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Among the items aboard the dhow, according to a review of factory markings on weapons and their packing crates, were 10 Chinese heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles, most of them manufactured in 2005.

The missiles were labeled QW-1M and bore stencils suggesting that they had been assembled at a factory represented by the state-owned China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation, sanctioned by the United States for transfers of missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.

The Chinese missiles were part of a larger shipment interdicted by American and Yemeni forces in January, which American and Yemeni officials say was intended for the Houthi rebels in northwestern Yemen. But the presence of the missiles in the seized contraband complicates an already politically delicate case.

The shipment, which officials portray as an attempt to introduce sophisticated new antiaircraft systems into the Arabian Peninsula, has raised concerns in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen, as the weapons would have posed escalated risks to civilian and military aircraft alike.

And it has presented the Obama administration with a fresh example of Iran's apparent transfer of modern missiles from China to insurgents in the larger regional contest between Sunni-led and Shiite-led states, in which the American military has often been entwined.

The United States has previously accused Iran, a Shiite-led theocracy, of sending weapons to the Houthis, who follow an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Saudi Arabia, an American ally, is considered the leading Sunni power in the region. Both sides have aided and equipped groups or governments they deem aligned with their interests, helping to fuel violence in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and elsewhere.

Iran has rejected the allegations as "baseless and absurd." Neither the Iranian government nor the Chinese firm that markets QW missiles answered written requests for comment.

The government of Yemen has asked the United Nations to investigate the shipment and report the findings to the Security Council. Yemeni news media reported that United Nations experts were in Yemen last week.

The analysis of the weapons' markings and origins was based on photographs taken when Yemeni officials briefly displayed the weapons to journalists.

Concerns over sophisticated Chinese missiles reaching Iran's proxies have considerable regional history. They are part of both the larger worries over antiaircraft weapons set loose by conflicts across the Middle East in the past decade and the lingering frustration in Washington over China's military aid to Iran.

In 2008, late in the Bush administration, the United States complained to China about two similar antiaircraft missiles that were recovered from Shiite militants in Iraq, according a diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks.

"We have demarched China repeatedly on its conventional arms transfers to Iran, urging Beijing to stop," the cable noted.

The cable said the QW-1 missiles recovered in Iraq had been manufactured in China in 2003.

Like the American-made Stinger, China's QW series is part of a class of weapons known as man-portable air-defense systems, or manpads. The cable instructed American diplomats to warn China of the "unacceptably high risk that any military equipment sold to Iran, especially weapons like manpads, that are highly sought-after by terrorists, will be diverted to nonstate actors who threaten U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as civilians across the region."

The latest discovery of Chinese manpads came after the United States Navy detected the dhow, the Jeehan 1, as it took on cargo in an Iranian military-controlled port. The vessel then embarked on a high-seas smuggling run, according to accounts by Yemeni and American officials.

The vessel tied off on a pier in the harbor on Lesser Tunb Island, a tiny spit of land just west of the Strait of Hormuz that is claimed by both Iran and the United Arab Emirates, officials familiar with its voyage said. The island is occupied by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

After passing eastward through the strait and heading south along the Arabian Peninsula, the dhow was stopped on Jan. 23 by the American destroyer Farragut and a Yemeni boarding team off the coast of Al Ghaydah.

The dhow's Iranian crew initially insisted the vessel was Panamanian-flagged and carried only fuel, an American official said. The military cargo, which included many ammunition crates that had been painted over with white or black paint, was found in hidden compartments, American officials said.

That cargo also included 316,000 cartridges for Kalashnikov rifles, nearly 63,000 cartridges for PK machine guns or the Dragunov series of sniper rifles, more than 12,000 cartridges for 12.7-millimeter DShK machine guns and 95 RPG-7 launchers.

The rifle cartridges were packaged in crates strongly resembling packaging used by Iran's Defense Industries Organization, another firm under American sanction, according to James Bevan, director of Conflict Armament Research, a private arms-tracking firm that has documented the spread of Iranian ammunition in East and West Africa.

The vessel also carried 10 SA-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles with two gripstocks for firing them, nearly 17,000 sticks of Iranian-made C-4 plastic explosives, 48 Russian PN-14K night vision goggles, and 10 LH80A laser range finders made, according to their placards, by the state-run Iran Electronics Industries, also under American sanction.

The original provenance of the SA-7s was not clear, though the crates they were in had stenciling in Bulgarian.

The captain and crew of the Jeehan 1 remain in Yemeni detention, and the dhow has been impounded under Yemeni custody, a Yememi official said.

An American official called the shipment "deeply disturbing" and said it "clearly appeared to violate" Security Council resolutions prohibiting Iran from exporting arms.

Two independent arms-trafficking researchers who have reviewed photographs and written a summary of the markings on the missiles and crates said the weapons appeared to be of Chinese origin.

Matthew Schroeder, an analyst for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington and the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, said that this was the first time to his knowledge that the QW-1M had left state control.

"If so, and these missiles were indeed bound for insurgents, this shipment is extremely worrisome, both from a regional security and a global counterterrorism perspective," he said.

Unlike many older shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles seen in insurgent hands around the world, the QW-1M is believed by analysts to have a seeker head more resistant to countermeasures intended to deceive it.

"The Fast Diet," published in mid-January in Britain, could do the same in the United States if Americans eat it up. The United States edition arrived last week.

The book has held the No. 1 slot on Amazon's British site nearly every day since its publication in January, according to Rebecca Nicolson, a founder of Short Books, the independent publishing company behind the sensation. "It is selling," she said, "like hot cakes," which coincidentally are something one can actually eat on this revolutionary diet.

With an alluring cover line that reads, "Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer," the premise of this latest weight-loss regimen — or "slimming" as the British call "dieting" — is intermittent fasting, or what has become known here as the 5:2 diet: five days of eating and drinking whatever you want, dispersed with two days of fasting.

A typical fasting day consists of two meals of roughly 250 to 300 calories each, depending on the person's sex (500 calories for women, 600 for men). Think two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast, and a plate of steamed fish and vegetables for dinner.

It is not much sustenance, but the secret to weight loss, according to the book, is that even after just a few hours of fasting, the body begins to turn off the fat-storing mechanisms and turn on the fat-burning systems.

"I've always been into self-experimentation," said Dr. Michael Mosley, one of the book's two authors and a well-known medical journalist on the BBC who is often called the Sanjay Gupta of Britain.

He researched the science of the diet and its health benefits by putting himself through intermittent fasting and filming it for a BBC documentary last August called "Eat, Fast and Live Longer." (The broadcast gained high ratings, three million viewers, despite running during the London Olympics. PBS plans to air it in April.)

"This started because I was not feeling well last year," Dr. Mosley said recently over a cup of tea and half a cookie (it was not one of his fasting days). "It turns out I was suffering from high blood sugar, high cholesterol and had a kind of visceral fat inside my gut."

Though hardly obese at the time, at 5 feet 11 inches and 187 pounds, Dr. Mosley, 55, had a body mass index and body fat percentage that were a few points higher than the recommended amount for men. "Given that my father had died at age 73 of complications from diabetes, and I was now looking prediabetic, I knew something had to change," he added.

The result was a documentary, almost the opposite of "Super Size Me," in which Dr. Mosley not only fasted, but also interviewed scientific researchers, mostly in the United States, about the positive results of various forms of intermittent fasting, tested primarily on rats but in some cases human volunteers. The prominent benefits, he discovered, were weight loss, a lower risk of cancer and heart disease, and increased energy.

"The body goes into a repair-and-recover mode when it no longer has the work of storing the food being consumed," he said.

Though Dr. Mosley quickly gave up on the most extreme forms of fasting (he ate little more than one cup of low-calorie soup every 24 hours for four consecutive days in his first trial), he finally settled on the 5:2 ratio as a more sustainable, less painful option that could realistically be followed without annihilating his social life or work.

"Our earliest antecedents," Dr. Mosley argued, "lived a feast-or-famine existence, gorging themselves after a big hunt and then not eating until they scored the next one." Similarly, he explained, temporary fasting is a ritual of religions like Islam and Judaism — as demonstrated by Ramadan and Yom Kippur. "We shouldn't have a fear of hunger if it is just temporary," he said.

What Dr. Mosley found most astounding, however, were his personal results. Not only did he lose 20 pounds (he currently weighs 168 pounds) in nine weeks, but his glucose and cholesterol levels went down, as did his body fat. "What's more, I have a whole new level of energy," he said.

The documentary became an instant hit, which in turn led Mimi Spencer, a food and fashion writer, to propose that they collaborate on a book. "I could see this was not a faddish diet but one that was sustainable with long-term health results, beyond the obvious weight-loss benefit," said Ms. Spencer, 45, who has lost 20 pounds on the diet within four months and lowered her B.M.I. by 2 points.

The result is a 200-page paperback: the first half written by Dr. Mosley outlining the scientific findings of intermittent fasting; the second by Ms. Spencer, with encouraging text on how to get through the first days of fasting, from keeping busy so you don't hear your rumbling belly, to waiting 15 minutes for your meal or snack.

She also provides fasting recipes with tantalizing photos like feta niçoise salad and Mexican pizza, and a calorie counter at the back. (Who knew a quarter of a cup of balsamic vinegar added up to a whopping 209 calories?)

In London, the diet has taken off with the help of well-known British celebrity chefs and food writers like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who raved about it in The Guardian after his sixth day of fasting, having already lost eight pounds. ("I feel lean and sharper," he wrote, "and find the whole thing rather exhilarating.")

The diet is also particularly popular among men, according to Dr. Mosley, who has heard from many of his converts via e-mail and Twitter, where he has around 24,000 followers. "They find it easy to work into their schedules because dieting for a day here and there doesn't feel torturous," he said, adding that couples also particularly like doing it together.

But not everyone is singing the diet's praises. The National Health System, Britain's publicly funded medical establishment, put out a statement on its Web site shortly after the book came out: "Despite its increasing popularity, there is a great deal of uncertainty about I.F. (intermittent fasting) with significant gaps in the evidence."

The health agency also listed some side effects, including bad breath, anxiety, dehydration and irritability. Yet people in London do not seem too concerned. A slew of fasting diet books have come out in recent weeks, notably the "The 5:2 Diet Book" and "The Feast and Fast Diet."

There is also a crop of new cookbooks featuring fasting-friendly recipes. Let's just say, the British are hungry for them.

A main goal of Mr. Kerry's trip is to encourage a measure of political peace and a commitment to economic change needed to secure a crucial $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The United States and the European Union are prepared to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in additional assistance if Egypt can reach agreement with the I.M.F.

"His basic message is it's very important to the new Egypt for there to be a firm economic foundation," said a senior State Department official who traveled with Mr. Kerry on the flight to Cairo.

Egypt's economy has teetered near collapse for months, with soaring unemployment, a gaping budget deficit, dwindling hard-currency reserves and steep declines in the value of its currency.

The two years of tumult that began with the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak also sharply slowed foreign investment and tourism, and economists say the Egyptian government urgently needs a cash infusion of several billion dollars to fend off the risk of an economic calamity that could lead to more unrest and instability.

 The International Monetary Fund has held on-again, off-again negotiations with Egypt for more than a year about providing the $4.8 billion. The fund's loan is critical, economists say, because it would provide a seal of approval that Egypt's economy is on a path toward self-sufficiency, allowing Cairo to obtain enough other international loans to fill in its deficit.

Economists familiar with the loan talks say that the fund's American and European backers are eager to complete the loan to move Egypt toward stability, but that the fund has imposed two difficult conditions.

It has required the Egyptian government to commit itself to undertaking painful reforms like raising taxes and reducing energy subsidies. It has also required a demonstration of political support for the reforms and the loan, to ensure that the government will honor its commitments in the future. That requires a dependable political process, as well a degree of consensus that Egypt's political factions have been unable to sustain.

There needs to be "a basic political agreement among all of the various players in Egypt," the senior State Department official said.

Toward that end, Mr. Kerry plans to conduct an intensive series of meetings with members of the political opposition, the business community and ranking government officials.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled for April in Egypt. The major opposition group, the National Salvation Front, has announced that it plans to boycott the vote to protest what it says is a push by President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist allies to dominate politics.

The senior American official said that Mr. Kerry would not insist that the opposition participate in the election, but that he planned to make the argument that Mr. Morsi's rivals need to participate in the political process if they want their views to be taken into account.

Mr. Kerry met with Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak and one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front, and spoke by phone with another leader of the group, Mohamed ElBaradei.

On Sunday, Mr. Kerry is scheduled to meet with Mr. Morsi.

The protests and street violence that have destabilized Egypt's transition continued Saturday even as Mr. Kerry arrived for his visit. The Egyptian state media reported that a demonstrator in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura was killed when he was run over by an armored police vehicle.

Clashes between the police and protestors had broken out in the city several days ago and picked up Saturday after the killing. Dozens were injured, the state media said.

Violence also flared up again in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, where the state media reported that protestors had burned down a police station. The Port Said protests began on Jan. 26 after 21 local soccer fans were sentenced to death for their role in a deadly riot at a match last year. Two police and more than forty protestors were killed in the ensuing riots.

Residents have demanded a new trial for the soccer fans and retribution for those killed by the police.

Over the past month, however, the demonstrations in Port Said have blurred together with sometimes-violent protests in several other cities along the Suez Canal or in the Nile Delta. Some protestors are angry at Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing them of failing to deliver fast enough on the anticipated rewards of the revolution, including economic benefits.

The new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., promptly issued an apology and said the killings were an accident.

The victims, Toor Jan, 11, and Andul Wodood, 12, were brothers and had been walking behind their donkeys in the Shahed-e-Hasas district of Oruzgan Province when the helicopter fired on them, according to Afghan officials in the district. The two donkeys were killed as well.

General Dunford said that coalition forces had opened fire on what they thought were insurgent forces, and killed the boys by accident. "I offer my personal apology and condolences to the family of the boys who were killed," General Dunford said. "We take full responsibility for this tragedy."

There was some disagreement about the presence of Taliban in the area and about the details of the episode.

Haji Mohammad Esmail, head of the district shura or council, said the area was "fully under government control," and that "we haven't seen any engagement in the area and nor is the area threatened by the Taliban."

Abdullah Himat, a spokesman for the provincial government in Oruzgan, in southern Afghanistan, said that while the shooting was a mistake, there had been Taliban presence in the area and insurgents had opened fire on the helicopter. Both Australian and American soldiers were involved in the episode, he said.

Fareed Ayal, the spokesman for the provincial police chief, said the helicopter was hunting for Taliban by tracking their radio signals when the killings took place. "There wasn't any engagement with the Taliban, it was just a mistake that they have killed the two boys at an area where they thought they detected a Taliban radio signal," he said.

The episode was the second airstrike to kill civilians since General Dunford assumed command in February. In Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, up to 11 civilians were killed, including 5 children, when airstrikes were used to destroy two homes.

That attack, which included Afghan forces on the ground, led President Hamid Karzai to forbid Afghan units from asking for airstrikes by coalition air forces. The Afghans have little air capability of their own. General Dunford met with Mr. Karzai after the episode in Kunar and expressed his "personal condolences" for the civilian deaths.

The coalition last year imposed strict rules limiting the use of airstrikes in areas where civilians are present.

Jeff Bush, 37, was in his bedroom on Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but escaped unharmed. Mr. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued by a sheriff's deputy.

Engineers returned to the property on Saturday morning to do more tests after taking soil samples and running tests there all day Friday. They said the entire lot was dangerous, and no one was allowed in the house.

"I cannot tell you why it has not collapsed yet," said Bill Bracken, the owner of an engineering company called to assess the sinkhole. He described the earth below as a "very large, very fluid mass."

"This is not your typical sinkhole," said Michael Merrill, the Hillsborough County administrator. "This is a chasm. For that reason, we're being very deliberate."

The hole had grown to 20 feet deep and 30 feet wide by Friday night, and officials said it was still expanding and "seriously unstable."

Officials delicately addressed another sad reality: Mr. Bush was likely dead, and the family wanted his body.

"They would like us to go in quickly and locate Mr. Bush," Mr. Merrill said.

Two neighboring houses were evacuated, and officials were considering further evacuations. Members of the media were moved from a lawn across the street to a safer area a few hundred feet away.

"This is a very complex situation," said the Hillsborough County fire chief, Ron Rogers. "It's continuing to evolve, and the ground is continuing to collapse."

Sinkholes are so common in Florida that the state requires home insurers to provide coverage against the danger. While some cars, homes and other buildings have been devoured, it is extremely rare for a sinkhole to swallow a person.

Florida is highly prone to sinkholes because of the underground prevalence of limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, creating caverns.

"You can almost envision a piece of Swiss cheese," Taylor Yarkosky, a sinkhole expert from Brooksville, Fla., said while gesturing to the ground and the sky-blue house where the earth opened in Seffner. "Any house in Florida could be in that same situation."

A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 400 feet across in 1981 and devoured five cars, most of two businesses, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in Hillsborough County alone since the government started keeping track in 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.

The sinkhole that swallowed Mr. Bush caused the home's concrete floor to cave in around 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the Tampa-area house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that sounded like a car hitting the house and brought Mr. Bush's brother, Jeremy, running.

Jeremy Bush said he had jumped into the hole but could not see his brother before the ground crumbled around him. A sheriff's deputy reached out and pulled him to safety.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care — I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy Bush said through tears Friday in a neighbor's yard. "But I just couldn't do nothing."