Ten Words from Today's NY Times - August 1, 2012

On Tuesday, India suffered the largest electrical blackout in history, affecting an area encompassing about 670 million people, or roughly 10 percent of the world’s population.

For a country considered a rising economic power, Blackout Tuesday — which came only a day after another major power failure — was an embarrassing reminder of the intractable problems still plaguing India: inadequate infrastructure, a crippling power shortage and, many critics say, a yawning absence of governmental action and leadership.

Theories for the extraordinarily extensive blackout across much of northern India included excessive demands placed on the grid from certain regions, due in part to low monsoon rains that forced farmers to pump more water to their fields, and the less plausible possibility that large solar flares had set off a failure.

But he attributed this week’s problems to the bureaucrats who control the system, saying that civil servants are beholden to elected state leaders who demand that more power be diverted to their regions — even if doing so threatens the stability of the national grid.

Those two states, which have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate over the last two decades, are considered firewalls, and an erosion of support would signal trouble for the president.

It seemed a shame, a grand moment to celebrate the most prolific Olympic champions squandered by red tape.

If not for the vagaries of history, Latynina might have had a career in ballet instead of gymnastics.

The Soviets were dominant, and no one was more accomplished than Latynina.

Only Latynina and another legend, Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia, have twice won women’s gymnastics’ most coveted prize — the gold medal in the Olympic all-around competition.

“It was a pleasure watching him,” she said, not appearing wistful.