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"North Korea's recent nuclear test is a challenge to the survival and future of the Korean people, and there should be no mistake that the biggest victim will be none other than North Korea itself," Ms. Park said in her inaugural address in front of the National Assembly building in Seoul.

She urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions without delay, "instead of wasting its resources on nuclear and missile development and continuing to turn its back to the world in self-imposed isolation."

Her motorcade's arrival Monday at the presidential Blue House marked a triumphant moment not just for Ms. Park but for her family. Ms. Park, 61, was returning to her childhood home, 34 years after the assassination of her father, Park Chung-hee, a divisive figure even now. Mr. Park's 18-year rule was credited with rapidly raising South Korea's economy from postwar devastation, but his iron-fisted governance was increasingly maligned as the country evolved toward democracy.

Ms. Park was elected in December thanks largely to the support of South Koreans in their 50s and older. Many younger voters were vehemently opposed to her candidacy, saying she represented a return to the past.

North Korea, meanwhile, has again become a prime national security concern. A week before Ms. Park's election, the North launched a satellite into orbit in defiance of United Nations resolutions. On Feb. 12, it conducted a third nuclear test. The two events have heightened fears that years of efforts by Washington and its allies to rein in the North's nuclear ambitions have failed, even as Pyongyang appears to have made progress toward achieving the capability to make long-range nuclear missiles.

Speaking Monday before a large crowd — which earlier had been entertained by the rapper Psy, famous for the song "Gangnam Style" — Ms. Park also addressed economic concerns, a major issue in the election. She said her tasks as president would include "achieving economic rejuvenation, the happiness of the people and the flourishing of our culture."

In a comment reminiscent of her father, she called for a "second miracle on the Han River." Seoul, which straddles the Han, began transforming itself into an industrialized metropolis under her father, who sought economic growth at all costs and nurtured a handful of family-controlled companies, such as Samsung and Hyundai, as the engines of an export-driven economy.

Now, as his daughter takes office, one of the biggest complaints among ordinary South Koreans is of widening economic inequality, particularly those conglomerates' overpowering influence on smaller businesses — a grievance Mr. Park addressed in her speech, saying that a second Han River "miracle" should be based on "economic democratization."

She promised policies designed to strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises so that "such businesses can prosper alongside large companies." She said, "By rooting out various unfair practices and rectifying the misguided habits of the past which have frustrated small business owners and small and medium-sized enterprises, we will provide active support to ensure that everyone can live up to their fullest potential, regardless of where they work or what they do for a living."

But in a break from recent years Oscar voters also found a way to take care of a wide variety of movies, especially "Life of Pi," which won four trophies, including the best director honor for Ang Lee. "Les Misérables" joined "Argo" in taking home three awards, and "Django Unchained" was honored with two, including one for Quentin Tarantino for best original screenplay.

"I want to thank Canada," Mr. Affleck said in a rapid-fire speech, a reference to that country's heroics in saving the diplomats who were the subject of his movie. Michelle Obama, wearing a silver gown and appearing via satellite from the White House, helped Jack Nicholson present the award.

Only a decade ago Mr. Affleck would have been a punch line at the Academy Awards, having taking an unfortunate career turn through flops like "Gigli" and "Reindeer Games." But he has turned out several highly praised films in recent years, gaining prestige along the way. His ascent culminated with "Argo," a tale of a cinematic cover for an escape from revolutionary Iran.

Still, Mr. Affleck was not nominated by the Academy for his directing, making "Argo" the first film to win best picture without an accompanying nomination for its director since 1990, when "Driving Miss Daisy" won the best-picture Oscar. When Mr. Affleck failed to receive a nomination for directing that helped rally support for "Argo," which picked up a rash of honors on the awards circuit. On Sunday it also won Oscars for best adapted screenplay (for Chris Terrio) and best editing (for William Goldenberg).

"Lincoln," considered the early Oscar front-runner, seemed to overreach by getting Bill Clinton to introduce a clip at the Golden Globes last month. "Lincoln," the most nominated film going into the night with 12 nods, left with two statuettes, including one for Daniel Day-Lewis as best actor, his third in that category.

In a gracious acceptance speech, he thanked his "beloved skipper," the film's director, Steven Spielberg, and concluded by saying "For my mother."

A flustered Jennifer Lawrence stumbled as she ascended the stairs en route to accepting the Oscar for best actress for "Silver Linings Playbook," but recovered with a smile before saying "this is nuts."

Seth MacFarlane, this year's host, opened the 85th annual Academy Awards with a round of risky humor more akin to the Golden Globes, delivering a monologue that mocked himself as "the worst Oscar host ever" and joining with the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles to perform a song-and-dance homage to topless scenes by female stars.

"We saw your boobs," they chanted to nervous giggles from the audience.

Mr. MacFarlane's performance from there oscillated between inside jabs at attendees, joking at one point about George Clooney's history of dating very young women, and one-liners that showcased his juvenile brand of humor. "I would argue that the actor who really got inside Lincoln's head was John Wilkes Booth," Mr. MacFarlane cracked to apparent winces from the audience.

The Oscars also seemed to emulate the Grammy Awards, with more emphasis on centerpiece performances — by Adele, Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand, among others — than on the presentation of awards. The much-advertised musical tribute, which ran for 11 minutes, had it both ways, mixing clips from films with live performances by Catherine Zeta-Jones from "Chicago," Jennifer Hudson in "Dreamgirls" and the cast of "Les Misérables."

The producers made up time by hustling awards winners off the stage, doing it musically with a riff from "Jaws" in at least one case. Most winners seemed to adhere to the admonishments made by producers before the show to avoid reading prepared remarks.

The awards presentation at the Dolby Theater here unfolded pretty much as expected, with voters spreading their awards across a variety of pictures. Voters even found a way to honor "Anna Karenina," which drew shrugs from most critics and ticket buyers but nonetheless won best costume design.

Anne Hathaway won best supporting actress for her role as an emaciated prostitute in "Les Misérables." "It came true," she said softly after climbing onstage.

Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for "Django Unchained," something of a surprise given the Weinstein Company's hard push for Robert De Niro for his role in "Silver Linings Playbook."

"We participated in a hero's journey, the hero here being Quentin," Mr. Waltz said of Mr. Tarantino.

There was a rare tie in the sound editing category, with Oscars going to "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall." The last time there was a tie was in 1994 in the live-action-short category, according to an Academy librarian. It was the only award for "Zero Dark Thirty," which was once a leading best picture contender but fizzled under intense criticism for its depiction of the role of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Best animated feature went to Pixar's "Brave," which beat its corporate sibling, "Wreck-It Ralph," from Walt Disney Animation. Disney's cartoon studio did win best animated short,  for "Paperman."

Best documentary feature went to "Searching for Sugar Man," from the first-time director Malik Bendjelloul — the only feel-good documentary in a list that otherwise wrestled with grim problems like the AIDS epidemic and  the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Michael Haneke's "Amour," about an elderly couple coping with illness and death, won best foreign-language film.

Honoring a wide variety of pictures is a hallmark of the Golden Globes and the producers of Sunday's telecast, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, also worked to give their ceremony a more laid-back atmosphere, hoping to emulate the festiveness of the Globes. Mr. Meron said last Tuesday that the words "Academy Awards," for instance, had been dropped from the show's title ("The Oscars") because they sounded "musty."

The celebrity-packed telecast was as musical as any since 1989, when the producer Allan Carr ("Grease") opened the show with a campy production number that found Snow White joining Rob Lowe in an ill-advised sendup of "Proud Mary." That show got a significant ratings bump, but Hollywood recoiled — Disney sued for unauthorized use of a copyrighted character — and Mr. Carr's show is remembered as one of the worst of all time.

Hollywood has learned to have low expectations for the Oscar telecast, which for the past three years has posted declines among viewers ages 18 to 49, the demographic group advertisers pay the most to reach. (Last year the Oscar show attracted a total audience of 39.3 million viewers, a 3.7 percent increase from the previous year.)

The Academy, desperate to attract younger viewers, hired Ms. Hathaway and James Franco to be hosts in 2011. Critics booed, complaining in particular about a near-catatonic Mr. Franco. Last year the Academy overcorrected, handing hosting duties to Billy Crystal; the critics hissed, calling the show antiquated. It had hoped to strike the right chord Sunday with Mr. MacFarlane.

The Academy was counting on Mr. MacFarlane to lure young male viewers, the primary audience for his "Family Guy" television cartoon and R-rated movie "Ted." But in a bit of a disconnect Mr. Zadan, making the publicity rounds last week, said Mr. MacFarlane in rehearsals reminded him of a "throwback to the days of Bob Hope."

Oscar telecasts tend to rise and fall among total viewers based on the popularity of the movies being honored. Last year the winning film, "The Artist," was seen only sparsely by audiences, and only one of the nine nominated films — "The Help" — had taken in more than $100 million in North America before the ceremony. This time six films had crossed that threshold: "Lincoln," "Argo," "Life of Pi," "Django Unchained," "Les Misérables" and "Silver Linings Playbook."

Close behind with about $90 million in ticket sales was "Zero Dark Thirty," which lost Oscar steam as it came under attack from members of Congress and others for its depiction of torture as a tool in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Oscar voters snubbed Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the film, leaving its writer, Mark Boal, as its best hope of winning, in the adapted screenplay category.

The Oscars may go up and down in the ratings, but revenue from the show keeps rising. Last year the Academy took in a record $89.6 million from the show, up about five percent from $85.5 million the year before.

Years ago, fresh out of high school, Ms. Hunt had finished enough advanced work to enter the University of Texas at Austin with sophomore standing. But after a year, homesick, she returned to Virginia. Then she married and eventually moved to Indiana. She had 10 children, whom she home-schools, and worked in her husband's business.

About a year ago, at 39, she resolved to complete a degree. In a kind of a higher-education sprint, she took a number of college equivalency exams, earning 54 credits in 14 weeks.

"I tried to do an exam a week at the University of Indianapolis test center," where the exams could be proctored, she said. "Each test cost about $80."

Ms. Hunt estimated that her degree in business administration, plus a simultaneous associate degree in applied science, had cost her $5,300, including books and fees. There are almost as many routes to a Thomas Edison degree as there are students. In a way, that is the whole point of the college, a fully accredited, largely online public institution in Trenton founded in 1972 to provide a flexible way for adults to further their education.

"We don't care how or where the student learned, whether it was from spending three years in a monastery," said George A. Pruitt, the college's president, "as long as that learning is documented by some reliable assessment technique."

"Learning takes place continuously throughout our lives," he said. "If you're a success in the insurance industry, and you're in the million-dollar round table, what difference does it make if you learned your skills at Prudential or at Wharton?"

At a time when student debt has passed $1 trillion, such institutions seem to have, at the very least, impeccable timing. Thomas Edison, New Jersey's second-largest public college, and two like-minded institutions — Charter Oak State College in Connecticut and the private, nonprofit Excelsior College in New York — are all growing. Thomas Edison's graduating class last fall was a third bigger than the class five years earlier. And the idea of measuring students' competency, not classroom hours, has become the cornerstone of newer institutions like Western Governors University in Utah.

At Thomas Edison and the other such colleges, almost all students are over 21, many are in the military, and few have taken a direct path to higher education.

Pilar Mercedes Foy, 31, a Thomas Edison graduate whose parents did not go to college, said after she got an entry-level job at PSEG, the New Jersey energy company, she realized that she would need a degree to advance. She earned the bulk of her credits through heavily subsidized evening classes offered at work, supplemented by classes at Union County College and 12 credits from the CLEP Spanish exam. For her, earning a degree without taking on a penny of student debt was enough of a milestone that she invited her husband, parents, siblings, in-laws and nieces to the September graduation ceremony.

Thirty years ago, when Dr. Pruitt became president, the Thomas Edison approach was controversial. Some academics, in particular, were skeptical, he said, almost believing that "if we didn't teach it to you, you couldn't have learned it."

Results have quieted most naysayers, Dr. Pruitt said. For example, Thomas Edison graduates had the highest pass rate on the exam for certified public accountants in New Jersey, in the latest national accounting-boards report. Still, the approach raises real questions about the meaning of a college degree.

"If I'm giving you a degree, I'm vouching for you, testifying to your competence," said Clifford Adelman, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington. "With these nomad students in higher education, whose students are they? There are questions of ownership and ethical responsibility."

Most Thomas Edison students arrive with some credits, at times earned many years earlier. Others get credits by submitting a portfolio of their work or passing standardized exams like the College Level Examination Program, administered by the College Board. Many complete online college courses from Thomas Edison or "open courseware" sources like the Saylor Foundation. Many bring transcripts from the American Council on Education's credit recommendation program, certifying their nontraditional programs.

Arthur C. Brooks, a former economics professor at Syracuse who heads the American Enterprise Institute, earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Thomas Edison in 1994, at age 30, after a decade as a musician. He took correspondence courses, he said, "at the cheapest places I could find."

Mr. Brooks believes he did the same homework, wrote the same papers and took the same tests as on-campus students at other colleges, without meeting a single professor. To get his degree, he had to prove mastery of economics in a two-hour telephone conversation with a professor at Pace University.

"It was like a field exam," said Mr. Brooks, now 48. "He asked about Adam Smith, John Keynes, supply and demand, macro and micro — everything an economics major at any university would be expected to know."

David Esterson, 45, of Whittier, Calif., started taking college classes while in high school, attended the University of Washington for a year, was a photographer in Los Angeles, then started a music business. About three years ago, when his nephews began talking about college, Mr. Esterson decided he should complete his degree.

He took online courses at the University of Minnesota and the University of Phoenix before trying a couple of California community colleges and an acupuncture school. He finally earned a bachelor's degree in liberal studies from Thomas Edison in September.

"It sounded like a scam, but the fact that it was a state school, and accredited, made it more real," Mr. Esterson said.

And it has been real, he said: "Nobody I contacted about graduate programs seemed to look down on the Edison degree, and I got into every grad school I applied to."

Now enrolled in two graduate programs — an online master's in leadership at Northeastern and a dual-degree executive M.B.A. program from Cornell University and Queen's College in Canada — Mr. Esterson is a booster for his alma mater. "I've never been there, but I did buy a sweatshirt," he said.

With a flourish, he would ask an employee to crack open a couple of barrels. After the stinging smell of the peppers was noted, he asked guests to dab the mash with a finger and gingerly lick it.

Tears flowed, air was gasped for and, at the host's invitation, spit flew to clear tongues.

Mr. McIlhenny had no doubt played the culinary instigator countless times in his 45 years at the McIlhenny Company, the makers of Tabasco pepper sauce, perhaps Louisiana's best known product. But he still chuckled as he gave his guests small spoons that earned them entry into the Not So Ancient Order of the Not So Silver Spoon.

Mr. McIlhenny, the chairman and chief executive of the family-owned McIlhenny Company, died on Saturday in New Orleans. He was 68. The cause was apparently a heart attack.

His death was announced by the McIlhenny Company.

Mr. McIlhenny became chief executive in 2000. During his tenure, the company enjoyed record growth, thanks in part to the introduction of new products, like chipotle, sweet and spicy and Buffalo-style hot sauces and the expansion of a catalog business that sells Tabasco neckties and teddy bears. Mr. McIlhenny also formed licensing deals with the makers of A1 steak sauce, Spam, Cheez-Its and other supermarket staples.

The great-grandson of Edmund McIlhenny, who invented Tabasco sauce after the Civil War, Paul Carr Polk McIlhenny was born in Houston on March 19, 1944, with his twin sister, Sara. He attended the Woodberry Forest School in Virginia and the University of the South in Tennessee, and served stateside in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Mr. McIlhenny joined the family business in 1967 and was groomed by his cousin Walter S. McIlhenny, then president of the company. His first jobs included loading peppers in the field, processing the pepper mash and loading cases of sauce onto rail cars. He lived on the West Coast to learn the company's retail sales and food broker operations.

Back at the company headquarters on Avery Island, La., he worked in the marketing, advertising, purchasing and food service departments, among others.

Mr. McIlhenny split his time between New Orleans and Avery Island, which sits on a large salt dome in bayou country. There, peppers are grown for their seeds, which are shipped to growers overseas. The mash that returns is aged for three years before being mixed with vinegar and stirred for one month. After the skins and seeds of the peppers are removed, the sauce is sent to the bottling plant. About 750,000 bottles modeled after the cologne-style bottles used for the first batch of the sauce made in 1868 roll off the lines daily.

Like many in his family, Mr. McIlhenny was active in environmental preservation efforts. He was on the board of the America's Wetland Foundation.In 2010, he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America. During Mardi Gras in 2006, with New Orleans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, Mr. McIlhenny reigned as Rex, the King of Carnival. Survivors include his wife, Judith Goodwin McIlhenny; two daughters, Barbara McIlhenny Fitz-Hugh and Rosemary McIlhenny Dinkins; a brother, Gustaf; a sister, Sara McIlhenny Ringle; and four grandchildren.

"It is like an earthquake," said Pedro Pisco, a city hall administrator from this old fishing port, a few miles away from Praia do Norte. "When it breaks, you can feel the earth shaking under your feet."

The area has a reputation as a dangerous spot for its turbulent gales, crushing surf and frequent accidents, though on a recent day the sea was flat as a reflecting pool. Normally, though, the waves crash on shore with a special power, and for years residents were not even sure they were safe to surf.

Despite its charm and a stunning 14th-century church, Nazaré has seen some bad times, with the decline of its once-prosperous fishing industry and an exodus of local youth. And that was before the euro crisis and the deep slump in the Portuguese economy.

But thanks to a photo that electrified the world last month — showing a big-wave surfer named Garett McNamara setting a world record by streaking down the face of an estimated 100-foot breaker — the city is now busily trying to cash in on its moment of fame to promote itself and its now famous beach, Praia do Norte, as a pre-eminent big wave surfing spot.

The waves here have long been compared to invincible enemies, killing fishermen, vacationers and frequently inundating streets and shops. There is even a spot called "the reef of widows," where by legend the wives of fishermen would watch their husbands drowning after waves had destroyed their boats.

The town is still filled with widows wearing black dresses or the traditional seven layers of multicolored petticoats and long socks. A local legend says that women wore seven skirts because while waiting for their husbands to sail home, they would count seven waves until the sea would calm down.

Dino Casimiro, a 35-year-old body-boarder from Nazaré, is an ardent admirer of the waves and one of the major initiators of the city's image makeover.

"For many years, we didn't know if the waves were surfable or not," said Mr. Casimiro, a physical education teacher in several local schools. "They were too big."

In 2010, with the town's big-wave fame spreading, several of the biggest names in surfing — including Mr. McNamara, who lives in Hawaii, and Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian and Tiago Pires, the Portuguese surf champion — came to Praia do Norte. "Praia do Norte is the best secret in the world," Mr. McNamara said by telephone from Hawaii. "There is nowhere in the world where you can be so close to the giant waves."

The project, called the "Zon North Canyon show" and developed with Mr. McNamara, was aimed at promoting him as well as the town. It was sponsored by Zon, Portugal's main media holding company, after Mr. McNamara broke his first world record here by surfing a 78-foot wave.

Then last month Mr. McNamara spent about 30 seconds on the face of a giant wave still spoken of with awe by other surfers. "It was like riding a mountain, like snowboarding down a giant mountain," he said.

There are big wave spots far from land, like Cortes Bank 100 miles west of San Diego, Calif. But there are very few in coastal areas, because the gently sloping continental shelf normally flattens out the giants, gradually sapping their strength before they can reach land. But this small part of the Portuguese coast sits at the end of a giant funnel called the "canyon of Nazaré," 130 miles long and 16,000 feet deep (at its deepest), that points like an arrow toward the town.

The canyon, said Luis Quaresma, an oceanographer at the Lisbon-based Instituto Hidrografico, creates "a highway for the swell," which arrives with a lot of energy, very close to the beach. "While the waves here are almost always imposing, local people say, occasionally — on average, once a year — a few swells of almost unimaginable height will roll in," he said.

Cabinet officers sounded the alarm on television talk shows, and their concerns resonated with state officials, who were in town for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

Daniel I. Werfel, the controller of President Obama's budget office, held an unusual Sunday briefing to catalog the effects of the cuts state by state.

He and Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the National Economic Council, said they were not exaggerating the damage that would be done.

In place of the across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, Mr. Obama wants Congress to agree to what he calls a "balanced plan." The plan includes cuts in selected domestic programs, savings in certain benefit programs and additional tax revenue collected from some corporations and high-income people.

The conflict is shaping up as a real-world test of the importance and value of the federal government. Democrats expressed confidence that Americans would feel the impact of an $85 billion cut in a $3.5 trillion budget, while Republicans insisted that they would not accept new taxes on top of those signed into law by Mr. Obama last month.

The White House intensified its campaign just as Congress was returning to work this week and some governors were expressing anguish over the impact of the impending automatic cuts in federal spending.

"We don't do across-the-board cuts in state government, and it's a stupid idea in the federal government," said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, a Democrat.

But Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a Republican, said in an interview: "The White House is engaged in scare tactics. Every governor in this country knows how to cut their budget by 2 or 3 percent, and the White House ought to learn how to do it."

"The sequester is not the best way to do it," Mr. Heineman added. "We need greater flexibility in that process. But it's hard for me to believe that America is going to be devastated by the federal government cutting its budget 2 or 3 percent. That's a bunch of malarkey."

Another Republican, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, said in an interview, "The White House is in a campaign mode of trying to scare everybody, rather than sitting down with Congress and working out what the solution is to the budget."

State-by-state estimates of the impact of federal policies have been a staple of White House efforts to mobilize public opinion for more than 20 years.

In its report Sunday, the White House described how the budget cuts would hit states, with an emphasis on jobs lost.

"Ohio will lose approximately $25.1 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 350 teacher and aide jobs at risk," the White House said. "In Georgia, around 4,180 fewer children will receive vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough, influenza and hepatitis B due to reduced funding for vaccinations of about $286,000.

"Pennsylvania could lose up to $271,000 in funds that provide services to victims of domestic violence, resulting in up to 1,000 fewer victims being served. In Texas, approximately 52,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay by around $274.8 million in total."

In addition, the White House said, many of the nation's 398 national parks would be partly or fully closed.

On Friday, the administration said, $85 billion in cuts will automatically begin to take effect, with many domestic programs facing reductions of 9 percent and some military programs being reduced by 13 percent in the remaining seven months of the federal fiscal year.

Appearing Sunday on the CBS program "Face the Nation," Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, described the cuts as a threat to the economy.

"These are job-killing cuts, and we have to find a way to avoid them," Mr. O'Malley said. "We cannot cut our way to prosperity. We need a balanced approach to continue our jobs recovery."

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, portrayed the Republicans as willful and obstinate.

"Republicans have decided they want the sequester to go into effect," Mr. Pfeiffer said in a conference call with journalists. "They have decided that they are not open to compromise, that these cuts should happen, that these cuts are better for the country, better for 100,000 Americans to lose their jobs. It's better for people to wait in longer lines at airports; it's better for kids to get kicked out of Head Start than to close a few loopholes that benefit the wealthy. That's the choice they've made."

Mr. Pfeiffer said Republicans were undermining their own long-term goal of deficit reduction because "they don't want to give the president the win of additional revenue."

Republicans say the tax changes proposed by the president would stifle economic growth.

Sean M. Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Republicans agreed that "the sequester is not the right way to control federal spending." But he described the White House report on the state-by-state impact as "a public relations stunt."

In deciding how to carry out the cuts, Mr. Werfel said, agencies have only "limited flexibility."

"There are constraints to what an agency can do in taking this across-the-board $85 billion cut," Mr. Werfel said. "The way the law is written, it has to be taken from a percentage cut from every program, project and activity."

Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, which created the latest version of the sequester, some programs, like Medicaid and food stamps, are exempt from the automatic cuts, and cuts in Medicare payments cannot exceed 2 percent.

Social Security benefits would not be cut. But the White House said that the automatic budget cuts would force the agency to "curtail service to the public," and that the backlog of Social Security disability claims would increase.

"It is like an earthquake," said Pedro Pisco, a city hall administrator from this old fishing port, a few miles away from Praia do Norte. "When it breaks, you can feel the earth shaking under your feet."

The area has a reputation as a dangerous spot for its turbulent gales, crushing surf and frequent accidents, though on a recent day the sea was flat as a reflecting pool. Normally, though, the waves crash on shore with a special power, and for years residents were not even sure they were safe to surf.

Despite its charm and a stunning 14th-century church, Nazaré has seen some bad times, with the decline of its once-prosperous fishing industry and an exodus of local youth. And that was before the euro crisis and the deep slump in the Portuguese economy.

But thanks to a photo that electrified the world last month — showing a big-wave surfer named Garett McNamara setting a world record by streaking down the face of an estimated 100-foot breaker — the city is now busily trying to cash in on its moment of fame to promote itself and its now famous beach, Praia do Norte, as a pre-eminent big wave surfing spot.

The waves here have long been compared to invincible enemies, killing fishermen, vacationers and frequently inundating streets and shops. There is even a spot called "the reef of widows," where by legend the wives of fishermen would watch their husbands drowning after waves had destroyed their boats.

The town is still filled with widows wearing black dresses or the traditional seven layers of multicolored petticoats and long socks. A local legend says that women wore seven skirts because while waiting for their husbands to sail home, they would count seven waves until the sea would calm down.

Dino Casimiro, a 35-year-old body-boarder from Nazaré, is an ardent admirer of the waves and one of the major initiators of the city's image makeover.

"For many years, we didn't know if the waves were surfable or not," said Mr. Casimiro, a physical education teacher in several local schools. "They were too big."

In 2010, with the town's big-wave fame spreading, several of the biggest names in surfing — including Mr. McNamara, who lives in Hawaii, and Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian and Tiago Pires, the Portuguese surf champion — came to Praia do Norte. "Praia do Norte is the best secret in the world," Mr. McNamara said by telephone from Hawaii. "There is nowhere in the world where you can be so close to the giant waves."

The project, called the "Zon North Canyon show" and developed with Mr. McNamara, was aimed at promoting him as well as the town. It was sponsored by Zon, Portugal's main media holding company, after Mr. McNamara broke his first world record here by surfing a 78-foot wave.

Then last month Mr. McNamara spent about 30 seconds on the face of a giant wave still spoken of with awe by other surfers. "It was like riding a mountain, like snowboarding down a giant mountain," he said.

There are big wave spots far from land, like Cortes Bank 100 miles west of San Diego, Calif. But there are very few in coastal areas, because the gently sloping continental shelf normally flattens out the giants, gradually sapping their strength before they can reach land. But this small part of the Portuguese coast sits at the end of a giant funnel called the "canyon of Nazaré," 130 miles long and 16,000 feet deep (at its deepest), that points like an arrow toward the town.

The canyon, said Luis Quaresma, an oceanographer at the Lisbon-based Instituto Hidrografico, creates "a highway for the swell," which arrives with a lot of energy, very close to the beach. "While the waves here are almost always imposing, local people say, occasionally — on average, once a year — a few swells of almost unimaginable height will roll in," he said.

The race to succeed Mr. Castro, who is 81, now has a front-runner: Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 52, an electrical engineer and former minister of higher education, whom Mr. Castro selected as his top vice president on Sunday, making him first in the line of succession.

"It represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation," Mr. Castro told lawmakers at a conference of legislative leaders in Havana on Sunday. He added that Cuba is at a moment of "historic transcendence."

Indeed, Mr. Castro's speech — attended by his brother Fidel, 86, who made a rare public appearance — had the tone of an unsentimental goodbye. Just as Mr. Castro has inched the island toward free market reforms since taking over from his brother in 2006, his plan for a transition amounts to a slow fade, or, as Mr. Castro put it, the "gradual transfer" of "key roles to new generations."

And yet, on an island where a Castro has been in charge since 1959, he also seemed intent on changing how his successors will rule. In an announcement more surprising than his retirement plan, Mr. Castro said he hoped to establish term limits and age caps for political offices, including the presidency. Some broad constitutional changes, he said, will even require a referendum.

Not that the country's controlled socialism is on the way out, he insisted. The leaders he has elevated are all loyalists, including Mr. Díaz-Canel, who came up through the army and then served in provincial leadership before being elevated within the Communist Party. He is widely seen inside Cuba as a technocrat — a "regional czar whose power is discrete but tangible," said Arturo López Levy, a former analyst with the Cuban government — who earned Mr. Castro's favor not only with youth and loyalty, but also by being a good manager.

"He was a senior Communist Party official for Villa Clara and Holguin provinces, where there were important openings with foreign investment in tourism," said Mr. López Levy. He added that Mr. Díaz-Canel often worked as an intermediary between the central government and the military, which has taken an expanded role in tourism under Raúl Castro. "In that sense," Mr. López Levy said, "he will face the challenge and opportunity to prepare a smooth landing for a new type of civil-military relationship in the future."

Mr. Díaz-Canel's rise has been closely watched over the past year. He has appeared on Cuban television more often; in June 2012 he accompanied Raúl Castro to the Rio+20 meeting in Brazil and led the Cuban delegation to the London Olympics in July. He has also recently played a central role in meetings with officials from Venezuela, Cuba's most important ally, which supplies it with subsidized oil.

But even as the meeting on Sunday projected an image of complete unity, there was no guarantee that Mr. Díaz-Canel will be Cuba's next president. Many other young leaders have been pushed out of power over the years for reasons of scandal or disloyalty, and among the rising ranks, there are other leaders in their 50s who have recently been given more significant roles. Experts say that a power struggle is likely behind the Communist Party curtain, and in front of it as well, over the final five years of Mr. Castro's presidency.

"Much could happen between now and then, both within the government and in various sectors of Cuba's emergent civil society," said Ted Henken, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, a research group.

The choice of Mr. Díaz-Canel nonetheless signals a major change. Even with a five-year transition, Mr. Castro's decision to move Cuba publicly toward a new leader means that the island is now a heartbeat away from being ruled by a person who did not fight in the revolution that brought the Communists to power. The Castros, after aligning themselves for decades with the fighters whom they knew as young guerrillas, appear to have accepted that Cuba will be ruled next by someone whose career developed after the cold war.

"This is the first time the younger generation has a figure who is first in line," said Philip Peters, a veteran Cuba scholar and vice president of the Lexington Institute, which tracks relations between the United States and Cuba. In an interview from Havana, he said: "It is the first time the older generation admitted the possibility of someone in the younger generation becoming president. We'll see."