IHT Quick Read: Dec. 15 NEWS A 20-year-old man wearing combat gear and armed with pistols and a rifle killed 26 people - 20 of them children - in an attack in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, before committing suicide on Friday. It was America's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. James Barron reports. European Union leaders pledged on Friday to take further steps to set up common banking rules for the bloc, but they delayed plans for a shared budget for the euro zone nations as pressure appeared to be easing on the single currency. The lesson of Japan's last major election, which ousted the long-dominant Liberal Democrats, was that a growing hunger for change had seemed to reach a threshold. But voters look ready to return that party to power Sunday, determined to punish the governing Democratic Party for failing to rein in bureaucracies and mishandling the 2011 nuclear crisis. Martin Fackler reports from Kanazawa, Japan. At the global treaty conference on telecommunications in Dubai, the United States got most of what it wanted. But then it refused to sign the document and left in a huff. What was that all about, and what does it say about the future of the Internet? The U.S. defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, signed a deployment order on Friday to send 400 American military personnel and two Patriot air defense batteries to Turkey as its tensions intensify with neighboring Syria. Germany and the Netherlands will also send Patriot batteries. Thom Shanker and Michael R. Gordon report. Xi Jinping, the new Communist Party chief and civilian commander of the Chinese military, is moving quickly to make strengthening the country's armed forces a centerpiece of what he calls the "Chinese dream" of national rejuvenation. Edward Wong reports from Guangzhou. Nearly a decade after the German government embarrassingly failed in an attempt to ban the country's leading extreme-right political party, the upper house of Parliament on Friday voted to launch a new effort to have the National Democratic Party deemed unconstitutional. SPORTS It's tough to find a place where this Olympic year didn't leave a trace, from hermetic Saudi Arabia to tiny Grenada. But for Britain, 2012 was a true annus mirabilis, and the London Games were not the only force behind it. Christopher Clarey looks back. ARTS Increasing scarcity of Old Masters continues to drive up prices, even in hard economic times, but some bargains of rare beauty can still be had. Souren Melikian writes from London.