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Alexander Wang showed on Thursday that he could design for a major house. His debut for Balenciaga was smart and graceful, and the streamlined clothes advanced the codes in a modern way. He may have played it safe but he also didn't make mistakes.

Mr. Wang had his doubters, on both sides of the Atlantic, who questioned if a designer of moderate-priced clothes with attitude could make the Paris grade. But Balenciaga isn't a cathedral, any more than Mr. Wang is strictly a T-shirt designer. Times change. The only way to preserve a house is to periodically examine its foundations and then figure out how to make the structure more livable for today.

That's essentially what Mr. Wang did.

Sticking to a stark but elegant palette of black and white with a smidge of brown and dark green, he poked around in the Balenciaga archive. In the roundness of the opening jackets, in the gentle sweep of coats and in the cap sleeves and loose-back tops, there were allusions to Balenciaga's 1950s modernity, as well as '60s evening styles.

But Mr. Wang brought his street smarts to those couture volumes that are indelibly Balenciaga. He minimized them so that they look more realistic for today. In effect, he was offering a top and a pair of black pants, or thigh-high suede boots with small loopy silver bows. But the results were not boringly minimalist.

He was also clever with textures. Jackets and tops that appeared to be stiffened wool were in fact knits. Those crackled leather pieces that came out late in the show? Not leather at all but rather painted knits.

His predecessor, Nicolas Ghesquière, modernized Balenciaga, in part by using new materials that relate to hard, synthetic environments. Embroideries, no matter how exquisite, can look fuddy-duddy. So Mr. Wang did some nice fake-outs. Tops and dresses that looked as if they could have been injection-molded and then rolled in plastic sprinkles were actually embroidered. And some of the loveliest dresses were elongated drapes with hard bodices of tiny French knots.

"I wanted to begin by going back to the roots of the house," Mr. Wang said, calling out each style — the jacket, the skirt, the white shirt — as if identifying his building blocks. The New York designer can certainly build on these clothes, adding color and more risk-taking, but if he continues to strike that modern balance between couture and the street, he will reinvigorate a great name — and win over naysayers.

One difference at Balenciaga was that the clothes were friendly toward women, of any age. Ann Demeulemeester's show also looked especially inviting, and individual, with its romantic white smocks and underplayed tailoring. But such genuine warmth isn't always evident this season.

Thinking of the degrading jokes at the Oscars, I wouldn't mind if Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took over next year — and while they're at it, can they do something about these shows? It's not that designers are misogynist, or not especially misogynist, as in the past when some presented women as trussed-up Kewpie dolls. But banalities persist.

Saying he wanted to present "the notion of a dignified womanly persona, with a wealth of experience," Marco Zanini of Rochas showed chic if unremarkable slacks-and-sweater outfits with loafers, silk pajamas and slim coats brushed to a careworn softness. But it's hard for a woman to maintain her dignity when her midcalf pencil skirt forces her to take short steps or her majestically oversize coat seems a royal pain. (Surely, a reference in the show notes to "Prince of Whales" check was a typo.)

Mr. Zanini may design some attractive clothes, but you don't get the sense that his worldly woman really owns them.

At Nina Ricci, Peter Copping turned to the dance world for a graceful, nonchalant elegance conveyed in fitted washed wool suits, blush-pink silk slips and open necklines. Without prints and not many saccharine details, the clothes looked fresh. A pair of pianists performed Philip Glass's "Two Movements for Two Pianos." Still, it's a narrow view of womanhood that Mr. Copping presents, reflected not just in the retro silhouette but also in the fact that he used only a few nonwhite models.

Dries Van Noten often blends cultural motifs. You can't be sure if a classic English jacket or a burnoose inspired pieces in a deep red and cream wool stripe. His shapes were oversize, with mannish coats and embellished blazers over fringed tops or gold brocade. But this collection, despite some great individual pieces, lacked the resplendent slob appeal of his January men's show. Can't women have that attitude, too?

Jun Takahashi's modest and brilliant show at the Sorbonne probably confirmed for many in the audience why they will cross an ocean just to be tickled for 15 minutes. Mr. Takahashi, the creator of Undercover, hasn't done a Paris show in awhile. So it was a pleasure to see a genuine maverick back in action, riffing on girlie fashion and kiddie obsessions even as he (almost) convinced you that you needed pumps with ponytails swishing off the backs.

Somehow, unlike Seth MacFarlane at the Oscars, Mr. Takahashi takes the high road with the loaded female gags, including outfits whipped up from satin bras and corsets. He's just subversive in a way that few designers truly are today. The black version of the lingerie mash-up looked like a cool utility vest.

Each group in the show, done to a nice, laid-back mixture of indie rock and folk, winked at fashion as it displayed his technical virtuosity. White motorcycle jackets with matching skate skirts were adorable — and grown-up. There were dresses made from curling layers of white shirt collars, and a finale of extremely twisted outfits formed by bunched-up balls of fabric. The white version looked as if the model was sprayed with whipped cream.

In the latest attack, a series of improvised explosive devices in eastern Kunar Province killed eight members of the Afghan Border Police as they traveled through a village in the Dangam district on Thursday evening, according to the district governor, Hamisha Gulab Shinwari.

The government also said that two members of the Afghan Local Police in Helmand Province had been killed the day before, shot by two new recruits said to be loyal to the Taliban. The details of the latest attacks added to an already steep death toll on Wednesday, when 17 local police officers on duty in Ghazni Province were drugged and killed by Taliban infiltrators. The same day, another officer that the Taliban claimed was one of its supporters gunned down three fellow policemen in Kandahar Province.

Thursday's attack in Kunar was the work of a series of improvised explosive devices planted in the village of Deraki. An initial blast around 4 p.m. wounded four officers traveling by truck through the village, Mr. Shinwari said.

After the injured were placed in a civilian truck by four comrades, all eight men set off for medical treatment in Asadabad, the provincial capital. Shortly after, a second mine exploded beneath the car, killing all eight, Mr. Shinwari said.

"They were only few hundred meters away from the first blast site when the second explosion happened," said Mr. Shinwari, who condemned the attack.

The Afghan Border Police are tasked with safeguarding the nation's porous borders, often areas of high insurgent traffic, particularly along the northeastern boundary with Pakistan.

In the Helmand attacks, which took place on Wednesday around 6 p.m., two newly recruited Afghan Local Police officers wrested guns away from two colleagues and killed them as they walked to their security check post, according to Abdul Latif, the district police chief of Musa Qala.

Mr. Latif said that the commander of the local police post had recruited the men and believed they were reliable. He even helped them obtain national identity cards issued by the government by vouching for them, he added.

Screening police recruits has been a persistent issue for the Afghan government, as well as its American advisers. Vetted and trained under the guidance of American Special Operations troops, the Afghan Local Police force is seen as a critical part of the plan to secure the country, patrolling villages and remote areas where the national police and army are scarce. But the local police militias have been controversial in some areas of the country, troubled by accusations of corruption and human rights abuses.

The Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks against the officers in the Musa Qala district center, Landai Nawa, and said the attackers actually killed four officers, absconding with their weapons and a Toyota Corolla to join the Taliban.

"We welcomed them, their lives are secure, and they promised they will fight for the Taliban against the Karzai government," he said, referring to President Hamid Karzai.

Shares jumped following Thursday's announcement, which had been anticipated for months. Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis were appointed to the Office of the Chief Executive while a replacement is found.

"After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding — I was fired today. If you're wondering why. you haven't been paying attention," Mason, 32, wrote in a memo to staff.

He referred to controversial metrics used in its regulatory filings ahead of Groupon Inc.'s November 2011 initial public offering of stock as well as "two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that's hovering around one quarter of our listing price."

"The events of the last year and a half speak for themselves," he wrote. "As CEO, I am accountable."

The announcement came one day after Groupon reported a bigger-than-expected loss and gave a weak revenue outlook for the current quarter. The guidance had fueled investor worry — which started even before Groupon's IPO — that people are suffering from fatigue over the frequent emails flooding subscribers' inboxes. There were also worries that the company's efforts to broaden into an e-commerce powerhouse haven't been paying off.

Groupon said Mason was not available for interviews.

In a statement, Leonsis said, "Groupon will continue to invest in growth, and we are confident that with our deep management team and market-leading position, the company is well positioned for the future."

Groupon Inc. makes money by taking a cut from the online deals it offers on a variety of goods and services. Investors have questioned whether that business model is sustainable and leads to growth over the long term — and whether the company can not only grow its customer base but make more from each subscriber.

Groupon had the advantage of being first, but the model is easy to replicate. It has spawned many copycats after its 2008 launch, from startups such as LivingSocial to established companies such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Chicago-based Groupon Inc. also has faced scrutiny about its high marketing expenses, enormous employee base and the way it accounted for revenue.

Mason, a Northwestern University graduate and former punk band keyboardist, founded Groupon in 2008. By 2010, Groupon was available in 25 countries and its staff ballooned to nearly 10,000, many times that of other Internet darlings such as Twitter, Facebook or Zynga Inc., the other fallen star of the latest swath of Internet IPOs.

Groupon's stock has lost about 77 percent of its value since the IPO after losing $1.45, or 24 percent, to close Thursday at $4.53. After the announcement of Mason's ouster, the stock gained nearly 4 percent in after-hours trading.

"It had been ripped out with no explanation, along with quite a substantial chunk of the wall," said Alan Strickland, a member of the local council, describing the bizarre scene that greeted passers-by the other weekend. "All that was left was this hole."

The work, called "Slave Labour" and depicting a downtrodden, barefoot boy making Union Jacks on a sewing machine, had become a point of pride here in Haringey, the site of some of the nastiest rampages in the 2011 London riots. Stenciled onto the wall of the everything-costs-a-pound Poundland store on Whymark Avenue, it drew visitors from across London and abroad; so many people asked for directions that the local subway station erected a special "This way to our Banksy" sign.

"There really isn't any other reason people would come to Wood Green," said Eve de Meza, who lives nearby, speaking of the neighborhood that housed the work.

After "Slave Labour" disappeared, leaving the empty hole (soon filled in by builders who maintained they did not know the identity of the person paying them), Haringey faced a mystery. But the work surfaced almost immediately thousands of miles away in Miami, as the star attraction in a contemporary art auction. Though it was withdrawn from the auction at the last minute, after an outcry by outraged Banksy aficionados, that has not solved the residents' main problem.

They would like their art back, please.

"When it arrived, it was brilliant," said Tim West, co-owner of the Big Green Bookshop. "It had a 'really' factor — as in, 'Wood Green? Really?' "

Wood Green would indeed seem an unlikely spot for a mural valued at between $500,000 and $700,000, the figure the auction house, Fine Art Auctions Miami, had set for the sale. Poundland, an unlovely, unloved store that has its own "really" factor (as in: this huge package of batteries costs a pound? Really?) sits on a bustling corner amid a hodgepodge of charity shops, fast-food shacks and discount clothing emporia.

The notion that the elusive Banksy had singled out their community, of all the places in London, for one of his renowned guerrilla art projects was particularly appealing to residents. The artist works anonymously, at night, wherever he feels like working. He never signs his pieces; the only way to tell if they are authentic, dealers say, is to check his official Web site and see if they appear there. "Slave Labour" did.

But like many works by Banksy, an expert in attracting publicity while seeming not to court it, the work provided an ironic commentary on its location, making a sharp point about sweatshop labor, the Queen's diamond jubilee and possibly the outburst of patriotism surrounding the London Olympics. In any case, it seemed to fit right in.

Part of the residents' problem now is that they do not know who possesses the work, so they don't know whom to yell at to get it back. Legal opinion generally holds that Banksy's street art belongs not to him, but to whoever owns the walls he uses as canvasses. That adds a further complication here, because the wall in question is not owned by Poundland, but by the company it leases the space from, Wood Green Investments, and the company is not talking.

"If it wasn't them, then somebody else did it, but my clients have not reported any theft to the police," said Matthew Dillon, a lawyer for the company.

He acknowledged in an earlier interview that those clients are now in a fix. "If they deny removing the mural they will become embroiled in an international criminal investigation," he told The Financial Times, "and if they admit to consenting to it, then they will become the target of abuse." He added: "The advice to my client has been to say nothing."

Spooked by the outpouring of vitriol directed against it, the auction house in Miami isn't talking, either, except to note that the work "is now back with the consigner," whoever that is.

"I don't have any comment," Cornelia van der Geest, the business manager of the firm, Fine Art Auctions Miami, said in an interview. She said the firm had received hundreds of complaints about the auction, some of them not very nice.

"As an auction house, we want to be as uninvolved in this controversy as possible."

Efforts by Mr. Strickland of the Haringey council to determine who possesses the work right now have been fruitless.

"My private conversation with the owners" — that is, Wood Green Investments — "has not brought clarity in terms of what their involvement has been," he said. "They accept that it was their wall and their property, and as soon as you ask them, 'Do you know what happened? Was it stolen; did you sell it?' they won't provide answers."

Mr. Strickland said Fine Art Auctions had indicated that Wood Green Investments had sold "Slave Labour" on to a private collector, and that it was the private collector who had placed it in the auction.

"When we said, 'Owner? Do you mean the property company?' " Mr. Strickland explained, "they said, 'We can't confirm that.' If there is some way of getting a message to whoever owns the piece, we would like to open a dialogue."

Inside Poundland, the manager said employees were not authorized to say anything. But a sales clerk looked wistful when the subject of "Slave Labour" came up.

"It was really nice to have so many people here taking photos," she said, at a moment when the manager was not looking. "People on holiday, people passing through. It was a really nice painting, I mean work of art."

She added: "I was shocked to believe that someone could just come and take art from the walls, and the wall. Is nothing safe?"

The federal government is not a party to the case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, and was not required to take a position in it. But the lawyers who filed the challenge, Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, along with gay rights groups, lobbied hard for the brief, saying the administration could not stay silent on the issue.

The administration is expected to file the brief Thursday.

The broad outlines of the administration's position were not a surprise, given that it filed a brief last week in a same-sex marriage case in which it is a party, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307. But that case presents only the narrower question of the constitutionality of part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and regulations.

The Supreme Court's ruling in the Defense of Marriage Act case will at most decide whether the federal government can discriminate against same-sex couples even if they married in states that allow such unions. Nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage.

The case from California presents the broader question of whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the states that do not allow it, which is why the new brief is significant. It is hardly certain, however, that the Supreme Court will end up deciding that broad question. The court may well avoid the issue on technical grounds or rule in a way that applies only to California.

Until not long ago, the administration was thought likely to stay out of the California case, partly as a matter of historical practice and partly to be true to President Obama's public position on same-sex marriage.

The federal government took no position in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, the case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage, or in 2003 in the last major gay rights case, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state laws making gay sex a crime.

Moreover, when Mr. Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, he said the matter was for the states to decide.

"I continue to believe," he told Robin Roberts of ABC News, "that this is an issue that is going to be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what's recognized as a marriage."

That statement is not hard to reconcile with the administration's position in the case concerning the 1996 federal law. As Mr. Obama said in May, the law "tried to federalize what has historically been state law." But the views Mr. Obama expressed in May are in tension with the position taken by his lawyers in the new brief, which calls for federal intervention to override a state law.

(A second part of the 1996 law, which says states need not recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, is not before the Supreme Court.)

On the other hand, Mr. Obama has long opposed Proposition 8, the 2008 California voter initiative that amended the state's Constitution to overturn a State Supreme Court decision establishing a right to same-sex marriage.

"I am not in favor of gay marriage," Mr. Obama told MTV News in 2008. "But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them."

More recently, Mr. Obama has embraced a more sweeping view of marriage equality.

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law," he said in January in his Inaugural Address, "for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well."

The new brief argues that courts should subject laws making distinctions between straight and gay people to "heightened scrutiny," requiring a showing that such laws are "substantially related to an important government objective." The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether sexual orientation should require such review, but the federal appeals court in New York, in the Windsor case, said that it did.

The administration argues that the factors that led courts to require heightened scrutiny for laws concerning gender and illegitimacy should also require it for those addressing sexual orientation. Gay men and lesbians, the brief said, have suffered a history of discrimination, have distinguishing characteristics and lack political power.

The California case is scheduled to be argued on March 26 and the one concerning the federal law on March 27. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. will probably present the federal government's position in both cases, and he is likely to be questioned closely about changes and possible inconsistencies in the administration's position.