Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago.

The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine what caused one of the new lithium-ion batteries to catch fire and how to fix the problems.

The plane took off from Boeing Field in Seattle heading mostly east and then looped around to the south before flying back past the airport to the west. It covered about 900 miles and landed at 2:51 p.m. Pacific time.

Marc R. Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said the flight was conducted to monitor the performance of the plane’s batteries. He said the crew, which included 13 pilots and test personnel, said the flight was uneventful.

He said special equipment let the crew check status messages involving the batteries and their chargers, as well as data about battery temperature and voltage.

FlightAware, an aviation data provider, said the jet reached 36,000 feet. Its speed ranged from 435 to 626 miles per hour.

All 50 of the 787s delivered so far were grounded after a battery on one of the jets caught fire at a Boston airport on Jan. 7 and another made an emergency landing in Japan with smoke coming from the battery.

The new 787s are the most technically advanced commercial airplanes, and Boeing has a lot riding on their success. Half of the planes’ structural parts are made of lightweight carbon composites to save fuel.

Boeing also decided to switch from conventional nickel cadmium batteries to the lighter lithium-ion ones. But they are more volatile, and federal investigators said Thursday that Boeing had underestimated the risks.

The F.A.A. has set strict operating conditions on the test flights. The flights are expected to resume early this week, Mr. Birtel said.

Battery experts have said it could take weeks for Boeing to fix the problems.

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German Education Minister Quits in Plagiarism Case

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's education minister resigned Saturday after a university decided to withdraw her doctorate, finding that she plagiarized parts of her thesis — an embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel's government as it prepares for elections later this year.

Merkel said she had accepted "only with a very heavy heart" the resignation of Annette Schavan, who has been her education and research minister since 2005 and was considered close to the chancellor.

On Tuesday, an academic panel at Duesseldorf's Heinrich Heine University voted to revoke Schavan's doctorate following a review of her 1980 thesis, which dealt with the formation of conscience. The review was undertaken after an anonymous blogger last year raised allegations of plagiarism, which the minister denies.

"I will not accept this decision and will file suit against it — I neither copied nor deceived in my dissertation," she told reporters, speaking alongside Merkel at a brief news conference. "The accusations, as I have said over the past weeks and months, hurt me deeply."

Schavan made clear that she was going to prevent the issue turning into a festering problem for her party, and the government, as Germany gears up for parliamentary elections on Sept. 22 in which the conservative Merkel will seek a third term.

Schavan, 57, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, announced her decision after returning from an official trip to South Africa during which, she said, she thought "thoroughly about the political consequences."

"If a research minister files a suit against a university, that of course places strain on my office, the ministry, the government and the CDU as well," she said. "And that is exactly what I want to avoid."

Merkel offered lengthy praise of Schavan's "exceptional" performance as a minister, adding that "at this time, she is putting her own personal well-being behind the common good."

Schavan will be replaced by Johanna Wanka, the outgoing regional education minister in the state of Lower Saxony, Merkel said. That state's conservative-led government narrowly lost a regional election to the center-left opposition last month.

Schavan's resignation comes two years after then-Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg lost his doctorate and quit when it emerged that he copied large parts of his doctoral thesis. Schavan said at the time she was "ashamed" of that affair.

Doctorates are highly prized in Germany, where it is not unusual for people to insist on being referred to by their full academic title.

Despite the coalition government's setback in Lower Saxony, in northwestern Germany, polls show that Merkel remains popular with voters; her challenger from the center-left Social Democrats, Peer Steinbrueck, has struggled so far to gain traction.

Most recent polls show a majority neither for Merkel's current center-right coalition with the struggling pro-market Free Democrats nor for a rival combination of the Social Democrats and Greens.

They show Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats as the strongest single party. That suggests the chancellor may be able to carry on with a new coalition partner.

It's also unclear that the Schavan affair will provide much political ammunition for the opposition.

The usually low-profile minister's troubles over her three-decade-old thesis have drawn a much more measured response from opponents than in the case of Guttenberg, a rising conservative star at the time he quit.

On Friday, Sigmar Gabriel, the chairman of the Social Democrats, described Schavan as "a notably smart and, from my point of view, decent colleague."

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Stars salute MusiCares honoree Bruce Springsteen

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Be it concert or charity auction, Bruce Springsteen can bring any event to a crescendo.

Springsteen briefly took over auctioneering duties before being honored as MusiCares person of the year Friday night, exhorting the crowd to bid on a signed Fender electric guitar by amping up the deal. The 63-year-old rock 'n' roll star moved the bid north from $60,000 by offering a series of sweeteners.

"That's right, a one-hour guitar lesson with me," Springsteen shouted. "And a ride in my Harley Davidson sidecar. So dig in, one-percenters."

That moved the needle past $150,000. He added eight concert tickets and backstage passes with a bonus tour conducted by Springsteen himself. That pushed it to $200,000, but he wasn't done.

"And a lasagna made by my mother!" he shouted as an in-house camera at the Los Angeles Convention Center cut to his 87-year-old mother Adele Ann Springsteen.

And with an extra $250,000 in the musicians charity's coffers, Springsteen sat down and spent most of the evening in the unusual role of spectator as a string of stars that included Elton John, Neil Young, Sting, Kenny Chesney, John Legend, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne took the stage two nights before the Grammy Awards.

"Here's a little secret about Bruce Springsteen: He loves this," host Jon Stewart joked. "There's nothing he'd rather do than come to Los Angeles, put on a suit ... and then have people talking about him like he's dead."

Alabama Shakes kicked things off with "Adam Raised A Cain" and over the course of the evening there were several interesting takes on Springsteen's voluminous 40-year catalog of hits. Natalie Manes, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite played a stripped down "Atlantic City." Mavis Staples and Zac Brown put a gospel spin on "My City of Ruins." John added a funky backbeat to "Streets of Philadelphia." Kenny Chesney offered an acoustic version of "One Step Up."

Jim James and Tom Morello burned through a scorching version of "The Ghost of Tom Joad" that brought the crowd out of their seats as Morello finished the song with a fiery guitar solo. And Mumford & Sons took it the opposite way, playing a quiet, acoustic version of "I'm On Fire" in the round that had the crowd leaning in.

Legend offered a somber piano version of "Dancing in the Dark" and Young shut down the pre-Springsteen portion of the evening with a "Born in the USA" that included two sign-language interpreters dressed as cheerleaders signing along to the lyrics.

"John Legend made me sound like Gershwin," Springsteen said. "I love that. Neil Young made me sound like the Sex Pistols. I love that. What an evening."

Springsteen spoke of the "miracle of music," the importance of musicians in human culture and making sure everyone is cared for. And he joked that he somehow ended up being honored by MusiCares, a charity that offers financial assistance to musicians in need run by The Recording Academy, after his manager called up Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich to seek a performance slot on the show in a "mercenary publicity move."

In the end, though, he was moved by the evening.

"It's kind of a freaky experience, the whole thing," Springsteen said. "This is the huge Italian wedding Patti (Scialfa) and I never had. It's a huge Bar Mitzvah. I owe each and every one of you. You made me feel like the person of the year. Now give me that damn guitar."

He asked the several thousand attendees to move toward the stage — "Come on, it's only rock 'n' roll" — and kicked off his five-song set with his Grammy nominated song "We Take Care Of Our Own." At the end of the night he brought everyone on stage for "Glory Days."

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Online:

http://grammy.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted

United States companies are sending spent lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards, according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk.

In a blistering report submitted this week, the agency, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, notes that the United States does not fully follow procedures common among developed nations that treat international battery shipments as hazardous waste. It faults environmental agencies on both sides of the border for lapses in regulation and enforcement. Cross-border trade in lead batteries increased by up to 525 percent from 2004 to 2011, the report said.

The report, which has been circulating in draft form, has been forwarded to the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico, which have 60 days to object to its publication. An estimated 20 percent of lead acid batteries from the United States now go to Mexico for recycling, according to trade statistics.

“There needs to be better coordination between government agencies and better cross-border tracking,” said Evan Lloyd, who was the agency’s executive director until late last year and oversaw the yearlong study.

The report highlighted a number of shortcomings: Customs data on the number of batteries crossing the border did not mesh with counts by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Though the E.P.A. requires notice of batteries leaving the United States, there was no effort to make sure that they had arrived at qualified recyclers in Mexico. The data that battery companies sent to the E.P.A. about exports consisted of “piles of paper,” Mr. Lloyd said, and it was never amassed into an electronic database that would be “useful to regulators.”

Almost all lead acid batteries used in the United States are recycled to extract the lead for reuse because lead is a dangerous pollutant and because it is a valuable commodity. Lead batteries are used in vehicles, cellphone towers and wind turbines.

Since 2008, new United States limits on lead pollution have made domestic recycling complicated and costly. That has helped propel the recycling trade to Mexico, both legally and illegally, environmental groups say, because that country has less stringent limits for lead pollution, and far less vigorous enforcement.

“There’s a pretty consistent pattern suggesting that exports are the direct result of U.S. emissions standards,” said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, which has led the campaign against lead poisoning internationally. Mr. Gottesfeld noted that a Mexican plant owned by a major American recycler, Johnson Controls Inc., puts out more than 30 times as much lead emissions as its newest plant in the United States.

“What Mexico needs to do is to get its recycling up to U.S. standards, and the U.S. needs to do a much better job of tracking batteries overseas,” he said. In an e-mail, Johnson Controls, based in Milwaukee, said it was “modernizing and reinvesting” in the Mexican facility, acquired in 2005, “to reduce its environmental footprint.”

The report was initiated in response to a report by Occupational Knowledge International and Fronteras Comunes, a Mexican environmental group, as well as to an investigative article in The New York Times, Mr. Lloyd said. Soil collected by The Times in a school playground near a recycling plant outside Mexico City was found to have lead levels five times those allowed in the United States.

Lead poisoning causes high blood pressure, kidney damage and abdominal pain in adults, and serious developmental delays and behavioral problems in young children. When batteries are broken for recycling, the lead is released as dust and, during melting, as lead-laced emissions.

In the United States, recyclers operate in highly mechanized, tightly sealed plants, with smokestack scrubbers and extensive monitors to detect lead release. Plants in Mexico vary greatly in safety standards, and in some, the recycling process is little more than men with hammers smashing batteries and melting down their contents in furnaces.

In recent months, there have been new efforts to curb the flow of batteries south of the border, though many battery makers have fought that. In response to a draft of the report released late last year, Battery Council International, an industry group, said it opposed “the creation of additional burdensome certification programs.”

Last year, the United States General Services Administration, which is responsible for federal vehicles, asked ASTM International, an independent standards agency, to explore a voluntary standard for battery recycling.

But that effort came to naught after the proposal was voted down at an open meeting attended by representatives from industry, government and environmental groups in December. Of the 103 people at the meeting, 49 worked for Johnson Controls.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of an American recycler cited by Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, as the owner of a Mexican plant that puts out more than 30 times as much lead emissions as the company’s newest plant in the United States. The American recycling company is Johnson Controls Inc., not Johnson Controls International.

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Postal Service Posts Loss of $1.3 Billion in First Quarter

WASHINGTON — The Postal Service’s financial woes continued in the first quarter of this year as the agency continues to wait for Congressional action to address its mounting debt. The Postal Service posted a loss of $1.3 billion in the first quarter as mail volume continued to decline.

Total mail volume fell to 43.5 billion pieces from 43.6 billion in earlier year, agency officials told members of the Postal Board of Governors, which oversees the agency. The board, which told the agency to speed up measures to cut costs two weeks ago, endorsed the post office’s recent move toward suspending mail delivery on Saturday.

The data presented by the post office did show a slight increase in advertising mail from the 2012 election. The agency’s packaging and shipping service continues to grow, increasing 4 percent in the first quarter.

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Alicia Keys, Bobby Brown perform at Will.i.am show

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fergie may have been absent — but the Black Eyed Peas were joined by another female diva onstage: Alicia Keys.

Keys sang "Where Is the Love" with the pop-rap group at will.i.am's charity event Thursday night at The Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles. British singer Estelle also sang Fergie's portion of "The Time (Dirty Bit)."

Will.i.am's TRANS4M benefit show — which assists his i.am.angel foundation — also featured Bobby Brown and Ludacris, who both earned roaring cheers from the crowd of several hundred.

Will.i.am. said at the end of the evening that he raised $3.3 million.

"We're having fun, but we're also collecting funds," he told the crowd.

Will.i.am introduced Grammy-winning Keys to the audience saying: "Are you ready for a strong woman?"

The R&B singer performed "Girl on Fire" and "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart."

Brown sang his jams "Every Little Step" and "Tenderoni." He performed at the same event in 2011, as will.i.am and Taboo of the Peas worked as his background dancers. They did the same Thursday night.

He told will.i.am in between his set that he was proud of the musician and his charity work.

The Peas closed the night with the massive hit "I Gotta Feeling."

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Online:

http://iamangelfoundation.org .

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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The New Old Age: The Executor's Assistant

I’m serving as executor for my father’s estate, a role few of us are prepared for until we’re playing it, so I was grateful when the mail brought “The American Bar Association Guide to Wills and Estates” — the fourth edition of a handbook the A.B.A. began publishing in 1995.

This is a legal universe, I’m learning, in which every step — even with a small, simple estate that owes no taxes and includes no real estate or trusts — turns out to be at least 30 percent more complicated than expected.

If my dad had been wealthy or owned a business, or if we faced a challenge to his will, I would have turned the whole matter over to an estate lawyer by now. But even then, it would be helpful to know what the lawyer was talking about. The A.B.A. guide would help.

Written with surprising clarity (hey, they’re lawyers), it maps out all kinds of questions and decisions to consider and explains the many ways to leave property to one’s heirs. Updated from the third edition in 2009, the guide not only talks taxes and trusts, but also offers counsel for same-sex couples and unconventional families.

If you want to permit your second husband to live in the family home until he dies, but then guarantee that the house reverts to the children of your first marriage, the guide tells you how a “life estate” works. It explains what is taxable and what isn’t, and discusses how to choose executors and trustees. It lists lots of resources and concludes with an estate-planning checklist.

In general, the A.B.A. intends its guide for the person trying to put his or her affairs in order, more than for family members trying to figure out how to proceed after someone has died. But many of us will play both these parts at some point (and if you are already an executor, or have been, please tell us how that has gone, and mention your state). We’ll need this information.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Wall Street Edges Ahead

Stocks opened slightly higher on Wall Street on Friday after a trio of positive economic data points, but gains were expected to be modest.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index added 0.2 percent in early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq composite index jumped 0.4 percent.

Data showed that Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand. German data showed a 2012 trade surplus that was the nation’s second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe’s biggest economy.

And U.S. data showed that the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

The S.&P. 500 has risen for five straight weeks and is up 5.8 percent for the year. Its advance was helped by legislators in Washington averting a series of automatic spending cuts and tax increases earlier in the year, as well as better-than-expected corporate earnings and data that pointed to modest economic improvement but no immediate change in the Federal Reserve’s stimulus plans.

But the index, hovering near five-year highs, has stalled in recent days as investors await strong trading incentives to drive it further..

“The market has made a big run, a lot of this was anticipated and so now investors are saying, ‘Now what? What do we do for an encore?'” said Terry Morris, senior equity manager for National Penn Investors Trust Company in Reading, Pa. “It has made a big run and it is deserving of rest — in fact, it would probably be healthy if we had a little bit of a pullback.”

McDonald’s said that January sales at established hamburger restaurants around the world fell 1.9 percent, a steeper decline than analysts expected. Shares edged down 0.5 percent.

LinkedIn jumped 10.6 percent after announcing both blow-out quarterly profit and a bullish forecast for the new year that exceeded Wall Street’s already lofty expectations.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning, of 317 companies in the S.&P. 500 that have reported earnings, 69 percent have exceeded analysts’ expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and a 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S.&P. 500 companies grew 5 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

On Thursday, comments about the strength of the euro by the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, renewed concern about the euro zone economy and sent global equities lower. On Friday, European stock markets were mostly higher in afternoon trading, while the euro traded around $1.3394.

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New Political Uncertainty Grips Tunisia After Assassination, Reports Say

Amine Landoulsi/Associated Press

People placed flowers at the site outside his home where opposition leader Chokri Belaid was killed the day before on Thursday in Tunis.

TUNIS — New political uncertainties surfaced on Thursday in Tunisia, a day after officials moved quickly to contain the fallout from the assassination of a leading opposition figure. A plan to reshape the Islamist-led administration in favor of national unity government reportedly encountered strong resistance as protesters again demonstrated on the streets of the capital and elsewhere.

News reports on Thursday said the country’s dominant Ennahda Party had rejected the plan to dissolve the government, as proposed Wednesday by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.

“The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party,” Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda’s vice president was quoted as saying in news agency dispatches. “We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with others parties about forming a coalition government.”

The reported statement appeared to inject a new element of political tension into an already fraught and fragile situation.

Residents of Tunis said hundreds of protesters — far fewer than on Wednesday — took to the streets on Thursday while the French embassy said on its Web site it would close its schools in the capital on Friday and Saturday for fear of renewed outbursts of violence.

France is the former colonial power in Tunisia and has traditionally had a strong diplomatic presence here.

In the southern mining city of Gafsa, The Associated Press reported, citing a local radio station, riots broke out and police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones at the police. The city is known as a powerful base of support for the slain politician, Chokri Belaid.

Some reports also spoke of tear gas being fired in the capital as protesters again converged on the interior ministry in what has been depicted as the worst crisis since the so-called Arab Spring first took root in Tunisia more than two years ago.

Fresh unrest loomed with the prospect on Friday of a general strike agreed by Labor leaders on the same day as the funeral of Mr. Belaid, likely to be a highly emotive event in its own right.

Additionally, Friday, the Muslim holy day, has been associated with unrest and protest since the beginning of the revolts that overthrew or challenged dictatorial regimes across the Arab world and North Africa. Mr. Belaid was one of Tunisia’s best-known human rights defenders and a fierce critic of the ruling Islamist party.

His killing placed dangerous new strains on a society struggling to reconcile its identity as a long-vaunted bastion of Arab secularism with its new role as a proving ground for one of the region’s ascendant Islamist parties.

The explosion of popular anger, which led to the death of a police officer in the capital, posed a severe challenge to Ennahda, which came to power promising a model government that blended Islamist principles with tolerant pluralism.

Mr. Belaid was shot and killed outside his home in an upscale Tunis neighborhood as he was getting into his car on Wednesday morning. The interior minister, citing witnesses, said that two unidentified gunmen had fired on Mr. Belaid, striking him with four bullets.

The killing, which analysts said was the first confirmed political assassination here since the overthrow of the autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was a dark turn for the country that was the birthplace of the Arab uprisings of two years ago. It resonated in countries like Egypt and Libya that are struggling to contain political violence while looking to Tunisia’s turbulent but hopeful transition as a reassuring example.

“Confronting violence, radicalism and the forces of darkness is the main priority for societies if they want freedom and democracy,” Amr Hamzawy, a member of Egypt’s main secular opposition coalition, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Assassinating Chokri Belaid is warning bell in Tunisia, and in Egypt, too.”

The response by Tunisian officials was being closely watched. President Moncef Marzouki cut short an overseas trip to deal with the crisis. Mr. Jebali, the prime minister, called the killing a “heinous crime against the Tunisian people, against the principles of the revolution and the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other.”

Bowing to the outrage, he said cabinet ministers would be replaced with technocrats not tied to any party until elections could be held.

The announcement, which had been expected for months, held out the promise that Tunisia might continue to avoid the political chaos that has plagued its neighbors. Since the uprising, the country has held successful elections, leading to a coalition government merging Ennahda and two center-left parties. An assembly writing the country’s constitution has circumscribed the role of Islamic law, allowing Tunisia to avoid the arguments over basic legal matters that have led to protracted unrest in Egypt.

Monica Marks reported from Tunis, Kareem Fahim from Cairo and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo, David D. Kirkpatrick from Antakya, Turkey, and Brian Knowlton from Washington.

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