main channel, instead of traditional democratic means, for people to exercise their rights in a democracy.

However, we should be fully aware of the difference of netizens and the people while recognizing the prowess of Internet. As part of the people, netizens' opinions should only be a part of "public opinion".

China now has a total of 300 million Internet users, but they are mainly distributed in economically developed urban and coastal areas, with only a small portion in rural and inland areas. Under these circumstances, the so-called "Internet opinion" is by no means an accurate reflection of Chinese people's "public opinion".

One problem that has long plagued Internet opinions is the lack of sufficient reasoning. It is true that this is not the only problem that plagues the Internet. Even in the face-to-face dialogues in the real world, some kind of linguistic violence or body conflicts and other irrational activities may occur. The nature of the virtual Internet space aggravates such irrational tendencies. The absence of direct and face-to-face communications in Internet dialogues has emboldened people to express their opinions without worrying about the risks of unrestrained expressions.

In face-to-face communication, people have to keep in mind audience reaction and their own reputation. Therefore, they are unlikely to be disgrace themselves in word or deed. In comparison, the absolute privacy of the Internet is more likely to make people shed the garb of being civilized and aggravate the irrationality of Internet dialogues.

Besides, the lack of sufficient discussion in the virtual Internet world would easily make netizens reach ill-informed conclusions on issues, leaving open the possibility of their opinion being influenced by some radical or extremist Internet viewpoints.

Irrationality in Internet communications deserves greater attention given that reason serves as the precondition for democracy. The best decisions can be made through democratic procedures only when diverse opinions on issues get full play in public discussions. Otherwise, any so-called public opinion on the Internet is only a reflection of the "mob psychology" or herd mentality controlled by a handful of people with ulterior motives.

Despite the irrationality inherent in Internet dialogues, we don't need to excessively worry about it. The case of the South China tiger photograph indicates that there does exist an elite group among the mass of netizens, whose investigation, research and verification capabilities are equal to that of any official agency.

On issues of national interests, it is true that some netizens have gone to the extreme on the Internet. However, many of their irrational judgments are the result of incomplete Internet information. To get rid of such content, we should not clamp down on Internet expression. Instead, we should try to guarantee free access to a variety of viewpoints, to provide netizens the information for coming to the correct conclusions.

The prospects of China's Internet opinion depend on the rationality of its netizens as well as our faith in their reasoning. Our young netizens can never be mature and rational if they are denied access to Internet information.

The author is a professor with School of Law under Peking University

"Executives from Ansteel are being investigated (in the Rio Tinto-related case)", a senior manager at a domestic steel maker told China Daily Monday, requesting anonymity.

Apart from managers at the Liaoning-based steel mill, executives from China's largest steel maker Baosteel Group Corp, as well as Laigang Group and Jigang Group, are under investigation, domestic media reported.

Officials from China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), the industry body, are also being investigated, they reported.

Tan Yixin, a senior executive in charge of iron ore imports and exports at China's eighth largest steel mill, Shougang, was arrested July 7 for alleged commercial crimes.

Tan is said to be close to Australian Stern Hu, a Rio Tinto executive who is being detained by China on espionage charges.

When contacted by China Daily Monday, Shougang, Laigang, Jigang and the CISA refused to comment.

The investigations follow last week's detention of Hu and three domestic staff members.

The inquiry into Rio Tinto began before it broke off its $19.5 billion investment deal with Chinese metals firm Chinalco and before Rio Tinto formed an iron ore joint venture with rival BHP Billiton on June 5, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.

Chinese media reports said that Rio Tinto and other major international ore suppliers might have bribed executives to get access to figures such as stock levels, production schedules and volumes, financial information and purchase plans -- data that is sensitive and places China at a disadvantage during price talks.

Australia Monday summoned China's ambassador for a second time to press for details of Hu's detention.

But Canberra will not use "megaphone diplomacy" to pressure Beijing to release the Rio staff, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner told Reuters Television Monday.

"Our dealings with the Chinese government are going through formal channels," Tanner said.

The detention comes at a sensitive time, when China's steel industry, led by CISA, is in intense negotiations with Australian and Brazilian iron ore producers over prices.

Baosteel, Shougang and Angang are among the 16 delegation members at the talks for fixing 2009 prices. The annual talks, which were supposed to conclude by June 30, are still continuing.

The Rio Tinto case, experts say, is a sign that commercial espionage is growing in China.

"I think it is time for the Chinese government to regulate the behavior of foreign interest groups," said Jiang Yong, director of the Center for Economic Security Studies at China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.