IHT Quick Read: Dec. 27 NEWS China began service Wednesday morning on the world's longest high-speed rail line, from Beijing to Guangzhou - covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Florida, or from London across Europe to Belgrade, Serbia. Keith Bradsher reports from Hong Kong. Syria's embattled leadership suffered a new setback Wednesday with the defection of its military police chief, the highest-ranking officer to abandon President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising against him began nearly two years ago. Kareem Fahim and Rick Gladstone report. On the outskirts of Rome is an abandoned building colloquially known as the Salaam Palace, once a sparsely populated shelter where new arrivals from Africa squatted to create their own refuge. Today more than 800 refugees live there, a vivid reminder of what many say is Italy's failure to assist and integrate those who have qualified for asylum under its laws. Japan's Parliament formally chose the nationalist ex-prime minister Shinzo Abe to lead the country again, ending a three-year break from decades of near-constant rule by his conservative Liberal Democratic Party. ARTS On Indian television, mothers-in-law are not a joke - they're the law. In soap operas as in life, the extended family is still the bedrock of Indian society, where modernization meets its match. Alessandra Stanley reports from Mumbai. The new Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam - shaped like a bathtub, of all things - arrives years behind schedule at the tail end of the money-fueled, headline-hungry, erratically ingenious era of indulgent museum design that began to peter out with the global economy. Why a tub? That, says Michael Kimmelman, is the $170 million (well over budget) question. SPORTS The resurgence of German soccer began, like the country's economic comeback, after a long slide toward stagnation amid dire prophecies of impending irrelevance. Since then Germany has invested nearly $1 billion in its youth soccer programs, and the products of the new factory system were exhibited in striking fashion this season. Nicholas Kulish reports.