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"WASHINGTON  —   Congressional Republicans have a new fear when it comes to their    health care lawsuit against the Obama administration: They might win. The incoming Trump administration could choose to no longer defend the executive branch against the suit, which challenges the administration’s authority to spend billions of dollars on health insurance subsidies for   and   Americans, handing House Republicans a big victory on    issues. But a sudden loss of the disputed subsidies could conceivably cause the health care program to implode, leaving millions of people without access to health insurance before Republicans have prepared a replacement. That could lead to chaos in the insurance market and spur a political backlash just as Republicans gain full control of the government. To stave off that outcome, Republicans could find themselves in the awkward position of appropriating huge sums to temporarily prop up the Obama health care law, angering conservative voters who have been demanding an end to the law for years. In another twist, Donald J. Trump’s administration, worried about preserving executive branch prerogatives, could choose to fight its Republican allies in the House on some central questions in the dispute. Eager to avoid an ugly political pileup, Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Trump transition team are gaming out how to handle the lawsuit, which, after the election, has been put in limbo until at least late February by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. They are not yet ready to divulge their strategy. “Given that this pending litigation involves the Obama administration and Congress, it would be inappropriate to comment,” said Phillip J. Blando, a spokesman for the Trump transition effort. “Upon taking office, the Trump administration will evaluate this case and all related aspects of the Affordable Care Act. ” In a potentially   decision in 2015, Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ruled that House Republicans had the standing to sue the executive branch over a spending dispute and that the Obama administration had been distributing the health insurance subsidies, in violation of the Constitution, without approval from Congress. The Justice Department, confident that Judge Collyer’s decision would be reversed, quickly appealed, and the subsidies have remained in place during the appeal. In successfully seeking a temporary halt in the proceedings after Mr. Trump won, House Republicans last month told the court that they “and the  ’s transition team currently are discussing potential options for resolution of this matter, to take effect after the  ’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. ” The suspension of the case, House lawyers said, will “provide the   and his future administration time to consider whether to continue prosecuting or to otherwise resolve this appeal. ” Republican leadership officials in the House acknowledge the possibility of “cascading effects” if the   payments, which have totaled an estimated $13 billion, are suddenly stopped. Insurers that receive the subsidies in exchange for paying    costs such as deductibles and   for eligible consumers could race to drop coverage since they would be losing money. Over all, the loss of the subsidies could destabilize the entire program and cause a lack of confidence that leads other insurers to seek a quick exit as well. Anticipating that the Trump administration might not be inclined to mount a vigorous fight against the House Republicans given the  ’s dim view of the health care law, a team of lawyers this month sought to intervene in the case on behalf of two participants in the health care program. In their request, the lawyers predicted that a deal between House Republicans and the new administration to dismiss or settle the case “will produce devastating consequences for the individuals who receive these reductions, as well as for the nation’s health insurance and health care systems generally. ” No matter what happens, House Republicans say, they want to prevail on two overarching concepts: the congressional power of the purse, and the right of Congress to sue the executive branch if it violates the Constitution regarding that spending power. House Republicans contend that Congress never appropriated the money for the subsidies, as required by the Constitution. In the suit, which was initially championed by John A. Boehner, the House speaker at the time, and later in House committee reports, Republicans asserted that the administration, desperate for the funding, had required the Treasury Department to provide it despite widespread internal skepticism that the spending was proper. The White House said that the spending was a permanent part of the law passed in 2010, and that no annual appropriation was required  —   even though the administration initially sought one. Just as important to House Republicans, Judge Collyer found that Congress had the standing to sue the White House on this issue  —   a ruling that many legal experts said was flawed  —   and they want that precedent to be set to restore congressional leverage over the executive branch. But on spending power and standing, the Trump administration may come under pressure from advocates of presidential authority to fight the House no matter their shared views on health care, since those precedents could have broad repercussions. It is a complicated set of dynamics illustrating how a quick legal victory for the House in the Trump era might come with costs that Republicans never anticipated when they took on the Obama White House."
"After the bullet shells get counted, the blood dries and the votive candles burn out, people peer down from   windows and see crime scenes gone cold: a band of yellow police tape blowing in the breeze. The South Bronx, just across the Harlem River from Manhattan and once shorthand for urban dysfunction, still suffers violence at levels long ago slashed in many other parts of New York City. And yet the city’s efforts to fight it remain splintered, underfunded and burdened by scandal. In the 40th Precinct, at the southern tip of the Bronx, as in other poor, minority neighborhoods across the country, people long hounded for   infractions are crying out for more protection against grievous injury or death. By September, four of every five shootings in the precinct this year were unsolved. Out of the city’s 77 precincts, the 40th has the highest murder rate but the fewest detectives per violent crime, reflecting disparities in staffing that hit hardest in some neighborhoods outside Manhattan, according to a New York Times analysis of Police Department data. Investigators in the precinct are saddled with twice the number of cases the department recommends, even as their bosses are called to Police Headquarters to answer for the sharpest crime rise in the city this year. And across the Bronx, investigative resources are squeezed. It has the highest   rate of the city’s five boroughs but the thinnest detective staffing. Nine of the 14   precinct detective squads for violent crime in the city are there. The borough’s robbery squad is smaller than Manhattan’s, even though the Bronx has had 1, 300 more cases this year. And its homicide squad has one detective for every four murders, compared with one detective for roughly every two murders in Upper Manhattan and more than one detective per murder in Lower Manhattan. In   lobbies and   family apartments, outside methadone clinics and art studios, people take note of the inequity. They hear police commanders explain that they lack the resources to place a floodlight on a dangerous block or to post officers at a   corner. They watch witnesses cower behind   doors, more fearful of a gunman’s crew than confident in the Police Department’s ability to protect them. So though people see a lot, they rarely testify. And in the South Bronx, as in so many predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods like it in the United States, the contract between the police and the community is in tatters. Some people have stories of crime reports that were ignored, or 911 calls that went unanswered for hours. Others tell of a 911 call for help ending in the caller’s arrest, or of a minor charge leading to 12 hours in a fetid holding cell. This is the paradox of policing in the 40th Precinct. Its neighborhoods have historically been prime targets for aggressive tactics, like    that are designed to ward off disorder. But precinct detectives there have less time than anywhere else in the city to answer for the blood spilled in violent crimes. Gola White, who was beside her daughter when she was shot and killed in a playground this summer, four years after her son was gunned down in the same housing project, ticked off the public safety resources that she said were scant in Bronx neighborhoods like hers: security cameras, lights, locks, investigating police officers. “Here, we have nothing,” she said. When it comes to “  families,” she said, the authorities “don’t really care as much. That’s how I feel. ” The Times has been documenting the murders logged this year in the 40th Precinct, one of a handful of neighborhoods where deadly violence remains a problem in an era of   crime in New York City. The homicides  —   14 in the precinct this year, up from nine in 2015  —   strain detectives, and when they go unsolved, as half of them have this year, some look to take the law into their own hands. From hundreds of conversations with grieving relatives and friends, witnesses and police officers, the social forces that flare into murder in a place like the 40th Precinct become clearer: merciless gang codes, mental illness, drugs and long memories of feuds that simmered out of officers’ view. The reasons some murders will never be solved also emerge: paralyzing fear of retribution, victims carrying secrets to their graves and relentless casework that forces detectives to move on in hopes that a break will come later. Frustrations build on all sides. Detectives’ phones rarely ring with tips, and officers grow embittered with witnesses who will not cooperate. In the meantime, a victim’s friends conduct their own investigations, and talk of grabbing a stash gun from a wheel well or a mother’s apartment when they find their suspect. In the chasm between the police and the community, gangs and gun violence flourish. Parents try to protect their families from drug crews’ threats, and officers work to overcome the residue of years of mistrust and understaffing in communities where they still go racing from one 911 call to the next. The streets around St. Mary’s Park were the scene of two fatal shootings logged in the 40th Precinct this year. Both are unsolved. James Fernandez heard talk of the murders through the door of his   apartment on East 146th Street in a     the Betances Houses. He lived at the end of a long hallway strewn with hypodermic needles, empty dope bags and discarded Hennessy bottles. A   young men who spoke of being in a subset of the Bloods gang had made it their drug market, slinging marijuana and cocaine to regulars, flashing firearms and blowing smoke into the Fernandez apartment. When Mr. Fernandez, 40, asked the young men to move, they answered by busting up his car. This kind of crime, an anachronism in much of New York, still rattles the 40th Precinct, even though murders there have fallen to 14 this year from 83 in 1991. It has more major felony crimes per resident than any other residential district in the city. It is also one of the poorest communities in the country, and many young men find their way into underground markets. Mr. Fernandez was not one to shrink from the threats. When he was growing up on the Lower East Side, he rode his bicycle around to the customers of the drug dealers he worked for and collected payments in a backpack. After leaving that life, he got a tech maintenance job and, three years ago, moved into the Betances Houses with his wife and daughter, now 11. He had two choices to get help with the drug crew: call the police for help and risk being labeled a snitch, or call his old Lower East Side bosses for muscle and risk violence. He chose the police. Again and again, he walked into a local substation, Police Service Area 7, and asked for protection. His daughter was using an inhaler to relieve coughs from the marijuana smoke. Mr. Fernandez and his wife got terrible headaches. “There’s a lot of killers here, and we are going to kill you,” a sergeant’s police report quoted a    telling Mr. Fernandez in August 2015. A second report filed the same day said a    warned him, “I’m going to shoot through your window. ” Mr. Fernandez told the police both the teenagers’ names, which appear in the reports, and then went home. He said one of their friends had seen him walk into the substation, and they tried to intimidate him out of filing another report. Three days later, the same    propped his bike on their door, “then said if I was to open the door and say something, they would body slam me,” Mr. Fernandez’s wife, Maria Fernandez, wrote on slips of paper she used to document the hallway ruckus and the inadequate police response. The boys made comments about how easy a target she was and about how they would have to “slap” her if she opened the door while they made a drug sale, and they threatened to beat the Fernandez family because “they are the ones snitching,” her notes say. But another   complaint at the substation, 10 days after the first, brought no relief. A week later, feeling desperate, Ms. Fernandez tried calling: first to the substation, at 8:50 p. m. when one of the boys blew weed smoke at her door and made a   threat to attack her, and then to 911 at 10:36 p. m. The police never came, she wrote in her notes. She tried the 40th Precinct station house next, but officers at the desk left her standing in the public waiting area for a   she said, making her fear being seen again. Officers put her in worse danger some months later, she said, when they came to her door and announced in front of the teenagers that they were there on a complaint about drug activity. Mr. Fernandez started doing the work that he said the police had failed to do. He wired a camera into his peephole to record the drugs and guns. The footage hark back to the New York of the 1980s, still very much present to some of the precinct’s residents. Around 6:30 each morning, Sgt. Michael J. LoPuzzo walks through the tall wooden doors of the 40th Precinct station house. The cases that land on his metal desk  —   dead bodies with no known cause, strip club brawls, shooting victims hobbling into the hospital themselves  —   bring resistance at every turn, reminding him of an earlier era in the city’s   campaign. “I haven’t got one single phone call that’s putting me in the right direction here,” said Sergeant LoPuzzo, the head of the precinct’s detective squad, one day this summer as he worked on an answer to an email inquiry from a murder victim’s aunt about why the killer had not been caught. “And people just don’t understand that. ” Often it is detectives who most feel the effects of people turning on the police. Witnesses shout them away from their doors just so neighbors know they refuse to talk. Of the 184 people who were shot and wounded in the Bronx through early September, more than a third  —   66 victims  —   refused to cooperate. Over the same period in the 40th Precinct, squad detectives closed three of 17 nonfatal shootings, and 72 of 343 robbery cases. Part of the resistance stems from   preventive policing tactics, like    that were a hallmark of the     style under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. Near the height of the    strategy, in 2012, the 40th Precinct had the   stops in the city, the   stops in which officers used force and the most frisks. Of 18, 276 stops that year, 15, 521 were of people who had done nothing criminal. The precinct was also one of the   areas that the department flooded with its newest officers. At roll calls, they were pressured to generate numbers: write tickets and make arrests. They had no choice but to give a summons to a young man playing in a park after dark, even if the officers had done the same growing up in the same neighborhood. “I need to bring something in today to justify my existence,” Officer Argenis Rosado, who joined the precinct in 2010, said in an interview at the station house. “So now you’re in a small area, and day after day you’re hammering the same community. Of course that community’s eventually going to turn on you. ” The pressure warped the way officers and residents saw each other. Rookies had to ignore why someone might be drinking outside or sitting on a stoop. “Some of the cops that came out at that time probably viewed the community differently, too,” said Hector Espada, a   veteran of the precinct. “Not because they wanted to, but because they had to. Because some way or somehow, you can’t give someone a $115 summons and feel like you guys could still have a civil conversation after that. ” Morale wilted in the aged station house on Alexander Avenue, in Mott Haven. Officers felt pressure to downgrade crime complaints to make them appear less serious. Several said in interviews that they had overlooked crime reports from immigrants because they were seen as unlikely to complain, and watched supervisors badger victims into repeating their stories in hopes that they would drop their complaints. The practice of downgrading complaints resulted in the disciplining of 19 officers in the precinct last year, one in a string of scandals that has left officers there feeling overscrutinized for problems that also existed elsewhere. Four commanders in the precinct were sent packing in five years, one of them after officers were found to be “ticket fixing,” or forgiving parking tickets for friends, and another after he was recorded giving guidance on whom to stop and frisk: black boys and men, ages 14 to 21. Some officers fled to other commands. Others became reluctant to take assignments in proactive policing units, like   that put them in   situations on the street. “Whenever I walked through the doors of the precinct, to me, it seemed like a black cloud,” said Russell Lewis, a    of the 40th. “It was like a heaviness. When you walked in, all you wanted to do was do your 8 hours 35 minutes and go home, because you didn’t want to get caught up in anything. ” The precinct covers only about two square miles, but the more than a dozen housing projects there mean that it overflows with people. Methadone clinics draw addicts from around the city.   lofts on the southern edge of the precinct presage a wave of gentrification. Even as the Police Department has hired 1, 300 more officers for neighborhood policing and counterterrorism, officers in the 40th Precinct said they could still rush to 25 911 calls during a shift  —   a number unchanged from what the new police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, said he was handling in a similar South Bronx precinct 15 years ago. Several dozen calls at a time can be waiting for a response. Residents know that if you want the police for a domestic problem, it helps to hint that there is a weapon. Last year, the precinct drew the   number of civilian complaints for officer misconduct in the city, and the most lawsuits stemming from police actions. The precinct is trying to improve morale under a new commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Brian Hennessy. A cadre of what the department calls neighborhood coordination officers has been on patrol since last January, part of a citywide effort under Mr. O’Neill and Mayor Bill de Blasio to bring back the beat cop, unencumbered by chasing every last 911 call, who can listen to people’s concerns and help with investigations. The precinct has made among the most gun arrests in the city, and officers said they now had more discretion to resolve encounters without a summons or an arrest. At one corner near a school, on Courtlandt Avenue and East 151st Street, that has long spawned complaints about gunfire and fights, Inspector Hennessy and some of his officers painted over graffiti and swept up drug paraphernalia this summer. People said it was the first answer to their complaints in years. But the inspector acknowledged that the residue of   policing lingers. “That perception really sticks,” he said. The workload in the 40th Precinct is startling and reveals a gap in how detective squads are equipped to answer violent crime in Manhattan compared with the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Three of the precinct’s 16 detectives are carrying more than 400 cases each this year, and many others have loads in the high 300s, even though the department advises 150 in violent precincts. When they are assigned a homicide, they typically have four days to investigate before dealing with other cases. Quieter precincts can give detectives a month with little distraction to investigate a murder. Detectives in the 40th Precinct have each handled an average of 79 violent felonies this year through    —   murders, rapes, felony assaults and robberies. By contrast, a detective in the precinct on the southern end of Staten Island carries nine such cases a detective in the precinct patrolling Union Square and Gramercy Park handles 16 and a detective in the precinct for most of Washington Heights handles 32, the citywide median. Last year, the 40th was the    for violent crime, with 65 cases per detective. In the Bronx as a whole, a precinct detective has carried an average of 58 violent felonies this year, compared with 27 in Manhattan, 37 in Brooklyn, 38 in Queens and 25 on Staten Island. Rape cases and robbery patterns are later sent to more specialized units, but precinct detectives do extensive initial work to interview victims, write reports and process evidence. Precincts in much of Manhattan, which are whiter and wealthier than the South Bronx, often have more property felonies, like stolen laptops or credit cards, and the police say those can be complex. But even accounting for those crimes, the 40th Precinct has some of the heaviest caseloads of overall crime per detective in the city. Michael Palladino, the head of the Detectives’ Endowment Association and a former Bronx officer, said staffing disparities affected the department’s efforts to build trust in communities like the South Bronx. Witnesses make a calculation, he said: “If I cooperate with the detectives, there’s so much work, there’s so few of them there, they won’t even get the chance to protect me, or they’ll be there too late when the retaliation comes. ” Sergeant LoPuzzo, who turned down a more prestigious post to stay in the 40th Precinct, said that his squad worked tirelessly to handle cases with the people he had, and that while every squad wanted more detectives, staffing needs for counterterrorism units and task forces had created new deployment challenges across the department. “We fight with the army we have, not the army we wish we had,” he said. Details of how the Police Department assigns its 36, 000 officers are closely held and constantly in flux, and the public has minimal information on how personnel are allocated. Presented with The Times’s analysis of confidential staffing data, the department’s chief of detectives, Robert K. Boyce, vowed to send more detectives to the 40th Precinct and said the department would reassess its deployment more broadly in troubled precincts. He said a recent decision to bring gang, narcotics and vice detectives under his command made it easier to shift personnel. Chief Boyce said the burdens on detectives went beyond felony crimes to include   and   cases. And he noted the support that precinct squads got from centralized units focusing on robberies, gangs or grand larcenies, for example. Major crime keeps pounding the 40th Precinct, at rates that in 2015 were only a tenth of a percent lower than in 2001, even as citywide crime dropped by more than a third over the same period. But the precinct’s detective squad shrank by about eight investigators during those years, according to staffing data obtained from the City Council through a Freedom of Information Law request. The squad covering Union Square and Gramercy Park, where crime dropped by a third over that period, grew by about 11 investigators. (The 40th Precinct was given an additional detective and four   investigators this summer, when it was already missing three detectives for illness or other reasons.) Retired detectives are skeptical that community relations alone can drive down crime in the city’s last “” the busiest precincts. Rather, they say, the Police Department should be dedicating more resources to providing the same sort of robust investigative response that seems standard in Manhattan. “Any crime in Manhattan has to be solved,” said Howard Landesberg, who was a 40th Precinct detective in the late 1980s. “The outer boroughs are, like, forgotten. ” Retired detectives said that understaffing made it harder to solve crimes in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, where the higher prevalence of gang and drug killings already saddled investigators with cases in which people were not inclined to cooperate. Through   detectives had closed 67 percent of homicides in Manhattan and 76 percent of those in Staten Island this year, compared with 54 percent of those in the Bronx, 42 percent of those in Queens and 31 percent of those in Brooklyn. Of last year’s homicides, detectives cleared 71 percent in Manhattan, 63 percent in the Bronx, 62 percent in Queens, 57 percent in Staten Island and 31 percent in Brooklyn. “It’s the culture of the Police Department that they worry about Manhattan,” said Joseph L. Giacalone, a former sergeant in the Bronx Cold Case Squad, in part “because that’s where the money is. ” He added: “When de Blasio came in, he talked about the tale of two cities. And then he’s done the complete opposite of what he said. It’s just business as usual. ” The Bronx’s struggles extend into prosecutions. In each of the last five years, prosecutors in the Bronx have declined to prosecute violent felony cases more than anywhere else in the city. And the rate of conviction in the Bronx is routinely the lowest in the city as well, but has ticked up this year to surpass Brooklyn’s rate through November as Bronx prosecutors work to streamline cases. Some cases have become even more difficult to win because of the   problem in the 40th Precinct, which has allowed defense lawyers to attack the credibility of officers who were implicated, said Patrice O’Shaughnessy, a spokeswoman for the Bronx District Attorney’s office. The district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, elected in 2015, said in a statement, “I was a judge here in the Bronx, and I heard from jurors that they can’t be impartial because they don’t trust the police. ” Against that tide of mistrust, Sergeant LoPuzzo’s detectives work 36 hours straight on some fresh cases. They buy Chinese takeout with their own money for a murder suspect. They carry surveillance videos home in hopes that their personal computers may enhance them better than a squad computer. They buy an urn for a homeless mother who has her murdered son’s ashes in a box. In the months after a killing, they can seem like the only people in this glittering city who are paying attention to the 40th Precinct’s homicide victims. Newly fatherless children go back to school without a therapist’s help. Victims’ families wander confused through a courthouse and nearly miss an appearance. Newspapers largely ignore killings of people with criminal pasts, pushing them down the priority lists of the   chiefs at Police Headquarters. In a stuffy   squad room, the detectives of the 40th Precinct grapple with an inheritance of government neglect. They meet mothers who believe their sons might never have been murdered had a city guidance counselor listened to pleas to help them stay enrolled, or had a city housing worker fixed the locks or lights on a building. And the detectives work alongside a vicious system on the streets for punishing police cooperators. Young men scan court paperwork in prison, looking for the names of people who turned on them. One murder victim in the precinct this year was cast out of his crew after he avoided being arrested with them in a gang takedown some believed he was cooperating. A longtime 40th Precinct detective, Jeff Meenagh, said a witness in a homicide case was going to testify until he went back to his neighborhood and was told that anyone who testified would “get what you deserve. ” The allies Sergeant LoPuzzo makes are friendly only for so long. He helped clear a woman’s son of a robbery charge by locating surveillance video that proved he was not the robber. The mother started calling with tips under a code name  —   about a gun under a car, for example. But she always refused to testify. And she cut ties this year after Sergeant LoPuzzo arrested her son in the stabbing of two people and her   in a shooting. New York City owns East 146th Street and the   buildings on each side. But James Fernandez, in the Betances Houses, said the reality on the ground was different: The drug boss ran the block. By October, Mr. Fernandez was increasingly afraid  —   and fed up. Mr. Fernandez and his wife went so far as to give officers keys to the building door, so they could get in whenever they wanted, showed them the videos and offered them   access to his camera so they could see what was happening in the hallway. A couple of officers said they needed a supervisor’s permission to do more. Others answered that the young men were only making threats. Officers occasionally stopped outside their building, causing the young men to scatter, but did not come inside, Mr. Fernandez said. The menacing worsened. Mr. Fernandez’s daughter was harassed as she arrived home from school. She grew more and more distressed, and her parents had her start seeing a therapist. Mr. Fernandez made several complaints at the office of the borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr. and visited a victim’s advocate in the district attorney’s office. On Oct. 20, 2015, he sent an online note to the police commissioner’s office. “We went to all proper channels for help,” the note said. “Both precincts failed us, except 2 officers who helped us, but their hands are tied. No one else to turn to. I have months of video of multiple crimes taking place and we are in extreme danger. ” “40th and PSA 7 won’t do anything,” he wrote, referring to the local substation. “Please we need to speak to some one with authority. ” The local substation commander, Deputy Inspector Jerry O’Sullivan, and the Bronx narcotics unit were alerted to the complaints. But Mr. Fernandez said he never heard from them. So he relied on his own street instincts to protect his family. He made pleas to a man he thought was employing the dealers in the hallway. The activity quieted briefly, but it returned after the young men rented a room in a woman’s apartment upstairs. Mr. Fernandez approached a different man who he learned was the boss of the operation. The man agreed to ask the dealers to calm down. He even hired a drug customer to sweep the hallway, Mr. Fernandez said. But two weeks later, the dealing and the harassment resumed. So he went to his old Lower East Side bosses, who hired men to trail his wife and daughter on their way out of the building and make sure they made it safely to school. At other times they sat outside the Betances Houses. He also bought two bulletproof vests, for about $700 each. He could not find one small enough for his daughter. “I have no faith in the City of New York, I have no faith in the police, I have no faith in the politicians,” Mr. Fernandez said. “The only thing I know for sure: God, if we’re in a situation again, I will be left to defend my family. ” Paying such close attention to what was happening in the hallway, Mr. Fernandez said he learned some details about two recent homicides that the 40th Precinct was investigating. But because his calls for help were going nowhere, he said he decided not to put himself in greater risk by talking: He would not tell the police what he had learned. “I’m bending over backward, and nobody’s not even doing anything,” he said. “Why am I going to help you, if you ain’t going to help me?” By last January, a new neighborhood coordination officer was working with residents of the Betances Houses, and ended up with the most arrests in his housing command, Inspector O’Sullivan said. Chief Boyce said that the silos in which gang and narcotics detectives used to work made responding to complaints more difficult, but that the recent restructuring would remove those obstacles. “No one should live like Mr. Fernandez lived, with people dealing drugs outside of his apartment,” he said. Mr. Fernandez’s complaints did not spur any arrests, but two men from the hallway were caught separately this year in shootings. One of them, whom Mr. Fernandez named in a police report, was charged this summer with hitting an officer with a metal folding chair and firing three gunshots into a crowd, court papers say. He is being held on Rikers Island on an attempted murder charge. That was too late for Mr. Fernandez. By May, he had moved his family away."
"When Walt Disney’s “Bambi” opened in 1942, critics praised its spare, haunting visual style, vastly different from anything Disney had done before. But what they did not know was that the film’s striking appearance had been created by a Chinese immigrant artist, who took as his inspiration the landscape paintings of the Song dynasty. The extent of his contribution to “Bambi,” which remains a   mark for film animation, would not be widely known for decades. Like the film’s title character, the artist, Tyrus Wong, weathered irrevocable separation from his mother  —   and, in the hope of making a life in America, incarceration, isolation and rigorous interrogation  —   all when he was still a child. In the years that followed, he endured poverty, discrimination and chronic lack of recognition, not only for his work at Disney but also for his fine art, before finding acclaim in his 90s. Mr. Wong died on Friday at 106. A Hollywood studio artist, painter, printmaker, calligrapher,   illustrator and, in later years, maker of fantastical kites, he was one of the most celebrated   artists of the 20th century. But because of the marginalization to which   were long subject, he passed much of his career unknown to the general public. Artistic recognition, when Mr. Wong did find it, was all the more noteworthy for the fact that among Chinese immigrant men of his generation, professional prospects were largely limited to menial jobs like houseboy and laundryman. Trained as a painter, Mr. Wong was a leading figure in the Modernist movement that flourished in California between the first and second World Wars. In 1932 and again in 1934, his work was included in group shows at the Art Institute of Chicago that also featured Picasso, Matisse and Paul Klee. As a staff artist for Hollywood studios from the 1930s to the 1960s, he drew storyboards and made vibrant paintings, as detailed as any architectural illustrations, that helped the director envision each scene before it was shot. Over the years his work informed the look of animated pictures for Disney and   films for Warner Brothers and other studios, among them “The Sands of Iwo Jima” (1949) “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969). But of the dozens of films on which he worked, it was for “Bambi” that Mr. Wong was  —   belatedly  —   most renowned. “He was truly involved with every phase of production,” John Canemaker, an   animator and a historian of animation at New York University, said in an interview for this obituary in March. “He created an art direction that had really never been seen before in animation. ” In 2013 and 2014, Mr. Wong was the subject of “Water to Paper, Paint to Sky,” a major retrospective at the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. From the museum’s windows, which overlook San Francisco Bay, he could contemplate Angel Island, where more than nine decades earlier, as a lone    he had sought to gain admission to a country that adamantly did not want him. Wong Gen Yeo (the name is sometimes Romanized Wong Gaing Yoo) was born on Oct. 25, 1910, in a farming village in Guangdong Province. As a young child, he already exhibited a love of drawing and was encouraged by his father. In 1920, seeking better economic prospects, Gen Yeo and his father embarked for the United States, leaving his mother and sister behind. Gen Yeo would never see his mother again. They were obliged to travel under false identities  —   a state of affairs known among Chinese immigrants as being a “paper son”  —   in the hope of circumventing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur, the act, which drastically curtailed the number of Chinese people allowed to enter the country, was among the earliest United States laws to impose severe restrictions on immigration. But in 1906, an unforeseen loophole opened in the form of the San Francisco earthquake and fire. Because a huge number of municipal documents, including birth and immigration records, were destroyed, many newly arrived Chinese capitalized on the loss, maintaining that they had been born in San Francisco before the fire. As United States citizens, they were entitled to bring over their relatives  —   or, in the case of Gen Yeo and his father, “paper sons” posing as relatives. Attuned to the deception, United States immigration officials put Chinese arrivals through a formidable inquisition to ensure they were who they claimed to be. The questions came like gunfire: In which direction does your village face? How many windows are in your house? Where in the house is the rice bin? How wide is your well? How deep? Are there trees in your village? Are there lakes? What shops can you name? The sponsoring relative was interrogated separately, and the answers had to match. For the new arrival, a major mistake, or a series of smaller ones, could mean deportation. To stand a chance of passing, aspirants memorized rigorous dossiers known as coaching papers. The ensuing interrogation was hard enough for adults.    Gen Yeo would undergo it alone. On Dec. 30, 1920, after a month at sea, the Wongs landed at Angel Island Immigration Station. The elder Mr. Wong was traveling as a merchant named Look Get his son as Look Tai Yow. “Angel Island is considered to be the Ellis Island of the West Coast,” Lisa See, the author of “On Gold Mountain” (1995) a nonfiction chronicle of her   family, said in an interview in 2016. However, she continued: “The goal was really very different than Ellis Island, which was supposed to be so welcoming. Angel Island opened very specifically to keep the Chinese out. ” Because Mr. Wong’s father had previously lived in the United States as Look Get, he was able to clear Immigration quickly. But as a new arrival, Gen Yeo was detained on the island for nearly a month, the only child among the immigrants being held there. “I was scared half to death I just cried,” Mr. Wong recalled in “Tyrus,” an   documentary directed by Pamela Tom, which premiered in 2015. “Every day is just miserable  —   miserable. I hated that place. ” On Jan. 27, 1921, in the presence of an interpreter and a stenographer, young Gen Yeo, posing as Look Tai Yow, was interrogated by three inspectors. His father had already been questioned. Gen Yeo was well prepared and answered without error. In Sacramento, where he joined his father, a schoolteacher Americanized “Tai Yow” to “Tyrus,” and he was known as Tyrus Wong ever after. Soon afterward, father and son were separated once more, when the elder Mr. Wong moved to Los Angeles to seek work. For reasons that have been lost to time, he could not take his son. Tyrus lived on his own in a Sacramento boardinghouse while attending elementary school. Two years later  —   possibly more  —   Tyrus traveled to Los Angeles to join his father, who had found work in a gambling den. They lived in a   boardinghouse sandwiched between a butcher shop and a brothel. After school, Tyrus worked as a houseboy for two Pasadena families, earning 50 cents a day. His first art teacher was his father, who trained him nightly in calligraphy by having him dip a brush in water and trace ghostly characters on newspaper: They could not afford ink or drawing paper. When Tyrus was in junior high, a teacher, noting his drawing talent, arranged a summer scholarship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. By his own account an indifferent student in public school, Tyrus found his calling at the institute, now the Otis College of Art and Design. When his scholarship ended he declined to return to junior high. His father scraped together the $90 tuition  —   a small fortune  —   to let him stay on as Otis’s youngest student. He studied there for at least five years, simultaneously working as the school janitor, before graduating in the 1930s. Not long afterward his father died, leaving young Mr. Wong entirely on his own. From 1936 to 1938, Mr. Wong was an artist for the Works Progress Administration, creating paintings for libraries and other public spaces. With friends, including the   artist Benji Okubo, he founded the Oriental Artists’ Group of Los Angeles, which organized exhibitions of members’ work  —   an   level of exposure for Asian artists at the time. Mr. Wong, newly married and needing steady work, joined Disney in 1938 as an “” creating the thousands of intermediate drawings that bring animated sequences to life. Asians were then a novelty at Hollywood studios, and Mr. Wong was made keenly aware of the fact, first at Disney and later at Warner Brothers. One   flung a racial epithet at him. Another assumed on sight that he worked in the company cafeteria. Then there was the affront of the  ’s job itself: Painstaking, repetitive and for Mr. Wong quickly   it is the   work of animation  —   “a terrible use of his talents as a landscape artist and a painter,” Mr. Canemaker said. A reprieve came in the late 1930s, when Mr. Wong learned that Disney was adapting “Bambi, a Life in the Woods,” the 1923 novel by the Austrian writer Felix Salten about a fawn whose mother is killed by a hunter. In trying to animate the book, Disney had reached an impasse. The studio had enjoyed great success in 1937 with its animated film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a baroque production in which every detail of the backgrounds  —   every petal on every flower, every leaf on every tree  —   was meticulously represented. In an attempt to use a similar style for “Bambi,” it found that the ornate backgrounds camouflaged the deer and other forest creatures on which the narrative centered. Mr. Wong spied his chance. “I said, ‘Gee, this is all outdoor scenery,’” he recalled in a video interview years afterward, adding: “I said, ‘Gee, I’m a landscape painter! ’” Invoking the exquisite landscape paintings of the Song dynasty (A. D. 960 —  1279) he rendered in watercolors and pastels a series of nature scenes that were moody, lyrical and atmospheric  —   at once lush and spare  —   with backgrounds subtly suggested by a stroke or two of the brush. “Walt Disney went crazy over them,” said Mr. Canemaker, who wrote about Mr. Wong in his book “Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists” (1996). “He said, ‘I love this indefinite quality, the mysterious quality of the forest. ’” Mr. Wong was unofficially promoted to the rank of inspirational sketch artist. “But he was more than that,” Mr. Canemaker explained. “He was the designer he was the person they went to when they had questions about the color, about how to lay something out. He even influenced the music and the special effects: Just by the look of the drawings, he inspired people. ” Mr. Wong spent two years painting the illustrations that would inform every aspect of “Bambi. ” Throughout the finished film  —   lent a brooding quality by its stark landscapes misty, desaturated palette and figures often seen in silhouette  —   his influence is unmistakable. But in 1941, in the wake of a bitter employees’ strike that year, Disney fired Mr. Wong. Though he had chosen not to strike  —   he felt the studio had been good to him, Mr. Canemaker said  —   he was let go amid the lingering climate of   resentments. On “Bambi,” Mr. Wong’s name appears, quite far down in the credits, as a mere “background” artist. Mr. Wong joined Warner Brothers in 1942, working there  —   and lent out on occasion to other studios  —   until his retirement in 1968. The indignities he endured were not confined to the studios. Trying to buy a house, he and his wife, the former Ruth Kim, were told that each property they inquired about had just been sold. “Then in a month you’d go back there and the sign was still there,” Mr. Wong recalled in “Tyrus. ” After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Mr. Wong, like many   took to wearing a lapel button proclaiming his heritage, lest an angry American beat him up on the street. The war permanently dispersed the fledgling Oriental Artists’ Group. Mr. Wong’s friend Mr. Okubo was sent, with tens of thousands of other   to an internment camp. “If World War II hadn’t happened when it did, I think these artists, even the   artists, would have more of a name than they do today,” Ms. See said. “And that’s because this little movement that had just barely started was split apart by the war. ” Mr. Wong, who became a United States citizen in 1946, also designed Christmas cards for Hallmark and painted elegant   designs on dinnerware, now sought after by collectors. A longtime resident of Sunland, Calif. he became, in retirement, a renowned kitemaker, designing, building and hand coloring astonishing, airworthy creations  —   butterflies, swallows, whole flocks of owls, centipedes more than 100 feet long  —   that streaked the Southern California sky like paint on blue canvas. During the last 15 years of Ruth Wong’s life, when she was ill with dementia, Mr. Wong forsook his work to care for her. After her death in 1995, he slowly began making art again. In 2001, in formal recognition of his influence on “Bambi,” Mr. Wong was named a Disney Legend. The honor  —   whose previous recipients include Fred MacMurray, Julie Andrews and Annette Funicello  —   is bestowed by the Walt Disney Company for outstanding contributions. In 2003, a retrospective of his work, curated in part by Ms. See, was the inaugural exhibition at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles. The Disney Family Museum’s retrospective, “Water to Paper, Paint to Sky,” traveled in 2015 to the Museum of Chinese in America, in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Wong’s death, at his home in Sunland, was confirmed by the filmmaker Ms. Tom. His survivors include three daughters, Kay Fong,   Wong and Kim Wong and two grandchildren. When his daughters were small, Mr. Wong encouraged them to make art, as his father had encouraged him. Yet he would not let them have coloring books. The reason was simple: He did not want his children constrained, he said, by lines laid down by others."
"Death may be the great equalizer, but it isn’t necessarily evenhanded. Of all the fields of endeavor that suffered mortal losses in 2016  —   consider Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer in sports and the      Hollywood deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds  —   the pop music world had, hands down, the bleakest year. Start with David Bowie, whose stage persona  —   androgynous glam rocker, dance pop star, electronic experimentalist  —   was as   as his music. The year was only days old when the news came that he had died of cancer at 69. He had hinted that his time was short in the lyrics of his final album, released just two days before his death, but he had otherwise gone to great lengths to hide his illness from the public, a wish for privacy that ensured that his death would appear to have come out of the blue. Then came another shock, about three months later, when Prince accidentally overdosed on a painkiller and collapsed in an elevator at his sprawling home studio near Minneapolis. Death came to him at 57, and by all indications no one, including Prince Rogers Nelson, had seen it coming. As energetic onstage as ever, holding to an otherwise healthy regimen, he had successfully defied age into his sixth decade, so why not death, too? Leonard Cohen, on the other hand, in his 83rd year, undoubtedly did see it coming, just over his shoulder, but he went on his  —   I hesitate to say merry  —   way, ever the wise,   troubadour playing to sellout crowds and shrugging at the inevitable, knowing that the dark would finally overtake him but saying essentially, “Until then, here’s another song. ” It was as if 2016 hadn’t delivered enough jolts to the system when it closed out the year with yet another   death. George Michael, the 1980s sensation whose aura had dimmed in later years, was 53 when he went to bed and never woke up on Christmas. Pop music figures fell all year, many of their voices still embedded in the nicked vinyl grooves of old records that a lot of people can’t bear to throw out. The roster included Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Glenn Frey of the Eagles and Maurice White of Earth, Wind  Fire. Leon Russell, the piano pounder with a Delta blues wail and a mountain man’s mass of hair, died. So did Merle Haggard, rugged country poet of the common man and the   outlaw. He was joined by the bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley and the guitar virtuoso who was practically glued to Elvis’s swiveling hips in the early days: Scotty Moore. And then there was George Martin, whose   genius had such a creative influence on the sounds of John, Paul, George and Ringo (and, by extension, on the entire rock era) that he was hailed as the fifth Beatle. If the music stars could fill arenas, so could idols of another stripe: the mighty athletes who left the scene. No figure among them was as towering as Ali. Some called him the greatest sports figure of the 20th century, the boxer who combined power, grace and brains in a way the ring had never seen. But he was more than a great athlete. Matters of war, race and religion coursed through his life in a publicly turbulent way. Some people hated him when he refused to be drafted during the Vietnam War, a decision that cost him his heavyweight title. But more people admired him, even loved him, for his principled stands, his high spirits, his lightning mind, his winking   and, yes, his rhyming motormouth. Until illness closed in, little could contain him, certainly not mere ropes around a ring. Palmer, too, was transformational, golf’s first media star. The gentleman’s game was never quite the same after he began gathering an army on the rolling greenswards and leading a charge, his shirt coming untucked, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his club just that, a weapon, as he pressed the attack. An entire generation of   postwar guys took up the game because of Arnie, and not a few women did, too. He was athletically blessed, magnetically cool, telegenically handsome  —   but he was somehow one of them, too. The same was said of Gordie Howe, Mr. Hockey, a son of the Saskatchewan prairie who tore up the National Hockey League, hung up his skates at 52 and died at 88 and of Ralph Branca, a trolley car conductor’s son who was a living reminder that one crushing mistake  —   his, the fastball to Bobby Thomson that decided the 1951 National League pennant  —   can sometimes never be lived down. Pat Summitt, the coach who elevated women’s basketball, led her Tennessee teams to eight championships and won more games than any other college coach, could not defeat Alzheimer’s disease, dying at 64. And within months the National Basketball Association lost two giants from different eras. Clyde Lovelette, an Olympic, college and N. B. A. champion who transformed the game as one of its first truly big men, was 86 his hardwood heir Nate Thurmond, a defensive stalwart who battled Russell, Wilt and Kareem in the paint in a   Hall of Fame career, was 74. Even older, in the baseball ranks, was Monte Irvin. When he died at 96, there were few people still around who could remember watching him play, particularly in his prime, in the 1940s, when he was a star on the Negro circuit but barred from the   major leagues. He made the Hall of Fame anyway as a New York Giant and became Major League Baseball’s first black executive, but when he died, fans pondered again the question that has hung over many an athletic career shackled by discrimination: What if? A different question, in an entirely different sphere, arose after the stunning news that Justice Antonin Scalia had died on a hunting trip in Texas: What now? In the thick of one of the most consequential Supreme Court careers of modern times, he left a void in conservative jurisprudence and, more urgently, a vacancy on the bench that has yet to be filled, raising still more questions about what may await the country. Other exits from the public stage returned us to the past. Nancy Reagan’s death evoked the 1980s White House, where   glamour and   West Coast conservatism took up residence on the banks of the Potomac. John Glenn’s had us thinking again about a   burst of national pride soaring into outer space. The deaths of Tom Hayden and Daniel Berrigan, avatars of defiance, harked back to the student rebellions of the 1960s and the Vietnam War’s roiling home front. Phyllis Schlafly’s obituaries were windows on the roots of the right wing’s ascension in American politics. The death of Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as attorney general, recalled the Clinton years, all eight of them, from the firestorm at Waco, Tex. to the international tug of war over a Cuban boy named Elián González, to the bitter Senate battle over impeachment. On other shores, Fidel Castro’s death at 90 summoned memories of Cuban revolution, nuclear brinkmanship and enduring enmity between a   strongman and the superpower only 90 miles away. The name of Boutros   the Egyptian diplomat who led the United Nations, led to replayed nightmares of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia. The death of Shimon Peres removed a last link to the very founding of Israel and conjured decades of growing military power and fitful strivings for peace. And that of Elie Wiesel, in New York, after his tireless struggle to compel the world never to forget, made us confront once again the gas chambers of Auschwitz. If writers, too, are   even in fiction, then the world is poorer without the literary voices of Harper Lee, Umberto Eco, Pat Conroy, Jim Harrison, Anita Brookner, Alvin Toffler, Gloria Naylor and William Trevor, not to mention the playwrights Peter Shaffer, Dario Fo and,   Edward Albee  —   all dead in 2016. But just as treasured were those who spun   for our viewing pleasure  —   none more lustily than Ms. Fisher, the     Princess Leia of the “Star Wars” tales. Just a day later, capping a year of startling deaths, Ms. Reynolds, a singing and acting leading lady of an earlier era, died at 84 in the throes of a mother’s grief. Devotees of the “Harry Potter” movies were saddened by the death of Alan Rickman, who played the deliciously dour professor Severus Snape in that blockbuster franchise but whose career, on both stage and screen, was far richer than many of Snape’s younger fans may have known. Zsa Zsa Gabor’s celebrity, by contrast, outshone a modest acting career. Gene Wilder and Garry Shandling died in the same year, both having perfected a brand of hilariously neurotic comedy fit for a   culture. And this time Abe Vigoda, of the “Godfather” movies and “Barney Miller,” actually did die, after having not actually done so years ago when wildly uninformed people spread the word that he had. On the other side of the camera were directors whose vision came to us from all parts: Jacques Rivette, the French New Wave auteur, with his   meditations on life and art Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian master, with his searching examinations of ordinary lives Andrzej Wajda, a rival to Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa in some critics’ eyes, with his haunting tales of Poland under the boot first of Nazis and then of Communists. A long roster of television stars of a generation or two ago passed on, images of their younger selves frozen in time: Noel Neill (“Adventures of Superman”) Alan Young (“Mister Ed”) Robert Vaughn (“The Man From U. N. C. L. E. ”) William Schallert and Patty Duke (father and daughter on “The Patty Duke Show”) Dan Haggerty (“The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams”) Florence Henderson (“The Brady Bunch”) and Alan Thicke (“Growing Pains”). And Garry Marshall, the creative force who practically owned prime time with “Happy Days,” “Mork  Mindy,” “Laverne  Shirley” and more, died at 81. On Broadway, lights were dimmed in memory of Brian Bedford, Tammy Grimes and Anne Jackson, all brilliant in their day. The architect Zaha Hadid left behind monuments to her fertile imagination and shaken acolytes around the world. The street photographer Bill Cunningham, who found fashion statements on every corner, was suddenly missing, making Manhattan, overnight, a less idiosyncratic, less interesting place. That smiling skinny man pedaling his bicycle among the honking cabs in a blue French worker’s jacket with a camera slung around his neck  —   what a picture!  —   had split from the scene. So had seemingly a generation of fellow photographers who had made art in recording the last half of the 20th century: Ruth Gruber, Marc Riboud, Louis Stettner and more. And so had the TV journalists Morley Safer and Gwen Ifill and the TV commentator John McLaughlin, all of whom had tried to make sense of it. Music’s other precincts were emptier without the conductor and revolutionary composer Pierre Boulez and the new music soprano Phyllis Curtin the jazz artists Mose Allison, Bobby Hutcherson and Gato Barbieri the rapper Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor) and the Latin megastar Juan Gabriel. Silicon Valley saw a giant depart in Andrew S. Grove, who led the semiconductor revolution at Intel. The television industry lost a   executive, Grant Tinker, who in the ’80s made NBC the network to watch in prime time. Astrophysics, and the smaller world of women in science, said farewell to a pioneer and a champion in Vera Rubin. And for tens of thousands of people who might have choked to death had they not been saved by his simple but ingenious maneuver, the passing of Henry J. Heimlich prompted not just sympathy but, even more, gratitude. Come to think of it, eliciting a large, if silent, thank you from those who live on is not a bad way for anyone to go. Which brings us to Marion Pritchard. Few who died in 2016 could have inspired measures of gratitude more profound. She was a brave young Dutch student and a   gentile who risked her life to save Jews from death camps in the early 1940s, in one instance shooting a Nazi stooge before he could seize three little children she had been hiding. By her estimate she saved 150 people. How many were still alive when she died a few weeks ago at 96 is anyone’s guess. But we know for certain that some were, and we can reasonably surmise that a good many more were, too, all of them still in possession of her selfless gift and her matchless legacy, their very lives."
"SEOUL, South Korea  —   North Korea’s leader, Kim   said on Sunday that his country was making final preparations to conduct its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile  —   a bold statement less than a month before the inauguration of   Donald J. Trump. Although North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests in the last decade and more than 20 ballistic missile tests in 2016 alone, and although it habitually threatens to attack the United States with nuclear weapons, the country has never   an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. In his annual New Year’s Day speech, which was broadcast on the North’s   KCTV on Sunday, Mr. Kim spoke proudly of the strides he said his country had made in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He said North Korea would continue to bolster its weapons programs as long as the United States remained hostile and continued its joint military exercises with South Korea. “We have reached the final stage in preparations to   an intercontinental ballistic rocket,” he said. Analysts in the region have said Mr. Kim might conduct another weapons test in coming months, taking advantage of leadership changes in the United States and South Korea. Mr. Trump will be sworn in on Jan. 20. In South Korea, President Park   whose powers were suspended in a Parliamentary impeachment on Dec. 9, is waiting for the Constitutional Court to rule on whether she should be formally removed from office or reinstated. If North Korea conducts a    test in coming months, it will test Mr. Trump’s new administration despite years of increasingly harsh sanctions, North Korea has been advancing toward Mr. Kim’s professed goal of arming his isolated country with the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States. Mr. Kim’s speech on Sunday indicated that North Korea may   a   rocket several times this year to complete its ICBM program, said Cheong   a senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute in South Korea. The first of such tests could come even before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Cheong said. “We need to take note of the fact that this is the first New Year’s speech where Kim   mentioned an intercontinental ballistic missile,” he said. In his speech, Mr. Kim did not comment on Mr. Trump’s election. Doubt still runs deep that North Korea has mastered all the technology needed to build a reliable ICBM. But analysts in the region said the North’s launchings of   rockets to put satellites into orbit in recent years showed that the country had cleared some key technological hurdles. After the North’s satellite launch in February, South Korean defense officials said the Unha rocket used in the launch, if successfully reconfigured as a missile, could fly more than 7, 400 miles with a warhead of 1, 100 to 1, 300 pounds  —   far enough to reach most of the United States. North Korea has deployed Rodong ballistic missiles that can reach most of South Korea and Japan, but it has had a spotty record in   the Musudan, its   ballistic missile with a range long enough to reach American military bases in the Pacific, including those on Guam. The North has also claimed a series of successes in testing various ICBM technologies, although its claims cannot be verified and are often disputed by officials and analysts in the region. It has said it could now make nuclear warheads small enough to fit onto a ballistic missile. It also claimed success in testing the   technology that allows a   missile to return to the Earth’s atmosphere without breaking up. In April, North Korea reported the successful ground test of an engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile. At the time, Mr. Kim said the North “can tip   intercontinental ballistic rockets with more powerful nuclear warheads and keep any cesspool of evils in the Earth, including the U. S. mainland, within our striking range. ” On Sept. 9, the North conducted its fifth, and most powerful, nuclear test. Mr. Kim later attended another ground test of a new   rocket engine, exhorting his government to prepare for another rocket launch as soon as possible. In November, the United Nations Security Council imposed new  sanctions against the North."
"LONDON  —   Queen Elizabeth II, who has been battling a cold for more than a week, missed a New Year’s Day church service at her country estate in Sandringham, Buckingham Palace said on Sunday. A week earlier, the queen, who is 90, missed a Christmas Day church service, for the first time since 1988, because of the illness. “The Queen does not yet feel ready to attend church as she is still recuperating from a heavy cold,” the palace said in a statement. The queen’s husband, Prince Philip, who had also been ill, was well enough to attend both services, in the church at Sandringham, which is in Norfolk, on the east coast of England. The queen, who ascended to the throne in 1952, became the world’s   monarch following the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in October. She is also Britain’s   monarch, having last year surpassed Queen Victoria’s   reign. Her mother lived until the age of 101."
"BEIJING  —   President Tsai   of Taiwan sharply criticized China’s leaders on Saturday, saying they had resorted to military and economic threats in order to intimidate the island. “Step by step, Beijing is going back to the old path of dividing, coercing and even threatening and intimidating Taiwan,” she told journalists in Taipei, the capital, at a   news conference. Tensions between Taiwan and China, which have been rivals since the Communist Revolution of 1949, intensified in December after Ms. Tsai spoke on the phone with the American   Donald J. Trump, breaking a longstanding diplomatic practice. In recent weeks, China has stepped up military activities near Taiwan, sending its sole aircraft carrier through the waters near the island and dispatching military planes in the region. On Monday, Beijing announced that São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off the west coast of Africa that was one of Taiwan’s fewer than two dozen remaining diplomatic allies, had switched its allegiance to the mainland, provoking an outcry in Taiwan. Despite Beijing’s recent actions, which she said had “hurt the feelings” of the Taiwanese people and destabilized relations, Ms. Tsai vowed to avoid a confrontation. “We will not bow to pressure, and we will of course not revert to the old path of confrontation,” she said. Ms. Tsai faces the delicate task of registering discontent with Beijing while also sending a message that Taiwan will exercise restraint. The United States, which sees Taiwan as one of its most reliable allies in Asia and has sold billions of dollars of weapons to the island, has long sought to avoid a conflict between the two sides. But the election of Mr. Trump could complicate matters. He has antagonized Beijing with a series of critical comments. The   has also questioned the One China policy, which has underpinned relations between Washington and Beijing for decades, and criticized China’s military buildup in the disputed South China Sea. Bonnie S. Glaser, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Ms. Tsai’s words might reassure American officials that she would not pursue rash policies in the face of China’s show of strength. “She remains calm, rational and patient,” Ms. Glaser wrote in an email. Still, Ms. Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally favored independence for Taiwan, could face serious challenges in the coming months. Many people in Taiwan are nervous that Mr. Trump will use the island as a bargaining chip against China. And Ms. Tsai’s preference for stability in the region may not mesh with Mr. Trump’s bombastic style. Richard C. Bush, the director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said Ms. Tsai understood the need to “maintain a balance among relations with China, relations with the United States and domestic politics. ” Ms. Tsai’s vision, however, “may not align well with the incoming Trump administration’s apparent belief that it can pressure China on all fronts more than the Obama administration has,” he said. Ms. Tsai also sought to quell concerns about planned stopovers in Houston and San Francisco during a visit to Central America scheduled for January. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday called on the United States to block Ms. Tsai from entering the country, warning that such a visit would embolden independence activists in Taiwan. Ms. Tsai described the visit as “unofficial,” saying, “A transit stop is just a transit stop. ”"
"Danny Cahill stood, slightly dazed, in a blizzard of confetti as the audience screamed and his family ran on stage. He had won Season 8 of NBC’s reality television show “The Biggest Loser,” shedding more weight than anyone ever had on the program  —   an astonishing 239 pounds in seven months. When he got on the scale for all to see that evening, Dec. 8, 2009, he weighed just 191 pounds, down from 430. Dressed in a   and   shorts, he was lean, athletic and as handsome as a model. “I’ve got my life back,” he declared. “I mean, I feel like a million bucks. ” Mr. Cahill left the show’s stage in Hollywood and flew directly to New York to start a triumphal tour of the talk shows, chatting with Jay Leno, Regis Philbin and Joy Behar. As he heard from fans all over the world, his elation knew no bounds. But in the years since, more than 100 pounds have crept back onto his    frame despite his best efforts. In fact, most of that season’s 16 contestants have regained much if not all the weight they lost so arduously. Some are even heavier now. Yet their experiences, while a bitter personal disappointment, have been a gift to science. A study of Season 8’s contestants has yielded surprising new discoveries about the physiology of obesity that help explain why so many people struggle unsuccessfully to keep off the weight they lose. Kevin Hall, a scientist at a federal research center who admits to a weakness for reality TV, had the idea to follow the “Biggest Loser” contestants for six years after that victorious night. The project was the first to measure what happened to people over as long as six years after they had lost large amounts of weight with intensive dieting and exercise. The results, the researchers said, were stunning. They showed just how hard the body fights back against weight loss. “It is frightening and amazing,” said Dr. Hall, an expert on metabolism at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. “I am just blown away. ” It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes. Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight  —   even if they start at a normal weight or even underweight  —   will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. So they were not surprised to see that “The Biggest Loser” contestants had slow metabolisms when the show ended. What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight. Mr. Cahill was one of the worst off. As he regained more than 100 pounds, his metabolism slowed so much that, just to maintain his current weight of 295 pounds, he now has to eat 800 calories a day less than a typical man his size. Anything more turns to fat. The struggles the contestants went through help explain why it has been so hard to make headway against the nation’s obesity problem, which afflicts more than a third of American adults. Despite spending billions of dollars on   drugs and dieting programs, even the most motivated are working against their own biology. Their experience shows that the body will fight back for years. And that, said Dr. Michael Schwartz, an obesity and diabetes researcher who is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, is “new and important. ” “The key point is that you can be on TV, you can lose enormous amounts of weight, you can go on for six years, but you can’t get away from a basic biological reality,” said Dr. Schwartz, who was not involved in the study. “As long as you are below your initial weight, your body is going to try to get you back. ” The show’s doctor, Robert Huizenga, says he expected the contestants’ metabolic rates to fall just after the show, but was hoping for a smaller drop. He questioned, though, whether the measurements six years later were accurate. But maintaining weight loss is difficult, he said, which is why he tells contestants that they should exercise at least nine hours a week and monitor their diets to keep the weight off. “Unfortunately, many contestants are unable to find or afford adequate ongoing support with exercise doctors, psychologists, sleep specialists, and trainers  —   and that’s something we all need to work hard to change,” he said in an email. The study’s findings, to be published on Monday in the journal Obesity, are part of a scientific push to answer some of the most fundamental questions about obesity. Researchers are figuring out why being fat makes so many people develop diabetes and other medical conditions, and they are searching for new ways to block the poison in fat. They are starting to unravel the reasons bariatric surgery allows most people to lose significant amounts of weight when dieting so often fails. And they are looking afresh at medical care for obese people. The hope is that this work will eventually lead to new therapies that treat obesity as a chronic disease and can help keep weight under control for life. Most people who have tried to lose weight know how hard it is to keep the weight off, but many blame themselves when the pounds come back. But what obesity research has consistently shown is that dieters are at the mercy of their own bodies, which muster hormones and an altered metabolic rate to pull them back to their old weights, whether that is hundreds of pounds more or that extra 10 or 15 that many people are trying to keep off. There is always a weight a person’s body maintains without any effort. And while it is not known why that weight can change over the years  —   it may be an effect of aging  —   at any point, there is a weight that is easy to maintain, and that is the weight the body fights to defend. Finding a way to thwart these mechanisms is the goal scientists are striving for. First, though, they are trying to understand them in greater detail. Dr. David Ludwig, the director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, who was not involved in the research, said the findings showed the need for new approaches to weight control. He cautioned that the study was limited by its small size and the lack of a control group of obese people who did not lose weight. But, he added, the findings made sense. “This is a subset of the most successful” dieters, he said. “If they don’t show a return to normal in metabolism, what hope is there for the rest of us?” Still, he added, “that shouldn’t be interpreted to mean we are doomed to battle our biology or remain fat. It means we need to explore other approaches. ” Some scientists say weight maintenance has to be treated as an issue separate from weight loss. Only when that challenge is solved, they say, can progress truly be made against obesity. “There is a lot of basic research we still need to do,” said Dr. Margaret Jackson, who is directing a project at Pfizer. Her group is testing a drug that, in animals at least, acts like leptin, a hormone that controls hunger. With weight loss, leptin levels fall and people become hungry. The idea is to trick the brains of people who have lost weight so they do not become ravenous for lack of leptin. While many of the contestants kept enough weight off to improve their health and became more physically active, the low weights they strived to keep eluded all but one of them: Erinn Egbert, a   caregiver for her mother in Versailles, Ky. And she struggles mightily to keep the pounds off because her metabolism burns 552 fewer calories a day than would be expected for someone her size. “What people don’t understand is that a treat is like a drug,” said Ms. Egbert, who went from 263 pounds to just under 176 on the show, and now weighs between 152 and 157. “Two treats can turn into a binge over a   period. That is what I struggle with. ” Six years after Season 8 ended, 14 of the 16 contestants went to the N. I. H. last fall for three days of testing. The researchers were concerned that the contestants might try to frantically lose weight before coming in, so they shipped equipment to them that would measure their physical activity and weight before their visit, and had the information sent remotely to the N. I. H. The contestants received their metabolic results last week. They were shocked, but on further reflection, decided the numbers explained a lot. “All my friends were drinking beer and not gaining massive amounts of weight,” Mr. Cahill said. “The moment I started drinking beer, there goes another 20 pounds. I said, ‘This is not right. Something is wrong with my body. ’” Sean Algaier, 36, a pastor from Charlotte, N. C. feels cheated. He went from 444 pounds to 289 as a contestant on the show. Now his weight is up to 450 again, and he is burning 458 fewer calories a day than would be expected for a man his size. “It’s kind of like hearing you have a life sentence,” he said. Slower metabolisms were not the only reason the contestants regained weight, though. They constantly battled hunger, cravings and binges. The investigators found at least one reason: plummeting levels of leptin. The contestants started out with normal levels of leptin. By the season’s finale, they had almost no leptin at all, which would have made them ravenous all the time. As their weight returned, their leptin levels drifted up again, but only to about half of what they had been when the season began, the researchers found, thus helping to explain their urges to eat. Leptin is just one of a cluster of hormones that control hunger, and although Dr. Hall and his colleagues did not measure the rest of them, another group of researchers, in a different project, did. In a   study funded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, Dr. Joseph Proietto of the University of Melbourne and his colleagues recruited 50 overweight people who agreed to consume just 550 calories a day for eight or nine weeks. They lost an average of nearly 30 pounds, but over the next year, the pounds started coming back. Dr. Proietto and his colleagues looked at leptin and four other hormones that satiate people. Levels of most of them fell in their study subjects. They also looked at a hormone that makes people want to eat. Its level rose. “What was surprising was what a coordinated effect it is,” Dr. Proietto said. “The body puts multiple mechanisms in place to get you back to your weight. The only way to maintain weight loss is to be hungry all the time. We desperately need agents that will suppress hunger and that are safe with   use. ” Mr. Cahill, 46, said his weight problem began when he was in the third grade. He got fat, then fatter. He would starve himself, and then eat a whole can of cake frosting with a spoon. Afterward, he would cower in the pantry off the kitchen, feeling overwhelmed with shame. Over the years, his insatiable urge to eat kept overcoming him, and his weight climbed: 370 pounds, 400, 460, 485. “I used to look at myself and think, ‘I am horrible, I am a monster, subhuman,’” he said. He began sleeping in a recliner because he was too heavy to sleep lying down. Walking hurt stairs were agony. Buying clothes with a 68 waist was humiliating. “I remember sitting in a dressing room one day, and nothing would fit. I looked at the traffic outside on the street and thought, ‘I should just run out in front of a car. ’” He eventually seized on “The Biggest Loser” as his best chance to lose enough weight to live a normal life. He tried three times and was finally selected. Before the show began, the contestants underwent medical tests to be sure they could endure the rigorous schedule that lay ahead. And rigorous it was. Sequestered on the “Biggest Loser” ranch with the other contestants, Mr. Cahill exercised seven hours a day, burning 8, 000 to 9, 000 calories according to a calorie tracker the show gave him. He took electrolyte tablets to help replace the salts he lost through sweating, consuming many fewer calories than before. Eventually, he and the others were sent home for four months to try to keep losing weight on their own. Mr. Cahill set a goal of a   deficit per day. The idea was to lose a pound a day. He quit his job as a land surveyor to do it. His routine went like this: Wake up at 5 a. m. and run on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Have breakfast  —   typically one egg and two egg whites, half a grapefruit and a piece of sprouted grain toast. Run on the treadmill for another 45 minutes. Rest for 40 minutes bike ride nine miles to a gym. Work out for two and a half hours. Shower, ride home, eat lunch  —   typically a grilled skinless chicken breast, a cup of broccoli and 10 spears of asparagus. Rest for an hour. Drive to the gym for another round of exercise. If he had not burned enough calories to hit his goal, he went back to the gym after dinner to work out some more. At times, he found himself running around his neighborhood in the dark until his   indicator reset to zero at midnight. On the day of the   on the show’s finale, Mr. Cahill and the others dressed carefully to hide the rolls of loose skin that remained, to their surprise and horror, after they had lost weight. They wore compression undergarments to hold it in. Mr. Cahill knew he could not maintain his finale weight of 191 pounds. He was so mentally and physically exhausted he barely moved for two weeks after his publicity tour ended. But he had started a new career giving motivational speeches as the biggest loser ever, and for the next four years, he managed to keep his weight below 255 pounds by exercising two to three hours a day. But two years ago, he went back to his job as a surveyor, and the pounds started coming back. Soon the scale hit 265. Mr. Cahill started weighing and measuring his food again and stepped up his exercise. He got back down to 235 to 240 pounds. But his weight edged up again, to 275, then 295. His slow metabolism is part of the problem, and so are his food cravings. He opens a bag of chips, thinking he will have just a few. “I’d eat five bites. Then I’d black out and eat the whole bag of chips and say, ‘What did I do? ’” Dr. Lee Kaplan, an obesity researcher at Harvard, says the brain sets the number of calories we consume, and it can be easy for people to miss that how much they eat matters less than the fact that their bodies want to hold on to more of those calories. Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, an obesity researcher at Columbia University who has collaborated with Dr. Hall in previous studies, said the body’s systems for regulating how many calories are consumed and how many are burned are tightly coupled when people are not strenuously trying to lose weight or to maintain a significant weight loss. Still, pounds can insidiously creep on. “We eat about 900, 000 to a million calories a year, and burn them all except those annoying 3, 000 to 5, 000 calories that result in an average annual weight gain of about one to two pounds,” he said. “These very small differences between intake and output average out to only about 10 to 20 calories per day  —   less than one Starburst candy  —   but the cumulative consequences over time can be devastating. ” “It is not clear whether this small imbalance and the resultant weight gain that most of us experience as we age are the consequences of changes in lifestyle, the environment or just the biology of aging,” Dr. Rosenbaum added. The effects of small imbalances between calories eaten and calories burned are more pronounced when people deliberately lose weight, Dr. Hall said. Yes, there are signals to regain weight, but he wondered how many extra calories people were driven to eat. He found a way to figure that out. He analyzed data from a clinical trial in which people took a diabetes drug, canagliflozin, that makes them spill 360 calories a day into their urine, or took a placebo. The drug has no known effect on the brain, and the person does not realize those calories are being spilled. Those taking the drug gradually lost weight. But for every five pounds they lost, they were, without realizing it, eating an additional 200 calories a day. Those extra calories, Dr. Hall said, were a bigger driver of weight regained than the slowing of the metabolism. And, he added, if people fought the urge to eat those calories, they would be hungry. “Unless they continue to fight it constantly, they will regain the weight,” he said. All this does not mean that modest weight loss is hopeless, experts say. Individuals respond differently to diet manipulations  —     or   diets, for example  —   and to exercise and   drugs, among other interventions. But Dr. Ludwig said that simply cutting calories was not the answer. “There are no doubt exceptional individuals who can ignore primal biological signals and maintain weight loss for the long term by restricting calories,” he said, but he added that “for most people, the combination of incessant hunger and slowing metabolism is a recipe for weight regain  —   explaining why so few individuals can maintain weight loss for more than a few months. ” Dr. Rosenbaum agreed. “The difficulty in keeping weight off reflects biology, not a pathological lack of willpower affecting   of the U. S. A. ,” he said. Mr. Cahill knows that now. And with his report from Dr. Hall’s group showing just how much his metabolism had slowed, he stopped blaming himself for his weight gain. “That shame that was on my shoulders went off,” he said."
"Just how   is Hillary Kerr, the    founder of a   digital media company in Los Angeles? She can tell you what song was playing five years ago on the jukebox at the bar where she somewhat randomly met the man who became her husband. It was “These Days,” the version sung by Nico, the German   made famous by Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. Actually, the song had been playing just before she met Jonathan Leahy, now 38, on that December night in 2011 at the 4100 Bar in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. Ms. Kerr can’t remember exactly what was playing when they met because at that moment she was jumping up and down “like Tigger,” as she put it. In answering the usual     questions, Mr. Leahy told her he was a music supervisor for “Girls,” the HBO show created by and starring Lena Dunham. That was enough to get Ms. Kerr bouncing. “Your music has changed my life!” she told Mr. Leahy. Mr. Leahy, who is quiet but not shy (at least he doesn’t jump up and down upon meeting people) was mesmerized. “My main reaction,” he said, “was it’s a lot easier to talk to beautiful women in a bar when you’re working on a hit show. ” They exchanged email addresses, more an act of politeness than promise. Then their soundtrack went quiet for almost a year. Both Mr. Leahy and Ms. Kerr had active social lives, but they were focused on their careers. Mr. Leahy, who grew up in Laconia, N. H. graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. in 2000 and landed in Los Angeles later that year. Now he is a music supervisor with Aperture Music and is joined by Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe in being responsible for the music on “Girls. ” The team has also worked on films including “Trainwreck” and television series such as “New Girl. ” In addition, Mr. Leahy is the music supervisor for “Survivor’s Remorse” on Starz. Ms. Kerr grew up in the La Jolla section of San Diego, graduated from the University of Southern California in 2000 and eventually made her way to New York, where she took a job as an assistant at Elle magazine. In 2005 she moved back to the West Coast, to Los Angeles, and with a fellow Elle alum,  Katherine Power, created a company best known for its website, Who What Wear, which casts an eye on celebrity culture and fashion it now has 13 million monthly unique visitors. Ms. Kerr and Ms. Power also started the Who What Wear clothing and accessories line sold at Target. It was nine months after their initial meeting that Mr. Leahy emailed Ms. Kerr. He had a friend who wanted to get into the fashion industry. Ms. Kerr, Mr. Leahy and his friend met for a long, boozy brunch. They began to email and text a bit. “There was banter,” Ms. Kerr said, but neither knew the interest or intention of the other. A few months later, she texted to ask if he could help her score a ticket to see the band Lord Huron. Mr. Leahy happens to be a friend of Ben Schneider, the band’s lead singer, and had an extra ticket. “This was one of those moments where the universe conspires to make you seem cooler than you actually are,” Mr. Leahy said. He and Ms. Kerr met up at the show. That is when Mr. Leahy and Ms. Kerr moved into the ambiguous “mixtape era,” in which for months they emailed and texted each other with coy “are we just friends or what” texts revolving around music. For example, Ms. Kerr was visiting New York and texted Mr. Leahy a request for “walking around SoHo music. ” He sent her a link to “Love Me Again,” by John Newman. It has a club vibe but romantic lyrics. “I wanted to read into it,” Ms. Kerr said, but she figured (correctly, it turns out) that her new friend was a bit of a clueless guy who didn’t spend much time thinking about how a woman might react to such a song being shared with her. Another time he emailed her a link to a Fleetwood Mac version of “Need Your Love So Bad. ” After listening to it, Ms. Kerr said, “I called my friend Katie. ” “At that time,” she continued, “I just referred to him as ‘the supervisor.’ She knew I had a crush on him. She said, ‘How can it not mean something? ’” Mr. Leahy acknowledged that it might be difficult for a person to think he was not sending Ms. Kerr a message with this song. “I sort of thought, ‘Maybe it’s too much. ’” But he shared it with her anyway. (This is the same man who sent her the song “BedBedBedBedBed, Vacationer Remix,” by Deleted Scenes, “during the friend phase,” Ms. Kerr said.) Ms. Kerr played the game, too. She made Mr. Leahy a mix CD (handwritten liner notes and all) that she titled “Feynman Diagrams for All,” after Mr. Leahy told her in a text conversation that he thought the idea of Feynman diagrams  —   in which physicists map out the interactions of subatomic particles  —   was romantic. On the mix, Ms. Kerr included the Mazzy Star song “I’ve Been Let Down. ” It was “a bit of an Easter egg of my actual feelings,” she said. Around this time, Ms. Kerr texted Mr. Leahy a photo of the drink menu from a bar,  the Roger Room. She had focused on a drink named for the song “Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis,” which happens to be Mr. Leahy’s favorite Tom Waits tune. “This made me rethink things a bit,” he said, adding, “Hillary Kerr was clearly not to be trifled with. ” In early 2014, Mr. Leahy invited her to a Bleachers concert. The band’s lead singer is Jack Antonoff, who is Ms. Dunham’s boyfriend. Ms. Dunham was at the concert as well, and on meeting Ms. Kerr, she said, “I’ve heard so much about you. ” Ms. Kerr and Mr. Leahy shared their first kiss that night. He proposed to her on Polihale Beach in Kauai, Hawaii, on Jan. 1, 2016. On Dec. 10, 125 friends and relatives gathered in Palm Springs, Calif. at the Colony Palms Hotel, which was opened in 1936 by the reputed mobster Al Wertheimer and whose poolside guests have included Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, Kirk Douglas and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Ms. Kerr walked down a grassy aisle in a   courtyard wearing a structured lace Reem Acra dress, strapless with a bustier and a full skirt. Four musicians played “Once, With Feeling,” an instrumental song Mr. Leahy wrote for Ms. Kerr. . Just minutes into the cocktail reception, a few of Ms. Kerr’s best friends descended upon her. Jen Atkin, the celebrity hairstylist and social media star, started fussing with the flower she had sewn into the bride’s hair. Joey Maalouf, the celebrity makeup artist who is a creator of the       service the Glam App, whipped out a tube of lip gloss and reapplied it to the bride’s pucker. He had done her makeup. “The look we went for is sickeningly stunning and perfect,” he said. Guests mingled over drinks by the pool, which was framed by banquette tables lit from above by strings of bulbs. The sky turned pink before the stars appeared, and guests snapped photos and shared them with the hundreds of thousands who follow these members of the   illuminati (#imwithkerr and #letsgetleahyed). “This looks like it’s art directed,” Eva Chen, the head of fashion partnerships for Instagram, said as she took it all in. She had worked as an assistant at Elle with Ms. Kerr. Friends of both the bride and the groom celebrated what they saw as a great match, based on passion not only for each other but also for music. Leigh Belz Ray, the features and news director at InStyle, was another former Elle colleague who made the trip. “Hillary loves music, and it’s not just a casual thing,” Ms. Ray said. “We used to say the ultimate fantasy was to become a music director, and now she’s married to one. ” After a romantic first dance to Solomon Burke’s “If You Need Me,” Mr. and Mrs. Leahy (she will use her maiden name professionally) settled into several hours of serious dancing to songs spun by a D. J. And before they left for their Hawaiian honeymoon, Mr. Leahy completed his first important act as husband. He pulled together many of the songs that could be considered the soundtrack to their romance and made his wife a mixtape. When Dec. 10, 2016 Where Colony Palms Hotel, Palm Springs, Calif. Flora The bride and groom were married under a white birch trellis, because white birch is the state tree of New Hampshire, where Mr. Leahy grew up and where his parents, Richard and Marie Leahy, reside. The structure was wrapped in white peonies, Sahara roses and camellia greens. Readings Mr. Leahy’s family is Roman Catholic Ms. Kerr’s parents, John and Carole Kerr, are more spiritual than religiously observant. Many of the guests had an artistic bent. The bride and groom planned accordingly. Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach, author and lifelong family friend of Ms. Kerr, officiated. Friends and relatives stood to read poems from James Kavanaugh and Mary Oliver, as well as a passage from the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing   marriage. “A little Catholic priest, a little lesbian Pulitzer Prize winner, a little equal rights for all,” Ms. Kerr explained after the ceremony."
"Angels are everywhere in the Muñiz family’s apartment in the Bronx: paintings of angels on the wall, ceramic angels flanking the ancient VCR, angels strumming lyres or blowing little golden trumpets on the bathroom shelves. As José and Zoraida Muñiz and their children have struggled to deal with a   series of trials and setbacks, including cancer, debilitating epilepsy, deep depression and near eviction, it has sometimes seemed as if angels and love were the only forces holding things together. Zoraida’s early life in Puerto Rico was like something from a tropical Dickens novel. She and her siblings and mother built a house by hand after a hurricane ravaged their home and the children’s father withdrew support. Then Zoraida’s grandfather  —   the father of her absent father  —   destroyed the house in a rage. She was barely a teenager when she met José, a Vietnam War veteran. With permission from her uncle, a judge, they were married. She was 14. He was 29. They moved to New York in 1983 and started a new life. He built boilers. She worked in construction, using skills she learned as a child, and in a clothing store. But in 1987, Mr. Muñiz began having violent seizures  —   eight or 10 a day. They did not respond to medication. He could no longer work. She stopped working to take care of him. Still determined to live something like a normal life, they started a family. Their first child, José Jr. had a heart defect. By the time he was 2 he had had six   operations. That’s where the angels came in  —   the first one was a painting, a gift from a cousin.  “When they operated on my son, they told me he was an angel, because he was supposed to die,” Ms. Muñiz, 50, said. “From there I figured that angels are taking care of me and protecting me and my family. ” All the angels are gifts from friends and relatives, or picked up off the street, just like all the furniture in the Muñizes’ overstuffed apartment in a   complex on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx, much of it restored by Ms. Muñiz. “So many people throw away things, so I don’t have to buy,” she said. A second son, Jesus, became epileptic at 3. A girl, Maria, completed the family. In 2007, Mr. Muñiz had what felt like a horrible, stubborn toothache. It turned out to be cancer of the lower jaw. Ms. Muñiz stayed in the room with her husband while he received radiation treatment. “I’m willing to take anything with him,” she said. “I never left him alone, and I never will. ” Radiation did not work. To save Mr. Muñiz’s life, surgeons removed his tongue and his lower jaw and cut a hole through his esophagus. Disfigured, depressed and unable to speak, he can consume nothing thicker than milk and needs   care. This is the household where the Muñiz children grew up. “We’ve been through every craziness,” said José Jr. 24, who has suffered depression so severe that he dropped out of college and confined himself to the apartment, “every up and down. ” For years at a time, the family held on, seemingly by a thread. Over the summer, the younger son, Jesus, 22, got a   job at a Zaro’s Bakery in Manhattan’s financial district. Because the family’s rent is tied to income, the rent tripled in August, to about $770 a month from $245. But Jesus had school bills to pay, and the family paid some of the funeral expenses for José Sr. ’s mother, who died over the summer, and things began to unravel. They fell behind on the rent and utilities. Food was often scarce. The family regularly skipped meals. It was around this time that Ms. Muñiz got in touch with Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund. It covered their back rent, got them warm coats and blankets and helped them apply for food stamps for the first time. And with $600 from the Neediest Cases Fund, the family paid its electric bill. Things are looking up in some ways. Jesus is returning to college, where he is on a   track and wants to be a paramedic. Maria graduated in December from a   nursing program. Thinking of her father and his illness, she wants to be an oncologist. José Jr. was just accepted to the New York Film Academy’s photography program. But José Sr. continues to battle cancer. Zoraida is severely depressed. What keeps her going? she was asked. She gestured toward her family, sitting beside her beneath the painted angels. “They give me my strength, even if I have times I collapse,” she said. José Jr. agreed. “I use my parents and siblings as my motivation,” he said. “We’re all there for each other,” Ms. Muñiz said."
"With Donald J. Trump about to take control of the White House, it would seem a dark time for the renewable energy industry. After all, Mr. Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax, threatened to kill a global deal on climate change and promised to restore the coal industry to its former glory. So consider what happened in the middle of December, after investors had had a month to absorb the implications of Mr. Trump’s victory. The federal government opened bidding on a tract of the ocean floor off New York State as a potential site for a huge wind farm. Up, up and away soared the offers  —   interest from the bidders was so fevered that the auction went through 33 rounds and spilled over to a second day. In the end, the winning bidder offered the federal Treasury $42 million, more than twice what the government got in August for oil leases  —   oil leases  —   in the Gulf of Mexico. Who won the bid? None other than Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, which is in the midst of a major campaign to turn itself into a big player in renewable energy. We do not know for sure that the New York wind farm will get built, but we do know this: The energy transition is real, and Mr. Trump is not going to stop it. On a global scale, more than half the investment in new electricity generation is going into renewable energy. That is more than $300 billion a year, a sign of how powerful the momentum has become. Wind power is booming in the United States, with the industry adding manufacturing jobs in the reddest states. When Mr. Trump’s appointees examine the facts, they will learn that   technician is projected to be the   occupation in America over the next decade. The election of Mr. Trump left climate activists and environmental groups in despair. They had pinned their hopes on a Hillary Clinton victory and a continuation of President Obama’s strong push to tackle global warming. Now, of course, everything is in flux. In the worst case, with a sufficiently pliant Congress, Mr. Trump could roll back a decade of progress on climate change. Barring some miraculous conversion on Mr. Trump’s part, his election cannot be interpreted as anything but bad news for the climate agenda. Yet despair might be an overreaction. For starters, when Mr. Trump gets to the White House, he will find that the federal government actually has relatively little control over American energy policy, and particularly over electricity generation. The coal industry has been ravaged in part by cheap natural gas, which is abundant because of technological changes in the way it is produced, and there is no lever in the Oval Office that Mr. Trump can pull to reverse that. The intrinsically weak federal role was a source of frustration for Mr. Obama and his aides, but now it will work to the benefit of environmental advocates. They have already persuaded more than half the states to adopt mandates on renewable energy. Efforts to roll those back have largely failed, with the latest development coming only last week, when Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a Republican, vetoed a rollback bill. The federal government does offer important subsidies for renewable energy, and they will surely become a target in the new Congress. But those subsidies are already scheduled to fall drastically over five years, in a deal cut a year ago that gave the oil industry some favors and that passed Congress with many Republican votes. If Mr. Trump pushes for an early end to the subsidies, he will find that renewable energy has friends in the Republican Party. Topping that list is Charles E. Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa. That state  —     in presidential politics, let us remember  —   will soon be getting 40 percent of its electricity from wind power. “Senator Grassley has been and continues to be an extraordinary leader and champion for the wind industry,” said Tom Kiernan, the head of the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group. When I spoke with him last week, Mr. Kiernan did not sound like a man gnashing his teeth about the impending Trump era. By his group’s calculations, $80 billion of wind industry investment is in the pipeline for the United States over the next few years. “We are creating jobs throughout America,   jobs, and we think   Trump will want that to continue,” he said. If Mr. Trump really wanted to roll back the clock, he could try to get Congress to override all the state mandates, a gross violation of the supposed conservative commitment to federalism. But it would be a titanic fight, some Republican senators would defect on principle, and Mr. Trump would almost certainly lose. So if the damage Mr. Trump can do domestically is limited by circumstance, what about the international effort against global warming? That is the prospect that has David G. Victor most worried. Dr. Victor, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, is one of the closest observers of global climate politics. While the nations of the world agreed a year ago to a landmark deal to tackle global warming, that consensus is fragile, he pointed out. The Paris Agreement is really an outline more promise than reality. Mr. Trump has vowed to withdraw. Right now, other countries are saying they will go forward even if he does so, but it is not hard to imagine the thing unraveling. As part of the negotiations, the Obama administration promised billions of dollars from American taxpayers to help poor countries adjust to the devastation of global warming. “That’s a big part of the glue that held the Paris deal together,” Dr. Victor pointed out. Mr. Trump is considered likely to abandon that pledge. Perhaps the biggest threat to the climate agenda posed by the incoming administration is not anything that Mr. Trump might do, but rather what he will not do. While the energy transition is real, it is still in its earliest stages. Iowa may soon get 40 percent of its power from wind, but for the United States as a whole, the figure is closer to 5 percent. The transition is simply not happening fast enough. The pledges countries made in Paris, even if kept, are not ambitious enough. To meet the climate goals embodied in the Paris Agreement, the world needed an American president who would have pushed hard to accelerate the energy transition. You can debate whether Mrs. Clinton would have been that president, but it is certainly clear that Mr. Trump will not be. So as Washington goes into reverse gear on climate policy, seas will keep rising and heat waves will get worse. Later this month, global monitoring agencies are expected to report that 2016 was the hottest year in the historical record, beating out 2015, which beat out 2014. If nothing else, the next four years may be a fascinating test of just how far politics can become divorced from physical reality."
"THOMPSONS, Tex.  —   Can one of the most promising  —   and troubled  —   technologies for fighting global warming survive during the administration of Donald J. Trump? The technology, carbon capture, involves pulling carbon dioxide out of smokestacks and industrial processes before the   gas can make its way into the atmosphere. Mr. Trump’s denial of the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting climate change, a view shared by many of his cabinet nominees, might appear to doom any such environmental initiatives. But the new Petra Nova plant about to start running here, about 30 miles southwest of Houston, is a bright spot for the technology’s supporters. It is being completed essentially on time and within its budget, unlike many previous such projects. When it fires up, the plant, which is attached to one of the power company NRG’s hulking   units, will draw 90 percent of the CO2 from the emissions produced by 240 megawatts of generated power. That is a fraction of the roughly 3, 700 megawatts produced at this gargantuan plant, the largest in the Lone Star State. Still, it is enough to capture 1. 6 million tons of carbon dioxide each year  —   equivalent to the greenhouse gas produced by driving 3. 5 billion miles, or the CO2 from generating electricity for 214, 338 homes. From a tower hundreds of feet above the Petra Nova operation, the carbon capture system looks like a fever dream of an Erector set fanatic, with mazes of pipes and gleaming tanks set off from the main plant’s skyscraping smokestacks and busy coal conveyors. Petra Nova uses the most common technology for carbon capture. The exhaust stream, pushed down a snaking conduit to the Petra Nova equipment, is exposed to a solution of chemicals known as amines, which bond with the carbon dioxide. That solution is pumped to a regenerator, or stripper, which heats the amine and releases the CO2. The gas is drawn off and compressed for further use, and the amine solution is then cycled back through the system to absorb more CO2. Petra Nova, a   joint venture of NRG and JX Nippon Oil and Gas Exploration, will not just grab the CO2, it will use it, pushing compressed CO2 through a new pipeline 81 miles to an oil field. The gas will be injected into wells, a technique known as enhanced oil recovery, that should increase production to 15, 000 barrels a day from about 300 barrels a day. And since NRG owns a quarter of the oil recovery project, what comes out of the ground will help pay for the carbon capture operation. The plant, which has received $190 million from the federal government, can be economically viable if the price of oil is about $50 a barrel, said David Knox, an NRG spokesman. The company expects to declare the plant operational in January, Mr. Knox said. Aware of problems with carbon capture projects around the country and of the risks of hubris, he said: “We’re not going to declare victory before it’s time. ” If the price of oil stabilizes or rises, and if tax breaks for developing the technology continue and markets for carbon storage develop, he said, utilities might ask, “why would I not want to put a carbon capture system on my plant?” But developing   carbon capture has been neither straightforward nor easy. So far, problems have bedeviled major projects, often costing far more than projected and taking longer to complete. The federal government has canceled projects like Future Gen, which was granted more than $1 billion by the Obama administration. Carbon capture systems are not just expensive to build they tend to be   and make the plant less efficient over all  —   a problem known as “parasitic load. ” The Petra Nova carbon capture process gets its energy from a separate power plant constructed for the purpose, which NRG says makes the system more efficient than it would otherwise be, and frees up all of the capacity of the main power plant to sell all of the electricity it produces. The company estimates that the next plant it builds could cost 20 percent less, thanks to lessons learned this time around. If Petra Nova succeeds, it means a boost for carbon capture. Despite carbon capture’s problems, its supporters, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency, call the technology, known as carbon capture sequestration, crucial for meeting emissions standards that can prevent the worst effects of climate change. “If you don’t have C. C. S. the chance of success goes down, and the cost of success goes up,” said Julio Friedmann, an expert at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California and a former Energy Department official. “If you do have C. C. S. the chance of success goes up and the cost of success goes down. ” Carbon capture is proving itself, said David Mohler, the deputy assistant secretary for clean coal and carbon management at the federal Energy Department. Developing technologies often involves delay and cost overruns initially, he said. “You cannot engineer all the bugs out from inside a cubicle  —   you really have to do this stuff in the real world,” he said. Driving down costs, he noted, is what engineers and businesses do through research, development and production. He cited the plummeting cost of initially expensive technologies like solar power. “We do figure things out as we go,” he said. What the Trump administration will do with carbon capture is, at this point, anyone’s guess. “The technology only makes sense in a world where you are seeking to avoid putting CO2 into the atmosphere,” said Mark Brownstein, a vice president for the climate and energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund. But some supporters of the technology see reasons for hope. “I actually think it’s a moment of optimism,” said Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who met with Mr. Trump last month as a potential agriculture secretary. Ms. Heitkamp   legislation  with another Democrat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, to expand and extend tax breaks for carbon capture projects. “What I saw with the   was a laserlike focus on jobs,” she said. “I think he was intrigued” about the economic opportunity that carbon capture could provide to keep coal power generation in the national mix, she added. One of the pillars of Mr. Trump’s campaign was his intention to revive the fortunes of the coal industry through support of   clean coal. And while the exact meaning of the   phrase is open to interpretation, it generally includes not just technologies that remove soot and   pollutants, but also carbon dioxide. Ms. Heitkamp said that businesses, too, were likely to continue development of carbon capture technology, since they planned their plant investments on a curve of decades and are loath to change course because of a single election. “The decision they are making is not, what does the political outlook look like today? What’s it look like over the life of this plant?” Although she concedes that a   revival of coal’s fortunes is unlikely, carbon capture could be a way to extend the life of current facilities while keeping the nation’s energy mix diverse. Jeff Erikson, general manager at the Global C. C. S. Institute, which promotes the technology, said he did not expect to see a great number of new coal plants on the way. “I wouldn’t say carbon capture is going to rescue the coal industry,” he said, but pointed out that there is great potential for applying carbon capture to diverse natural gas plants and to industrial applications. Captured carbon can be used not just for oil production but a widening range of industrial processes, or can even be pumped into the ground. One of the most innovative approaches to carbon capture is being tried 50 miles east of the Petra Nova plant, in La Porte, Tex. where a consortium of companies is trying an entirely new approach to   power generation. In a $140 million, 50 megawatt demonstration project, the company, Net Power, will use superheated carbon dioxide in much the same way that conventional power plants use steam to drive turbines. This system, invented by a British engineer, Rodney Allam, eliminates the inefficiency inherent in heating water into steam and cooling it again. The power plant produces a stream of very pure, pressurized carbon dioxide that is ready for pipelines without much of the additional processing that conventional carbon capture systems require. The creators say that their technology will produce electric power at a price comparable to   power plants, the efficient   plants that burn gas to power one turbine and then use the excess heat from that process to generate additional power with a steam turbine. That means, in effect, that “the cost of being green is zero,” said Bill Brown, the chief executive of Net Power. “The potential to capture CO2 at no additional cost would be a game changer,” said Fatima Maria Ahmad, a fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a think tank. Net Power combines the resources of Exelon Generation, a power company, the engineering and construction firm CBI, and 8 Rivers Capital, which developed the technology used in the project. The centerpiece of the project is a special turbine built by Toshiba and designed for the punishingly high pressure used in the process. And while any system that so closely resembles a rocket engine has the potential for what engineers delicately refer to as a RUD  —   “rapid unplanned disassembly”  —   those working directly on the project say they have designed safety features that give them confidence. Even if the United States government shows little interest in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint under Mr. Trump and a Republican Congress, consortium officials say they expect to find ready customers from companies in the United States and around the globe, where the threat of climate change is fully acknowledged. “We see this very much playing into all parts of the world,” said Daniel McCarthy, executive vice president for CBI’s technology operating group. Environmentalists remain divided on the issue of carbon capture, said John Coequyt, global climate policy director for Sierra Club. “This is the issue where the biggest range of positions exists within the environmental community,” he said. Groups like the Clean Air Task Force favor it strongly. Other factions call clean coal a fig leaf to keep coal, with all of its environmental baggage, in the energy mix. And many suggest the billions of dollars spent on trying to capture carbon would be better directed to the technologies that don’t pollute the atmosphere in the first place. Dr. Friedmann, the former energy official, predicted that the technology would prove its usefulness. “It’s convenient to just say ‘Keep it in the ground,’ ” he said, referring to an   slogan. “What I prefer to say is ‘Keep it from the air. ’”"
"WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.  —   When   Donald J. Trump rang in the new year this weekend, he did it in   opulence, joined by the actor Sylvester Stallone, the gossip page fixture Fabio and a crowd of wealthy developers reveling under the swaying palm trees at Mr. Trump’s    resort in Palm Beach. President George W. Bush had his ranch in Crawford, Tex. His father had a compound in Kennebunkport, Me. President Obama has taken frequent vacations in Hawaii, staying at a private home. But Mr. Trump’s   private club in Florida, where he has spent the past two weeks away from his home in New York City, is likely to eclipse them all as the 45th president’s winter White House. And that was always the intention of Marjorie Meriweather Post, the cereal heiress and the property’s original owner, who left    to the federal government when she died in 1973, hoping it would serve as a home for presidents. But the government had no interest in her plan, and Mr. Trump later bought the property for less than $10 million, turning it into a club where membership costs six figures. Mr. Trump’s arrival was greeted with sneers by the Palm Beach elite, and he opened up   ’s membership to Jews and   who had been excluded from other   establishments. He was also the first club owner on the island to admit an openly gay couple. Since Mr. Trump’s victory in November,    has been stuffed with guests attracted by an amenity unique to this club: the chance to rub shoulders with the next president. “It’s like going to Disneyland and knowing Mickey Mouse will be there all day long,” said Jeff Greene, a developer and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Senate from Florida in 2010, who is a    member and was a Hillary Clinton supporter. Instead of hosting major corporate executives and potential cabinet secretaries for interviews inside a boxy transition office at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Trump has been seated at an ornately designed couch, upholstered in pale fabric laced with gold, beneath a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a scene resembling a mansion in “Sunset Boulevard” or “Citizen Kane,” two of Mr. Trump’s favorite movies. At night, the couches are moved out and tables are added to accommodate the evening cocktail crowd, among whom Mr. Trump moves from one table to the next, the most powerful greeter in the world. At the annual New Year’s Eve party on Saturday night, a   white menu included “Mr. Trump’s wedge salad,” a wild mushroom and Swiss chard ravioli and a “breakfast buffet. ” Those in attendance drifted in under a    striped awning, the men dressed in tuxedos, the women in ball gowns, many with their hair swept high. Guests stepped onto a red carpet as they entered the club and wandered over to a poolside cocktail party. Mr. Trump later delivered remarks, according to a guest, who said he thanked his family and the club members for their support over the years. Howie Carr, a conservative radio host who was supportive of Mr. Trump, roamed the crowd, with Mr. Carr posting on Twitter that his daughter asked Mr. Trump if she could be an intern in the White House. Mr. Trump’s two adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr. posed for photographs. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” were also there. Like most aspects of Mr. Trump’s business interests, the party generated controversy as tickets to it were made available to club members and guests for a little more than $500. Mr. Trump’s aides rejected the questions. Mr. Trump returned to New York on Sunday night. But the club will remain an escape for him. His contentious Twitter posts belie his relative calm when he is at    compared with when he is isolated inside Trump Tower. Mr. Trump’s combative public persona  —   often on display during his campaign  —   mostly dissolves behind the   walls of his castle. “   is an environment he can control,” said the historian Douglas Brinkley, who last week attended a    lunch with a longtime club member, Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media. “I watched him hold court  —   he was so comfortable in his own skin, and so relaxed. ” Mr. Ruddy has hosted Mr. Carr and Laura Ingraham, another conservative radio host who supported Mr. Trump, at the club and has introduced Mr. Trump to a range of news media figures, politicians and donors. He described the   as “seeking the   Donald Trump: totally at ease, very positive, very gregarious. ” Mr. Trump appears to feed off contact with the people at the club. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, he queried dinner guests about whether he should appoint Rudolph W. Giuliani or Mitt Romney as his secretary of state (he ended up picking neither). During this trip, he has heaped praise on his ultimate choice for the job, Rex W. Tillerson, the head of Exxon Mobil. (Mr. Trump has called him “Mr. Exxon. ”) He talks about the work he has done to find a solution for the problems at the Department of Veteran Affairs, which included a recent meeting with a number of executives at   . Mr. Trump told a New York Times reporter that he intended to make Brian Burns, the businessman son of a confidante of Joseph P. Kennedy, the ambassador to Ireland. Isaac Perlmutter, the reclusive head of Marvel Entertainment, is a    member who helped Mr. Trump put that meeting together. Mr. Trump has also held   with Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and a club member, and hosted prominent figures like Carlos Slim, the billionaire who is Mexico’s richest man. Mr. Trump his wife, Melania and their    son, Barron, inhabit a residential area of the club. His adult children and their families usually stay in nearby cabanas on the property. Mr. Trump frequently dines on the patio, a central point of action, where at night a singer plays with a small band, sometimes belting out requests from Mr. Trump and other guests. (“My Way,” a song popularized by Frank Sinatra, was one recent choice.) A violinist sometimes moves among tables, plucking tunes like the theme from “Fiddler on the Roof. ” Mr. Trump has given the cadre of White House reporters who now cover him some access to the club, but grudgingly so  —   he once again eluded the reporters covering him on Saturday, slipping away without any warning to play golf at another of his clubs nearby in Jupiter. And outside the confines of    old grievances flare up. On the golf course, Mr. Trump spotted Harry Hurt, a biographer who wrote critically of Mr. Trump years ago, preparing to play a round with David H. Koch, a billionaire conservative donor. Mr. Trump ordered club officials to remove Mr. Hurt from the property, according to a Facebook post by Mr. Hurt. Over the years, Mr. Trump has also been perpetually at loggerheads with Palm Beach officials. He has filed lawsuits attempting to keep noisy planes from flying over    and there have been disputes over the height of his oversize flagpole on the grounds. With its owner’s coming new job, the club has had some changes. Guests now go through an elaborate security screen to gain access to the main entrance. Secret Service agents are now sprinkled throughout the property, at night blending into the shrubbery along the grounds. Robin Bernstein, a club member for nearly 25 years, said that some club members might express frustration, but that most thought it was important “that we keep Donald and his family safe. ” Attendees seem to see a benefit so far in having the   around, and expect it will continue. “The loser in this game is Camp David,” said Mr. Brinkley, referring to the longtime presidential retreat in Maryland. “Once you’re at    and it’s so opulent and   the idea of suddenly inserting yourself into Camp David’s Maryland mountains environment seems unlikely. ”"
"This article is part of a series aimed at helping you navigate life’s opportunities and challenges. What else should we write about? Contact us: smarterliving@nytimes. com. When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you hop in the shower, check your email or grab a doughnut? What did you say to your roommates on the way out the door? Salad or hamburger for lunch? When you got home, did you put on your sneakers and go for a run, or eat dinner in front of the television? Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of   decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we eat, how we spend our evenings, and how often we exercise have enormous impacts. This is particularly true in our 20s, when so many of our habits are still up for grabs. The patterns you establish right now will impact your health, productivity, financial security and happiness for decades. How much money you make, how much time you spend with your friends and family, how well your body functions years from now  —   all of these, in many ways, are products of the habits you are building today. (Related: The 8 health habits experts say you need in your 20s) And in the last decade, our understanding of the neurology of habit formation has been transformed. We’ve learned how habits form  —   and why they are so hard to break. We now know how to create good habits and change bad ones like never before. At the core of every habit is a neurological loop with three parts: A cue, a routine and a reward. To understand how to create habits  —   such as exercise habits  —   you must learn to establish the right cues and rewards. In 2002, researchers at New Mexico State University studied 266 individuals, most of whom worked out at least three times a week. They found that many of them had started running or lifting weights almost on a whim, or because they suddenly had free time or wanted to deal with unexpected stresses in their lives. However, the reason they continued exercising  —   why it became a habit  —   was because of a specific cue and a specific reward. If you want to start running each morning, it’s essential that you choose a simple cue (like always lacing up your sneakers before breakfast or always going for a run at the same time of day) and a clear reward (like a sense of accomplishment from recording your miles, or the endorphin rush you get from a jog). But countless studies have shown that, at first, the rewards inherent in exercise aren’t enough. So to teach your brain to associate exercise with a reward, you need to give yourself something you really enjoy  —   like a small piece of chocolate  —   after your workout. This is counterintuitive, because most people start exercising to lose weight. But the goal here is to train your brain to associate a certain cue (“It’s 5 o’clock”) with a routine (“Three miles down! ”) and a reward (“Chocolate! ”). Eventually, your brain will start expecting the reward inherent in exercise (“It’s 5 o’clock. Three miles down! Endorphin rush! ”) and you won’t need the chocolate anymore. In fact, you won’t even want it. But until your neurology learns to enjoy those endorphins and the other rewards inherent in exercise, you need to   the process. And then, over time, it will become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning. You won’t want the chocolate anymore. You’ll just crave the endorphins. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, will start triggering a craving for the inherent rewards to come. Want more? You might also like: • The scientific   workout • No time to workout? Try exercising on the job • How to pick a health insurance plan"
"It’s the season for family travel and photos  —   and perhaps enlarging some of those images of snowy landscapes or tropical getaways to decorate your home. There are, of course, the usual print services and methods. You can choose a glossy or matte finish, print a photo on canvas, or make it into a poster with a few clicks online at photo sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly, professional photo shops like Adorama and Mpix, or drugstores and   chains like Walgreens and Costco. But the web is also home to many   printing services, as well as uncommon surfaces on which to enlarge photos for display, be it burlap, wood boards, acrylic or    fabric. Why not try some fresh sites and methods? I recently sent some   quality iPhone vacation photos to a handful of companies that I’d never used before and had them enlarged to various sizes and printed on different surfaces. I’ve also offered some guidance about bulk digitizing those boxes of old travel photos sitting in your closet or basement so that you can begin the New Year if not with a vacation, then with a   home. Of all the ways to turn photos into wall art, I was most interested in trying engineer prints, named for the large, lightweight prints used by architects. For less than the cost of a couple of movie tickets, you can make huge enlargements. Mind you, it’s a particular aesthetic, one that’s most likely to appeal to people who are after an industrial, shabby chic or bohemian look. The paper is thin and the lines of the images are softer than a fine art print. And engineer prints need not be formally framed. People stick them to their walls with washi tape, a crafting tape that comes in innumerable colors and prints or they hang the prints using wood poster rails or skeleton clips. For a while, engineer prints from photos were primarily available in black and white, but now you can find them in color, too. One of the easiest ways to order them online is through Parabo Press, which is run by Photojojo, an online photography gear shop, and Zoomin, a photo printing service in Asia. As with all printing sites, you upload your image, zoom in closer if you like, and then click to buy. The site’s engineer prints are 4 feet by 3 feet, and cost $20 in black and white, and $25 in color. I sent out two different photos to be made in black and white, and they came out, to my surprise, beautifully. I was impressed that they were able to be enlarged to such a degree and not look blurry. And the paper (while so thin I was worried about accidentally tearing it) lends it an artful, careless look rather than the expected framed print over the couch. Parabo Press is a breeze to use: It’s clean and easy to read, your options are straightforward, and there are no annoying upsells. The site also offers prints on metal, glass, newsprint and Zines (handmade magazines) calendars photo books and prints from its Risograph machine, which uses   ink and is described by Parabo as having “a cult following since its invention in 1980s Japan. ” A fabric print  —   not soft like a bedsheet, more like a place mat made of matte woven fabric  —   is another departure from a traditional photo enlargement. Order one from a site such as SnapBox and instead of framing it, you can peel and stick it on your wall. The site’s fabric posters adhere to (and can be peeled off) smooth surfaces such as untextured walls, glass, ceilings, tile and finished wood surfaces (avoid surfaces like stucco, concrete blocks, brick, unfinished wood, canvas or freshly painted walls). SnapBox offers fabric posters in more than a dozen sizes from 4x4 to 36x54, from less than $2 to about $80. I ordered a 24x36 fabric poster for $34. 99, a discounted price thanks to a holiday coupon  —   not cheap (you can buy fine art prints on other sites for less) but you’re printing on special material. Regardless of the cost, I expected the finished product to look like the sort of cheap thing one might see in a dorm room (it sticks to walls, after all) but I was pleasantly surprised. The fabric was durable and the details in the photo  —   crevasses in a glacier onlookers on a bridge  —   were nicely defined. SnapBox is a   site with clear instructions and pricing. In addition to fabric posters, it also offers fine art prints, photo books and prints on canvas and pillows. While many places can print photos on hard surfaces such as metal and acrylic, printing on wood boards is less common. The grain shows through your photos, which, thematically speaking, seems to make sense for certain subjects, like nature photos taken at, say, the beach or in a park. But what would something more modern, like a skyscraper or a tower, look like on wood? I decided to give it a try and put an image of Tokyo Tower on an 8x12 board ($65). I sent the photo to PhotoBarn, a family business that makes its products by hand in a “ ” in Tennessee. The result was a lovely departure from framed prints and from canvas, which can sometimes make striking photos look like amateur paintings. The wood was smooth and thick, and the image was crisp with a slight sheen  —   a perfect complement to the steel of Tokyo tower and the silver and glass of surrounding skyscrapers. For the most part the site is intuitive, though a few too many holiday sale buttons on the home page made for a disorienting start. PhotoBarn will also print your photos on canvas, burlap, and other wood products, like ornaments. I noticed a number of complaints about PhotoBarn on Yelp and the Better Business Bureau website regarding shipping speeds and customer service. I didn’t have a problem, but if time is of the essence, you may want to check with the company before placing an order. Once you’ve turned the best of your travel photos into art, it’s time to store the rest. If boxes of prints are taking up closet (and psychic) space, there are plenty of sites online that will scan your old photos (as well as negatives, slides and videos) so you can store them digitally. But there are several things to keep in mind. In general, these sites are a pain to navigate. They’re cluttered with too much text and fine print, and they offer so many options  —   Do you want your photos scanned in order? Do you want both sides of the photo scanned?  —   that if you don’t have a goal in mind before you go in, you can quickly be overwhelmed. Decide ahead of time what exactly you want to scan, how many photos you have and how you might use whatever you scan. Also, note that some of these companies by default send DVDs or CDs of your digital files. Not everyone has a CD or DVD player. If you want a thumb drive instead, be sure to select that option (if it’s offered) or call the company and see if it will provide one. Be aware, too, that it’s not unusual for these companies to have long lead times. A number of them digitize your photos in other countries, so it can take weeks to get your images back. For affordable bulk scans, ScanMyPhotos. com is an old standby (you can read David Pogue’s review on nytimes. com). The company will scan about 1, 800 photos at 300 dpi for $145 at its headquarters in Irvine, Calif. the cost of sending the photo box to you, as well as the shipping of the box to ScanMyPhotos and back to you again is included in the price. That’s one of the least costly and most uncomplicated deals around. Other companies charge for shipping photo boxes. I asked a photo editor at The Times if 300 dpi is sufficient for scanning and she said that to print photos at larger sizes, a higher dpi is preferable. ScanMyPhotos has such an option: a prepaid box for $259 for the same number of scans at 600 dpi instead of 300 dpi. A thumb drive is an additional $15. 95 a box. To find the best   place to scan photos and film, the Wirecutter, a consumer review site owned by The New York Times, researched 37 different scanning services and tested the top 12 contenders. Memories Renewed took the number one spot. The company, based in Minneapolis, Minn. offered “the best combination of price, quality, and turnaround time of any service we tested,” Wirecutter said. I was planning to try the service however, according to the Memories Renewed site, demand is so high at the moment that the lead time for most projects is more than two months. Scanning photos of any size up to 8. 5x11 is 60 cents a photo a thumb drive is $10 for 8 GB or $15 for 16 GB. Let’s say you don’t want to ship your irreplaceable photos in the mail. Or maybe you’d rather that strangers not see your photos and home videos. You could buy a scanner and scan your photos yourself, perhaps doing a batch for half an hour each day. Personally, I don’t want machines around my home collecting dust (and fast becoming outdated). So I decided to try the new PhotoScan app by Google Photos. It’s free and enables users to scan prints with a smartphone. First things first: These are not   scans. If you have prized photos in need of restoration, then go with a professional. However if, like me, you have a bunch of travel photos  —   landscapes, food, monuments  —   that you’re keeping simply because you want to remember where you were when, you may want to consider trying the app instead of giving up some privacy and spending upward of $150. By and large, PhotoScan is simple and quick, with almost no learning curve. If you try it, just make sure to hold your phone level when asked to move it over the image. Remember these words: Don’t tilt your phone! Most of the scans I made looked as good as the prints in terms of color and clarity. That said, this is unlikely to be your solution if you want   prints or have thousands of photos to scan. Once you get the hang of PhotoScan, using it becomes a repetitive, vaguely   activity. That is, unless the app crashes, which it did several times. But I was still glad for it. Even when it crashed, it took only the tap of a finger to begin again. And you can’t beat the price."
"Finally. The Second Avenue subway opened in New York City on Sunday, with thousands of riders flooding into its polished stations to witness a piece of history nearly a century in the making. They descended beneath the streets of the Upper East Side of Manhattan to board Q trains bound for Coney Island in Brooklyn. They cheered. Their eyes filled with tears. They snapped selfies in front of colorful mosaics lining the walls of the stations. It was the first day of 2017, and it felt like a new day for a city that for so long struggled to build this sorely needed subway line. In a rare display of unbridled optimism from hardened New Yorkers, they arrived with huge grins and wide eyes, taking in the bells and whistles at three new stations. “I was very choked up,” Betsy Morris, 70, said as she rode the first train to leave the 96th Street station, at noon. “How do you explain something that you never thought would happen? It’s going to change the way everybody lives as far as commuting goes. ” It was a major moment for New York’s sprawling transit system after decades of failed efforts to bring the line to one of the few corners of Manhattan the subway did not reach. The opening of the first segment of the line  —   an extension of the Q train to 96th Street  —   promises to lighten the crush of passengers on the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 trains along Lexington Avenue, the nation’s most overcrowded subway line, which had been the only line on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. When the stations opened shortly before noon, they were quickly filled with giddy riders both young and old, and strollers, suitcases and dogs  —   all familiar sights across the system. But for all the excitement, the line, with just three new stops, is much more modest than the ambitious route running the length of Manhattan that was once envisioned. It serves a relatively affluent and not very diverse part of the city, which has more than eight and a half million people and many   and minority residents who live far from a subway line. With the subway reaching its highest ridership levels since 1948, much of the aging system is plagued by crowding and delays, even as subway and bus fares are expected to rise again in March. Still, there was reason to cheer. The opening of a new subway line is a rare occasion in the United States and comes at a time of mounting concern about the deteriorating state of the nation’s infrastructure, from its roadways and bridges to its public transit systems. Few new subway stations have opened in recent years, even as expansive subway networks have sprouted in Asia, and most American cities never built any in the first place. The major subways in the Northeast  —   in New York, Washington and Boston  —   are grappling with old equipment and funding shortfalls, with Washington experiencing a near meltdown over safety problems. With mounting bills for basic maintenance, these subways have largely failed to grow. So the arrival of the   Second Avenue subway, which was first proposed in the 1920s, was a notable achievement for the   Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s vast network of subways, buses and commuter railroads. The first phase of the project took nearly a decade to build and cost about $4. 4 billion. With the opening, the map of the city’s loved and loathed subway adds three new stations, bringing the total to 472  —   the most of any subway in the world. A station that opened at Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s Far West Side in 2015 was the city’s first new station in a  . On Sunday, New Yorkers were mesmerized by the artwork adorning the walls. At the 72nd Street stop, Sumana Harihareswara stopped to gaze at a mosaic of a woman of South Asian descent dressed in a burgundy sari, looking at her cellphone. Ms. Harihareswara was overcome with emotion. “I don’t think I’ve ever come across subway art before that makes me feel so seen,” she said through tears. “This woman could be my aunt she could be my cousin. ” She and a stranger exchanged a knowing glance. “Representation matters,” they agreed. Ms. Harihareswara, a longtime transit enthusiast from Astoria, Queens, said she was struck by the diversity portrayed in the mosaics, including a mural of a gay couple holding hands. “There is no feeling quite like seeing yourself cemented into the infrastructure of New York,” Ms. Harihareswara said. After decades of aborted efforts to build the Second Avenue line, and at least three groundbreakings in the 1970s, construction on the current segment began in 2007. The line was originally projected to open in 2013, but subway officials pushed the deadline to the end of 2016 many years ago. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who effectively controls the authority, pressed officials to meet the December 2016 deadline even as concerns grew that the subway would not be ready in time. Still, the agency made the deadline  —   just barely  —   with a lavish inaugural ride on New Year’s Eve for a collection of dignitaries that culminated in a midnight toast. Although many New Yorkers believe the city runs the subways, it is actually the governor who appoints the authority’s chairman and holds considerable sway over the agency. Mr. Cuomo has capitalized on the Second Avenue opening to raise his national profile, overshadowing his frequent nemesis Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who attended the inaugural ride on Saturday but was not given a speaking slot. Despite general good will over the opening, some transit advocates expressed concerns over the high cost of the project and questioned whether officials would move aggressively to extend the line to 125th Street in East Harlem as planned. On Sunday morning, Mr. Cuomo arrived at the 96th Street station with the authority’s chairman, Thomas F. Prendergast, to join the first trip for regular riders, who cheered as the train pulled out of the station. Then Mr. Cuomo’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Rest assured: I’m not driving the train,” he joked. The first day of service was smooth, although there were a few hiccups. Around 3 p. m. there were delays on the Q line because of a train with mechanical problems at the City Hall station. About an hour earlier, the elevator at the new 86th Street stop had begun to malfunction, stranding passengers above and below ground. Strollers were wheeled onto steep escalators. Parents became upset. Jill Tallmer, 62, and her mother, Margot Tallmer, 91, contemplated visiting another day. “We’ve been waiting for 10 years, or more, to ride,” the younger Ms. Tallmer said while standing with her mother, a lifelong New Yorker who is in a wheelchair. “Hopefully, it’s almost ready for us. ” It was not, and they left after a few minutes. At the 72nd Street station, George Braith, a jazz saxophonist, was being mobbed by an eager pack of veritable paparazzi. The reason for his newfound celebrity: His likeness is featured in a mosaic there. “Would you look at that guy?” Mr. Braith, 77, said. “Pretty handsome fellow if you ask me. ” He is one of several local celebrities portrayed in the artwork, including chef Daniel Boulud. In Mr. Braith’s mosaic, he is clad in a slick red blazer and carrying his signature Braithophone, alto and soprano saxophones melded into one. Taking the instrument from his suitcase, he obliged the crowd with a brief tune. “Are you famous?” a   asked, seeing the hubbub. “In the jazz world,” Mr. Braith replied. The man shook his head and said, “Well, you’re immortalized as far as I’m concerned. ” Another   celebrant, Ian Ma, 15, lives in Sheepshead Bay, a waterfront neighborhood in southern Brooklyn that is nowhere near the new subway line. But he has been enchanted by trains since he started rolling toy models on the floor as a child, he said, and he cajoled his parents into giving him a ride. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this train my whole life,” he said, seemingly speaking for many others."
"  pages into the   journal found in Dylann S. Roof’s car  —   after the assertions of black inferiority, the lamentations over white powerlessness, the longing for a race war  —   comes an incongruous declaration. “I want state that I am morally opposed to psychology,” wrote the young white supremacist who would murder nine black worshipers at Emanuel A. M. E. Church in Charleston, S. C. in June 2015. “It is a Jewish invention, and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont. ” Mr. Roof, who plans to represent himself when the penalty phase of his federal capital trial begins on Tuesday, apparently is devoted enough to that proposition (or delusion, as some maintain) to stake his life on it. Although a defense based on his psychological capacity might be his best opportunity to avoid execution, he seems steadfastly committed to preventing any public examination of his mental state or background. “I will not be calling mental health experts or presenting mental health evidence,” he wrote to Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court on Dec. 16, a day after a jury took only two hours to find him guilty of 33 counts, including hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations. At a hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Roof told the judge that he planned to make an opening statement but not call witnesses or present evidence on his behalf. The testimony presented by prosecutors during the guilt phase of Mr. Roof’s trial detailed with gruesome precision how he had plotted and executed the massacre during a Wednesday night Bible study in the church’s fellowship hall. It was less satisfying in revealing why he had done it. With his choice to sideline his legal team and represent himself, the second phase  —   when the same jury of nine whites and three blacks will decide whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison  —   may prove little different. Death penalty experts said it was exceedingly rare for capital defendants to represent themselves after allowing lawyers to handle the initial part of a case. Mr. Roof, who also faces a death penalty trial in state court, has not publicly explained his reasoning. But legal filings strongly suggest a split with his   defenders about whether to argue that his rampage resulted from mental illness. Mr. Roof’s lead lawyer, David I. Bruck, tried repeatedly to plant that notion during the guilt phase, knowing it might be his only chance. Because evidence of mitigating factors is supposed to be reserved for the penalty phase, Judge Gergel allowed him little leeway. In his closing argument, while acknowledging Mr. Roof’s guilt, Mr. Bruck managed to tell the jury that Mr. Roof subscribed to “the mad idea that he can make things better by massacring the most virtuous, kind and gentle people he could ever have found. ” Mr. Bruck seeded his speech with words like “abnormal,” “irrationality,” “senselessness,” “delusional,” “obsession” and “perseveration,” a psychiatric term referring to the uncontrollable repetition of a particular response. Mr. Bruck, one of the country’s most experienced death penalty litigators, portrayed his    client as a loner whose most meaningful relationship seemed to be with his cat who staged hundreds of photographs of himself with no sign of friends whose racial hatred was ignited by internet searches and not personal experience who could not pinpoint during his confession to the F. B. I. how many he had killed, how long he had spent at the church or even what month it was who had no escape plan and left suicide notes to his parents. “There was something in him that made him feel that he had to do it,” Mr. Bruck said, “and that is as much as he knows. ” After receiving the results of a psychiatric examination in November, Judge Gergel found Mr. Roof competent to stand trial  —   meaning that he was capable of understanding the proceedings and assisting in his defense. At Mr. Bruck’s request, the judge scheduled a second competency hearing for Monday, but he signaled last week that he saw no reason to delay the penalty phase. The judge has repeatedly warned Mr. Roof against representing himself, including immediately after the verdicts, when he called it “a bad decision” and urged him to “fully appreciate the implications. ” The warnings have had no discernible effect on Mr. Roof, who has until Tuesday to reverse his decision to relegate his lawyers to standby counsel. That status allows Mr. Bruck and his team to offer guidance, but not to question witnesses or make objections. Prosecutors plan a procession of grief, perhaps calling dozens of members of victims’ families to testify about the impact of the killings. The prosecutors are also likely to   the considerable evidence of Mr. Roof’s premeditation and clearly articulated racial intent. Death penalty experts said the absence of mental health evidence to mitigate those aggravating factors could be decisive. “If the jury views Roof as evil and having made a knowing, intelligent choice to kill these innocent, churchgoing people in order to foment racial hatred, they are much more likely to impose the death penalty than if they believe him to be a young and severely mentally ill person who acted under delusional racist beliefs,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group. It would take only one holdout on the jury, which consists of 10 women and two men, to spare Mr. Roof from lethal injection. Judge Gergel has ruled that the jurors can be told that prosecutors had rejected Mr. Roof’s offer, through Mr. Bruck, to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Many in Charleston were relieved by Mr. Roof’s conviction in light of the mistrial that had been declared 10 days earlier in the state murder prosecution of Michael T. Slager, the white North Charleston policeman whose fatal shooting of a black motorist in 2015 was captured on video. Even those who oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, like the Rev. Joseph A. Darby, a presiding elder for the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, said it would seem bewildering for Mr. Roof to escape capital punishment. “That could very well be the end of the death penalty in America, because if there was ever justification for killing anybody, this is the case,” Mr. Darby said. There is no consensus among members of the victims’ families about Mr. Roof’s fate. When the Justice Department elected in May to seek the death penalty, it acted against the wishes of many and of the two women he had spared. Five relatives offered Mr. Roof a measure of forgiveness at a remarkable bond hearing two days after the shootings. But by law, those who testify now are prohibited from telling the jury what penalty they think he should receive. “It’s going to be extremely emotional, powerful testimony,” said John H. Blume, a death penalty expert who teaches at Cornell Law School, “and that emotion could implicitly and misleadingly indicate to the jury that some of these people want the death penalty when it’s not the case. ” If Mr. Roof is sentenced to death, it will be the first time a jury has done so in a prosecution involving the federal hate crimes law, according to experts on capital cases. That statute, which was broadened in 2009, does not carry a potential death sentence, but Mr. Roof was also convicted of other crimes that do. A death sentence most likely would give way to a yearslong series of appeals (in which Mr. Roof could not represent himself). Among the issues could be the composition of the jury, given that Mr. Roof acted rather passively as his own lawyer when it was selected the withholding of evidence on mental health and other mitigating factors and Mr. Roof’s competence to stand trial and to represent himself. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Indiana v. Edwards that trial judges could insist on legal representation for defendants who are “competent enough to stand trial but who suffer from severe mental illness to the point where they are not competent to conduct trial proceedings by themselves. ” Mr. Bruck and his team have argued in court filings that Mr. Roof, a   dropout, “has no right to represent himself in a capital trial, and even less so at the penalty phase. ” But in the 41 years since the Supreme Court recognized a Sixth Amendment right of   for criminal defendants, in Faretta v. California, the court has never specifically narrowed that holding for death penalty trials, despite their complexity. Some death penalty opponents hope that Mr. Roof’s defiance will prompt the appellate courts to adopt a more rigorous standard for capital defendants. “Whether or not they’re legally insane, there’s certainly something mentally wrong with them,” said Peter D. Greenspun, a lawyer who was ousted by a defendant, John A. Muhammad, for part of a capital murder trial for the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington area. He added, “To have a person like that make this kind of decision, it really calls into question, from a philosophical point of view, whether that person is in a position to understand their civil liberties. ” Mr. Muhammad, who ultimately reinstated Mr. Greenspun, was sentenced to death in 2003 and executed six years later. “It’s something that Roof will likely regret,” Mr. Greenspun predicted of his choice to represent himself. “At some point down the road, he’s going to say, ‘What did I do?’ And there’s no going back. ”"
"MUMBAI, India  —   It was a bold and risky gamble by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India that quickly seemed to backfire. The announcement of a ban on the largest currency bills circulating in India, which came into full effect at midnight Friday, the last day for depositing the old notes at banks, set off cash shortages that have hit the country’s most vulnerable people hard and prompted worries about the economy. But despite those concerns, as well as doubts about whether the currency ban will reduce corruption as it is designed to do, for the moment, at least, Mr. Modi’s bet appears to be paying off in the public arena. Even as the poorest Indians have struggled, many have continued to voice support for the prime minister’s initiative to target the vast amounts of untaxed money, known as “black money,” flowing through the country’s economy, in hopes that it will combat an endemic culture of corruption. Mr. Modi, analysts say, has successfully tapped into deep frustration with the corruption that pervades almost every public interface with government. “Even though the cash ban has produced enormous hardship for me and my family, I support what Mr. Modi is doing for our country,” said Hem Raj Chechi, 39, a taxi driver in New Delhi, the capital, who said business had been down 50 percent since the ban was announced. Mr. Chechi has not been able to pay his children’s school fees or send money back to his village to support them for nearly two months. But, he said, “We need to fight black money, even though it is hurting little people like me. ” Mr. Modi came to power as a disruptive force pledging to overturn the status quo in New Delhi, bring jobs and fight corruption. Indians have repeatedly taken to the streets in recent years to demand an end to corruption, widely seen as being most detrimental to the poor and powerless. Declaring war on corruption, Mr. Modi announced on Nov. 8 that 500 and 1, 000 rupee bills, worth about $8 and $15, would be banned the next morning. With the currency ban, Mr. Modi has managed to convince many disaffected Indians that he is on their side. He has also used his powerful skills as a communicator to persuade people like Mr. Chechi that the pain stemming from the ban is for the   good. That frustration with a political and business elite viewed by many as corrupt is what drove many Americans to vote for   Donald J. Trump last year, said Eswar S. Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University who is a native of India. “Trump made the case that only he could effect change by blowing up the system,” Mr. Prasad said in an interview. “Modi, in the same way, did have a persuasive narrative that small changes at the margins can’t tackle   problems like corruption. We needed big and painful changes, really disruptive ones. ” Mr. Modi appeared on television on New Year’s Eve to tell Indians he understood their pain and urge them to bear with him in the aim of creating a better nation. He compared his cash ban to the freedom struggle led by Mohandas K. Gandhi, a battle of good versus evil. “Today Mahatma Gandhi is not among us, but the path that was truth that he showed us is still most appropriate,” Mr. Modi said, using the honorific for Gandhi. “As we begin the centenary year of the Satyagraha,” he said, referring to Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance movement, “let us recall the Mahatma and resolve to follow his message of truth and goodness. ” Mr. Modi was presiding over one of the   major economies in the world when he announced the ban on the rupee notes, which made up 86 percent of the money in circulation. “It’s a little bit crazy,” said Geng Xiao, a professor of finance and public policy at the University of Hong Kong. “When I first read the news, I couldn’t even figure out if it was true. ” The government said that people depositing large amounts of old currency  —   more than 250, 000 rupees, or about $3, 670, could be asked to prove that they had paid taxes on it. Some saw vast amounts of untaxed holdings suddenly rendered worthless. Whether Mr. Modi’s   move will actually reduce corruption is a matter of debate. Some economists believe it could pave the way for other measures intended to discourage bribery or restructure the economy. But others say the currency ban is unlikely to result in a significant reduction in corruption, even as it has inconvenienced hundreds of millions of people who have struggled to get enough cash to meet their daily needs while the government tries to print enough new notes to replace the banned ones. And a country short of cash has been unable to spend it, which is likely to reduce economic growth in the short term, economists say. People living on the edge of poverty have been hit hard, their diets and livelihoods severely affected. Many in India see Mr. Modi, who has also had success persuading Parliament to clear the way for a unified    tax to make it easier to ship and sell things across state lines, as living up to his promise to be a reformer of India’s ossified and bureaucratic economy. But in the process, he has placed the Indian economy and his political future at risk. Many economists believe that the Indian economy will take at least a   hit because of a dire shortage of cash, and that the future impact is uncertain. If the effects are prolonged, the public support for Modi could wane. “If this move damages the economy, he’s in for a rough ride,” said Harsh Pant, the head of strategic studies at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. Mr. Xiao said that in a system in which the informal sector is substantial, the economy could be expected to experience a shock when so much cash is suddenly taken out. “You need offsetting stimulus policies to keep the economy growing,” he said. Mr. Modi was elected by an overwhelming majority in 2014, defeating the government, led by the Indian National Congress party, that had ruled for most of the country’s   life, on the promise of bringing development and jobs and reducing corruption. “In 2014, he had presented himself as the big disrupter,” Mr. Pant said. “He was the precursor to what’s happening in the West. ” Mr. Modi was then the chief minister of the state of Gujarat, where he had a reputation for tearing away the country’s red tape so businesses could set up shop and expand. But during his first two years after winning national election, Mr. Modi, whose party did not control the upper house of Parliament, struggled to achieve a significant economic overhaul. Mr. Modi changed the political narrative in 2016 as he successfully fought to get Parliament to clear the way for the simplified    tax. He cast the opposition as “people who don’t want change, who don’t want reform,” Mr. Pant said, forcing them in August to support the changes. But the challenges facing Mr. Modi remain considerable. Seven weeks after the cash ban began to be put in place, the currency shortage remains acute, leading to a sharp drop in demand for services and earnings, many providers said. Nagender Tiwari, 42, a rickshaw driver in East Delhi, said he was earning only 60 percent of the 1, 000 rupees, or about $15, that he used to take home daily before the cash ban. As a result, his family, which includes two children in 11th grade, has reduced its consumption of fish and meat. They have been unable to pay the rent on their home, he said. He said he was skeptical about whether the ban was reducing corruption, noting that he continued to be stopped by traffic police officers who extorted bribes. “So if bribery is not stopped, how can black money be stopped?” he asked. Raj Kumar Bindal, 65, a paper trader in New Delhi, said sales that plummeted to nearly nothing in the days after the cash ban had returned to about half of what they were before. “We can’t shift to a cashless mode overnight,” he said. Surjit Bhalla, a New   economic adviser for the Observatory Group in New York, said he believed Mr. Modi was likely to enact several other major changes in the coming months, possibly including a move to a simplified personal income tax. India needs to reduce the incentives for taxpayers to cheat, Mr. Bhalla said. In the United States, for every $100 collected in income tax, an estimated $20 owed is not paid, he added. In India, for that same $100 in taxes paid, $200 more is owed, he said. Collectively, the cash ban and other anticorruption initiatives have the potential to transform India, Mr. Pant and others said. But doing so depends on Mr. Modi’s continuing to command the political narrative of the country, as he has so successfully done since instituting the cash ban. “So far, he has taken control of the narrative and the people are with him,” Mr. Pant said. “He thinks he can continue to do it, but we really don’t know. There are so many unknowns. ”"
"BAGHDAD  —   A suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives on Monday in a busy Baghdad market, killing at least 36 people hours after President François Hollande of France arrived in the Iraqi capital. The Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomb went off in a produce market that was packed with day laborers, a police officer said, adding that another 52 people were wounded. During a news conference with Mr. Hollande, Haider   Iraq’s prime minister, said the suicide bomber had pretended to be a man seeking to hire day laborers. Once the workers gathered around, he detonated the vehicle. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed the attack in a statement circulated on a website that is often used by the group. It was the third such attack in three days in or near Baghdad, underscoring the lingering threat posed by the extremist group despite a string of setbacks for it elsewhere in the country over the past year, including in and around the northern city of Mosul. The attack took place in Sadr City, a vast Shiite district in eastern Baghdad that has been repeatedly targeted by Sunni extremists since the 2003   invasion. Militiamen loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada   were seen evacuating bodies in their trucks before ambulances arrived. Bodies were scattered across the bloody pavement alongside fruit, vegetables and laborers’ shovels and axes. A minibus filled with dead passengers was on fire. Asaad Hashim, 28, an owner of a nearby cellphone store, described how the laborers had pushed and shoved around the bomber’s vehicle, trying to get hired. “Then a big boom came, sending them up into the air,” said Mr. Hashim, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his right hand. He blamed “the most ineffective security forces in the world” for failing to prevent the attack. An angry crowd cursed the government, even after a representative of Mr. Sadr tried to calm them. Late last month, the Iraqi authorities started removing some of the security checkpoints in Baghdad in a bid to ease traffic for the capital’s six million residents. “We have no idea who will kill at any moment and who’s supposed to protect us,” said Ali Abbas, a    father of four who was hurled over his vegetable stand by the blast. “If the securities forces can’t protect us, then allow us to do the job. ” Several smaller bombings elsewhere in the city on Monday killed at least 20 civilians and wounded at least 70, according to medics and police officials. All officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. The United States State Department condemned the attacks. Separately, the American military announced on Monday the death of a coalition service member in Iraq in a “  incident,” without providing further details. Mr. Hollande met with Mr. Abadi and President Fuad Masum, and later traveled to the   northern Kurdish region to meet with French troops and local officials. He pledged to help displaced Iraqis return to Mosul, where Iraqi forces are waging a large offensive against the Islamic State. France is part of the   coalition formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State after the extremist group seized large areas in Iraq and neighboring Syria. France has suffered multiple attacks claimed by the extremist group."
"SYDNEY, Australia  —   The annual beach pilgrimage during the height of summer in Melbourne, Australia’s   city, is threatened by an unsettling phenomenon: shores where the tides are tainted with excrement. The Environment Protection Authority in the state of Victoria said on Monday that heavy rains had caused fecal pollution to wash into Port Phillip from rivers, creeks and drains. It advised against swimming at 21 beaches because of poor water quality. “It’s poo in all its luxurious forms that is causing the problem,” said Anthony Boxshall, the agency’s manager of applied sciences, noting that the waste was coming from people, dogs, horses, cows, birds and other animals. Fecal pollution can cause serious health problems, including gastroenteritis. Mr. Boxshall said much of the waste had been washed down the   Yarra River that runs through Melbourne into Port Phillip, affecting the city’s bayside beaches the most. The agency, which takes regular water samples, rates beaches. A “good” rating means that the water is suitable for swimming. “Fair” means that rainfall has affected the water. “Poor” means people should avoid it. Residents said that the pollution had deterred them from indulging in a favorite summer ritual. “When the temperature gets above 86 Fahrenheit, Melbournians typically pack the family in the car with food and drink and spend the day at the beach,” said Sam Riley, who lives in the city. “I was going to take my two young boys to the beach myself over the summer, but now I’m concerned about whether the water is clean. ” Mr. Boxshall said any improvement in the beaches’ water quality was uncertain as long as the rain continued. The agency says it usually takes between 24 and 48 hours for the waters to clear after the rain stops."
"When the Green Bay Packers lost to the Washington Redskins in Week 11, dropping to   Aaron Rodgers vowed to “run the table” in a march to the playoffs. With a   victory over the Detroit Lions on Sunday night, the team fulfilled Rodgers’ promise. Much of the drama of the matchup between division rivals was eliminated earlier in the day when the Redskins lost to the Giants, thus guaranteeing both the Packers and Lions would be playoff teams, but the N. F. C. North bragging rights, and a home game in the first round of the playoffs, were sufficient motivation for Green Bay to push hard enough to secure the team’s sixth consecutive win and the third consecutive loss for Detroit. Pundits had spent the week deciphering all of the wild scenarios that could play out for positioning among the remaining teams. But when all was said and done, ten of the teams that were in line for a playoff spot remained in the same seeding order. No. 6 Detroit Lions at No. 3 Seattle Seahawks Time: 8:15 p. m. Eastern SATURDAY on NBC The Seahawks’ title hopes took a crushing blow when Earl Thomas was lost for the season with a broken leg. After the injury, the Seahawks went   with the wins coming with major asterisks as they came against the   Rams and 49ers. That collapse paled in comparison to the Lions, who lost their final three games, blowing what had been a large division lead against Green Bay. Line: Seahawks   ( : 43) No. 5 Giants at No. 4 Green Bay Packers Time: 4:40 p. m. Eastern SUNDAY on Fox Thanks to playing in the N. F. C. East, home of the   Dallas Cowboys, the Giants managed to tie Atlanta for the   record in the N. F. C. but got stuck with the No. 5 seed in the playoffs and a road game against a   Packers squad that won its final six games. The good news for the Giants is that superstitious fans will note that the last two times they played the Packers on the road in the playoffs, they not only won the games but went on to win the Super Bowl both times. Line: Packers   ( : 44. 5) Bye weeks: Dallas, Atlanta No. 5 Oakland Raiders at No. 4 Houston Texans Time: 4:35 p. m. Eastern SATURDAY on ESPN Line: Texans   ( : 37) The Texans were the least inspiring of the N. F. L. ’s division champions and that was complicated further when Tom Savage, whom the team had elevated to starting quarterback after the benching of Brock Osweiler, was forced to leave Week 17’s loss to Tennessee with a concussion. As bad as that sounds, it may still be enough against a reeling Oakland squad that lost Derek Carr to a broken leg in Week 16, Matt McGloin to a shoulder injury in Week 17, and fell all the way from the No. 2 seed in the A. F. C. to No. 5. It is unclear at this point if McGloin or rookie Connor Cook will start at quarterback against Houston. No. 6 Miami Dolphins at No. 3 Pittsburgh Steelers Time: 1:05 p. m. Eastern SUNDAY on CBS The Dolphins were a contender when the team’s quarterback, Ryan Tannehill, was lost in Week 14 with injured ligaments in his left knee. Thanks to backup quarterback Matt Moore, and Jay Ajayi, the team’s   running back, they won two of three games and secured a   berth. But going up against a   offense like Pittsburgh is a tough test for Miami’s middling defense, even if Tannehill’s knee heals enough to allow him to return. Line: Steelers  .5 ( : 47. 5) Bye weeks: New England, Kansas City With four teams vying for two N. F. C. playoff spots, all eyes were on the   game on Sunday. A Redskins victory could have caused movement in the seedings, with the Lions and Packers playing a     evening matchup. The Giants, who had already locked up the No. 5 seed and had nothing to gain, threw a wrench in the Redskins’ plans, eliminating their division rivals with a decisive   victory. With the drama essentially taken out of the N. F. C. all of the playoff movement Sunday occurred in the A. F. C. where there was a   at the top of the standings in the A. F. C. West. Just a week after losing Derek Carr, the team’s quarterback and a legitimate candidate for most valuable player, to a broken leg, the Oakland Raiders were crushed   by the Denver Broncos. That, combined with the Kansas City Chiefs’   victory over the San Diego Chargers vaulted the Chiefs from a   spot all the way to the No. 2 seed in the A. F. C. which comes with a   bye in the playoffs. The loss for Oakland added to the misery of the Raiders, who have gone from Super Bowl contenders last week to a   team that will play on the road in Houston next week potentially with a   quarterback under center as Carr’s backup, Matt McGloin, injured his shoulder in the loss to the Broncos. Beyond the switch to the Chiefs as the No.   in the A. F. C. it was business as usual for the teams that will get bye weeks in the playoffs. The New England Patriots secured the No. 1 spot in the A. F. C. with a win over Miami, the Dallas Cowboys were already guaranteed the No. 1 spot in the N. F. C. before their loss to Philadelphia, and the Atlanta Falcons held onto the No. 2 seed in the N. F. C. with a   win over New Orleans. The only remaining chance for a minor   was for the Packers, who led their division by virtue of a tiebreaker, to lose to the Lions, which would have forced them to play on the road in the   round of the playoffs. But the    aspect of the de facto N. F. C. North championship went away when the Redskins lost to the Giants, which eliminated the Redskins from   contention. While most of the races were straight forward, one of the crazier playoff scenarios that had been discussed before the week was the possibility that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers could find themselves in the playoffs. They simply had to shoot the moon by beating the Carolina Panthers, having the Redskins tie the Giants, the Packers lose to the Lions, and should all of that happen they simply required wins by Indianapolis, Dallas, Tennessee and San Francisco to top the Packers in strength of schedule. Tampa Bay took care of their end by beating the Panthers early in the day, but they were eliminated officially when Dallas lost to Philadelphia."
"Mariah Carey suffered through a performance train wreck in Times Square on New Year’s Eve as malfunctions left her at a loss vocally during her hit song “Emotions,” struggling to reach notes and to sync the lyrics and music. The trouble continued when she gave up on another of her   numbers, “We Belong Together,” while a recording of the song continued to play, a confirmation that she had been  . But on Sunday, a dispute erupted between Ms. Carey’s representatives and producers of ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest,” on which the singer was performing. Ms. Carey’s manager, Stella Bulochnikov, charged that the show’s producers had been aware of technical problems but did not fix them  —   and chose to continue showing Ms. Carey’s messy performance “to get ratings. ” “I will never know the truth, but I do know that we told them three times that her mike pack was not working and it was a disastrous production,” Ms. Bulochnikov told Us Weekly magazine on Sunday. “I’m certainly not calling the F. B. I. to investigate. It is what it is: New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Mariah did them a favor. She was the biggest star there, and they did not have their” act together. Dick Clark Productions, which produced the show, issued a statement on Sunday night saying that Ms. Carey’s performance woes had nothing to do with the production, and that any suggestion that the company “would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd. ” “In very rare instances, there are of course technical errors that can occur with live television,” the statement said, adding that an initial investigation suggested that the production company “had no involvement in the challenges associated with Ms. Carey’s New Year’s Eve performance. ” A veteran audio producer, Robert Goldstein of Maryland Sound International, a company that has worked on the Times Square event for years, also said in an email that there had been no malfunctions with the sound equipment he oversaw. “Every monitor and   device worked perfectly,” Mr. Goldstein said. “ I can’t comment beyond that and don’t know what her nontechnical issue may have been. ” A spokeswoman for Ms. Carey said on Sunday that the singer was not at fault for her performance. “Unfortunately there was nothing she could do to continue with the performance given the circumstances,” the spokeswoman, Nicole Perna, told The Associated Press. It was a rare meltdown on national television by one of the   recording artists of all time. Ms. Carey, a pop phenomenon in the 1990s who won five Grammys out of 34 nominations over the years, was the final   act on ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest. ” She had just finished “Auld Lang Syne” when her star turn began to spiral out of control. “We can’t hear,” she said in the opening seconds of “Emotions” after she sashayed down the stage before more than one million people who had gathered to watch the ball drop in Manhattan. Standing still with her left hand on her hip while music played, Ms. Carey told the audience that there had not been a proper sound check before her performance. Then she said, “We’ll just sing,” and noted proudly of her song, “It went to No. 1. ” But she could not manage the notes that followed, and she either forgot lyrics or did not want to deliver a subpar performance. “We’re missing some of these vocals, but it is what it is,” she said. “Let the audience sing. ” ABC quickly cut to shots of the Times Square crowd as Ms. Carey tried to perform some of her choreography. She continued suggesting fixes from the stage, and at one point seemed to defend herself. “I’m trying to be a good sport here,” she said. When the number ended, the crowd cheered her on. “That was  —   ” she said, pausing for effect, “amazing. ” She seemed to recover at first with “We Belong Together,” but there appeared to be another malfunction, and Ms. Carey again stopped singing. But this time, the prerecorded number kept playing. “It just don’t get any better,” she said, and then left the stage. The cause of the problem was not immediately clear. After the performance, Ms. Carey posted a mildly profane slang phrase on Twitter with an “upset” emoji, then wrote: “Have a happy and healthy new year everybody! Here’s to making more headlines in 2017. ” An ABC spokesman said on Sunday that the network would not comment on the problems with Ms. Carey’s performance."
"PARIS  —   When the Islamic State was about to be driven out of the ancient city of Palmyra in March, Yves Ubelmann got a call from Syria’s director of antiquities to come over in a hurry. An architect by training, Mr. Ubelmann, 36, had worked in Syria before the country was engulfed by war. But now there was special urgency for the kind of work his youthful team of architects, mathematicians and designers did from their cramped offices in Paris: producing digital copies of threatened historical sites. Palmyra, parts of it already destroyed by the Islamists who deemed these monuments idolatrous, was still rigged with explosives. So he and Houmam Saad, his Syrian colleague, spent four days flying a drone with a robot camera over the crumbled arches and temples. “Drones with four or six rotors can hover really close and register structural details, every crack and hole, and we can take very precise measurements,” said Mr. Ubelmann, who founded the company Iconem. “This is the stuff architects and archaeologists need. ” They need it in a new push for virtual preservation that scientists, archaeologists and others, like Mr. Ubelmann, are compiling on a large scale. The records could be used to create computer models that would show how monuments and endangered historical sites might one day be restored, repaired or reconstructed. Of special interest today are ancient sites in Syria, and also Iraq, that have suffered from war, looting and the Islamic State. “Palmyra was very difficult,” Mr. Ubelmann said. “The terrorists were uploading videos with them blowing up monuments and smashing statues to manipulate public opinion,” he said. “We felt the best response was to magnify the pictures of these places and show their splendor and their importance to the culture. It became a war of images. ” The latest front in that war is in the exhibition halls of the Grand Palais in Paris, where, through Jan. 9, many of the 40, 000 images he and his team took at Palmyra have become the basis for displays. Called “Eternal Sites: From Bamiyan to Palmyra,” the show aims to draw attention to the rising threats to global heritage. To underscore the exhibition’s political importance, it was opened several weeks ago by President François Hollande of France, who described it as “an act of resistance” against terror and intolerance. Showing the beauty of the Middle Eastern heritage, he said, “is the best answer to the Islamist propaganda of hate, destruction and death. ”   Martinez, the director of the Louvre and the lead curator of the show, said the sites had been chosen because “all are under threat from pillaging, neglect or destruction and are not accessible to the public. ” He said it aimed to mobilize public opinion “in the face of the devastation of unique heritage. ” Besides images from Palmyra, the multimedia show projects enormous   photographs and videos, immersing visitors in different eras, including the ancient Iraqi city of Khorsabad around 700 B. C. an   mosque in Damascus and a medieval Christian citadel. Mr. Ubelmann dismissed any criticism of collaboration with the government of the Syrian president, Bashar  . “We were working pro bono, not for any government, but to help the archaeologists,” he said. They shared their work with the Syrian archaeologists, he said, adding, “We also train our colleagues so they can later do this on their own. ” What is paramount is memory and potential restoration. In the last year, his team has flown drones over some 20 historic sites in Syria. Recently, it moved into   zones in Iraq, close to the front line in the fight against the Islamic State. The team is now analyzing the war’s effects on the remains of once thriving cities dating back some 3, 000 years, including Nineveh, Khorsabad and the thrashed temple and palace of Nimrud, where the government drove out the jihadists in November. In 2015, Islamists sent out videos showing militants using sledgehammers to break reliefs of human figures and mythical winged bulls as part of their   campaign. “Nimrud was probably the most splendid of the Assyrian cities,” Layla Abdulkarim, a Syrian architect, said as she analyzed aerial photographs. Using drones in archaeological work is not entirely new, specialists say, but at a recent gathering in Paris researchers from Europe and the Middle East said they were now having to practice “war archaeology,” that is, collecting reliable data from   areas. The images from the drones in war zones had proved immensely valuable. But these were barely scratching the surface. Before the war, close to 150 archaeological projects were underway, just in Syria, researchers said. Experts from many countries are trying to assess the damage in Syria’s old cities but also in the area where the Islamic State held sway that is straddling Iraq and Syria, the region that is seen as central to human history and often called the birthplace of modern economics and writing. There is an outcry for data about the havoc wreaked in Yemen by Saudi bombing. “People are exchanging satellite images and data on blogs and other research platforms, but we have no real assessment yet because so many ancient sites are not accessible,” said Pascal Butterlin, a professor of archaeology at the Sorbonne in Paris. Time is of the essence, even in the case of    ruins, Mr. Butterlin said. He has led expeditions for more than 20 years to Mari, near Syria’s border with Iraq. Before fleeing, the guards at Mari reported that looters had come from Iraq, he said. “We need to know what places need to be stabilized and how looters have altered the sites,” he said. “Important evidence, like clandestine pits, can disappear very quickly through sandstorms and erosion. ” Cheikhmous Ali, a Syrian archaeologist based in France, who founded the international group the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology, said reports of organized pillaging continued. A first wave of looting began in 2012, Mr. Ali said, and looting has accelerated since 2014 with the arrival of the Islamic State. While jihadists were more motivated to destroy the artifacts, they had also allowed looters to operate in exchange for money. Mr. Ali said he kept an ever changing tally of museums bombed, objects carted off, safes stolen. The exhibition in Paris, which is drawing large crowds, coincides with “History Begins in Mesopotamia,” a show at the Louvre’s regional museum in Lens. Both exhibitions highlight the French government’s active concern about cultural damage in Syria, which was briefly controlled by France in the first half of the 20th century. Mr. Hollande has taken a strong interest, condemning the deliberate destruction of patrimony by all sides as “war crimes. ” This past month, France offered $30 million toward a proposed $100 million fund to protect sites as fighting abates, provide emergency storage for artifacts and eventually rehabilitate monuments. At the “Eternal Sites” opening at the Grand Palais, Mr. Hollande stressed that France was taking in more Syrian refugees trying to protect monuments of great historical and cultural importance did not mean ignoring the suffering of the population. “Should we be concerned about the patrimony?” he asked. “What is more important, saving lives or saving stones? In reality, these two are inseparable. ”"
"Pop music and fashion never met cuter than in George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” video. Sure, other catwalk favorites starred in music videos during that era, and fashion photographers like Steven Meisel and Herb Ritts were recruited by stars such as Madonna, Chris Isaak and Janet Jackson to burnish their visuals. But the convergence of a   maker’s irresistible rhythms and lyrics, a group of models at the peak of their fame and a director on the verge of his own runaway success gave “Freedom! ’90” a jolt of stylish energy that has yet to fade after more than a  . Directed by David Fincher, who was at the start of his film career, and filmed over several days at Merton Park Studios in London, the video from Mr. Michael’s 1990 album, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,” brought together five models  —   Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Tatjana Patitz  —   who were then the queens of fashion. It runs for six and a half minutes, and its production also gathered a team of novice professionals who would go on to become major forces in fashion, including the stylist Camilla Nickerson, the hairdresser Guido Palau, the makeup artist Carol Brown and the model John Pearson. Shot in moody, romantic   tones, “Freedom! ’90” had been viewed more than 37 million times on YouTube by the time of Mr. Michael’s unexpected death at 53 last Sunday. Reached by phone this week, some of the participants recalled their experiences on set, and some of the video’s most ardent fans reflected on its impact. Naomi Campbell, model. We’d done a British Vogue cover with Peter Lindbergh with all of us. I met George in L. A. and he said: “I’ve been told that I need to speak to you to get the girls for the video. What would it take to get you?” We were living in America, so I said you’d have to fly us in, basically. I said yes, and then Christy and Tatjana and everyone came in. The night before the video, I didn’t sleep at all, because we did five shows for Thierry Mugler in Paris. He had 76 models, and it was the big finale of him designing, although none of us knew that then. The last show finished at around 3 o’clock in the morning, and George was there. So from there I went back to my hotel, packed my bags and went on the first flight to London. David Fincher knew exactly what he wanted. He didn’t really give us parts, but he knew exactly which part of the song he wanted each and every one of us to sing. I was more the active one. Cindy was sultry. I don’t think any of us knew what it would become. We knew the song was a hit, but we didn’t know in any way what effect it would have in terms of videos, the way it would affect people. We were all really excited on the day it was going to be aired. They all had great premieres back in the day. They don’t have them anymore. Not that I’ve seen. MTV’s changed. Hasn’t it? I got to see George a little bit more after that because Kate Moss was neighbors with him. When we did the Olympics, he sang there in London. We all did the finale, and he was rehearsing and Kate and I went to watch him with this amazing choir singing “Freedom. ” After, he invited us all back to his home and he had this really nice   in the garden, and we all got to light these wishing lanterns and we all did that together. That’s the memory I’m going to keep. Guido Palau, hairdresser. I don’t know how I got the job. George Michael and David Fincher had seen some of my work in British Vogue. It was a different time then. It was a big, big production, a   video because they had to bring in all the girls. Every girl had a day, though Christy and Linda were there together. My part was to make the girls the best they could look as who they were. They weren’t playing characters. They were playing themselves. And each had their own personality: Linda the comedian, Christy much more classic, Cindy the pinup, Tatjana this kind of film noir, and Naomi a very strong kind of woman. We extracted that from them. They weren’t prodded at all, though there were some surprises, like Linda’s hair, which she’d done for a job for someone else. It wasn’t like I said, “Oh, dye your hair blond,” not at all. At the time, we really didn’t realize how iconic the video would become. I was probably a bit naïve about the whole thing seeing how it was a bit of a   job for me. What I remember most is the days being very long, and at the end of the day, the red wine would come out. There we’d be in the location van drinking and singing with George. Tatjana Patitz, model. I was in my own zone. I had to kind of slide up and down the wall for part of the day. The feel of the set was so   this big, loft kind of vibe. There was another setup with me laying on a chaise longue with a black smoking jacket. I think I may have had a bustier on. And I was smoking, even. People still smoked in videos then and even in films. George Michael wasn’t on the set the day I was there, but I’d met him a few times in L. A. Herb Ritts shot a cover of me and him for a magazine  —   I’m trying to remember what magazine it was. So many magazines have come and gone. Glamour was very present in fashion in those days, feminine glamour, people looking at inspiration from the movie stars of the ’40s and ’50s  —   Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner. A lot of magazines were pairing models with pop stars or movie stars to shoot covers. It was very different those days. The business was much smaller and wasn’t as saturated, not as fast as it is now. Models were known by their first names, and suddenly the glamour we embodied at that time crossed over to pop music videos and film. We were part of the entertainment industry, which made it really fun. George was very nice, almost a little shy. Maybe that’s the wrong word. He was mellow and kind. I was quite   at the time because I grew up with Wham and their music he was one of my first teenage crushes. In the five or so times I met him, he was always very pleasant and sweet but timid, not one of those vivacious,   people who take a room by storm. I remember the shoot being in fall or early winter. I flew in on the Concorde for the day and flew back to New York right after that. It’s funny. A lot of people were using models in videos then, but this one in particular stood the test of time. It’s not like you look at “Freedom! ’90” now and say, “Oh, my God, it’s so ’80s!” It’s not like “Working Girl. ” John Pearson, model. My agent called up and said: “Hey, do you want to do this video? All the big girls are doing it. ’” Of course I said yes. I was a big George Michael fan. I used to see him all the time in London at the clubs. I arrived at the studios at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and met David Fincher briefly, and then basically sat around all day and watched while Christy and Linda were being shot. There’s one shot where Linda puts her head underneath her sweater that’s amazing. That wasn’t rehearsed. Linda really knows how to use her body to communicate in an elegant way, never cheap and tawdry. George was there, very warm and nice but very shy. The day went long, and the producer said at the end of the day, “Can we shoot you tomorrow?” I didn’t have another job booked, so I said, “Sure. ” Then he said, “Do you mind doing it for nothing?” I said, “No way. ” It was a little bit bolshie of me, but I knew what the girls were getting. In the end, I was paid $15, 000 for the day, which is not bad to hang out with these fabulous, beautiful girls. But I’d been working nonstop for three years, and I wasn’t going to do it for free. And it turned out to be one of those fabulously easy,    jobs, everyone riding on this wave of semistardom and recognition for the models. I really didn’t realize how big it all was at the time. Candis Cayne, actress, model and former drag personality. There was a group of girls in N. Y. C. in the ’90s, and we didn’t want to model ourselves on anything other than the supermodels. Linda and Naomi and Christy. So when the video of “Freedom!” came out and they were all in it, we were obsessed. I used to do shows at Boy Bar, so I decided I was going to do “Freedom!” and got Lina and Mistress Formika and Sherry Vine to play the various parts. I was Linda. She was my favorite. We did the whole thing naked under white sheets. After the very last chorus, we dropped the sheets and were completely naked holding our groin areas. That song meant a lot to us. There were singers we knew were gay then, but no one really talked about it. We just grabbed onto songs and artists who knew who and what we were, whether it was Madonna with “Vogue” and “Truth or Dare” or George Michael with “Freedom!” I don’t know if he was openly gay or not, then. I guess not. But it was almost O. K. because we all knew and it was such a homophobic time. It was so oppressive, particularly when you factor in the AIDS epidemic. To be open would have been a career killer. But going to a club, listening to “Freedom! ,” it was an escape. Alan Hunter, one of the original MTV V. J. s. It was a funny moment in my life. I was driving my kid to day care on a day where I didn’t know where my career had gone. I’d left MTV. My agent wasn’t calling. I was depressed. And I turned on the radio, and on came George Michael’s new song. It was George Michael at the peak of his writing skills. It was such a brilliant   capstone I’d ever heard. It was his    song. He was saying, “Everything that brought me to pop stardom I now disavow. ” Then I saw the video shortly thereafter with all that iconography he’d used in his past, and he literally sets those things on fire and explodes them. The leather jacket he’d worn and the jukebox from “Faith. ” And he just steps away. He wasn’t even in the video. It showed how serious he was, even while he said it all with a lot of love. It was such a joyous song. I actually felt happy. Zac Posen, fashion designer. I was 10 years old, 10 or 11. I’d see it in my living room waiting for Madonna to come on. I probably wanted to be the child in “Open Your Heart. ” But what I remember about “Freedom!” was that it was kind of a seminal predecessor to grunge. Because you have these incredibly glamorous beauties in a very industrial, Corinne Day,   space. There’s water dripping down the walls and George Michael’s leather jacket is on fire, and the models are naked. It was really the glamour of the ’80s transitioning into something more raw that was to come."
"WASHINGTON  —   The most powerful and ambitious   Congress in 20 years will convene Tuesday, with plans to leave its mark on virtually every facet of American life  —   refashioning the country’s social safety net, wiping out scores of labor and environmental regulations and unraveling some of the most significant policy prescriptions put forward by the Obama administration. Even before   Donald J. Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, giving their party full control of the government, Republicans plan quick action on several of their top priorities  —   most notably a measure to clear a path for the Affordable Care Act’s repeal. Perhaps the first thing that will happen in the new Congress is the push for deregulation. Also up early: filling a   Supreme Court seat, which is sure to set off a pitched showdown, and starting confirmation hearings for Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees. “It’s a big job to actually have responsibility and produce results,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. “And we intend to do it. ” But as Republicans plan to reserve the first 100 days of Congress for their more partisan goals, Democrats are preparing roadblocks. The party’s brutal   wounds have been salted by evidence of Russian election interference, Mr. Trump’s   cabinet picks and his taunting Twitter posts. (On Saturday, he offered New Year’s wishes “to all,” including “those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. ”) Obstacles will also come from Republicans, who are divided on how to proceed with the health care law and a pledge to rewrite the tax code. Some are also skittish about certain policy proposals, like vast changes to Medicare, that could prove unpopular among the broad electorate. And any burst of legislative action will come only if Congress can break free of its longstanding tendency toward gridlock. For Republicans, the path to this moment has been long and transparently paved  —   the House in particular has signaled the Republican policy vision through bills it has been passing for years. But many of those measures have gathered dust in the Senate or been doused in veto ink. The cleft between the two chambers recalls the situation faced by the insurgent House Republican majority in the  . Speaker Newt Gingrich took control with a determined agenda, only to be stymied by the Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, who stacked conservative House bills like so many fire logs in the back of the Senate chamber. “They’ve been given a golden opportunity here,” said Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate majority leader. “But I have watched over the years when one party has had control of the White House and the Senate and the House, and the danger is overplaying your hand. “If you go too far, like what happened with Obamacare, and you get no support at all from the other side, you have a problem,” Mr. Lott continued. “You have to find a way to work with people across the aisle who will work with you. ” The tax overhaul and an infrastructure bill may be two opportunities for bipartisan cooperation the Senate Finance Committee is already moving in that direction. Still, both of those issues are expected to remain on the back burner, despite promises to the contrary from Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus. The Senate may be narrowly divided, but among the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus are 10 who will stand for   in two years in states that voted for Mr. Trump. Republicans are counting on their support, at least some of the time. But on many issues, Senate Democrats  —   including their new leader, Chuck Schumer of New York  —   are expected to pivot from postelection carping to active thwarting, using complex Senate procedures and political messaging to slow or perhaps block elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda. “After campaigning on a promise to help the middle class,   Trump’s postelection actions suggest he intends to do the exact opposite after he’s sworn in,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington. “Democrats will do everything we can to fight back if he continues to pursue an agenda prioritizing billionaires and big corporations while devastating   families and the economy. ” Republicans have chafed for years at a host of rules, many   that President Obama has issued through the regulatory process, and they have been advising the Trump team on which ones should be undone. “I hear probably more about the strangulation of regulations on business and their growth and their development than probably anything else,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, said at a recent forum. “I think if we can provide regulatory relief right away, that can breathe a sigh of relief into the economy. ” In late December, the Obama administration rolled out a major new environmental regulation intended to rein in   mining. That regulation, one of dozens that Mr. Trump is expected to reverse, is meant to go into effect one day before his inauguration. But Congress is likely to block it, using the obscure Congressional Review Act, which permits lawmakers to undo new regulations with only 51 Senate votes within the first 60 legislative days of the rules’ completion. Given time constraints on the Senate floor, members will have to pick some priorities. They are expected to train their sights on a rule that requires oil and gas producers to reduce methane gases, another that requires mining and fossil fuel companies to disclose payments they have made to foreign governments to extract natural resources, and still others that restrict pesticide use. Republicans will also move quickly to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They plan to pass a truncated budget resolution for the remainder of the fiscal year  —   already a quarter over  —   that includes special instructions ensuring that the final repeal legislation could circumvent any Democratic filibuster. But Republican leaders have not settled on a health care plan to replace Mr. Obama’s, and they may delay the repeal measure’s effective date for years. The Senate must also consider Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks, and Senate Democrats are already trying to slow the process. However, they cannot do much more than that, because when they were in charge, they changed the rules so that presidential nominees other than Supreme Court picks need only 51 votes to be confirmed. Previously, such nominations could face a filibuster, which required 60 votes to overcome. Democratic leaders have encouraged members to avoid meeting with Mr. Trump’s nominees until they have turned over their tax returns and made other disclosures. Republicans have been particularly upset that Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whom Mr. Trump picked quickly to be attorney general, has either not gotten meetings with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee or had meetings canceled. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California postponed her meeting with Mr. Sessions until January because, she said, her schedule got too busy. “The senator doesn’t want to rush,” said her spokesman, Tom Mentzer. One reason that Democrats are in no hurry is their bitterness over Mr. McConnell’s refusal last year to hold a hearing on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland. Lingering in the background is the specter of Russia. Democrats  —   and some Republicans, who are at odds with Mr. Trump on the issue and may at times be a brake on him  —   want a vigorous investigation of its efforts to disrupt the election. The Obama administration, which took sweeping steps last week to punish the Russians over election hacking, will release a report this month that is likely to serve as a turning point in those discussions. While Republicans may have a rare chance to open the flow of legislation, the party’s leaders are acutely aware of the punishment that Americans have historically delivered in midterm elections when things have not gone well. “This is no time for hubris,” Mr. McConnell said. “You have to perform. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —   It’s   or   time for Republicans. After a tumultuous decade that has seen profound changes in the makeup and character of their party, Republicans are poised to complete their slow but steady climb back to power as they seize control of the House, Senate and the White House for the first time since 2006. That political triad will leave them with a splendid opportunity for success. But there is little room for failure if they hope to satisfy their impatient constituents and deliver on bold promises to reshape the nation’s health care delivery system, restructure the tax code, drive job creation, muscle up American foreign policy, rebuild a crumbling infrastructure and set America on a new course. Republicans who will take command of the Senate and House as the 115th Congress convenes on Tuesday have long been itching for a chance to do it their way, constantly grousing that President Obama and Congressional Democrats held back American progress and economic growth. Now they must show they can deliver. And they know it. “When you have both houses and the presidency, there is no acceptable excuse for not passing major legislation,” said Representative Tom Cole, a senior Republican from Oklahoma. “There is a lot of pressure on Republican members to produce and to produce quickly. ” That will not be easy. There is a mutual wariness between many Republicans in Congress and   Donald J. Trump, leaving it unclear how often their interests and priorities will coalesce or collide. Some of the biggest fights might well be between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the White House occupied by a man who campaigned against the establishment and some of the very Republicans running Congress. Republicans must also maneuver while facing slightly expanded Democratic minorities in the House and Senate, in a climate that is, in many respects, even more hostile than it was before the November elections. Democrats remain angry at how Republicans treated President Obama, including their refusal to consider the nomination of federal Judge Merrick B. Garland to the United States Supreme Court. Democrats want payback for the cold shoulder given to Mr. Garland’s nomination to satisfy themselves and to show their supporters that they are not going to roll over for the new Republican government. While they cannot employ the filibuster to block most nominations, they still retain it for Supreme Court picks and legislation  —   at least for now. Perhaps most important, Republicans themselves are going to need something of an attitude adjustment. The contemporary Republican Party has been built out of fierce opposition to Mr. Obama and deep disdain for activist government. Nearly   of current House Republicans have never served with a Republican president and their entire time in Washington has been spent fighting the executive branch. As a result, Republicans have had the luxury of being able to argue for positions that appealed to their conservative base but that they knew would not become law because Senate Democrats would block them or because the president would veto them. Now, if they can assemble the votes, their ideas will become law  —   with all the attendant consequences. Republicans who have shied from the responsibility of government will now be called upon to support increases in the debt limit, approve annual budgets, endorse spending bills and back other   measures that they formerly left to the Democrats and some of their more compromising colleagues. With Democrats unlikely to help on many of those votes after being castigated for them by Republicans, the Republicans who belonged to the “vote no, hope yes” caucus when it came to critical legislation in recent years now will have to vote yes and hope things go well. This isn’t the same style of Republican majority pushed from power after being routed in the 2006 midterm elections after the public backlash to the administration of President George W. Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq. Forged by the Tea Party revolt that restored Republicans to control of the House in the 2010 elections, and in the Senate in 2014, this party is much more conservative with a membership that tends to see government as an impediment to be leveled, not as a force to be shaped to their views to the benefit of their constituents. Eight years of railing against the Obama administration has infused them and their constituents with a hostility and disregard for the government that Republicans must now lead rather than ridicule. Tensions could arise between House and Senate Republicans as well. When the Newt   party took over the House in 1995 for the first time in four decades, newly empowered Republicans sent a raft of legislation to the Senate, only to see it stall there. With President Bill Clinton in the White House at the time, Republicans knew much of it would not be enacted. Now, with Mr. Trump soon to occupy the Oval Office, it is unlikely that House Republicans will be willing to watch Democrats bottle up legislation in the Senate. Demands that their Senate counterparts eliminate the filibuster could mount quickly. While they understand the challenges, Republicans are nonetheless jubilant at their enviable position. “A Republican in the White House and a Republican majority in Congress present tremendous opportunity to make real progress,” Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, said in the party’s weekly radio address on Saturday. “We assume that responsibility with the promise that we’ll work hard to do everything that we can to deliver more opportunities to Americans tomorrow than they have today. ” “I am pretty giddy,” said Mr. Cole as he looked ahead. Republicans have won their chance. Now it is time to see what they can do with it."
"Good morning.  Here’s what you need to know: • The Turkish authorities are hunting for the gunman who opened fire at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day, killing at least 39 people from no fewer than 12 countries. The Islamic State claimed him as “a hero soldier of the caliphate” and appeared to refer to Turkey’s role in the Syrian war. In Iraq, the group claimed a suicide bombing in central Baghdad that killed dozens, even as it makes a brutal   effort to hang on to its only remaining Iraqi stronghold, Mosul. _____ • South Korea’s full Constitutional Court begins formal hearings on the impeachment of President Park  . Public outrage  —   initially aimed at influence by Choi   the daughter of a religious sect leader  —   has turned to broader concerns about the power of the presidency and the influence of   conglomerates like Samsung. The country is seeking the extradition of Ms. Choi’s daughter, who was arrested in Denmark after months of hiding. _____ • House Republicans surprised Washington by voting to hobble a congressional ethics office with no advance notice. The full House will consider the move today as the most powerful   Congress in 20 years goes into session, promising to roll back many of President Obama’s signature policies. Faced with North Korea’s threat to test an intercontinental ballistic missile,   Donald J. Trump took to Twitter to declare bluntly, “It won’t happen!” Over the weekend, Mr. Trump promised to reveal “things that other people don’t know,” possibly as soon as today, about assessments that Russia interfered in the U. S. election. _____ • “We need to fight black money, even though it is hurting little people like me. ” Many Indians agree with that sentiment, voiced by a Delhi taxi driver, saying they are more concerned about reining in corruption than the immediate hardships caused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ban on   bills. India’s Supreme Court ruled that candidates for political office may not run on   or   appeals. The decision comes ahead of assembly elections that will test the strength of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. _____ • SpaceX traced the explosion of its Falcon 9 rocket in September to the unexpected interplay of supercold helium and oxygen with carbon fibers and aluminum. The company said it would resume launches as early as Sunday. • American tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook are on a collision course with European regulators over issues including privacy and taxes. •   saunas, or jjimjilbangs, are doing a brisk business in parts of the United States. • Ads from a slew of major U. S. companies prominently feature Muslims as part of an inclusive marketing strategy. • Thinking about asking for a raise, or changing jobs? Or just want to be happier at work? Here’s a roundup of advice on retuning your career. • Most major markets reopen after the New Year’s holiday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • China’s pledge to shut down its commercial ivory trade is galvanizing support among African trading partners and could boost its international standing. [The New York Times] • Suicide bombers struck the international airport in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing at least three security officers. [Al Jazeera] • A prison battle in Brazil between gangs fighting for control of the cocaine trade left about 60 inmates dead  —   some decapitated. [The New York Times] • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was questioned by police investigators, indicating that a graft inquiry has become a criminal investigation. [The New York Times] • Pakistan began a   polio immunization campaign in the city of Quetta after a strain of the virus was found in sewage samples. [Reuters] • A Mongolian official’s apology for allowing the Dalai Lama to visit is the latest sign that Chinese pressure is outweighing the country’s deep ties to the Tibetan leader. [The New York Times] • Pan Pan, a    panda who fathered nearly a quarter of the world’s captive pandas, died last week at a conservation center in China’s Sichuan Province. [The New York Times] • The first meteor shower of the year, the Quadrantids, should be visible from Asia in the early hours of Wednesday. [EarthSky] • A cache of notes left by Richard Nixon’s closest aide shows that Nixon, for domestic political reasons, sabotaged a 1968 peace initiative that could have brought the Vietnam War to an early end. • A museum in Yan’an, China, honors a group of American diplomats who in 1944 gave Washington a positive assessment of Mao Zedong, and had their careers destroyed for it. • J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of “The Lord of the Rings,” was born 125 years ago today. Fans around the world plan to toast “The Professor” at 9 p. m. local time. • Tyrus Wong, who endured racial bias to become one of the most celebrated   artists of the 20th century and whose influence was crucial to the animated film “Bambi,” died at 106. • Finally, our Asia correspondents don’t limit themselves to traditional news stories. Sometimes, they’re just taken with a subject, like Myanmar’s unemployed elephants or President Xi Jinping’s favorite jacket. Here are some of our favorites. Enjoy. “I Can’t Drive 55,” the rocker Sammy Hagar once famously wailed, but 43 years ago this week, he and every other American driver were faced with obeying the first federal speed limit. Setting speed limits had been the states’ responsibility. But in 1973, OPEC cut oil shipments to the United States for supporting Israel in a war with its Arab neighbors. The embargo hit the American economy hard. In 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, lowering the speed limit to reduce consumption. And American car buyers sought out more   vehicles, turning to a country that had not yet been celebrated for automaking: Japan. The debate over road safety and speed limits continued for decades, and in 1995, President Bill Clinton repealed the federal limit, returning the power to the states. In parts of Texas, drivers can legally go 85 m. p. h. That’s the fastest in the country, though it’s slower than a few places in the world. Stretches of Germany’s autobahn have no maximum limit. It’s a far cry from one of the earliest speed restrictions. In 1901, Connecticut limited some drivers to 12 miles per hour. Chris Stanford contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com."
"The body of the Iraqi prisoner was found naked and badly bruised in 2003, outside a detention center in southern Iraq run by United States Marines. The    man had been beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to stand for long periods and interrogated by Marines about his alleged role in a fatal ambush of American forces. James N. Mattis,   Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, was then a major general and the commander of the Marine division in Iraq responsible for the center. He quickly convened an inquiry into the death, which led to   and banned the harsh techniques used at the prison. “General Mattis was all up in arms over this,” Ralph Dengler, then a lieutenant colonel, testified at a military hearing in January 2004. He added that the commander, who arrived hours after the discovery on a planned visit with his British counterpart, had immediately described the death as “the worst thing that happened” under his watch in the Iraq war. “I was surprised that he would have felt that strongly about it, considering many of the other deaths, including American deaths,” Colonel Dengler said. Colleagues say the general’s handling of the episode reflects his firmly held views against torture and prisoner mistreatment, which are shared by many military leaders and could put them at odds with the new commander in chief. Mr. Trump, in a New York Times interview in late November, said he had been surprised to learn that the man he was considering to lead the country’s 2. 2 million service members did not believe in torture. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump advocated bringing back the   practice of waterboarding, adding that “only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work. ” General Mattis does not support abusive techniques, let alone waterboarding. “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers,” he told Mr. Trump during their meeting in November, according to the   “and I do better with that than I do with torture. ” The general’s beliefs were shaped by his military training, but also by his experiences in dealing with issues related to torture or mistreatment, according to an examination of his nearly   career and interviews with former colleagues and friends. General Mattis led the United States Central Command from August 2010 to March 2013. Lt. Col. T. G. Taylor, who was General Mattis’s spokesman during much of that time, said in an interview that the commander had spoken of America as needing to hold the moral high ground. Failing to uphold important principles “makes it easier for a soldier or a Marine to ask, ‘What am I fighting for? ’” Colonel Taylor said. “That is something that General Mattis is keenly aware of,” he added. As a young officer, General Mattis would have been instructed in the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, which, among other protections, require humane treatment of prisoners of war. A Marine who enlisted in 1969 while attending college  —   part of an R. O. T. C. program during the height of the Vietnam War  —   he did not deploy to Vietnam. But, several friends say, he believed that American prisoners of war were more likely to be tortured by the Vietcong if the United States tortured enemy captives. In 2006, General Mattis supported Gen. David H. Petraeus of the Army and other military leaders in the development of a new counterinsurgency field manual that highlighted limits on interrogation tactics. “Torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is never a morally permissible option, even if lives depend on gaining information,” the manual said. “Lose moral legitimacy, lose the war. ” General Mattis later agreed in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that it was inappropriate for the military to support the use of abusive techniques on detainees  —   including waterboarding, forced nudity and sensory deprivation, tactics inflicted on prisoners during interrogations in secret C. I. A. prisons in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Those techniques had been modeled on a military training program operated by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which later fell under the general’s command. That program, Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, also known as SERE, exposed United States soldiers and other service members to techniques that an enemy violating the laws of war might use so that Americans could be better prepared to resist them. The experience typically led trainees to conclude that tortured prisoners of war will say whatever they need to in order to stay alive, whether true or not. A recent investigation by The New York Times found that many terrorism suspects subjected to harsh tactics in C. I. A. jails or American military prisons had lasting mental health problems that were similar to those experienced by some American former P. O. W.s who suffered horrific abuses in Vietnam or Korea. As a commander in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, and as an overall leader of the American war effort, General Mattis often grappled with the consequences of the C. I. A. ’s treatment of prisoners and the harsh conditions at the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They became a powerful recruiting tool for jihadis who threatened American forces in the field. Testifying at a Senate hearing in 2015 after his retirement, General Mattis opposed the release, before the end of hostilities, of prisoners who had fought against the United States. However, he added, they should be treated humanely, in accordance with international and domestic law. “I would go by the Geneva Conventions, and maintain them, with Red Cross oversight, until the war is over,” he told lawmakers. Torture is not effective in eliciting intelligence, the general felt. “For his whole career, he’s believed that it just doesn’t pay dividends,” said a retired senior United States military officer who is close to General Mattis but spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating Mr. Trump. The “pack of cigarettes” reference, according to people who served with the general, reflects two tenets that are drummed into future military leaders: that information gleaned from torture is unreliable, and that   can go a long way. “I’m not in his head, but what General Mattis was saying is that offering a modicum of friendship and humanity to someone in a desperate situation is more successful than physical torture,” Colonel Taylor said. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, declined requests for more detail on the  ’s discussions with General Mattis or on the source of General Mattis’s beliefs and any further thoughts Mr. Trump has had about the use of torture. General Mattis declined to be interviewed. Many American military leaders maintain that the Bush administration’s departure from established practices in allowing harsh coercive techniques  —   government lawyers had said they did not meet the legal definition of torture, and had declared that detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions  —   tainted the United States’ reputation while not yielding results. “Ineffective, war crime, against our values, moral high ground, et cetera,” Donald J. Guter, a retired rear admiral and the dean of the South Texas College of Law, said in explaining objections to brutal treatment. “A very practical reason is that it opens the door for our own troops to be tortured, and we have no basis to object. If we torture, we’ve lost who we are. ” The Department of Defense has clear policies on the humane treatment of detainees. For example, the Army field manual’s section on intelligence collection states: “Use of torture is not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable results. ” The manual adds, “Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is prohibited. ” As a commander in Iraq, General Mattis ordered several investigations into detainee abuse. One of the most significant concerned the 2003 death at a makeshift detention and interrogation center in an abandoned Iraqi Army barracks in southern Iraq, christened Camp Whitehorse. Prisoners were held by United States Marine reservists in extreme heat in a dirty, stone building that had been looted of all amenities by Iraqis during the   invasion. The prisoner who died, Nagem Sadoon Hatab, had been arrested days earlier on suspicion of involvement in a deadly ambush of a United States Army convoy that led to the capture of Jessica Lynch, a    private who was later rescued. Mr. Hatab was alleged to have killed American service members and sold an   rifle taken from one of them. Mr. Hatab failed to stand up while being subjected to     treatment  —   forced standing for 50 minutes of each hour, for up to 10 hours. The objective was to make the detainees tired, stressed and submissive for interrogators, witnesses later said in military court hearings. Like other prisoners at the center, Mr. Hatab was hooded and his hands were restrained behind his back with plastic ties. He was beaten severely by Marine guards after refusing to comply with the forced standing and  . He also underwent questioning by a special Marine interrogation squad. A Marine guard later testified that he had often heard yelling, screaming and banging from the interrogation room, a converted bathroom. After midnight on June 6, 2003, Mr. Hatab was found dead in a courtyard where he had been left lying for hours, his body covered in his own feces. An armed forces medical examiner categorized the death as a homicide. Mr. Hatab had six broken ribs and had suffocated from a broken bone in his throat after being dragged outside by his neck, the examiner concluded. Eight Camp Whitehorse personnel were charged with crimes, including negligent homicide. But the investigator appointed by General Mattis, Col. William B. Gallo, later cited problems with the autopsy and could not determine which of the attacks on Mr. Hatab, if any, might have been lethal. In Colonel Gallo’s opinion, the   treatment did not amount to torture, but the command had failed to provide adequate predeployment training in handling prisoners and in the law of war. Evidence, including certain photographs of the prisoner and a summary of an interrogation he underwent, had been lost or destroyed, complicating the investigation and prosecution. Two Marines, a major and a sergeant, were eventually convicted of lesser charges. Mr. Hatab’s death clearly had an effect on General Mattis. According to reports at the time, he ordered a review of the procedures for handling prisoners, which resulted in a ban of   tactics, including the forced standing. Marine Corps personnel running detention camps were given more training, and a manual was compiled to explain each step of the process. Still, there were several other instances of prisoner abuse involving the division. Later, aiming to earn the trust of the Iraqi people after the first phase of combat had ended, General Mattis added an addendum to the motto of his Marines: “No better friend, no worse enemy. ” The addition was, “First, do no harm. ”"
"ISTANBUL  —   The Islamic State on Monday issued a rare claim of responsibility for an attack in Turkey after a New Year’s Day shooting at an Istanbul nightclub that killed at least 39 people, describing the gunman who carried out the assault  —   and who has not been identified or captured  —   as “a hero soldier of the caliphate. ” The Turkish authorities are still searching for the gunman, who killed a police officer guarding the Reina nightclub before going on a shooting rampage with a   rifle, but the state news media reported that eight suspects had been detained in connection with the attack. The authorities on Monday released two photographs of the person suspected of being the gunman, captured by security cameras, that showed a   cleanshaven man in a dark winter coat. The government’s spokesman, Numan Kurtulmus, said at a news conference that investigators believed they found the assailant’s fingerprints and that they were close to identifying him. Mr. Kurtulmus did not mention the Islamic State specifically, but he said Turkey would press the fight against terrorism. Referring to the attack, which happened just after midnight on Sunday morning, Mr. Kurtulmus said: “The fact that it was done during the first minutes of 2017 gives an important message. The message is, ‘We will go on to menace Turkey in 2017.’ And we say to them, we will break into your caves wherever you are. ” The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on Monday that the gunman might be from Kyrgyzstan or elsewhere in Central Asia. The Russian news agency Interfax quoted Aiymkan Kulukeyeva, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Kyrgyzstan, as saying, “According to preliminary information, this information is doubtful, but we are checking all the same. ” The Islamic State asserted in a statement that the attack had been carried out “in continuation of the blessed operations that the Islamic State is conducting against Turkey, the protector of the cross. ” “A hero soldier of the caliphate attacked one of the most famous nightclubs, where Christians celebrated their pagan holiday,” read the statement from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “They used hand grenades and a machine gun and transformed their celebration to mourning. ” In an apparent reference to Turkey’s role in the conflict in Syria, the statement warned that “the government of Turkey should know that the blood of Muslims, which it is targeting with its planes and its guns, will cause a fire in its home by God’s will. ” The statement did not name the assailant, and it was not clear whether the Islamic State had organized the attack or had merely inspired the gunman. But the shooting came just days after a   State group, the Nashir Media Foundation, published the latest in a series of messages calling for attacks on clubs, markets and movie theaters. The Islamic State’s claim of responsibility came after years of complex relations between the Turkish state and the jihadist group operating across its southern border. Several terrorist attacks in Turkey over the last year have been attributed to the Islamic State, but the militant group rarely claims responsibility for major attacks in the country. A rare exception came in November, when the group claimed to be behind a deadly car bombing in southeastern Turkey. Analysts said that the Islamic State has walked a fine line in Turkey, trying to balance its goal of destabilizing the country without antagonizing the government to the extent that it would crack down heavily. For years, Turkey looked the other way, according to analysts and regional diplomats, as jihadist groups moved fighters and supplies across the border, establishing deep networks in Turkish border towns. Committed to supporting the uprising against President Bashar   of Syria, Turkey felt the jihadists could be managed while they fought with forces loyal to the Syrian government. But that policy ultimately changed, as Turkey worked to secure its borders, under pressure from its allies as it took in millions of Syrian refugees and as terrorist attacks rocked the country. Turkey began a military intervention in northern Syria in August that put its forces on the front lines against Kurdish militants as well as Islamic State fighters. This turned the jihadists decidedly against Turkey, prompting their leaders to call for attacks there. The Turkish military said on Monday that it had struck Islamic State targets in Syria, killing at least 22 militants. American intelligence officials had recently expressed concern about a possible attack in Turkey, warning in a statement on Dec. 22 that extremist groups were “continuing aggressive efforts to conduct attacks throughout Turkey” in areas where American citizens and expatriates lived or visited. That warning came three days after a gunman, described by Turkish officials as a      police officer, assassinated Andrey G. Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, at an art gallery in the capital, Ankara. The gunman shouted “God is great!” and “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!” during the attack, which was captured on video. The   Anadolu news agency said that 38 of the 39 people who died in the attack on Sunday had been identified, The Associated Press reported. At least two dozen of the people killed were said to be foreigners."
"WASHINGTON  —   President Obama’s advisers wrestled with an intractable problem in the spring and summer of 2015: How could they stabilize Afghanistan while preserving Mr. Obama’s longtime goal of pulling out the last American troops before he left office? As it happened, the president solved the problem for them. In early August of that year, when Mr. Obama convened a meeting of the National Security Council, he looked around the table and acknowledged a stark new reality. “The fever in this room has finally broken,” the president told the group, according to a person in the meeting. “We’re no longer in   mode. ” What Mr. Obama meant was that no one in the Situation Room that day, himself included, thought that the United States  —   after 14 years of war, billions of dollars spent and more than 2, 000 American lives lost  —   would ever transform Afghanistan into a semblance of a democracy able to defend itself. At the same time, he added, “the counterterrorism challenges are real. ” As bleak as Afghanistan’s prospects were, the United States could not afford to walk away and allow the country to become a seedbed for extremists again. A few weeks later, the president halted the withdrawal and announced that he would leave thousands of American troops in the country indefinitely. It was a crucial turning point in the evolution of Barack Obama. The antiwar candidate of 2008 who had pledged to turn around Afghanistan  —   the “good war” to George W. Bush’s “bad war” in Iraq  —   had conceded that the longest military operation in American history would not end on his watch. The optimistic president who once thought Afghanistan was winnable had, through bitter experience, become the commander in chief of a forever war. He remains defensive about the lessons of that journey. “We shouldn’t assume that every time a country has problems that it reflects a failure of American policy,” the president said in an interview in September. Now, as Mr. Obama prepares to turn the war over to Donald J. Trump, a leader even more skeptical than he is about the value of American engagement in foreign conflicts, Afghanistan captures the disillusionment of a man who believed, as he put it in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, “that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. ” More than any other conflict, Afghanistan shaped Mr. Obama’s thinking on the basic questions of war, peace and the use of military power. It is where he discovered his affinity for drones, sharpened his belief in the limits of American intervention, battled his generals and hardened his disdain for unreliable foreign leaders. It reaffirmed his suspicions about sending American troops into foreign conflicts and made him reluctant to use more force in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other war zones. It also chastened him about his own hopes. “When it comes to helping these societies stabilize and create a more secure environment and a better life for their people, we have to understand,” he said in the interview, “that this is a long slog. ” Mr. Obama was a state senator from Illinois in October 2002 when he famously condemned Iraq as a “dumb war. ” But in the same speech he also said, “I don’t oppose all wars. ” He was referring to Afghanistan, which he viewed as a just war to hunt down the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again,” he told the crowd that day in Chicago’s Federal Plaza. By July 2008, as the Democratic nominee for president, Mr. Obama had embraced Afghanistan as a priority over Iraq  —   the “good war,” in a phrase that he never actually used himself but that became so associated with his approach it was sometimes wrongly attributed to him. Mr. Obama praised the Bush administration’s troop surge in Iraq that year not because he believed that the United States could transform Iraqi society, but because he thought that reducing the violence there would allow the nation to turn its attention to Afghanistan. “This is a war that we have to win,” he declared. He promised to send at least two more combat brigades, or roughly 10, 000 soldiers, to Afghanistan. The United States was hardly on course for victory. Although there were already close to 50, 000 American troops in Afghanistan as Mr. Obama campaigned that summer, the Taliban were gaining momentum. In a bloody debacle, nine American soldiers were killed in what became known as the Battle of Wanat when the Taliban brazenly overran a remote Army outpost in the far eastern province of Nuristan. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Mr. Obama in calling the situation in the country “precarious and urgent. ” More than 100 Americans would die in Afghanistan by the end of 2008, a larger number than in any other prior year. When Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, he ordered a quick policy review on Afghanistan by a former intelligence analyst, Bruce Riedel. But even before it was completed, he accepted a Pentagon recommendation to send 17, 000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total to nearly 70, 000 American troops on the ground. By the fall of 2009, with the Taliban showing increased strength, Mr. Obama’s military commanders, backed by the elders on his war council, including Hillary Clinton, then his secretary of state, were pressing him to go much farther. They urged on him an ambitious counterinsurgency strategy that had helped turn around the war in Iraq  —   a     expensive doctrine of trying to win over the locals by building roads, bridges, schools and a   government. The strategy, known by its acronym COIN, would require as many as 40, 000 additional American men and women in uniform in Afghanistan, his advisers told him. “There was still the afterglow of the surge in Iraq, and the counterinsurgency narrative that had made the military the savior of the Iraq war,” said Vali R. Nasr, a former State Department adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan. “I don’t believe Obama was in a position to pick a debate with the military on Afghanistan, and to assert what would be his worldview. ” “In many ways, I think, he deferred,” said Mr. Nasr, now the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Although Mr. Obama agreed after months of internal debate to send 30, 000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he placed a strict timetable on the mission, saying they would have to be withdrawn again, starting in July 2011. His aides later said he felt hijacked by a military that had presented him with a narrow band of options rather than a real choice. Even some former military commanders agreed, saying that the troop deployments were framed in a way that made choosing a smaller number  —   20, 000, for example  —   look like a path to certain defeat. “President Obama was asking the military for broad options,” said Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired general who served as the commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and was later Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Kabul. But, he said, the military gave Mr. Obama only “variations” on “the more robust counterinsurgency model. ” Mr. Eikenberry, who wrote a politically explosive but prescient cable in late 2009 raising doubts about the wisdom of the surge, diagnosed a deeper problem with the policy. Was it simply to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for Al Qaeda? Or was it to turn Afghanistan into another Denmark? “When he came in, everyone knew we were going to do more,” Mr. Eikenberry said. “But what we were trying to achieve was difficult to define. ” Given Mr. Obama’s innate wariness of   it didn’t take long for him to grow disenchanted with the Denmark option. A few months into the surge, in the spring of 2010, David H. Petraeus, the commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command and an architect of the strategy, was briefing him on the state of the counterinsurgency campaign. Drawing on anthropology theory from the University of Chicago, General Petraeus explained to his commander in chief how neighborhoods in Kandahar related to one another. Mr. Obama listened for a while, then cut him off. “We can’t worry about how neighborhoods relate to each other in Kandahar,” he curtly told General Petraeus, according to people in the room. “Obama believes the military can do enormous things,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser. “It can win wars and stabilize conflicts. But a military can’t create a political culture or build a society. ” By the end of his first term, Mr. Obama had evolved to the point that he fully embraced the concept “Afghan good enough. ” The phrase, which had been kicked around the White House since 2010, referred to the shift away from   to a policy that was content with taking out the terrorists, preventing the Taliban from overrunning the country and putting a premium on getting the troops out. By that new standard, things had improved in Afghanistan. By August 2010, 100, 000 American troops were on the ground in Afghanistan and were pushing back the Taliban in some critical areas. Despite uneven progress in the military campaign, Ryan Crocker, a diplomat who had reopened the American Embassy in Kabul in 2002 and served there again as ambassador in 2011, recalled thinking, “Wow, this place looks great!” The Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011 added to Mr. Obama’s conviction that he was on the way to closing the books on the war. At midnight on May 1, 2012, Air Force One rolled out from behind a hangar at Joint Base Andrews to pick up the president for a secret trip to Afghanistan. He was going to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai that set the terms for relations after 2014, when the United States was scheduled to withdraw its combat troops and turn over Afghanistan’s security to the Afghans. Aides to Mr. Obama had advised him not to go for security reasons, but he saw it as an important milestone. The agreement promised an “enduring partnership” between the United States and Afghanistan, with pledges of American help in developing the Afghan economy and public institutions. Yet the promises obscured a starker reality: Mr. Obama had accelerated the timetable for drawing down American troops, and he was looking beyond the war. Speaking to a national TV audience from Bagram Air Base, he suggested that America’s experience in Afghanistan had come full circle. “One year ago, from a base here in Afghanistan, our troops launched the operation that killed Osama bin Laden,” he said. “The goal I set  —   to defeat Al Qaeda, and deny it a chance to rebuild  —   is now within our reach. ” Earlier, Mr. Obama had met for an hour with Mr. Karzai. The two had long had a rocky relationship  —   on an earlier trip, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Karzai for the rampant corruption in the Afghan government  —   and this session did little to improve their rapport. Mr. Crocker recalled that the president was “very aloof, almost cold, which bothered me a bit because I’d worked a solid damn year to get Karzai in a better place with us. ” Things never warmed up between them. When Mr. Karzai refused to sign a   security agreement with Washington, Mr. Obama gave up on him to focus on his successor, Ashraf Ghani. The experience left a lasting imprint on the president, his aides said. He concluded that without the right partner, it was impossible for the United States to succeed, no matter how much blood and treasure it poured into a country. It was an insight that Mr. Obama applied to his relations with other countries, from Pakistan to Israel, where his poor relationships with the leaders impeded progress. “The most underappreciated part of foreign policy,” Mr. Rhodes said, “is dealing with flawed partners. ” When Mr. Obama convened his National Security Council that day in August 2015, the Taliban were regrouping again. They had carried out audacious terrorist attacks in the center of Kabul and had mounted a military offensive in the provinces of Kunduz and Oruzgan. Worse, there was a new threat in the form of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which sprouted in the poisonous soil of Iraq after the United States left and was finding recruits in the Hindu Kush. Mr. Obama had rejected a chorus of calls in Washington to delay the drawdown, under which the residual force of American troops was to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2016. “The mantra I heard was that the president does not want to hand off to his successor the mess he inherited,” said Daniel F. Feldman, who served as the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2014 and 2015. But as the Islamic State became a dire enough threat to return American troops to Iraq, Mr. Obama felt compelled to change course on Afghanistan. “ISIL thrived in a vacuum in Iraq and it pointed to a similar vacuum in Afghanistan,” Mr. Rhodes said. Mr. Obama, he said, was prodded by more than fear. After a long stretch of political paralysis, Afghanistan formed a government with Mr. Ghani in the presidency. For the first time since taking office, Mr. Obama felt like he had a partner with whom he could do business. The   Afghan Army was taking heavy casualties fighting the Taliban, and the president believed that the United States had an obligation to help them. But as Mr. Obama’s war council met that August morning, the level of American support remained the subject of intense debate. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. a skeptic about Afghanistan going back to 2009, argued that the country would revert to chaos, regardless of how long the United States stayed there. “It doesn’t matter if we leave tomorrow or 10 years from now,” he declared, according to those in the room. He was, he conceded, a “broken record” on this issue. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who had succeeded Admiral Mullen as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended that the United States maintain a military presence in Kabul, and at Bagram and a scattering of bases in the east and south. The 10, 000 soldiers in the country would carry out a singular, ruthless mission of killing suspected terrorists and keeping the country from spiraling out of control. The imperative, General Dempsey told Mr. Obama, was that Afghanistan fit into a broader counterterrorism policy from Central Asia to North Africa to extend “well beyond your presidency,” according to several officials. Mr. Obama liked that idea. It was in line, he said, with the principles he had laid out in a 2014 speech at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N. Y. where he said America would train and equip foreign armies but leave the   fighting to them. He acknowledged that it would mean handing off Afghanistan to his successor as unfinished business. “This goes to the politics of what I’m leaving for the next president,” he told the group, according to one of the participants. “My interest is not to sign them up for 10 years of X,” he added, referring to troop numbers, “but to lay out a vision and to put stakes in the ground for that vision. ” Mr. Obama now seems at an uneasy peace. In the interview in September, he disputed the suggestion that his policy had failed. He had, after all, reduced the number of American troops to fewer than 10, 000 from more than 100, 000. They were training and assisting Afghan troops, even if the line between that and actual combat was sometimes blurry. The country had been broken to begin with, he said, and America was never going to fix it. “Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries in the world with the lowest literacy rates in the world before we got there. It continues to be,” Mr. Obama said. The country “was riven with all kinds of ethnic and tribal divisions before we got there. It’s still there. ” In the end, Afghanistan became the template for a new kind of warfare  —   a chronic conflict, across an arc of unstable states, in which the United States is a participant, if not the principal actor. At a NATO summit meeting in Warsaw in July, Mr. Obama acknowledged that this prospect would disappoint an American public still suffering from combat fatigue. “It’s very hard for us ever to get the satisfaction of MacArthur and the emperor meeting, and a war being officially over,” he said. “As commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world,” he went on, “I spend a lot of time brooding over these issues. And I’m not satisfied we’ve got it perfect yet. ”"
"With the year winding down and New Year’s resolutions just around the corner, it’s time to gear up for that   clutter purge. But the thought of tackling the kitchen junk drawer  —   or even taking down the decorations  —   can be overwhelming. So to help motivate you, several organizing professionals offered tips on how to streamline your closets, beat back the toys taking over the living room and, yes, finally deal with that junk drawer. START WITH THE HOLIDAY TRAPPINGS To keep plastic ornaments and Hanukkah candles organized, use small containers you already have on hand, like popcorn and cookie tins or empty shoeboxes and egg cartons. Wrap fragile ornaments in leftover tissue paper or newspaper, or invest in storage containers like archival ornament boxes from the Container Store. For strings of lights and garlands, use zip ties to avoid tangles and put them in plastic bags labeled according to use (tree lights, porch lights, balcony, bushes, etc. ). Zip ties can also be used on wreaths, so that they can be hung on coat hangers and covered with plastic garment bags from the dry cleaner. To avoid a stockpile of holiday cards, “save only those that are meaningful and special,” Tova Weinstock, a professional organizer in Brooklyn, said. “For the others, appreciate them as you receive them and then kindly send them to the trash. ” EDIT YOUR CLOSET Eliminating clothes you never wear is easier said than done. “I don’t believe in ‘If you haven’t used or worn something in a year, get rid of it,’” said Laura Cattano, another organizer in Brooklyn. “How you want to live moving forward is a much better guide for editing than whether or not you actually have used something in the past. ” Focus on the image you would like to project, she said, then start at one end of the closet and review each piece, pulling out those you know you can toss, donate or sell. Try on anything you haven’t worn in a while and consider how it makes you feel or if it could be styled differently. Clothes you have forgotten about could be “your new favorite thing,” she said, while there may be some pieces you wear all the time that should be retired. (If you subscribe to the Marie Kondo method of decluttering, ask yourself, “Does it ‘spark joy? ’”) Sort clothes by type, grouping pants together, then shirts or blouses, jackets or dresses. “If you can’t see it, you won’t wear it,” said Sharon Lowenheim, an organizer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the founder of the Organizing Goddess. “So remove dry cleaning bags and hang only one item per hanger. ” Arranging shirts by sleeve length, with the shortest at the front, makes them easier to find, said Ms. Lowenheim, who also subscribes to a rotation method: selecting garments to wear from the front of each section, then hanging them up toward the back after they are cleaned. “If you find yourself continually bypassing an item at the front, that is a signal to you that you just don’t like that item,” she said. “Get rid of it. ” Another way to keep your closet streamlined is to store   clothes out of sight, said Faith Roberson, an organizer in Manhattan and the founder of Organize With Faith. When clothes have been put away for half the year and you’ve done fine without them, “it changes your perspective,” she said. “You can honestly ask yourself, ‘Do I actually love this piece? And if I don’t, why am I holding onto it? ’” TACKLE THE TOYS Organizing pros agree that the best way to keep toys from taking over is to get children involved in selecting some to donate. “Finding a charity that provides toys to less fortunate children is very motivating for a child,” said Ms. Lowenheim, whose    daughter purged her playthings in this manner before each birthday and holiday, starting when she was a toddler. Before that, Ms. Lowenheim said, she would sneak into her daughter’s room while she was sleeping to gather up the games and stuffed animals she was no longer playing with. “When she was around 3, she started noticing if something was missing and would ask me about it,” Ms. Lowenheim said. “At that point, I realized that I had to involve her in the process. ” If they cooperate, be sure to respect their decision, Ms. Roberson said, even if they choose something you wouldn’t have. “Parents think about the money they’ve spent,” she said, or the sentimental value, which can make them reluctant to let go of that American Girl doll or the train set from Aunt Joan. Another strategy is to encourage them to sell the toys they no longer play with, either online or at a garage sale, and keep the proceeds for themselves. Once the toys have been pared down, Ms. Roberson swears by clear shoe or sweater drawers for storage. “They are stackable, they have dividers, are easy to clean, easy to label, and they come in four different sizes,” she said. To help maintain order, “label where each toy goes,” said Ms. Lowenheim, who recommends installing a tall bookcase and putting paints, jigsaw puzzles and other games that tend to leave a mess on the highest shelf. If your child is too young to read, label the containers with stickers or pictures. If everything has “a home” to return to at the end of the day, she said, cleanup will be easier. AND THAT JUNK DRAWER . .. “Don’t waste your time standing over the drawer sifting through it piece by piece,” Ms. Roberson said. Dump everything onto the floor or countertop, divide it into piles and then ask yourself: Do I want it? Does it work? Does it need to be in the junk drawer? If not, where else could it go? “Take it easy, and go pile by pile,” she said. Put things where they belong (like that miniature tube of toothpaste you got from the dentist that should go in your toiletries bag) and discard things you don’t need, like old keys and expired batteries and coupons. To ward off atrophy, buy a drawer organizer, suggested Ms. Lowenheim, who uses expandable drawer organizers from Staples in her own home. “The key thing is to measure the drawer, then find the organizer that best fits the space,” she said. “If it’s too small, it won’t help. ” The reward? “Keeping everything sorted by type,” she said, “will make it easier for you to find something when you need it. ”"
"JERUSALEM  —   Israeli police investigators questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for three hours at his official residence on Monday evening on suspicion of receiving illicit gifts and favors from business executives. Mr. Netanyahu was questioned “under caution,” the police said in a statement, implying that there were grounds to suspect that Mr. Netanyahu might have committed a criminal offense. “No further details can be given at this stage,” the statement added. The Ministry of Justice said late Monday that Mr. Netanyahu had been questioned by investigators from Lahav 433, a police fraud investigation and prosecution unit, with the authorization of the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit. In a detailed statement, the ministry described how the police had gathered testimony from dozens of witnesses, some abroad, and seized documents during a monthslong graft inquiry. While some aspects of the inquiry did not yield evidence of crimes, the statement said, other parts warranted a deeper investigation. Mr. Netanyahu, who has been subject to police inquiries and investigations in the past that ended without charges, has vehemently denied any impropriety. “This will all come to nothing, because there is nothing,” he has said repeatedly of the latest accusations. Local news outlets say the investigators are focused on two separate cases, one more serious than the other, but they have offered little detail on the more serious one. The less weighty one, according to reports in the newspaper Haaretz and other outlets, concerns favors for Mr. Netanyahu, and possibly for members of his family, given by Israeli and foreign business executives. The Israeli police took testimony from Ronald S. Lauder, a conservative American businessman and philanthropist, and a close friend of Mr. Netanyahu’s, when he came to Israel in late September to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and president. Upon Mr. Lauder’s arrival in Israel, he was asked to meet with the Israeli police “and respond to questions related to an investigation, to which Mr. Lauder is not a party,” Helena Beilin, a Tel   lawyer representing Mr. Lauder, said in a statement. “After a short meeting the following day, he was told that his presence was no longer needed and that there would be no need for additional meetings. This remains the case. ” Mr. Netanyahu’s office, suggesting that he is the victim of a witch hunt, issued a statement over the weekend berating the news organizations for what it described as premature and politically motivated reports. “Try to replace the prime minister at the ballot boxes, as is accepted in democracies,” it added. In televised remarks on Monday afternoon, Mr. Netanyahu told legislators from his conservative Likud Party in Parliament, “We hear the celebratory spirit and winds blowing through the television studios and in the corridors of the opposition. ” “Hold off the celebrations don’t rush,” he added. “I’ve told you before and will tell you again  —   this will come to nothing, because there is nothing. ” Mr. Netanyahu is serving his third consecutive term in office, and his fourth over all. He has exuded confidence lately, lashing out at journalists who have been critical of him, talking up Israel’s diplomatic and economic achievements, and calling in the United States ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, for a dressing down late last month after the Obama administration decided not to use its veto to shield Israel from a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu, generally a popular prime minister, has developed a combative relationship with the local mainstream news media. After years of tension with the Obama administration, he also appears buoyed by the prospect of a partnership with   Donald J. Trump, who seems more sympathetic to Israeli government policies on issues like settlements. For Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents, the prospect of a possible indictment has provided a glimmer of hope, even though elections are not scheduled until late 2019. “This creates an unusual dynamic in Israeli politics,” said Nahum Barnea, a political columnist for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and a critic of Mr. Netanyahu. On the one hand, Mr. Barnea said, there were already signs that Netanyahu loyalists would try to promote legislation banning investigations of sitting prime ministers. On the other, he said, the question of who might succeed Mr. Netanyahu, who has no natural heir in his party, was bound to be raised. Opposition leaders were fairly subdued in their initial response. Isaac Herzog, the leader of the Zionist Union and of the opposition in Parliament, said it was “a tough day for Israel when a prime minister is under investigation. ” He added, “We are not expressing satisfaction at another’s misfortune. ” Mr. Herzog has also been the subject of police investigations over campaign funding. Yair Lapid, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, which has challenged Likud in recent polls, said, “The presumption of innocence applies to every Israeli, including the prime minister. ” He called for a swift investigation for the sake of the country, saying, “A person who is being investigated is a person under pressure. ” Israeli prime ministers are not obligated to step down while under investigation, unless they are charged with a crime. Nonetheless, the accusations could chip away at Mr. Netanyahu’s standing. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was forced from power in 2008 under the weight of police investigations and accusations of corruption, although he remained in office as a caretaker prime minister until early elections could be held in 2009. In February, Mr. Olmert became the first former Israeli prime minister to enter prison. He is serving a   term for bribery and obstruction of justice. Mr. Netanyahu described Mr. Olmert in 2008 as a “prime minister up to his neck in investigations” and said he could not be trusted to make fateful decisions under the circumstances because they might be based on personal rather than national interests. Since the 1990s, Mr. Netanyahu’s political career has been dogged by inquiries into his conduct, and that of people around him, though no charges have been filed against him. The inquiries have ranged from scandals involving travel expenses and garden furniture  —   the Netanyahus were suspected of having switched a new set bought for the prime minister’s official residence with an identical, old set in their private home in Caesarea  —   to a more recent one involving a   deal with Germany for the acquisition of submarines. That agreement came under scrutiny after it became known that Mr. Netanyahu’s personal lawyer also represents the Israeli agent of the German shipyard that builds the submarines, and other naval equipment purchased by Israel, giving rise to suspicion of a conflict of interest. In that episode, too, Mr. Netanyahu and the lawyer, David Shimron, have denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Netanyahu’s relationship with Arnaud Mimran, a French tycoon who was convicted of fraud last year, and who testified that he had contributed a large sum of money to Mr. Netanyahu for his 2009 election campaign, has also prompted suspicions of impropriety."
"PARIS  —   If the world does not envy the French enough already for their generous vacations, universal health care and fine food and wine, the arrival of 2017 brings this: a newly created “right to disconnect. ” Though ridiculed in some quarters as a ban on   email after hours, it is not quite that. But it is born of the enlightened view that it is actually beneficial for people not to work all the time, and that workers have the right to occasionally draw the line when their employer’s demands intrude on evenings at home, treasured vacations or Sundays with friends and family. “Employees are more and more connected during hours outside of the office,” Myriam El Khomri, the minister of labor, said last year in justifying the need for the law. “The boundary between professional and personal life has become tenuous,” and cases of burnout are becoming more prevalent, she said. The measure is one of a raft of new laws that took effect with the beginning of the new year and that exemplify the search for compromises between preserving French traditions and making concessions to the realities of the modern world. The new provision in the labor law does not ban   emails, but does require that companies with more than 50 employees negotiate a new protocol to ensure that work does not spill into days off or   hours. Some consultants have recommended that employees and managers avoid the “reply all” function on emails to groups so that only one person is being asked to read an email and respond, rather than half the office. Another approach recommends setting a time each evening after which employees are not expected to reply  —   several firms have designated the 10 hours between 9 p. m. and 7 a. m. others the 12 hours between 7 p. m. and 7 a. m. As a country with Catholic roots, but also a commitment to personal liberties, France has had an ambivalent approach to divorce. It has long been legal, but not necessarily speedy. A new nod to modernity in French laws eases the rules for people who want to divorce. While historically France has been far more flexible than Ireland or Italy, it still required a judge to rule on each divorce. The procedure routinely took as long as a year, and sometimes far longer, because cases were backed up awaiting the judicial signature. Now, if both members of the couple agree on the divorce, lawyers can draw up the divorce agreement, jointly sign the papers and have them notarized. No judges need be involved. Smoking is another area in which French habits have changed relatively little in recent years  —   27 to 28 percent of the population still lights up  —   but the country is now following many others in requiring “neutral packaging” for tobacco products: Instead of advertising a brand, cigarette packs sport only health warnings and photos of illnesses caused by smoking. At least two new laws demonstrate the country’s gradual move toward more sustainable products. Instead of thin plastic bags, French supermarkets and fruit vendors must substitute either bags made with a   synthetic called amidon that is mixed with plastic, a thicker type of plastic bag that could be reused, or paper bags. At Monoprix, a supermarket chain, paper bags have won out and stacks of them perch precariously on stands at the ends of fruit counters. More radical is the edict that went into effect on Sunday banning the use of pesticides in public gardens and along public highways. It promises to make public green spaces safer for birds and other small animals, which are especially vulnerable to the poisons used in pest killers. It will not be easy for the gardeners employed by cities to turn to more sustainable methods. When the city of Lyon abandoned pesticides voluntarily nine years ago, it took quite some time to change the culture, although Lyon is now considered a model. In 2019, the antipesticide law will expand to include amateur gardeners  —   a challenge not only for the French with backyard rows of dahlias and daisies, but also for those who nurse roses in their window boxes. A new   law is sure to please the French because it plays to their immense pride in local comestibles: It allows prepared foods, like frozen dinners, to be labeled “produit d’origine française” only if the item is made with 100 percent French meat or milk. Any product with more than 8 percent foreign meat must say where the animal was born, raised and butchered. A product with more than 50 percent foreign milk must say where it was collected and turned into the product being sold. It seems that the French version of “Made in America” is “Raised in France. ”"
"OTTAWA  —   It was 7 a. m. and 99 passengers and six crew members were aboard a 737 on the tarmac at Calgary International Airport, bound for a sunny holiday in Cancun, Mexico. There was one problem, however. The flight’s captain was passed out in the cockpit, apparently from drinking. The police in Calgary, Alberta, arrested the pilot, Miroslav Gronych, 37, on Saturday and have charged him with two   offenses. “This is a new one, and obviously this had a very significant potential to cause great harm had the pilot actually been allowed to fly this plane,” Staff Sgt. Paul Stacey of the Calgary Police Service said at a news conference. “There’s just so many checks and balances, it just doesn’t surprise me that he got caught before this plane was able to leave the gate. ” Nevertheless, Inspector Ken Thrower, the commander of the Calgary Police Service’s traffic and airport unit, said his officers, along with airport officials and inspectors from Transport Canada, the aviation regulator, will begin trying to figure out how the pilot managed to pass through several checkpoints, including airport security, while obviously inebriated. Mr. Gronych was charged with two criminal offenses: having care and control of an aircraft while impaired, and having care and control of an aircraft while testing for more than 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. “He was pretty high,” Sergeant Stacey said, adding that it was inconceivable that the pilot had followed Transport Canada regulations that bar drinking or drug use by pilots within eight hours of a flight. The aircraft was operated by Sunwing Airlines, a   carrier based in Toronto. Sunwing’s gate agents found the pilot’s behavior to be unusual and alerted the  . The   then discovered the pilot slumped in the captain’s seat and “severely impaired by alcohol,” Sergeant Stacey said. Transport Canada, which did not respond to requests for comment, is conducting a separate investigation, which is likely to result in additional charges, the police said. Inspector Thrower said Mr. Gronych is from Slovenia and is in Canada on a work visa. He will appear in court again on Thursday. After some delay, the flight did take off with a new crew. Sunwing did not respond to requests for comment. Janine Massey, a spokeswoman, told The Associated Press that the carrier was “very apologetic for any upset that this has caused and would like to assure our customers that safety remains our utmost priority. ”"
"RIO DE JANEIRO  —   A prison riot involving gangs vying for supremacy over the cocaine trade in the Brazilian Amazon left at least 56 people dead, the authorities in the city of Manaus said on Monday. Riots at Brazil’s prisons are common, but the episode in Manaus, which involved decapitated bodies being thrown over the walls of the penitentiary, ranks among the bloodiest in recent decades. Officials expressed dismay over the scenes of slaughter in the Compaj prison, which held more than 1, 200 inmates, about triple its official capacity. “I never saw anything like this in my life,” Judge Luís Carlos Valois, who helped negotiate an end to the riot, said in a Facebook post. He said that dozens of people had been killed, but that it was challenging to arrive at a precise count: “There were lots of bodies. Many of them were dismembered. ” The riot flared on Sunday and lasted about 17 hours, raising fears of even greater violence on the streets of Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon basin with a population of about 2. 1 million. Manaus has emerged as a brutal battleground between two prison gangs that are contesting control of the drug trade in the region. The authorities said that one of the gangs, Familia do Norte (Family of the North) which operates from the Manaus prisons, was responsible for the vast majority of the killings during the riot. The targets were from First Capital Command, a much larger rival gang commonly known by its Portuguese initials, P. C. C. which has its roots in the prisons of São Paulo in southeast Brazil. “There were deaths only on one side,” Sérgio Fontes, the top security official in Amazonas State, told reporters. “The Familia do Norte massacred members of the First Capital Command, and one or another guys who weren’t on their good side at the moment. ” The riot drew comparisons with the 1992 uprising at the Carandiru prison in São Paulo, when police forces stormed the building and 111 inmates were killed. An appeals court recently voided the convictions of 73 police officers for their participation in the killings, raising criticism from human rights groups. Since that episode, the Brazilian authorities have vowed to alleviate overcrowding in the country’s prisons and combat prison gangs. But soaring numbers of convictions for relatively minor drug offenses have pushed prison populations upward, the gangs’ clout is growing, and riots continue to erupt frequently all over the country. In the riot in Manaus, inmates took dozens of fellow prisoners hostage. They also seized 12 employees of Umanizzare, a private contractor that operates prisons in the Amazon. Negotiators eventually won the release of the hostages by assuring the inmates that they would not be harmed or transferred to other prisons. Security specialists say that Brazil could experience more riots like the one in Manaus as P. C. C. the São Paulo gang, extends its reach around the country. Familia do Norte, the Manaus gang, recently formed an alliance with Red Command, a gang that has been losing ground to P. C. C. in parts of Rio de Janeiro."
"After the explosion in September of one of its rockets, SpaceX is now ready to get back into the business of sending payloads to space, the company announced on Monday, with its next rocket headed to orbit as soon as Sunday. In a statement, SpaceX  —   or more formally, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation  —   said that an investigation had determined the likely cause: an unexpected interplay of supercold helium and oxygen with carbon fibers and aluminum. The statement Monday added technical details about what went wrong, and the company said it had devised workarounds to prevent a recurrence. The cascade of explosions on Sept. 1 that destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was perplexing and concerning, because it occurred during what is usually regarded as a safer portion of operations  —   the fueling of propellants  —   about eight minutes before the ignition of the engines for a planned test. (The launch had been scheduled for two days later.) The trouble appeared to start near the liquid oxygen tank on the second stage of the   rocket, and in less than a tenth of a second, that section was in flames, followed by the destruction of the entire rocket and a $200 million communications satellite whose customers included Facebook, which had planned to use it to expand internet services in Africa. Under current federal laws, investigations into such explosions are led by the company that built the rocket, not by a government agency. The investigation panel included representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration, the United States Air Force, NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board. Falcon 9 rockets are used to carry NASA cargo to the International Space Station and are to provide transportation for astronauts beginning in 2018. SpaceX is also competing to win contracts to launch Department of Defense spy satellites. With few obvious clues to the explosion, the company initially considered hypotheses like sabotage, that a sniper had fired a shot rupturing the oxygen tank from the roof of a competitor’s building nearby. “The accident investigation team worked systematically through an extensive fault tree analysis,” SpaceX said in its statement. The investigation narrowed in on three helium containers within the   liquid oxygen tank. The containers consist of an aluminum liner with an outer layer of strong carbon fibers. During launch, as the liquid oxygen is consumed, the helium is heated and released to maintain pressure within the tank. In December 2015, SpaceX began using an upgraded Falcon 9 design that uses supercooled liquid oxygen at minus 340 degrees, 40 degrees colder than what is typically used. The lower temperature makes the oxygen denser, which improves engine thrust. But the helium was even colder. As the carbon and aluminum cool, they shrink at different rates, opening gaps into which liquid oxygen could flow. In addition, the helium may have been below the temperature at which oxygen freezes, and some of the trapped oxygen may have become solid. “Really surprising problem that’s never been encountered before in the history of rocketry,” Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, said in an interview on CNBC in November. Both carbon and aluminum can burn, and with oxygen sandwiched in between, all of the ingredients for a conflagration were present. Friction or the breaking of fibers could have provided the energy for ignition, the company said. Tests at SpaceX’s facilities in Hawthorne, Calif. and McGregor, Tex. supported that conclusion, the company said. The configuration of the helium containers has been shifted, and the fueling procedures will change so that the helium will be warmer, SpaceX said. The next SpaceX launch is to carry a   of satellites for Iridium Communications, which provides communications services including satellite telephones through a constellation of satellites. Iridium is looking to replace the surviving 65 original satellites with 70 new satellites, each about the size of a Mini Cooper car. A month ago, Iridium issued a statement saying it hoped that SpaceX would be able to launch its satellites in   but less than a week later, SpaceX said it was pushing back the launch date to early January. The Iridium satellite is to be launched by SpaceX from a leased launchpad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. For launches from Florida, SpaceX hopes to complete renovations at Launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, once used for space shuttle launches. SpaceX is tentatively aiming to resume cargo flights to the space station this month."
"In the basement of a mammoth old building in Upper Manhattan that houses the Yeshiva University High School for Boys sits a cramped gym that is home to the high school’s floor hockey team, known as the Lions. The school calls the gym the Lions’ Den, but many visitors call it the Dungeon and liken playing there to playing hockey inside a box. Games are raucous affairs with rough play and frenzied fans squeezed onto the narrow bleachers at one end, between the squads of panting players. Several miles away, in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, is the comparatively luxurious indoor rink at the Salanter Akiba Riverdale High School, known as S. A. R. With its sturdy boards and rounded sides, the rink resembles a real ice hockey surface. Its scoreboard is flanked by American and Israeli flags. Between these two extremes exists the   but thriving world of interscholastic floor hockey at yeshiva high schools in New York City and surrounding towns. The game in these Orthodox Jewish private schools stretches back at least to the late 1970s, but in recent years, it has grown enormously popular. The championship match can fill an arena with as many as 1, 000 fans, with more people watching live online. Players in elementary grades at Jewish schools now set their sights on yeshivas with the most powerful hockey programs. “Outside the Orthodox community, this is a foreign thing,” said Amir Gavarin, 22, a former floor hockey league player. “But inside, it’s a whole world unto itself, and supercompetitive. ” The teams play in the Metropolitan Yeshiva High School Hockey League, which includes 18 varsity and 15 junior varsity teams for boys. There are also 12 girls’ teams, which play in the spring season. The game is similar to ice hockey, but played on foot on a gym floor with a hard orange ball and   squads made up of a goalie and four roaming players. Goalies wear full padding, but the other players wear sweatpants, jerseys and helmets with face masks. Under the jersey, some players wear a tallit katan, a religious garment with knotted fringes, or zizit. Blatant body checking is banned, but there is plenty of contact. The teams play mostly in conventional gyms set up with temporary barriers. Orthodox youngsters are often introduced to the game in summer camp or by friends from their synagogue, and end up playing in one of the many youth leagues that have cropped up in Orthodox neighborhoods, before joining teams in middle school. “In some New Jersey yeshivas, floor hockey is more popular than basketball,” said Yoni Stone, the varsity coach at the Yeshiva University High School for Boys. “Forget high school  —   every single day school has a team, and the kids start in the youth leagues. ” Players, abiding by their religious tenets, use the sport as an outlet between long hours spent studying Judaic texts and other subjects. Since they observe the Sabbath, there is no play on Friday evenings or Saturdays before sundown. The season runs from late October through March. On a weeknight last month, the Lions made their dramatic pregame entrance to blaring rock music. They were there to take on the Cobras from the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, N. J. a school financed by the family of Jared Kushner, the    of   Donald J. Trump. Mr. Kushner himself was proficient at the sport, having played for the Frisch School in Paramus, N. J. when he was a teenager. The Cobras wound up beating the Lions, a fatiguing feat since the ball rarely escapes the playing area, making for almost nonstop action. Each game has three periods, with each period lasting 12 minutes. In fact, the team from the Ramaz School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side prepared to play at the Lions’ gym by having one of its players, a senior training to enter the Israeli Army, put his teammates through rigorous military exercises. The Ramaz School holds games in a modern, brightly lit gym that is a far cry from the Lions’ Den. One night last month, the Rams of Ramaz took on the visiting Thunder from the Rav Teitz Mesivta Academy, or R. T. M. A. from Elizabeth, N. J. and won the game in   overtime, prompting a celebratory mob of Ramaz players. At certain powerhouses, hockey is perhaps the most prominent sport, and rivalries have developed between neighboring yeshivas. In Brooklyn, the games can be particularly intense whenever the Magen David Yeshivah or the Yeshivah of Flatbush, both in Midwood, or the Yeshivat Darche Eres in Sheepshead Bay, face off. “They’re seeing all these kids in synagogue the next day, so that creates a certain competitiveness,” Mr. Stone said. When rivals in the Five Towns section of Long Island play, “the whole town shuts down” for games that can attract hundreds of spectators, said David Kolb, a hockey writer for MSG Networks and the operator of Camp Dovid, a summer hockey camp in Pennsylvania where campers wear the names of their yeshivas on their jerseys. Two top teams in the Five Towns  —   the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway and the D. R. S. Yeshiva High School for Boys  —   have nurtured a   rivalry. And in the league final in 2014, when the Hebrew Academy finally avenged years of losses with a victory, “you would have thought the messiah had come,” said Seth Gordon, the hockey commissioner for the Metropolitan Yeshiva High School Athletic League. “Some of these rivalries start in elementary school, with the seeds planted when these kids are in sixth grade,” Mr. Gordon said. Though the sport has drawn a loyal and passionate following, the athletes are ultimately religious students who are urged to put their spiritual priorities before their athletic ones. “It’s common with the Jewish identity that we can’t do certain things because of the boundaries of observant Jewish life, so we create our own parameters and do it to the fullest,” Mr. Gavarin said. Mayer Schiller, a Hasidic rabbi who in the 1990s coached Yeshiva University High School to six consecutive league championships, is recognized as the progenitor of the yeshiva floor hockey scene. He was hard to miss, since he coached wearing his black hat and coat. Rabbi Schiller, 65, still an avid fan of rock, pop and punk music, established the now popular tradition of having players enter the gym to loud music. The rabbi’s choice: the Ramones. He grew up playing roller hockey in Queens. In the late 1970s, with New York’s professional basketball teams sagging, students began rooting for two local hockey teams, the Rangers and the Islanders, Rabbi Schiller recalled. Rabbi Schiller was a devout Rangers fan who was particularly fond of the raucous play of Nick Fotiu, a native of Staten Island who became a brawler for the Rangers. The rabbi formed a team at the Ramaz School in 1979, and helped organize a fledgling yeshiva hockey league with a   teams that grew significantly over the years. He regarded coaching as a form of spiritual service and striving at sports as a complement to studying sacred texts and worshiping God. “If God didn’t mean for this greatness to exist, why did he give us Gretzky and Jordan?” Rabbi Schiller said. On a recent weeknight, the S. A. R. team  —   which includes Mr. Kolb’s two sons, Gordie and Henri  —   was put through   drills and scrimmaging by its longtime head coach, Howie Falkenstein. Mr. Falkenstein also runs a hockey program at the Westchester Summer Day camp in Mamaroneck, N. Y. and a league in the Bronx that attracts players from across the region. Its youngest level is the Mites division, which is open to first and second graders. Mr. Falkenstein was getting his team ready for its game against the Frisch School and had players practicing penalty shots. Gordie, the S. A. R. Sting’s captain, deftly scored on his brother, a goalie, prompting a chorus of hoots from teammates. S. A. R. wound up beating Frisch, solidifying its status as one of the league’s top teams. “It’s definitely its own niche, but it’s still hockey and it has the team camaraderie that people are looking for,” Mr. Falkenstein said. “It has the same excitement when you score a goal or make a save. ”"
"Writers are different from the rest of us. Their castoff scraps can be worth money, not to mention the obsessive attentions of future scholars. Jonathan Lethem, 52, recently became the latest author to sell his personal paper trail to a major archive. The Beinecke Rare Book  Manuscript Library at Yale University acquired a trove of his manuscripts, letters, notes and other artifacts, which will now sit alongside material from Walt Whitman, Sinclair Lewis, James Baldwin and Marilynne Robinson in its rich American literature collection. Mr. Lethem’s papers contain items relating to the novels that made him something of a reluctant patron saint of Brooklyn’s literary ascendance, including “Motherless Brooklyn” (1999) and “The Fortress of Solitude” (2003). But as befits a lifelong collector, music obsessive, comics geek and dedicated chronicler of underground culture, there are also   cartoons, New York 1970s ephemera and what is surely the largest cache of drawings of vomiting cats in any university collection. “For an author who is so much fun as a novelist, it’s interesting to see there is so much fun in his archival documents as well,” said Melissa Barton, the curator of American prose and drama at the Beinecke. (Ms. Barton, citing library policy, declined to say what Yale paid in the sale, which was arranged by the Manhattan book dealer Glenn Horowitz.) Mr. Lethem’s archive also includes two computer hard drives, a laptop and other digital materials, especially from more recent years. “You can feel the evaporation of the physical ephemera,” Mr. Lethem, whose most recent novel, “A Gambler’s Anatomy,” appeared in October, said in an interview. But the bulk of the collection consists of   artifacts, some of them charmingly weird. We asked Mr. Lethem, who left New York in 2010 to teach creative writing at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. about some of the odder items in his literary closet. The archive includes a number of   comic books Mr. Lethem made as a child, featuring invented superheroes like   Man, whose origin story included an   attempt to start a nudist colony in Alaska. In one installment,   Man (who later got a passing   in “The Fortress of Solitude”) battled Ed Koch, who was no hero to Mr. Lethem’s   bohemian parents. “I didn’t make multiple copies to sell or anything,” he said. “It was more like I was collecting my own weird artifacts from a pretend universe where   Man was a real comic. ” Mr. Lethem swiped this sticker after stumbling on a shoot for the 1979 movie “The Warriors” in the   subway station in Brooklyn, which was standing in for the Times Square station. “This was my subway stop, and the fact that they were turning it into 42nd Street seemed absurd,” Mr. Lethem recalled. “I remember thinking that no one would see or hear about this movie. Nothing that anyone was shooting in my neighborhood could possibly be important. ” The archive contains typescripts of his novels, often affixed with alternate titles. (Would “Motherless Brooklyn” have been a hit if it had been called “Jerks From Nowhere”?) The earliest is “Apes in the Plan,” an unpublished “fake Philip K. Dick novel,” as Mr. Lethem put it, named for a Devo lyric and written between ages 18 and 23. “I wrote three novels on an electric typewriter,” he said. “If I live long enough, I could end up being one of the last living humans who can say that. ” This diary tracking his writing progress, social interactions, exercise and, um, digestion comes from the   when Mr. Lethem had dropped out of Bennington College and moved to Berkeley, Calif. to try to become a writer. “I had thrust myself into a kind of vacuum,” he said. “I had no visible means of support, nor was anyone expecting to hear from me. This kind of weird   probably had to do with externalizing my superego and answering the question ‘Who are you and what did you actually do today? ’” About those drawings of vomiting cats   …     “For about 15 years, every time I had a really good dance party that went late, with people lolling around drunk and exhausted, at about 2 a. m. I would hand out paper and ask everyone to draw a vomiting cat,” Mr. Lethem said. “I ended up with an incredibly thick file of drawings, some by people who went on to be published cartoonists and writers. ” Some of the goofy character names in Mr. Lethem’s novels are drawn from   lists he typed up early in his career, a habit he connects with the wordplay of “Motherless Brooklyn,” whose narrator has Tourette’s syndrome. Mr. Lethem recalled a moment of recognition sparked by an Oliver Sacks essay about a surgeon with Tourette’s who kept a list of more than 200 unusual names as “candy for the mind. ” “He was collecting real names,” Mr. Lethem said. “But when I read that, I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s me. ’” Names from this list showed up in “Gun, With Occasional Music” (1994) and “Chronic City” (2009). “The Fortress of Solitude,” inspired by Mr. Lethem’s Brooklyn childhood, describes a   store called Samuel J. Underberg, “a site of mysterious life,” where graffiti artists came to buy ink that was specially formulated for stamping prices on slimy packages of meat and therefore ideal for tagging. While writing, Mr. Lethem acquired some random items from the real Underberg’s (now demolished) which are shown here with a 1978 Billboard Hot 100 list, an old calendar and other research materials. “I became a collector of all this tawdry used signage,” he said. “I just thought it was really weird and cool. ” The archive contains dozens of letters from fellow writers and artists, including Donna Tartt, Paul Auster, Suzanne Vega, Jennifer Egan, Thomas Berger and Ursula K. Le Guin. This missive, written on an airline safety card, is from the novelist David Bowman, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2012. “All his letters were like mail art,” Mr. Lethem said. “David had a great, crazy brain. He never stopped covering the world in language. ”"
"In 2007, Rey Canunayon and his wife, MaryGwen, immigrated to the United States from the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. In doing so, they were fulfilling their family’s dreams. For years, her parents had requested that the Canunayons join them in New York City. But her parents died before that could happen. Mr. Canunayon felt remorse about not honoring their wishes while they were alive. Still, he and his wife wanted to embark on the adventure and make the move. “America is a great nation, a kind nation, a nation of greener pastures and milk and honey and endless possibilities,” Mr. Canunayon said. When the couple arrived, they stayed with Ms. Canunayon’s family in New Jersey. Life was exciting, even relaxing, Mr. Canunayon said. But as they settled in a new country, he struggled to find work and grew despondent. “Oh, my God, I have cried a river because I was in a depression,” said Mr. Canunayon, now 46. He found relaxation riding the subway, one station to the next, so long as it kept moving. “When you come from a place where you are so familiar, your own country, you have friends, relatives, connections, a career. And then you’re stripped of everything except your dignity it’s really hard,” he said. Eventually, the couple were able to move into an apartment of their own in Elmhurst, Queens. They also secured employment. He works at a   laundry, while his wife, 49, is a babysitter, a midwife and a nanny. In October 2015, they received their green cards. Beyond that, Mr. Canunayon, who left a career in nonprofit work in the Philippines, has recommitted himself to working to help people and neighborhoods change for the better. Only this time, he is not collecting a paycheck for it. “God gave knowledge for free, skills for free, talent for free, so I’ll give it for free,” Mr. Canunayon said. He volunteers at the couple’s place of worship in Elmhurst, St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church. He also helps other Filipino immigrants. “I cannot imagine myself not sharing the skills and   talent that I have,” he said. But because this effort doesn’t come with a salary, it doesn’t help pay the bills. It took one episode, when the Canunayons received a $600 medical bill for lab tests in September, for them to plummet into financial instability. “It was a big problem, Mr. Canunayon said. “What will happen to us if we can’t pay the rent?” He came across a possible solution on one of his volunteer outings for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and the Filipino Consulate, where he was helping people renew their passports. He mentioned his financial problems to Greg Hankins, a volunteer he had met that day. Mr. Hankins encouraged him to contact another group, Community Health Advocates. It is operated by the Community Service Society, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The Community Service Society did help, providing $641. 45 in Neediest Cases money to cover the couple’s outstanding medical bills. They also got help obtaining health insurance. While grateful for the assistance, they continue to worry about everyday challenges: making ends meet, sending money back to their families and carefully monitoring their finances. “It’s the same situation, financially struggling and trying to get myself back into the saddle,” Mr. Canunayon said. He continues to search for jobs in the nonprofit sector. In the Philippines, he worked in research, advocacy and policy legislation, which led to the development of sustainable organic agriculture to feed the poor. The cause was personal: Many members of his family are farmers. He has not given up hope that he will find a job that lets him continue his passion for service while providing a decent income. “I would be killing myself if I did something else,” he said. “It would deplete my energy. When you work on the things you most love doing, it’s not work. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —   It was supposed to be a triumphant morning for Republicans on Capitol Hill  —   a moment to demonstrate the merits of unified party rule in the age of Donald J. Trump. By noon, party leaders had a message for their charges: It was not going smoothly. The day after House Republicans voted to eliminate an independent ethics body, members returned to work on Tuesday to find their offices inundated with angry missives from constituents amid a national uproar. By midmorning, Mr. Trump had weighed in, questioning the members’ priorities on Twitter. Shortly after, lawmakers were summoned to the basement of the Capitol for a hastily convened meeting with Republican leaders. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader  —   who, along with Speaker Paul D. Ryan, had opposed the proposal  —   lobbed a pointed question at his fellow Republicans, according to two people present: Had they campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act, or tinkering with an ethics office? Minutes later, members emerged to say the changes had been scrapped. The reversal came less than 24 hours after House Republicans, meeting in a secret session, voted to curtail the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body created in 2008 after a series of scandals involving House lawmakers, including three who were sent to jail. It was part of a turbulent opening for the Trump era in Washington, marked by a Republican push in the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans, led by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, had sought on Monday to prevent the office from pursuing investigations that might result in criminal charges. Instead, they wanted to allow lawmakers on the more powerful House Ethics Committee to shut down inquiries. They even sought to block the small staff at the Office of Congressional Ethics, which would have been renamed and put under the oversight of House lawmakers, from speaking to the news media. “It has damaged or destroyed a lot of political careers in this place, and it’s cost members of Congress millions of dollars to defend themselves against anonymous allegations,” Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, said Tuesday, still defending the move. But such resolve crumbled Tuesday morning, as thousands of phone calls flooded lawmakers’ offices and both conservative and liberal ethics groups issued statements condemning the vote. Some Republicans joined in, saying the measure sent the wrong message to the public. (Internet searches for the words “Who is my representative” surged after news of the plan broke Monday night and peaked Tuesday morning, according to Google.) “It was a stumble,” said Representative Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, who opposed the measure and who was himself the subject of an ethics investigation while he was governor of South Carolina. “Probably not the way you want to start out. ” Mr. Trump had weighed in via a series of Twitter posts, suggesting that the House should be focused on domestic policy priorities such as health care and a tax overhaul. He called the Office of Congressional Ethics “unfair” but said focusing on it now was a case of misplaced priorities. He appended the hashtag “DTS,” an apparent allusion to his promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Mr. Ryan and Mr. McCarthy had made clear on Monday that they, too, were opposed to the change. But amid boxes of pizza at a House office building, with the Rose Bowl playing on a nearby television, several members voiced support for the maneuver, including Representative Steve Pearce of New Mexico, whose office employed an aide who was ensnared in an ethics inquiry but later cleared. At first, on Tuesday morning, Mr. Ryan and Mr. McCarthy played down the changes. Mr. McCarthy suggested that he and Mr. Ryan did not have the power to simply order other Republicans to take their advice. “Welcome back,” he joked, referring to the start of the new session of Congress on Tuesday. Even at home, he said, “I usually don’t win what we watch on TV. ” About an hour later, before new members of Congress were to be sworn in  —   the point when the House adopts new rules that will govern how it conducts itself during the   session  —   Mr. McCarthy told his fellow Republicans that they needed to reverse themselves quickly, or potentially face an even more embarrassing revolt on the House floor. By his estimation, he told them, the provision was going to be removed one way or another. This was not the first time that House lawmakers  —   Democrats or Republicans  —   had tried to curtail the powers or budget of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which some lawmakers see as being too aggressive in its investigations, even though it is routinely cheered by nonprofit ethics groups on both the left and the right. Perhaps most prominently, in 2011, Representative Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat who later left Congress to join the Obama administration, tried to cut the agency’s budget by 40 percent, a proposal that failed on a   vote. The House Ethics Committee, the only body that has the power to actually punish lawmakers, also frequently clashed with the office, which serves more as a grand jury that investigates allegations and issues findings to the Ethics Committee of probable cause of misdeeds. For example, the committee tried in 2015 to force the Office of Congressional Ethics to shut down its investigation into allegations that nine House lawmakers’ trips to Azerbaijan in 2013 had been improperly paid for, in part, by a foreign government entity. Some of the lawmakers also accepted improper gifts during the trips, including rugs and crystal. The Office of Congressional Ethics refused to shut down its inquiry, and it published its findings on its own after the Ethics Committee voted to clear the lawmakers of wrongdoing (although the committee urged them to return the gifts). House rules require the Ethics Committee to act on recommendations by the Office of Congressional Ethics within 90 days, with the expectation that it will either formally clear the targeted lawmakers or create investigative committees to determine if rules or laws have been violated. But in recent years, the committee has increasingly relied on a loophole that allows it to informally continue to review allegations without closing a case, a step it has taken in 21 of the 68 cases referred since 2009. Most frequently, that means an end to the matter, at least as far as the public is aware, even though the Ethics Committee never formally announces that it has closed the investigation. As of this week, cases in such a limbo include allegations against Representatives Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina Roger Williams, Republican of Texas Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois and Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois. After their reversal on Tuesday, House Republicans agreed to ask the Ethics Committee to examine the Office of Congressional Ethics and recommend possible changes by this summer to address the concerns that some members have raised. Mr. Goodlatte, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defended his proposal and called the reporting about it inaccurate. “Gross misrepresentation by opponents of my amendment, and the media willing to go along with this agenda, resulted in a flurry of misconceptions and unfounded claims about the true purpose of this amendment,” he said in a statement. But Mr. Goodlatte’s critics said he had simply been caught trying to sneak through a favor to help protect his fellow lawmakers. “We’re glad that the House Republicans listened to the public outrage about this proposal and came to their senses to reverse it, and not end real ethics enforcement in Congress,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said."
" (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the  .) Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Congress focuses on health care. Debate begins today on legislation to dismantle major parts of the Affordable Care Act. President Obama is scheduled to meet with Democrats about resisting efforts to repeal the law, while Vice   Mike Pence will meet with lawmakers from his party to gird them for a fight. • Rough first day back. Republican lawmakers abandoned on Monday a move to eliminate an ethics office after rebukes from constituents and from   Donald J. Trump. Our writer says Mr. Trump’s intervention raises “alarms among Republicans about his power to corral them via social media. ” • Trump on trade. The  ’s pick for trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, is a longtime advocate of protectionist policies, a choice in line with Mr. Trump’s focus on making products in America. That effort has made some Republicans uneasy, but some Democrats are ready to support it. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Trump criticized General Motors for making cars in Mexico. Hours later, Ford said it would expand production at a Michigan factory and would drop plans for a new plant in Mexico. • Getting ready for legal fights.  Democratic leaders of the California Legislature have hired the former U. S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to represent them in any legal fights against the White House. The state is preparing for battles on issues including the environment, immigration and criminal justice. • Latest in Istanbul attack. Turkish officials say they know who killed at least 39 people in an assault on a nightclub last weekend, although they did not release his name. A video appears to show the suspect recording himself as he walked through the city. • Challenges ahead for Netanyahu. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has been “the ultimate survivor” in a political system that destroyed many of his predecessors, our writers say, but the current graft inquiry could be different. The political turmoil comes as an Israeli soldier was found guilty of manslaughter today for shooting a wounded Palestinian attacker. The country has been highly divided over the case. • Rethinking death. One of our most popular stories this week is about Dr. B. J. Miller, who became a triple amputee after a horrific accident in college. He’s on a quest to change the way we die, and he pioneered a model of palliative care that aims to view death as a human experience, not just a medical one. • Megyn Kelly’s move to NBC from Fox News heralds a major shift in the cable news landscape, and it will give her a daytime show as well as a Sunday newsmagazine. Some industry executives outlined the challenges Ms. Kelly will face in those formats. • India has become a major center for cyberfraud, as a result of an abundance of young workers skilled in computers and English. A recent scheme targeting Indian immigrants in the U. S. came to light when two teenage workers blew the whistle. • The price of Bitcoin is soaring, thanks in part to a tilt toward isolationism in the U. S. and Europe, and to trading by Chinese speculators. The virtual currency is worth about $1, 025, or 140 percent more than a year ago. • U. S. stocks were up on Tuesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Welcome to Hell   …     Hell, Mich. Our 360 video follows John Colone, the unofficial mayor of the town, which has a population of 72. • New to read. We review Aravind Adiga’s new novel, “Selection Day,” about religion and cricket. Mr. Adiga “supplies further proof that his Booker Prize, won for ‘The White Tiger’ in 2008, was no fluke,” our critic writes. Also, we look at Roxane Gay’s new collection of short stories, “Difficult Women. ” • Alternate theory about the Titanic. An Irish journalist who spent 30 years investigating the famous sinking says he found evidence that a coal fire in the ship’s hull weeks before it set sail played a role in the tragedy. “It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence,” he said. • Recipe of the day. If you’re going meatless to start the new year, try this spinach lasagna. While it bakes, read about Ruby Tandoh, the popular British cookbook author who urges us simply to eat what we love. This month, Melania Trump  —   born Melanija Knavs in Slovenia  —   will become the second first lady to have been born outside the U. S. Louisa Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams (president from 1825 to 1829) was the first. She was born in London in 1775. Her mother was English, her father the American consul. Their home became an essential stop for American visitors, including the future president, who met Louisa in 1795 and married her in 1797. Louisa arrived in the U. S. in 1801, when President John Adams brought his diplomat son home for a time. Wherever the couple was posted, her engaging personality stood out. Louisa dazzled imperial courts overseas, and her soirees were the heart of Washington’s social life when her husband was secretary of state, proving to be crucial to his ascension to the presidency. The question of her “Americanness” became an issue during his tumultuous term in office. Her efforts to defend herself only drew more attention to her background. Louisa continued to be a political partner to her husband as he served in Congress after leaving the White House, supporting his antislavery efforts. When she died in 1852, both Houses adjourned. A Washington publication wrote that hers was one of the “longest funeral processions ever witnessed in this city. ” Adeel Hassan contributed reporting. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning. What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes. com. You can sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox."
"WASHINGTON  —   The   Congress opened the turbulent Trump era in Washington on Tuesday, as the new Senate moved instantly to begin the repeal of President Obama’s signature health care law while the House descended into chaos in an   attempt to gut an independent congressional ethics office. On a day usually reserved for pomp, constitutionally mandated procedure and small children parading around in fancy dresses, Congress instead pitched itself into partisan battles. Speaker Paul D. Ryan easily won   but not before the embarrassment of having his members defy him by voting to eliminate the ethics office, only to then abandon that effort after a flood of criticism from constituents and Twitter messages from   Donald J. Trump that criticized House Republican priorities. It was a rocky start to a period in which Republicans had promised an end to Washington gridlock if they controlled both Congress and the White House. There was intraparty conflict and a sense that Mr. Trump, who ran against the Republican establishment, would continue to be openly critical of his own party at times. As Democrats in both chambers seethed, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, unveiled the legislative language that could decimate the Affordable Care Act before the crocuses start to bloom in the spring, even if any replacement of the law could take years. Budget language released on Tuesday gives House and Senate committees only until Jan. 27 to produce legislation that would eliminate major parts of the health care law. Under arcane budget procedures, that legislation would be protected from a Democratic filibuster and could pass the Senate with a simple majority. And debate will begin on Wednesday, before senators have even moved into their new offices. The dueling over the health law’s fate will pull in both the departing and incoming White House administrations as well. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will visit with congressional Democrats to plot how to resist the planned repeal, and Mike Pence, the vice   will meet with Republicans to gird them for the fight ahead. While the Senate action showed Republicans on course to keep campaign promises, the House got off to a messy start, brought on by Republicans who had moved largely in secret on Monday to gut a congressional ethics office against Mr. Ryan’s wishes. That provoked an outcry from both Democrats and voters who flooded House offices with angry calls. “Every   organization is calling my office,” said Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas. “And we’ve told them: ‘Thank you very much. We appreciate your feedback. ’” After a hastily called meeting on Tuesday morning among Republicans, the matter was dropped before it could go to the full House floor for a vote. As the Senate moved to larger legislative matters, the House kerfuffle seemed to cast a shadow over Mr. Ryan, but he tried to brush it off. “There’s no sense of foreboding in the House today,” Mr. Ryan said after his   “only the sense of potential. ” The fight over the House rules was already acrimonious thanks to a piece of the package that would impose $2, 500 in fines for filming events on the House floor, a response to Democrats who streamed their overnight   over guns last June using cellphones and video cameras. In the Senate, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. swore in seven new members and all the incumbents who won their races last year, their colleagues looking on cheerfully, as a cold rain pelted the newly refurbished Capitol dome. Members of the House and Senate brought along their families  —   elderly parents with canes, small children tugging at uncomfortable lacy hems  —   as well as former senators and other special guests. Former Vice President Dick Cheney accompanied his daughter Liz to her   as a member of the House elected from Wyoming. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York officially became the Democratic leader and quickly warned Republicans that the minority would be vocal, if not operatic, in resisting much of their agenda and many of Mr. Trump’s nominees. “It is our job to do what’s best for the American people, the middle class and those struggling to get there,” he said. “If the   proposes legislation on issues like infrastructure, trade and closing the carried interest loophole, for instance, we will work in good faith to perfect and, potentially, enact it. When he doesn’t, we will resist. ” He added, “If   Trump lets the   members of Congress and his cabinet run the show, if he adopts their timeworn policies  —   which benefit the elites, the special interests and corporate America, not the working man and woman  —   his presidency will not succeed. ” On Tuesday, the House also adopted rules clearing the way for legislation to roll back the health care law. The budget blueprint introduced on Tuesday in the Senate is not sent to the president and does not become law, but still clears the way for subsequent legislation that Republicans say will repeal major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans bypassed the Budget Committee so they could immediately bring the measure to the floor. Such resolutions are normally developed after weeks of work in the Budget Committee. Under the plan, four congressional committees  —   two in the House and two in the Senate  —   have until Jan. 27 to develop legislation that will be the vehicle for repealing the health care law. The document does not specify which provisions of the law may be eliminated and which ones may be preserved. Nor does it specify or even suggest how Republicans would replace the Affordable Care Act, which the Obama administration says has provided coverage to some 20 million people who were previously uninsured. Republicans have said they may delay the effective date of a repeal bill, to avoid disrupting coverage for people who have it and to provide time for Republicans to develop alternatives to the 2010 health law. The budget blueprint allows Republicans to use savings from repealing major provisions of that law to help offset the cost of future, unspecified measures to help people obtain coverage. “Americans face skyrocketing premiums and soaring deductibles,” said Senator Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “Insurers are withdrawing from markets across the country, leaving many families with fewer choices and less access to care than they had before  —   the opposite of what the law promised. ” The American Medical Association urged Congress on Tuesday to explain how it would replace the Affordable Care Act. “Before any action is taken through reconciliation or other means that would potentially alter coverage, policy makers should lay out for the American people, in reasonable detail, what will replace current policies,” the chief executive of the association, Dr. James L. Madara, said in a letter to congressional leaders. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who engineered the House passage of the health law in 2010, promised this week that Democrats would be just as aggressive in fighting its repeal. Republicans have said they may delay legislation to replace the health law for several years. Ms. Pelosi said that such a delay would be “an act of cowardice on the part of Republicans,” and that “they don’t even have the votes to do it” because they have not agreed on a replacement plan. Democrats also vowed to give Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees rigorous scrutiny. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the   Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has written to Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the committee chairman, asking to postpone the first scheduled confirmation hearing, set for next week for Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whom Mr. Trump has chosen as attorney general."
"WASHINGTON  —     Donald J. Trump on Tuesday named as his chief trade negotiator a Washington lawyer who has long advocated protectionist policies, the latest sign that Mr. Trump intends to fulfill his campaign promise to get tough with China, Mexico and other trading partners. Mr. Trump also renewed his episodic campaign to persuade American companies to expand domestic manufacturing, criticizing General Motors via Twitter on Tuesday morning for making in Mexico some of the Chevrolet Cruze hatchbacks it sells domestically. Hours later, Mr. Trump claimed credit after Ford said it would expand vehicle production in Flat Rock, Mich. The choice of Robert Lighthizer (pronounced   ) to be the United States’ trade representative nearly completes Mr. Trump’s selection of top economic advisers and, taken together with the  ’s running commentary on Twitter, underscores Mr. Trump’s focus on making things in America. That is causing unease among some Republicans who regard Mr. Trump’s views on trade as dangerously retrograde, even as they embrace the bulk of his economic agenda. Mainstream economists warn that protectionist policies like import taxes could impose higher prices on consumers and slow economic growth. But some Democrats are signaling a readiness to support Mr. Trump. Nine House Democrats held a news conference Tuesday with the A. F. L. . I. O. president, Richard Trumka, to urge renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. “We wanted him to know that we’ll work with him on doing that,” Mr. Trumka said. “I don’t think he has enough Republican support to do it, and rewriting the rules of trade is a necessary first step in righting the economy for working people. ” Mr. Trump and his top advisers on trade, including Mr. Lighthizer, share a view that the United States in recent decades prioritized the ideal of free trade over its own  . They argue that other countries are undermining America’s industrial base by subsidizing their own export industries while impeding American importers. They regard this unfair competition as a key reason for the lackluster growth of the economy. In picking Mr. Lighthizer, who has spent much of the last few decades representing American steel producers in their frequent litigation of trade disputes, Mr. Trump is seeking to hire one of Washington’s top trade lawyers to enforce international trade agreements more vigorously. He must be confirmed by the Senate. “He will do an amazing job helping turn around the failed trade policies which have robbed so many Americans of prosperity,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. Mainstream Republicans have sought common ground with Mr. Trump, emphasizing, for example, the importance of enforcing trade rules, but they have not abandoned the party’s longtime advocacy for trade. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will hold hearings on Mr. Lighthizer’s nomination, issued a cautiously supportive statement Tuesday. “As the world and our economic competitors move to expand their global footprints, we can’t afford to be left behind in securing strong deals that will increase our access to new markets for   products and services,” Mr. Hatch said in a statement. “I look forward to a vigorous discussion of Bob’s trade philosophy and priorities. ” Mr. Trump has named a number of advisers on trade, leaving some ambiguity about the division of responsibilities. The   named the economist Peter Navarro, an outspoken critic of China, to lead a new White House office overseeing trade and industrial policy. Mr. Trump also said Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor and choice for commerce secretary, will play a key role. Mr. Lighthizer, however, is the only member of the triumvirate with government experience. “Those who say U. S. T. R. will be subordinated to other agencies are mistaken,” said Alan Wolff, another former senior American trade official who was the steel industry’s   on trade with Mr. Lighthizer for nearly 20 years, citing Mr. Lighthizer’s encyclopedic knowledge of trade law. “He’ll be a dominant figure on trade, in harmony with Wilbur Ross and Navarro. ” There is also an ideological divide between the people Mr. Trump has named to oversee trade policy and his broader circle of advisers, which is populated by longstanding trade advocates like Gary D. Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, who will lead the National Economic Council Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, tapped for secretary of state and Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, Mr. Trump’s choice for ambassador to China. Proponents of trade hope the broader circle, and congressional Republicans, will exert a moderating influence. “You’re seeing a pretty clear indication that there will be a focus on the enforcement of our trade agreements and on the letter of the law,” said Scott Lincicome, an international trade lawyer at White  Case. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean a significant turn toward protectionism. Even free trade guys like me support enforcement. ” Trade opponents on the left and the right, meanwhile, are hoping Mr. Trump means to break with several decades of   policy. “There’s going to be a war within the Trump administration on where they go with trade, and we’re hoping to energize the worker base he had to make sure they go in the right direction to benefit the American worker,” Mr. Trumka said. Mr. Trump’s promise to immediately designate China as a currency manipulator may offer an early test of the administration’s intentions. Economists see no evidence China is suppressing the value of its currency, although it has done so in the past. Mr. Lincicome said officially labeling China a currency manipulator despite the lack of recent evidence would signal that the administration is taking a hard line on trade issues. A broader shift in trade policy would unfold more slowly. Mr. Trump has promised to renegotiate Nafta the original process took most of three years. He has promised to pursue enforcement actions against other nations, but it takes time to mount cases. He has threatened to impose new tariffs on imports, but sweeping changes most likely would require congressional legislation. Mr. Trump already is seeking to exert influence by seizing the presidential bullhorn. “General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U. S. car   free across border,” he wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “Make in U. S. A. or pay big border tax!” General Motors announced in 2015 that it would make the Cruze in Coahuila, Mexico. American manufacturers are moving   production to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs and because of declining domestic demand. They continue to build more expensive vehicles in the United States. Ford’s announcement Tuesday does not reverse that trend. The carmaker said it still planned to move production of the compact Ford Focus from Michigan to Mexico. But it said it would invest in a different Michigan plant to expand production of   vehicles, including its   pickup truck and the Mustang sports car, as well as a new   sport utility vehicle. “We are encouraged by the   policies that   Trump and the new Congress have indicated they will pursue,” said the company’s chief executive, Mark Fields. Mr. Lighthizer served as deputy United States trade representative in the Ronald Reagan administration, when he was involved in pressing Japan to reduce its restrictions on American imports and its subsidies for its own exports. Mr. Trump has criticized China for similar practices, setting the stage for a new round of confrontations. Reagan is often remembered as an advocate for free trade, but his administration in its early hours imposed a quota on Japanese auto imports. It was the first in a long series of measures aimed at putting pressure on the nation that was then regarded, like China in recent years, as a threat to American prosperity. “President Reagan’s pragmatism contrasted strongly with the utopian dreams of free traders,” Mr. Lighthizer wrote in a 2008 piece criticizing Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, for embracing “unbridled” free trade. Conservatives, he argued, “always understood that trade policy was merely a tool for building a strong and independent country with a prosperous middle class. ”"
"■   Donald J. Trump appears to side with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over United States intelligence agencies, with Vice   Mike Pence backing him up. ■ She’s hired: Omarosa Manigault gets a White House post, as do some notable Trump loyalists. But Mr. Trump is leaning on Republican veterans in the Oval Office’s top slots. ■ The   finds something “very strange” about his intelligence briefing on Friday  —   even though the White House says it was always planned for Friday. For the Republican Party, Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, was once purely a villain. He found little sympathy with conservatives after he leaked American military secrets from Iraq, published purloined diplomatic cables that could have gotten American sources killed and sought refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, fleeing charges of rape. But now, Mr. Trump appears to be siding with Mr. Assange over the conclusions of America’s intelligence services. Mr. Assange appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night with Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest news media boosters, to declare once again that the Russians were not the source of the purloined emails that WikiLeaks released from the Democratic National Committee and the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Mr. Trump followed that appearance with a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday that appeared to be preparing his followers for battle once more information on intelligence findings was released, most likely by Thursday. There were actually two separate hackings that the Obama administration has said came from Russian intelligence  —   with “100 percent” certainty. As he has previously, Mr. Assange said: “Our source is not the Russian government. It is not state parties. ” But Mr. Assange has often said that the organization does not always know the identity of its sources. It is highly unlikely that anyone approaching WikiLeaks with the emails obtained by Russian government hacking would acknowledge the source, so it is likely that Mr. Assange cannot be sure of the origin of the emails. Mr. Assange and Mr. Hannity did not address that, in addition to WikiLeaks, the leaked Democratic material was published by two mysterious websites, DCLeaks. com and a blog written by someone called Guccifer 2. 0. American intelligence agencies say they believe both were created by Russian agents. In addition to American intelligence agencies, most private researchers also say they believe that the D. N. C. and Podesta hackings were carried out on orders of Russian government officials, though a few skeptics say they believe the case is unproven by the evidence made public. Mr. Assange’s statement is unlikely to change that conclusion. Intelligence officials will brief Congress on their Russia inquiry on Thursday, ahead of a briefing for Mr. Trump in New York on Friday. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will hold the first hearing on the matter on Thursday as well. As for that “terrible” information mentioned by Mr. Trump, the CNN commentator Donna Brazile did send Mr. Podesta an email ahead of a Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich. tipping him off that a woman in the audience would ask why the government was not doing more to help clean the city’s   water supply. That was, in fact, reported widely and often, here and here and here and here, among other places. And that was hardly an unexpected query  —   for Mrs. Clinton or for her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It did cause Ms. Brazile to lose her CNN post. The   appears to be getting a jump on the news. Vice   Mike Pence defended Mr. Trump’s Assange posts at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, effectively doubling down on the incoming administration’s icy blasts toward United States intelligence. Mr. Trump “expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions,” Mr. Pence said, with House Republican leaders by his side. Mr. Trump’s remarks have again placed fellow Republicans in an uncomfortable position. Asked on Wednesday morning about the Twitter post, Speaker Paul D. Ryan steered clear of criticizing the   saying he would not be commenting on “every little tweet or Facebook post. ” But he called Mr. Assange “a sycophant for Russia,” who “leaks, steals data and compromises national security. ” Mr. Ryan noted that Mr. Trump had not yet received his latest briefing on Russia. “Hopefully, he’ll get up to speed on what’s been happening and what Russia has or has not done,” he said. Ms. Manigault, the villain and diva from Mr. Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice,” was officially named assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, one of a slate of Wednesday appointments that went to ardent Trump loyalists. The appointments include Bill Stepien, a confidant of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and a figure in the “Bridgegate” scandal, who will be White House political director. Keith Schiller, who was head of private security at Mr. Trump’s real estate company, will be director of Oval Office operations. John DeStefano, a longtime aide to former House Speaker John A. Boehner, will direct presidential personnel. And George Gigicos, who organized those giant campaign rallies, will be director of advance, a further indicator that Mr. Trump plans to continue that sort of thing as president. But for star power, no one is going to beat Ms. Manigault. Ms. Manigault aside, Mr. Trump is turning to some seasoned veterans to run key operations in his White House. Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday that he had selected Joe Hagin, who served for 14 years in the White House under Roanld Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, as his deputy chief of staff for operations, a key post in which he will be responsible for organizing presidential trips and security, among other things. He named Rick Dearborn, who has 25 years of experience on Capitol Hill, as his chief liaison to Congress, heading the Office of Legislative Affairs as well as the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Cabinet Affairs. Katie Walsh, who was chief of staff at the Republican National Committee under Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, will become his deputy at the White House, overseeing senior staff, scheduling and the Office of Public Liaison. In a statement, Mr. Priebus called the three a “team of doers” who would fill critical roles. Kellyanne Conway, who served as counselor to Mr. Trump, said she was thrilled to have “another strong female leader” on the team in Ms. Walsh. First, Mr. Trump said that the nation should move beyond talk of Russian interference in the presidential election, but that he would listen to what American intelligence experts had to say. Then, on New Year’s Eve, the   promised that by Tuesday or Wednesday, he would reveal information on the hacking that Americans do not know. And now, he seems to think the intelligence community has not quite gotten its story straight. The Obama administration quickly let it be known that, in fact, intelligence leaders always intended to brief Mr. Trump on Friday in New York. And intelligence officials were not amused. Nor were some Republican political consultants. But this is not the first time the   has taken a swipe at the intelligence community, which has concluded that Russia tried to help get him elected president. President Obama is on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to plot a strategy to save his signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Vice   Mike Pence countered with his own visit to congressional Republicans. “The first order of business is to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Mr. Pence said. “It needs to be done. ” And Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter, trying to stiffen Republican spines as Democrats press their point that a fast gutting of the law will endanger the health care of 20 million people covered under the law and put at risk tens of millions more with   health problems. “Schumer clowns” may not be an olive branch to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new minority leader, but it is a signal that the incoming president is ready for war over health care. “Republicans should stop clowning around with Americans’ Medicare, Medicaid and health care,” Mr. Schumer responded after meeting with the president. He warned that Republicans would “throw the entire health care system into chaos. ” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, tried to coin a phrase: “Make America sick again? Is that what Republicans want?” The Trump transition office named the lawyer Jay Clayton to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The last time Mr. Trump held a real news conference was on July 27, when he said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had called him a genius and wrongly insisted that “many people” saw bombs strewn all over the floor of the San Bernardino, Calif. attackers’ home and failed to report it. That long stretch without a real news media grilling did not do him much harm. He did, after all, win the election. But he says he will hold a true, open news conference next Wednesday. No word yet whether this session will take the place of the one he scheduled for last month, then canceled, to specifically reveal his plans for the future of his corporation."
"LOS ANGELES  —   Girding for four years of potential battles with   Donald J. Trump, Democratic leaders of the California Legislature announced Wednesday that they had hired Eric H. Holder Jr. who was attorney general under President Obama, to represent them in any legal fights against the new Republican White House. The decision by the Legislature to retain Mr. Holder, who is now a prominent Washington lawyer, is the latest sign of  the ideological battle that may play out over the next four years between this predominantly Democratic state and Washington. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president, defeated Mr. Trump by more than four million votes here. “Having the former attorney general of the United States brings us a lot of firepower in order to prepare to safeguard the values of the people of California,” Kevin de León, the Democratic leader of the Senate, said in an interview. “This means we are very, very serious. ” Mr. de León said he expected California to challenge Washington  —   and defend itself from policies instituted in Washington  —   on issues including the environment, immigration and criminal justice. He said California Democrats decided to turn to Mr. Holder as they watched Mr. Trump assemble his cabinet and begin to set the tone for his presidency. “It was very clear that it wasn’t just campaign rhetoric,” Mr. de León said of Mr. Trump’s proposals over the past year. “He was surrounding himself with people who are a very clear and present danger to the economic prosperity of California. ” Mr. Trump did not immediately return requests for comment. The move by Mr. de León and his Democratic counterpart in the Assembly, Anthony Rendon, follows Gov. Jerry Brown’s appointment of Representative Xavier Becerra as attorney general last month, to succeed Kamala D. Harris, who was elected to the United States Senate. That appointment made Mr. Becerra one of the   Latino officials in this state, and he is expected to be instrumental in battling with the Trump White House over any attempt to enforce stringent measures aimed at immigrants. Mr. Brown has made clear that he intends to challenge the administration on global warming and that his attorney general will be a key to that battle. The Democratic Party controls   of both the Assembly and the Senate in California. Every statewide elected official is a Democrat. Mr. Holder was Mr. Obama’s attorney general from 2009 to 2015. He was the first   to hold that position. He is a partner at Covington  Burling, a law firm in Washington that specializes in representing states and companies against the federal government. “I am honored that the Legislature chose Covington to serve as its legal adviser as it considers how to respond to potential changes in federal law that could impact California’s residents and policy priorities,” Mr. Holder said in a statement. “I am confident that our expertise across a wide array of federal legal and regulatory issues will be a great resource to the Legislature. ” The Legislature has an ample stable of lawyers on staff, but officials said Mr. Holder and his firm brought specific litigation and political skills that could be needed in the coming years. Mr. de León said the final compensation for the firm had not been set, but would be publicly disclosed once it was. “The cost will be very minimal compared to the billions of dollars at stake if California doesn’t adequately make its case,” he said."
"JERUSALEM  —   The fate of just one   Israeli soldier was hanging in the balance. But for many Israelis, the guilty verdict announced on Wednesday was a critical turn in the battle for the character of the state. When the military judges convicted Sgt. Elor Azaria of manslaughter for shooting a Palestinian assailant in the head as he lay wounded on the ground, they were ruling not just on his conduct but also on the host of ethical and political issues it raised. Since the shooting in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron in March, the case has polarized Israelis and rocked the pedestal on which the military normally stands. With the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank approaching, the highly charged trial had fueled a debate about military ethics and the place of the army in Israeli society. The verdict did little to heal the rifts the trial had exposed: Hours after it was rendered, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined a chorus of voices calling for the soldier to be pardoned. “This is a difficult and painful day for us all,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a Facebook post supporting a pardon, which can be granted by Israel’s president or the army’s top officials. Referring to the Israel Defense Forces, he added, “The soldiers of the I. D. F. are our sons and daughters, and they need to remain above any dispute. ” Prof. David Enoch, an expert in the philosophy of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said he thought the manslaughter conviction was “justified” but added, “I’m not sure this verdict will be welcomed by many of the soldiers and much of the public. ” The military’s rules make clear that assailants must be quickly incapacitated, but that once the threat is neutralized, they should not be killed. Rights groups and other critics have accused Israeli soldiers and police officers of being too quick to pull the trigger, particularly in response to a recent spate of deadly stabbings, shootings and car attacks by Palestinians. The Hebron killing, caught in chilling completeness in a video that quickly went viral worldwide, for many critics crystallized the question of excessive force, and even military leaders said Sergeant Azaria acted without justification. But in Israel, a country where military service is a part of national identity, many Jews called for backing up young soldiers sent on dangerous missions and said that Sergeant Azaria had been in an impossible situation and had little chance of an acquittal, since that would have put his commanders in a bad light. Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called Wednesday’s decision “a tough verdict. ” “The first thing I ask of all of us  —   those who like the verdict and those like me who like it much less  —   we are all obligated to respect the court’s decision,” Mr. Lieberman said. “We are obligated to maintain restraint. ” Mr. Lieberman, as a member of the parliamentary opposition before his cabinet appointment, had attended the military court to support Sergeant Azaria and called the legal proceedings a “theater of the absurd. ” But on Wednesday, he said, “We must keep the army above and beyond all political argument. ” Politicians to Mr. Netanyahu’s right and left have also called for a pardon, including the education minister, Naftali Bennett, and Shelly Yacimovich of the Labor Party, who said that “Azaria’s shoulders are too narrow to bear the entire weight of the fissure” the case has exposed. Some Israeli experts compared the Azaria verdict to the Kafr Qassem ruling of more than 60 years ago, after border police officers fatally shot 49 Arab men, women and children as they returned from work in the fields, unwittingly breaking a curfew. The murder convictions of officers in that case established that security forces must refuse to follow a “patently illegal order” that carries a “black flag” of criminality. It helped shape the army’s ethos. Now, some fear that in the lower ranks, it has begun to erode. In a measure of the tensions, the verdict was handed down in a special court inside the walled and heavily guarded compound of the military’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, rather than in the courtroom where the trial was held, to keep demonstrators at bay. Video footage showed Sergeant Azaria smiling as he entered the courtroom to applause, and he was embraced by his family and friends. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the compound, shouting slogans like “free the boy. ” Col. Maya Heller, one of the military judges, spent more than two and a half hours delivering the verdict. She systematically rejected the main points of the defense and said there had been “no justification” for the shooting, according to reports from the courtroom. Describing Sergeant Azaria’s telling of the event as “twisting” and “evolving,” the judge said the defense had tried to “hold the rope at both ends. ” On one hand it asserted that the victim, Abed     appeared to pose a danger because he was still moving, and on the other it brought medical witnesses who contended that he was dead by the time Sergeant Azaria shot him in the head. The judge seemed to give great weight to statements Sergeant Azaria, a medic who was 19 at the time, made at the scene, indicating he had acted not out of fear but for revenge. A soldier testified that before the shooting, Sergeant Azaria had said, “How is it that my friend was stabbed and the terrorist is still alive?” After the shooting, a commander who was at the scene recalled Sergeant Azaria saying, “The terrorist deserved to die. ” Ilan Katz, one of Sergeant Azaria’s lawyers, vowed to appeal. The military’s high command had denounced the shooting immediately after it happened, calling it a grave breach of proper military conduct. But Israeli society was divided against the backdrop of continued Palestinian attacks, many   politicians and celebrities, along with Jewish parents of soldiers, hailed Sergeant Azaria as a hero. Mr. Netanyahu first condemned Sergeant Azaria’s actions, then phoned the soldier’s family to offer sympathy and reassurances that he would be treated fairly. Local television stations frequently showed images of Sergeant Azaria’s distraught parents hugging him in court. Appealing to public sentiment in a country blighted by wars and terrorism, and where most Jewish    are conscripted for up to 32 months of military service, his supporters portrayed him as “everybody’s child. ” In remarks recorded before the verdict, the military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, tried to puncture that narrative. “An    in the Israeli Army is not ‘everybody’s child,’” he said. “He is a fighter, a soldier who must dedicate his life to carry out the tasks we give him. We cannot be confused about this. ” The episode began when two Palestinian men stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in Hebron. Israeli soldiers killed one and wounded the other, Mr. Sharif, 21. Sergeant Azaria arrived at the scene about six minutes later. The video showed calm had been restored. Yet 11 minutes after the initial attack, he cocked his rifle and shot Mr. Sharif as he lay on the road. Lawyers representing Sergeant Azaria said he had acted to save his comrades, in the belief that Mr. Sharif, who was still moving, might have been concealing an explosive belt under his jacket. But Sergeant Azaria did not warn the other soldiers or the medical staff nearby to move away. During the trial, Sergeant Azaria’s company commander, Maj. Tom Naaman, said he “did not feel any danger” from Mr. Sharif, undercutting the defendant’s claims. Yusri   Mr. Sharif’s father, told reporters that the verdict was “a good step” but that he hoped there would be no lenience in the sentencing, which is scheduled for Jan. 15. Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli Parliament, said on  Twitter that dozens of soldiers and commanders who killed Palestinians should have been convicted. “Fifty years of occupation add up to much more than one Azaria,” Mr. Tibi wrote."
"Stuck at your work desk? Standing up and walking around for five minutes every hour during the workday could lift your mood, combat lethargy without reducing focus and attention, and even dull hunger pangs, according to an instructive new study. The study, which also found that frequent, brief walking breaks were more effective at improving   than a single, longer walk before work, could provide the basis for a simple, realistic New Year’s exercise resolution for those of us bound to our desks all day. There is growing evidence, of course, that long bouts of uninterrupted sitting can have undesirable physical and emotional consequences. Studies have shown that sitting motionless reduces blood flow to the legs, increasing the risk for atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaques in the arteries. People who sit for more than eight or nine hours daily, which for many of us describes a typical workday, also are at heightened risk for diabetes, depression and obesity compared with people who move more often. In response, researchers and some bosses have proposed a variety of methods for helping people reduce their sitting time at work, including standing workstations and treadmill desks. But such options are cumbersome and costly, making them impractical for many work situations. Some experts have worried, too, that if people are physically active at the office, they might subsequently become more tired, grumpy, distracted or hungry, any of which could have an undesirable effect on work performance and   health. So for the new study, which was published in November in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, the Johnson  Johnson Human Performance Institute and other institutions decided to test several methods of increasing movement among office workers. (The study was funded largely by Johnson  Johnson, with additional support from the Colorado Nutrition Obesity Research Center.) To start, the researchers invited 30 sedentary adult office workers to a university clinic to complete a battery of health tests and questionnaires. The researchers measured their heart rates and stress hormone levels and asked them to rank, on a numerical scale, how energetic or tired they felt, as well as how happy they were, and whether they were feeling peckish or had little appetite just then. The volunteers also completed computerized games designed primarily to test their ability to concentrate and make decisions. Then, on three subsequent visits to the clinic, each volunteer simulated a   workday. During one visit, the volunteers sat for the whole time with no interruptions, except for bathroom breaks. During another, they walked moderately for 30 minutes at the start of their experimental day, and then sat for the next five and a half hours with no additional scheduled breaks. Finally, during a third visit, the volunteers sat for most of the six hours, but began each hour with five minutes of moderate walking, using treadmills at the clinic. At the start and end of each session, the researchers drew blood to check levels of stress hormones. And periodically throughout each day, they asked their volunteers to numerically rate their moods, energy, fatigue and appetites. The volunteers also repeated the computerized testing of their thinking skills at the close of each session. The researchers then analyzed the data. The numbers showed that on almost all measures, the subjects’ ratings of how they were feeling rose when they did not sit for six uninterrupted hours. They said that they felt much more energetic throughout the day if they had been active, whether that activity was bunched into a single longish walk at the start of the day or distributed into multiple brief breaks. On other measures, though, the   walks were more potent than the concentrated   version. When the workers rose most often, they reported greater happiness, less fatigue and considerably less craving for food than on either of the other days. Their feelings of vigor also tended to increase throughout the day, while they often had plateaued by early afternoon after walking only once in the morning. There were no differences on the scores on the cognitive tests, whether they sat all day or got up and moved. Stress hormones also remained steady during each visit. These results suggest that “even a little bit of activity, spread throughout the day, is a practical, easy way to improve ” says Jack Groppel, a study author and a founder of the Johnson  Johnson Human Performance Institute. He points out that the walking breaks did not cause people to feel more tired or hungry, but instead had the opposite effect. They also did not alter people’s ability to focus, so, in theory, should not affect productivity (for good or ill). This study, however, was small in scale,   and limited by its dependence on the volunteers’ perceptions of their responses to the experiment. But even so, “it’s clear that moving matters,” Dr. Groppel says. So set your 2017 appointment calendar, he suggests, to devote five minutes every hour to physical activity, whether you walk up and down a staircase, along a corridor or just pace around your office."
"It’s that time of year when financial advice sites issue their lists of the “Stocks to Buy for 2017. ” Before you take them up on their suggestions, let’s look at how well such portfolios did in 2016. The portfolios of stocks they were telling you to buy generally did much worse than the stock market over all. The results underline what many personal finance experts recommend: Invest in a broad,   mutual index fund. (The Times’s “Your Money” columnist wrote more on this here.) In 2016, the broad S. P. stock index increased 9. 5 percent. But if you invested in Forbes’s 2016 list, your money grew about 7 percent. Kiplinger’s was about half that. A list that appeared on the Money magazine site garnered 4. 9 percent, and Barron’s returned 5. 3 percent. One such list at CNBC did a little better than most at 10. 6 percent. But Vanguard’s Total Stock index fund returned 12. 5 percent in the same period. We even calculated these returns by assuming that any of the dividends were reinvested, but still none beat the widely owned index fund. There is nothing wrong with these lists if you are using them as mere suggestions of what companies might be worth investigating. There were some bona fide winners on almost every list: Goldman Sachs, Kennametal, Ellie Mae, Douglas Dynamics,   Burlington Stores. You might not have heard of some of those companies, so it’s not a bad place to look for ideas. But the problem with such lists is that they encourage people to approach investing the wrong way. Unsophisticated investors are being persuaded that they should own a sheaf of stocks. But as you can see, even when the stocks are recommended by professional money managers and filtered through some of the best financial journalists, they don’t do as well as the averages. The best advice remains the same: If you have money you want to play with, go have some fun with a few stocks that you can monitor closely. If you keep it simple, it’s easier to track and respond. But for the rest of us, the smart investment is  those index funds. They cost less than stocks or other funds. They remove most of the emotion from your decision making, which is the cause of a lot of bad decisions. That’s your best bet in 2017."
"For Megyn Kelly, the shift from Fox News to NBC  —   where she will host a daily daytime show and a Sunday newsmagazine program  —   will be a test of whether she can connect with a broader audience in a different format and reach another level of television stardom. But her move, announced Tuesday, has broader implications for the television news industry, raising new questions about the future of Fox News, where she was a countervailing presence in an opinion lineup heavy with   ideology, and of NBC News, which has been a longtime bête noire for conservative press critics. And it comes as all news organizations gird for a new era of media coverage that arrives Jan. 20 with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. The Murdoch family, which controls Fox News’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, had become so invested in Ms. Kelly as a franchise that they were prepared to pay her a salary of more than $20 million a year. People inside and outside the network widely took that to mean the Murdochs were staking the network’s future on a journalist who effectively made her name by upending the expectations for a Fox News anchor  —   for instance, by publicly taking on the Republican nominee for president. But now Fox News, long the cable news ratings leader and an influential voice in the national political debate, is on course to begin coverage of a new administration with no   anchor with Ms. Kelly’s history of challenging Mr. Trump. Her show, “The Kelly File,” was sandwiched between the   program of Bill O’Reilly  —   she was regularly second to him in the cable news ratings  —   and that of Mr. Trump’s major booster, Sean Hannity. Her departure, coming after that of Greta Van Susteren, also means that Fox faces the prospect of having no female host in prime time. That is a potentially troubling development for the network as its seeks to move past last summer‘s sexual harassment scandal involving its   and former chairman, Roger Ailes, in which many women described experiencing harassment or intimidation. (Fox is said to be looking at several potential female successors for Ms. Kelly.) For NBC, the addition of Ms. Kelly, 46, may help address a challenge confronting many major news organizations: connecting with a politically diverse audience. In bringing Ms. Kelly to NBC, Andrew Lack, the chairman of the news division, is adding a journalist schooled in the preferences and worldviews of the conservative Americans who helped elect Mr. Trump, and whose anger so many news organizations failed to appreciate. Ms. Kelly’s closely watched career move capped months of drama in the political sphere, in which she was often at the center of Mr. Trump’s intense,   campaign, and in the media world, where she became a key figure in the events that led to Mr. Ailes’s ouster. Ms. Kelly was the most prominent among a group of women at the network who told internal investigators that Mr. Ailes had engaged in inappropriate behavior. (Mr. Ailes has denied all the accusations.) Despite having made a generous offer to Ms. Kelly, Rupert Murdoch, an executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, whose   negotiation tactics are legendary, offered a supportive statement about her decision to leave. “We thank Megyn Kelly for her 12 years of contributions to Fox News,” the statement read. “We hope she enjoys tremendous success in her career and wish her and her family the best. ” Though the loss of Ms. Kelly is a blow to Fox News, the network has a winning formula that has kept it atop the ratings for many years, and helped it to avoid the   its rivals experienced in the weeks after Election Day, as The Associated Press reported. And now the nation has a new Republican president whose approach speaks to the sensibilities of many of Fox’s viewers. Company executives said the Murdochs knew Ms. Kelly was a flight risk their offer included keeping her in prime time, and she had made it clear she was seeking a job that would give her more time for her family. Ms. Kelly had spoken with top executives at ABC News, CNN and in the syndication industry, as well as NBC News, but NBC remained largely under the radar as a landing spot. One person briefed on Ms. Kelly’s deliberations said that Mr. Lack won her over by starting the talks with a question about what she was seeking, instead of flatly offering possibilities. He then came back with a deal that was tailored to her preferences. A daytime show would give her a schedule that would allow her to see her children off to school and to have dinner with them and her husband, Douglas Brunt, a novelist. People briefed on the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to disclose what Ms. Kelly’s new annual salary would be at NBC. Fox News rivals who sought to hire Ms. Kelly away, including NBC News, had indicated that they could not match the $20 million offer from Fox, the cable news leader for the last 15 years running. But even a modest raise for Ms. Kelly would place her among television’s   journalists. The Wall Street Journal recently reported she was to collect $15 million for the final year of her contract. Her high price tag was worth it for Mr. Lack, who took over leadership of NBC News and MSNBC in 2015, 14 years after he had ended an   tenure running the divisions. Executives at NBC Universal turned to him to stabilize the network after the suspension of the nightly news anchor Brian Williams for embellishing accounts of his reporting in Iraq, and as MSNBC floundered in the ratings. Among his moves since returning has been to direct MSNBC back toward more traditional, hard news coverage during its daytime hours  —   like its cable news rivals, it hit record ratings highs last year  —   and away from its yearslong market position as a   answer to Fox News, which at times colored the reputation of its sister, NBC News. Ms. Kelly will not be reporting for MSNBC, which still has     hosts like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. In a brief interview, Mr. Lack said he would be closely involved in the creation of Ms. Kelly’s daytime show, which will run Monday through Friday at a time to be determined, as well as the one she will anchor on Sunday nights. That show will be in the vein of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” where Mr. Lack worked early in his career. “The thing about this that is challenging but exciting as hell is that we love making new shows,” he said. “You don’t get that opportunity that often any more, and you don’t get the opportunity to do that with a talent like Megyn. ” Yet the move has its risks for all involved, especially the daytime program. Daytime television has been notoriously difficult for news stars. People involved in the discussions said that the program was not planned to be in the mold of a traditional daytime talk show, nor much like the     special Ms. Kelly hosted last May on the Fox broadcast network, which drew some harsh criticism (some of which Ms. Kelly dismissed as liberal disappointment over a friendly interview with Mr. Trump). In an interview with Charlie Rose on “CBS Sunday Morning” last year, Ms. Kelly described the television show of her fantasies. “How about if we merge a little Charlie Rose, a little Oprah, and a little me all together,’’ she said. “And we serve that up as an hour? Wouldn’t you watch that?” Ms. Kelly kept a relatively low profile on Tuesday, addressing her own news at the end of that night’s edition of “The Kelly File. ” “This was a tough decision for me,” Ms. Kelly said, thanking the Murdochs and attributing the move in part to her desire for more time with her children. Her last show on Fox is on Friday."
"Megyn Kelly’s new office at NBC News sits a block north of Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. But it might as well be a world away. In switching networks at a pivotal point in her career, Ms. Kelly, the No.   personality in cable television news, is taking a calculated risk that she can swap her dedicated Fox audience for the broader, but more fickle, viewership of network television. There are challenges from the  . Her splashy arrival has the potential to fray nerves among the big personalities at the network  —   who already compete against one another for interviews and scoops. Ms. Kelly, 46, will also be taking on a daytime talk show format that has been a virtual graveyard for television news personalities in the last 10 years. And the new Sunday newsmagazine show that NBC plans to build around Ms. Kelly will go up against a giant that has not been meaningfully challenged for decades: “60 Minutes” on CBS. Still, Ms. Kelly is a bona fide star with a   book and a breakout role in this year’s presidential campaign, when she clashed with Donald J. Trump. NBC News comes out the winner in one of the most closely watched talent sweepstakes in years, acquiring one of television’s biggest names who could play a role in any number of major network events, like coverage of elections or the Olympics. Interviews on Tuesday with network executives and producers  —   from Fox, NBC and other rival channels  —   suggest that Ms. Kelly’s performance at NBC will be as closely watched in the industry as her past few months of contract negotiations. Ms. Kelly will have to design her daytime talk show from scratch. Even though she made her name as a news anchor, she has argued that she is not obsessed with politics. When she hosted a   special on Fox in May  —   her first major foray outside cable news  —   she expressed a desire to combine the qualities of Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters and Charlie Rose. That special  —   which featured interviews with Mr. Trump, the celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro and the actress Laverne Cox  —   received middling reviews. It was far from a ratings hit: Among adults younger than 50, the demographic most important to broadcasters, Ms. Kelly’s special performed about as well as ABC’s “Beyond the Tank,” a   spinoff. A daily daytime talk show also poses risks.   talent like Jane Pauley, Meredith Vieira, Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper have taken a stab at the genre in the past, and each one failed. In Ms. Pauley’s case, NBC invested millions of dollars, but the show was yanked in 2005 after just one year. NBC said on Tuesday that Ms. Kelly’s show was expected to be closer to a news program than the typical daytime talk show, although it is unclear what exactly that will mean or how much appetite there is for news amid a landscape including shows like “Days of Our Lives,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “Steve Harvey. ” The audience for daytime television is also significantly more diverse than Fox’s   viewership. Starting a Sunday rival to “60 Minutes,” the   among newsmagazines, is likewise no easy task. “Rock Center,” which Brian Williams hosted, lasted two seasons. NBC’s most recent newsmagazine, “On Assignment,” ran    against “60 Minutes” over five weeks the show averaged about four million viewers, compared with more than nine million for “60 Minutes,” which broadcast two repeats during that time. (This season, “60 Minutes” is averaging more than 14 million viewers.) It is also unclear how NBC will accommodate Ms. Kelly’s show during the National Football League season, when NBC’s popular “Sunday Night Football” package includes a highly rated pregame show that begins at 7 p. m. Eastern. But Andrew Lack, NBC News’s chairman, has long had newsmagazines in his blood. In addition to overseeing a “60 Minutes” competitor on CBS in the 1980s, Mr. Lack presided over NBC in the 1990s when newsmagazines, including the network’s popular “Dateline,” dominated   lineups. Fox, meanwhile, must now set a course without one of its biggest names, as the network continues to recalibrate itself after the ouster of its chairman, Roger Ailes. Ms. Kelly’s exit from Fox News was so abrupt that it was announced on the day that the network had run a   ad in The Wall Street Journal trumpeting the ratings of its   lineup, with Ms. Kelly prominently pictured. Her departure stunned the Fox newsroom, where journalists and executives spent Tuesday afternoon speculating over which anchor might replace Ms. Kelly in the coveted 9 p. m. slot  —   and wondering if Ms. Kelly would even appear that night. When Greta Van Susteren, another veteran anchor, announced her departure in September, network representatives visited her home to tell her not to bother coming in. In the end, Ms. Kelly was granted a chance to bid farewell to Fox News viewers  —   her last show is Friday. It is not clear who will replace her. Fox News has never had an     lineup. Potential replacements being floated inside the network on Tuesday include four women who have regularly filled in for Ms. Kelly: Sandra Smith, a host of Fox’s noon show, “Outnumbered” Trish Regan, a rising star at Fox Business Network Shannon Bream, who covers the Supreme Court and Martha MacCallum, a morning anchor. Kimberly Guilfoyle, a host of “The Five” who is friendly with Mr. Trump’s circle, and Tucker Carlson, who has put up high ratings since taking over Fox News’s 7 p. m. slot, have also been suggested. Sean Hannity, whose viewership at 10 p. m. increased enormously in 2016 and has spiked since Election Day, could be moved up an hour, but his momentum in his time slot may make Fox executives reluctant to make a switch. One winner in the sweepstakes for Ms. Kelly could be CNN, even though it did not succeed in recruiting her. CNN, while still behind Fox News in total viewers by a wide margin, has occasionally beaten Fox among viewers 25 to 54, the demographic that determines advertising rates. In 2016, CNN finished within 58, 000 viewers of Fox in prime time in the demographic  —   cutting Fox’s lead in half. Since the election, Fox has regained a sizable lead, but now, without spending a penny, CNN will now have an opportunity to take another run at Fox’s   advantage."
"QINGYUAN, China  —   The 48 soccer fields of the vast Evergrande Football School in south China seem barely enough for its 2, 800 students. Against a backdrop of school spires that seem modeled on Hogwarts, the young athletes swarm onto the fields nearly every day, kicking, dribbling and passing in the hope of soccer glory and riches. “Soccer will be my career after I grow up,” Wang Kai, a gangly    who has studied at the boarding school for over three years, said after a morning session under the supervision of a Spanish coach. “I want to be the Chinese Cristiano Ronaldo,” he said, referring to the Portuguese superstar. Grooming the next Ronaldo or Messi has become a national project in China, where the country’s No. 1 fan, President Xi Jinping, is bent on transforming the country into a great soccer power. It is a moonshot for China, whose teams have ranked poor to middling in recent international competition. But the effort has already unleashed a surge of spending and support for the game that has stunned fans and players around the world. In the last two weeks, the main Chinese league has plucked foreign stars from Europe and South America with contracts reported to be worth as much as $40 million a year, the highest pay for any soccer player in the world. A Chinese club offered the real Ronaldo $105 million a year, but he declined, his agent said last week. These giddying sums are shaking the landscape of pro soccer. Antonio Conte, the manager of England’s fabled Chelsea team, denounced the Chinese spending spree last month as a “danger for all teams in the world. ” The drive to match China’s economic ascent with success on the soccer field has become emblematic of Mr. Xi’s ambition to transform China into a great and confident power. “My biggest hope for Chinese soccer is that its teams become among the world’s best,” he announced in 2015. In the last two years, the government has poured the kind of concentrated effort into soccer that it has previously devoted to winning Olympic medals in individual sports like diving and gymnastics. It has promised to clean up and reorganize professional soccer and build a new generation of players by creating tens of thousands of soccer fields and adding soccer programs in tens of thousands of schools. The aim is to establish a flow of top players eventually capable of winning the coveted men’s World Cup and returning the women’s team to its former glory. That effort has emboldened Chinese clubs to spend lavishly. As well as paying tens of millions for foreign players, Chinese team owners have spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying into European clubs, hoping to tap their coaching and marketing expertise. “Current spending has created massive expectations,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports enterprise at the University of Salford in Britain. “Spending big on players is also about acquiring heroes and icons. ” But if soccer distills Mr. Xi’s national ambitions, it also illustrates how his plans could falter, as they have in other arenas, in a muddle of rushed and distorted enforcement, especially at the local level. There has been resistance by parents, worried about their children taking precious time away from academics, as well as fear that splurging on foreign stars diverts money and attention from fostering homegrown talent. The pitfalls in fixing soccer, it turns out, are a bit like those in fixing the economy a desire for quick, flashy success is putting   goals at risk. People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Communist Party, warned last month of a “bubble” of reckless spending in Chinese professional soccer that could burst and badly damage the sport. Too many investors had feverish expectations, while some clubs, officials and schools were only going through the motions of developing young players, the newspaper said. “One of the biggest problems is ” said Cameron Wilson, a Scottish resident of Shanghai who edits Wild East Football, a website that follows the sport in China. “There are these great plans and ideas. But when it gets down to the   level in the provinces, it’s like people doing their own thing. ” China’s passionate soccer fans would be thrilled to have competitive national teams instead of the lackluster ones they have now. The national men’s team recently placed 83rd in FIFA rankings, just ahead of the Faroe Islands, a remote outcrop of Denmark with fewer than 50, 000 inhabitants, and it is unlikely to win a spot in the 2018 World Cup. The women’s team  —   the pride of Chinese soccer in past decades  —   has stumbled. It was   for the Women’s World Cup in 1999 but slipped to 13th in the latest  rankings. “The national team is a joke,” said Xu Yun, 16, who had come to Workers’ Stadium in Beijing to watch his favorite Beijing team clobber a listless opponent from Henan Province. “I think it will need decades to get it right. It’s not just a question of spending money, it’s attitude. ” For years, the domestic professional game was riddled with corruption, brazen even by China’s   standards. Since   revelations grew into a national scandal in 2009, the worst cheating has been cleaned up. “It still exists,” Mr. Wilson said. “Just not so blatantly. ” For Xi, soccer has been a passion since childhood. His trips abroad have included photographs with David Beckham and other soccer celebrities. In Ireland in 2012, he famously had an enthusiastic but seemingly rusty go at kicking a ball. In September, he revisited his old school in Beijing, where he learned to kick and became a fan of the game, according to memoirs of his former teacher. “Look how healthy I am,” Mr. Xi told young soccer players at the school. “I laid the basis for that through sports when I was young. ” Private investors have piled into professional soccer, encouraged by Xi’s backing for the game and apparently eager to curry favor with his government. In the main pro trading season last year, the 16 Chinese Super League teams spent about $300 million hiring away promising foreign players, outstripping player spending by the English Premier League by nearly $120 million, according to FIFA TMS, a player transfer data company. Prices in 2017 are likely to go even higher. But Mr. Xi’s focus is on the long game and the next generation of players. His plan calls for 50, 000 schools to have a strong emphasis on soccer by 2025, a leap from 5, 000 in 2015. The number of soccer fields across the country will grow to over 70, 000 by the end of 2020, from under 11, 000. By then, the plan says, 50 million Chinese, including 30 million students, will regularly play soccer. “Now principals at every school are paying quite a bit more attention to soccer,” said Dai Wei, the athletic director at r. Xi’s old school, the Bayi School. “That was unthinkable before. ” Yet there is deep cultural resistance, even at Bayi. Some parents discourage their children from committing time to sports, Mr. Dai said, because they have so much homework and face stiff competition on academic exams. While China has excelled at individual sports that demand intense discipline from an early age, the country has not done as well at fostering group sports, where skills like teamwork and improvisation count as much as personal virtuosity. The privately run Evergrande school, the world’s biggest soccer boarding school, says its formula of intense training combined with a solid education could show the way for developing young players. “As more soccer schools are built, there’ll be more and more kids playing, and the stars will multiply, too,” said Liu Jiangnan, the principal of the school, which opened in 2012. “I’d guess that in seven or eight years, half the members of the Chinese national squad will come from this school. ” Drawn by such hopes, parents pay up to about $8, 700 a year to send children here, where 24 Spanish coaches oversee training. Students spend 90 minutes a day on drills and also play on weekends. Promising players get scholarships, and children from poorer families get discounts, school officials said. But even here, the children come to the game later than their European and South American counterparts, and they often lack solid grounding in teamwork and tactics, said Sergio Zarco Diaz, a Spanish coach. “The kids are getting better, year by year,” he said hopefully. But the Evergrande approach is too expensive to be widely copied. Some schools, facing a shortage of coaches and space for fields, have devised their own drills, like soccer gymnastics, in which children stand in lines tossing a ball up, down and around. It may impress visiting officials, but it is scant preparation for the free flow of the game, said Zhang Lu, a widely respected soccer commentator. “Chinese soccer has failed before through rushing for instant success,” Mr. Zhang said in an interview in Beijing, recalling previous failed efforts to build up the game in the 1980s and 1990s. “The problem is that everyone’s thinking is still deeply set in traditional ideas. Everyone thinks soccer is just about getting results, competition, training, creating stars. ” Mr. Zhang has instead been encouraging schools to focus on fun and broad participation. That approach gives more children a break from the monotony of the classroom and will eventually bring out more future champions than an elitist,   approach, he argues. Some schools are trying his way. On a recent afternoon, the smog that often covers Beijing lifted and the children of Caoqiao Elementary School rushed onto the fields, shouting and squealing with delight. “This morning soccer had been canceled because of the smog,” said the principal, Lin Yanling. “But at midday I notified the kids that it was back on, and they all went crazy with relief. ”"
"In the technology industry, the sharks have never long been safe from the minnows. Over much of the last 40 years, the biggest players in tech  —   from IBM to   to Cisco to Yahoo  —   were eventually outmaneuvered by   that came out of nowhere. The dynamic is so dependable that it is often taken to be a kind of axiom. To grow large in this business is also to grow slow, blind and dumb, to become closed off from the very sources of innovation that turned you into a shark in the first place. Then, in the last half decade, something strange happened: The sharks began to get bigger and smarter. Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified less by the storied   in a garage than by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Together the Five compose a new superclass of American corporate might. For much of last year, their further rise and domination over the rest of the global economy looked not just plausible, but also maybe even probable. In 2017, much the same story remains, but there is a new wrinkle: The world’s governments are newly motivated to take on the tech giants. In the United States, Europe, Asia and South America, the Five find themselves increasingly arrayed against legal and regulatory powers, and often even against popular will. The precise nature of the fights varies by company and region, including the tax and antitrust investigations of Apple and Google in Europe and Donald J. Trump’s broad and often incoherent criticism of the Five for various alleged misdeeds. This is the story that will shape the contours of the next great era in tech: Five huge companies that can only get bigger are set against governments that increasingly see them as a clear threat to governing authority. So, happy New Year. Let’s start with some stats. In 2017, the Five are bigger than ever. As in 2016, they are half of the world’s 10 most valuable companies, when measured by stock market value. Their wealth stems from their control of the inescapable digital infrastructure on which much of the rest of the economy depends  —   mobile phones, social networks, the web, the cloud, retail and logistics, and the data and computing power required for future breakthroughs. Meanwhile, the Five are poised to jump beyond their corner of the lagoon. Over the last few years they have begun to set their sights on the biggest industries outside tech  —   on autos, health care, retail, transportation, entertainment and finance. The Five aren’t exactly immune to business cycles. Apple’s sales were flat last year, and after a monster 2016, Alphabet’s stock price hit a plateau. The Five also aren’t entirely safe from competition from   and one of the persistent features of the tech industry is that some of the most perilous threats to giants are the hardest to spot. Still, at the moment, thanks to smart acquisition strategies and a   outlook, the Five sure do look insulated from competition from   today’s most valuable tech upstarts, like Airbnb, Uber and Snap, could grow quite huge and still pose little threat to the collective fortunes of the Frightful Five. What has changed is public perception. For years, most of the Five enjoyed broad cultural good will. They were portrayed in the news media as forces of innovation and delight, as the best that American capitalism had to offer. The exceptions were Microsoft, which reached towering heights through corporate ruthlessness in the 1990s, and Amazon, which got under people’s skin for, among other things, making books cheaper and more widely accessible, thereby hurting bookstores. But generally people loved tech giants. They had gotten huge just the way you’re supposed to in America  —   by inventing new stuff that people love. And even their worst sins weren’t considered that bad. They weren’t causing environmental disasters. They weren’t selling cigarettes. They weren’t bringing the world to economic ruin through dangerous financial shenanigans. After I noted the Five’s growing invincibility last year, the biggest pushback I got from people at these companies had to do with the moniker I had given them: Why hadn’t I called them the Fabulous Five? Over the last year perception began to change. Familiarity breeds contempt as technology wormed deeper into our lives, it began to feel less like an unalloyed good and more like every other annoyance we have to deal with. Silicon Valley grew cloistered, missing people’s unease with the speed with which their innovations were changing our lives. When Apple took on the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year over access to a terrorist’s iPhone, many in tech sided with the company, but a majority of Americans thought Apple should give in. During the long presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said a lot of things that people in tech found ridiculous. He vowed to call on Bill Gates to help him shut down the parts of the internet that terrorists were using. He promised to force Apple to make iPhones in America. He suggested that The Washington Post was running critical stories about him because its owner, Jeff Bezos, was scared that Mr. Trump would pursue antitrust charges against Mr. Bezos’s main company, Amazon. Few in the tech industry supported Mr. Trump, but the industry’s antipathy seemed to matter little to the public. For years, most of the Frightful Five were given the benefit of the doubt as economic disrupters that were undercutting the cultural and economic power of the big industries that many people despised  —   entertainment giants, cable and phone companies, and the news media, among others. “During the periods where incumbents are battling disrupters, in general the U. S. has done a good job of encouraging disrupters,” said Julius Genachowski, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission who is now a partner at the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. That describes the general direction of policy during the Obama administration. The tech giants were less giant for much of the Obama years, and various parts of the United States regulatory and legal infrastructure sought to protect and nurture them. During Mr. Genachowski’s term at the F. C. C. and then again during the term of his successor, Tom Wheeler, the commission passed rules favoring “network neutrality,” which declared that telecommunications companies could not favor some kinds of content online over others. It was a policy broadly favored by tech companies. But as Mr. Genachowski noted, as the disrupters grow, the dynamic often shifts. “The next part of the arc is that disrupters become very successful and in some ways turn into incumbents, and then you see two things  —   battles between incumbents and other incumbents, and a next generation of disrupters tackling incumbents,” he said. That’s where we are now. The Five have become incumbents themselves, and they are more likely to be treated as such by governments, who will look to both sides of the ledger  —   their benefits to society as well as their potential costs  —   when deciding how to police them. But there’s a twist: With the Five, unlike in previous eras of tech, it is not clear that there are many potential disrupters among today’s  . The battles for dominance in cloud services, artificial intelligence and data mining,   assistants,   cars, virtual reality and most every other Next Big Thing are being waged among the Five. That could likely raise the hackles of regulators and lawmakers even more and depending on your position on corporate power versus governmental power, things could be fabulous, or frightful."
"BEIJING  —   A city official in southwest China unleashed a barrage of gunfire on the city’s mayor and Communist Party secretary during a meeting on Wednesday, injuring them before fleeing and killing himself, the official news media reported. Privately owned guns are rare in China, because of a virtual ban on civilian use, and grisly attacks on officials by colleagues are also uncommon. So rumors of the shooting in Panzhihua, an industrial city in Sichuan Province, rippled quickly across the Chinese internet even before the local authorities confirmed the news. Panzhihua was built as part of Mao’s plans to relocate factories deep inland, where they would be protected from a feared war. But the violence in this isolated site was nonetheless an embarrassing breach of the efforts by China’s president, Xi Jinping, to remake officialdom into a clean, impeccably disciplined bureaucracy. Details were sparse, and there were no clues to the gunman’s motives. But the brief initial report in the state media sketched a scene of the head of the Panzhihua Land and Resources Bureau, Chen Zhongshu, bursting into a meeting at an exhibition center and opening fire on officials there. “The gunman stormed into the meeting, fired repeatedly at the main leading comrades of the city party committee and government and then fled,” said an online report by Sichuan Daily, an official provincial newspaper, citing the Panzhihua government press office. The suspect in the shooting, Mr. Chen, was found dead in the exhibition center. He had taken his own life, the report said without giving details. The mayor, Li Jianqin, and party secretary, Zhang Yan, were wounded and sent to the hospital, but their injuries were not considered   the report said. Mr. Zhang, the party secretary, has worked in Panzhihua since 2006, and the mayor, Mr. Li, has worked there since last year, according to Chinese news reports. Both officials went to meetings and inspection visits with Mr. Chen previously, but there was nothing in the earlier reports to suggest that trouble had been brewing. Photographs on Chinese news websites showed armored vehicles and paramilitary troops massed outside the exhibition center in the aftermath of the violence."
"A steep drop in gang violence last year drove shootings in New York City to the lowest number in at least a   Police Department data shows, a result of what police officials say has been a focus on gang takedowns and targeted arrests in some of the city’s roughest neighborhoods. The internal police data, obtained by The New York Times, paints a detailed portrait of the motives, locations and circumstances behind murders and shootings for the last two years.   shootings fell to 412 in 2016, from 560 the year before, according to the data, which tracked shootings and murders through Dec. 28 of each year.   killings dropped to 79 in 2016, from 129 in 2015. Those   helped push citywide shootings to a new low of 998 by year’s end, police officials said, down from 1, 138 in 2015. Murders also fell, to 335 from 352 the year before. The New York City police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, has noted the department’s efforts to push shootings below 1, 000 for the first time since at least the early 1990s, when the police began keeping similar records. Mr. O’Neill and Mayor Bill de Blasio were expected to discuss those efforts at a news conference in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Scores of gang takedowns this year, resulting in about 900 arrests, took violent people off the streets and made it more costly to engage in   crimes, police officials said. “Precision policing targets those people who are responsible for the violence, which in a significant amount of cases are gangs,” said Stephen P. Davis, the department’s chief spokesman. “By going after the gang members, arresting them, we recognize the resultant reduction in violence. ” Violent crime has been more persistent  in some communities, especially outside Manhattan. But the Police Department, in continuing to drive down crime even as it has pulled back from heavy   enforcement and aggressive tactics like    has shown the value of focusing resources on stopping serious crime, said David M. Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “New York City, in many ways, convinced the rest of the country that things like zero tolerance were the way to make communities safe,” he said. “And now it’s showing the country that you absolutely do not need to do that, you should not do it, and there are much, much better and less damaging ways to work with communities to produce public safety. ” The reductions in New York stand in stark contrast to some other cities, most notably Chicago, which had a sharp increase in murders and shootings in 2016 and ended the year with 762 homicides. The New York Police Department data offers a rare glimpse into the more granular ways that the department’s Detective Bureau tracks and classifies crime, as well as the   tangle of reasons that people are shot and killed. Shootings and murders dropped across almost every category of motive last year. Murders in which drugs were the primary motive, for example, dropped to 29 in 2016, from 42 the year before. But domestic killings rose slightly, to 57 last year from 49 in 2015. Criminologists believe gang enforcement can result in arrests of people who are also domestic offenders, but they say that domestic violence remains more difficult to prevent, because it can escalate inside homes, without the police being notified. Mr. Kennedy said that efforts in smaller jurisdictions across the country to respond to the earliest signs of domestic violence and to punish repeat offenders were showing results, but that those strategies would be more difficult to replicate in a city the size of New York. Fewer people were murdered with guns in 2016, but the number of people killed by cutting rose to 73, from 50 the year before. Murders and shootings on the street, in public housing and in commercial locations all dropped last year through Dec. 28. Murders on playgrounds climbed to 12, from three the year before, and also rose in dwellings and in vehicles. More broadly, murders indoors ticked up by 19, while outdoor murders fell by 49. About a third of shootings and murders occurred between 10 p. m. and 2 a. m. and more than half happened between 6 p. m. and 2 a. m. The biggest share of murders were motivated by what the police call a “dispute. ” Of those, the largest share had to do with words that were exchanged, followed by disputes over a man or woman, over money, and over a previous history. Five murders in 2016 were deemed to be motivated by a stare or a disrespectful act, two by gambling and two by road rage. Just under a third of the shooting cases last year were closed with an arrest, and 22 percent of the cases were closed because the police had exhausted all leads. Forty percent of the murder cases were closed with an arrest, and eight others were termed an exceptional clearance, a category that would include cases in which the person suspected of being the killer was murdered before an arrest was made."
"Our new president is a    billionaire Ivy League graduate, a real estate tycoon, a TV star and a son of inherited wealth. But he is no longer, by his own calculations, a member of the “elite. ” Nor are the men (and the few women) now joining his inner circle  —     and corporate executives, Harvard and Yale alumni, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Goldman Sachs bankers. The true elite apparently sits elsewhere, among those who, in Sarah Palin’s notable 2008 formulation, think “that they’re  —   I guess  —   better than anyone else. ” As an adjective, the word “elite” still conveys something positive, even aspirational: elite athlete, elite model, elite travel services. But as a noun, embodied by actual living people, it has become one of the nastiest epithets in American politics. “Elites have taken all the upside for themselves and pushed the downside to the   and   Americans,” complains Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon (of Harvard, Goldman Sachs and Hollywood). In this formulation, elites are a destructive, condescending collective, plotting against the beleaguered masses outside their ranks. And in these attacks, the   and his team are deploying one of the most effective partisan political stereotypes of the modern age. For most of American history,   sentiment was a matter of up versus down, not left versus right. But about half a century ago, the conservative movement set out to claim   politics as its own. That meant redefining the term away from class and toward culture, where the “elite” could be identified by its liberal ideas, coastal real estate and highbrow consumer preferences. The   Club for Growth captured this type in a famous 2004 attack ad, instructing the Democrat Howard Dean to “take his           New York         freak show back to Vermont where it belongs. ” Trump adjusted the formula for the hot topics of the 2016 campaign. “I was on the right side of that issue, as you know, with the people,” he boasted after Brexit, adding that “Hillary, as always, stood with the elites. ” His complaints against “political correctness” conjure a world of absurdist campus politics, where overprivileged students squabble over gender pronouns and the fine points of racial victimization. “Media elites” come in for special attack, cordoned off in pens to be mocked and jeered at during rallies, labeled both liars and incompetents. But Trump has also ventured beyond mere   turning the 2016 election into a competition between knowledge systems: the      “people” versus the    “elites. ” His campaign insisted for months that pollsters and technocrats and media would be proven wrong by his electoral success. The fact that he did win dealt a blow to an entire worldview, one in which empirical inquiry and   were supposed to triumph in the end. The question, now, is whether it’s possible to run an executive branch based on hostility toward experts and professionals of all political stripes  —   and how many billionaires and Ivy Leaguers Trump can appoint before this rhetorical pose begins to break down altogether. The notion that distant elites might be conspiring against the people comes straight from the Founding Fathers, whose Declaration of Independence lamented the “long train of abuses and usurpations” inflicted upon ordinary Americans by an arrogant British king. From there on, United States history might be seen as a repeating cycle of   revolt. The Jacksonians rebelled against the Founders’ aristocratic pretensions. Northern “free labor” went to war against the oligarchical slavocracy. And the Populist revolts of the late 19th century adapted this story to modern capitalism, with farmers and laborers rebelling against robber barons, bankers,   experts and   professionals. The first historians to study those Populists described them as heroic crusaders, champions of the “people” against the “powers. ” But by the middle of the 20th century, alarmed by the rise of fascism and homegrown demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy, a new generation of scholars took a more anxious view of the   spirit. In his 1955 book “The Age of Reform,” Richard Hofstadter dismissed the Populists as   provincial   the latent fascists of their day. Eight years later, his “  in American Life” documented a dangerous suspicion of “the critical mind” that seemed to course through the national culture. From his perspective, the 1952 election captured everything wrong with American political life, with Dwight Eisenhower’s “philistinism” winning over Adlai Stevenson’s “intellect. ” Hofstadter did not usually describe his ideal intellectually minded citizens as members of an “elite. ” That word conveyed something different  —   a ruling class that held direct political and economic power. The most famous articulation of this view came from the sociologist C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 assessment of America’s “power elite. ” “They rule the big corporations,” Mills wrote. “They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. ” In Mills’s view, these people were tied together not by culture or ideology but by their positions at the helms of large,    institutions. As individuals, they might be Republicans or Democrats, and might live in Ohio or California. The point was that they were in charge of things. But that vision never gained much traction in mainstream politics, where a more partisan, targeted definition was starting to emerge. William F. Buckley Jr. carved out some essentials in his first book, “God and Man at Yale,” drawing a neat distinction between respectable   men like himself and the socialistic eggheads of the professoriate. Ronald Reagan chose the term “elite” to bring it all together in his famed 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” delivered on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. “This is the issue of this election,” he said: “whether we believe in our capacity for   or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a   capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ” Lyndon Johnson won that election in a blowout, but Reagan’s vision of a smug and detached liberal elite helped spark the oncoming “culture wars,” pitting a supposedly indignant Middle America against the liberal snobs of the coasts. By the 1990s, with the rise of   media stars like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, bashing the “liberal elite” had become a favorite blood sport of the American right. Despite all the abuse hurled their way, some “liberal elites” have accepted at least part of their detractors’ critique, particularly on the progressive left. It was during Bill Clinton’s presidency that the social critic Christopher Lasch published “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy,” which mourned that “   liberals” had turned into “petulant,   intolerant” scolds, thoroughly out of touch with the concerns of Middle America. Since then, the torch has passed to a younger generation of writers, including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, whose 2012 “Twilight of the Elites” called for rethinking the entire ethos of liberal “meritocracy”  —   a system, he argued, that tends to fuel   and incompetence at the top while offering little but contempt and dim prospects for those at the bottom. So as 2017 begins, we find ourselves in a strange and uncertain political moment. Antipathy toward a wealthy, preening managerial class seems to be gaining popularity across the political spectrum  —   and, oddly, to have helped elect a wealthy, preening incoming president. Meanwhile, both liberal and conservative “elites” are scrambling to figure out what happens if the   continues to reject basic political norms and even routine intelligence briefings. Under a Trump presidency, such “elites” may have no choice but to attempt a radical redefinition of their role in American life. Otherwise, the man in the White House will do it for them."
"“Will you marry me?” Hundreds of thousands of potential grooms and brides pop that question every year, and yet the logistics of delivering that momentous phrase  —   where to do it, when to do it and how much of a surprise should it be  —   remains among the most important decisions anyone planning on getting married has to make. Some of the couples whose wedding announcements were featured in the pages of The New York Times this past year, or whose weddings The Times learned about, got engaged in unusual spots  —   from a Manhattan rooftop to a subway construction site below the city’s streets  —   and one proposal even involved seeking advice from President Obama. And, of course, at least several can now be found on YouTube. Here are 10 of our most engaging stories of the year. Mr. Litman, who first began dating Ms. Michelis in the eighth grade at the Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, proposed in November 2015 in Montauk, N. Y. the entire scene captured by a drone hovering above on an unusually warm   day at the beach. With waves rushing the shore and the Montauk Point Lighthouse in the distance, Ms. Michelis can be seen from a windblown aerial view playfully running beneath the drone before turning back to Mr. Litman. As she runs closer, he drops to his knee, engagement ring in hand. Momentarily shocked at the sight, she drops her purse as he asks her to marry him, and the two then fall into each other’s arms. “The first thing that came to my mind was, I can’t wait to show it to our kids,” Ms. Michelis said. They were married Oct. 8. The couple first met in fall 2011 while working on the digital team for Mr. Obama’s   campaign. After the president’s victory, Mr. Fallsgraff became the digital director of Organizing for Action, the nonprofit organization that manages the social media and digital accounts for Mr. Obama. In 2015, Mr. Fallsgraff and his team were filming a video with Mr. Obama at a hotel in Washington during the Organizing for Action Spring Organizing Summit. Knowing he was planning to leave in June, Mr. Fallsgraff took the opportunity to talk with the president, and told him that he was bent on proposing (which he would do three months later). “You got a rock picked out and all that?” he recalled Mr. Obama asking. Mr. Fallsgraff told him he had yet to get the ring and asked if the president had any advice. Mr. Obama suggested that Mr. Fallsgraff get help from someone Ms. Wilson trusted and who understood her taste. When Mr. Fallsgraff suggested that he was thinking of asking Ms. Wilson’s best friend, the president responded, “I think that’s the right strategy, but you’ve got to swear her to secrecy. ” The next time Mr. Fallsgraff saw Ms. Wilson’s best friend, he pulled her aside. “I told her I had a mission for her from the president of the United States,” he said. Mission accomplished. Mr. Fallsgraff and Ms. Wilson were married July 3. The couple, who met in June 2015 through a dating app called the League, went to Paris six months later for a New Year’s celebration. While at a restaurant there, Mr. Purcell ordered a bottle of Champagne for what he thought was 110 euros, the equivalent of about $119. But when the bill arrived after dinner, he realized he had mistakenly ordered a bottle of vintage Champagne  —   the 2003 Dom Pérignon Rosé  —   at a cost of 1, 100 euros, a total at the time of roughly $1, 195. In May, Mr. Purcell invited Ms. Bui to the rooftop of his apartment building in San Francisco to enjoy the unobstructed   view that included the Golden Gate Bridge. As they took in the view, Mr. Purcell surprised Ms. Bui by breaking out an expensive bottle of the same vintage Champagne he had mistakenly bought in Paris. It was all a part of a special occasion, he told her, and then he surprised her again, this time with an engagement ring. They were married Nov. 26. The couple, who met in 2007 while they were working for the New York City Department of City Planning, became engaged in May 2014, when Mr. Meagher proposed while they were on a tour of the construction site of the 86th Street station, part of the Second Avenue subway. The tour, conducted below street level, included residents who live near the new subway line as well as officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “We’re both passionate about cities and infrastructure,” Mr. Meagher said. And about each other, as the group learned when Mr. Meagher, wearing a hard hat and an orange safety vest, got down on one knee and asked Ms. Grossman, who was wearing the same gear, to marry him. Gasps, then applause, broke out among the tour group, as well as from the bride’s parents, who had also shown up for the occasion. They were married Jan. 9. The couple met in August 2014 during a performance of the Broadway musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. ” Mr. Fogelman, who was there alone, tried to move to an empty seat next to Ms. Phillips to get a better view of the stage. “Not in the middle of a song,” said Ms. Phillips, who was there with a friend. Mr. Fogelman waited until after the song to switch seats, and at intermission, he apologized profusely to her for his poor theater etiquette. She forgave him, he sat down next to her, and they began talking. They were soon dating, and in August 2015, while sitting in those same seats, Mr. Fogelman turned to Ms. Phillips at intermission and proposed. “It turned out to be a wonderful   at the theater,” Ms. Phillips said, “one that I will never forget. ” They were married Sept. 4. Mr. Whelden, a plumber in Boston who sings with two professional   touring a cappella groups (Five O’Clock Shadow and Overboard) proposed during his performance at a New Year’s Eve concert in Rockport, Mass. The crowd roared when he sang “Fall in Love,” a song he wrote for his future bride that included the words “will you marry me. ” “It was the most amazing, romantic proposal I could’ve ever imagined,” Ms. Delaney said. They were married May 7. The couple, who were both living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, met through OkCupid in early 2011. They immediately became a couple. In July 2015, they moved into a   together in Bay Ridge. On their first day in the new place, Ms. Roth put in motion her proposal while Ms. Marini was at work. She was hiding when Ms. Marini returned, and watched her follow a path of lighted candles to a makeshift bed where Chinese food boxes had been placed across the floor, leading to a smaller box. (“Melina had always idealized the movie trope of people moving into a new apartment that’s not yet furnished, and having to eat Chinese food on the floor, ” Ms. Roth explained.) When Ms. Marini opened the smaller box, which contained an engagement ring, she started sobbing. Along with the ring was a note that said: “Will you marry me? Check yes or no. ” Ms. Marini checked “yes,” and she and Ms. Roth, who came out of hiding, cried in each other’s arms. “I’m not the type of person who wants to see ‘Will you marry me?’ splashed across a Jumbotron,” Ms. Marini said. “This was much more intimate to me, and much more meaningful. ” They were married Aug. 6. The couple met on March 11, 2005, while shooting pool in what Ms. Powell described as a dim, smoky bar on Avenue B in Manhattan. They shared several beers, then a single kiss outside the bar. Mr. Albertson, 23 at the time, was beyond taken with her, but Ms. Powell, then 20, was not quite ready for a serious relationship. They settled on becoming friends. Ms. Powell eventually married another man, and fell out of touch with Mr. Albertson. By May 2014, however, Ms. Powell was divorced and dating Mr. Albertson, often telling him that the word “marriage” now frightened her. On March 11, 2015, 10 years to the day they met, they were back on Avenue B and heading into that same dim, smoky bar when Ms. Powell looked down and saw a huge chalk mark indicating the spot where she had first kissed him. She turned to find him down on one knee, holding her engagement ring. “I was freaking out,” she said. “I just started crying and hugging him. ” He proposed but managed to avoid scaring her by leaving out the word “marriage. ” “I was wondering,” he said, “if you wanted to hang out with me forever. ” They were married March 11. Mr. Turke, who proposed in February, chose to give his future bride a full day of   bliss, rather than a single moment of happiness. An hour after he sneaked out of their apartment at 6 a. m. he called her with instructions to go into their kitchen, where she found a huge bouquet of white lilies with several notes that he had left for her, including one that read, “Today is the day that we get engaged,” and another that read, “Enjoy the moments ahead of you, have fun and say ‘yes. ’” What ensued was a dizzying series of events that first took Ms. Helmling to the NoMad Hotel in Manhattan, where she found her three best friends waiting at a breakfast table. A waiter then gave them a note with instructions to walk across the street to a spa, where they each enjoyed Champagne and a massage before being whisked away for manicures and pedicures. Later in the day, Ms. Helmling was chauffeured over the George Washington Bridge to a small park in New Jersey overlooking the Hudson River  —   the spot where Mr. Turke had first asked her out in September 2013. “When she arrived, we hugged and cried and she told me all about her day,” said Mr. Turke, who also presented a slide show that included every photo that had both of them in it, arranged in chronological order as a way of telling their story. Then he proposed, and Ms. Helmling cried some more. They were married Nov. 13. The couple met online in 2008. At the time, Mr. Stucky was living in Somerville, Mass. and going through a divorce. They were soon dating, but their relationship began to sputter. In the space of three years, each of them proposed to the other, and each was soundly rejected. In June 2014, Ms. Mathiowetz was partying with friends in New York when she consumed too many psychedelic mushrooms. The episode left her paralyzed for nearly six hours  —   and longing again for Mr. Stucky, whom she was no longer seeing. “I can’t believe I haven’t been telling you every day that I love you,” she called to tell him the moment she got back on her feet. Mr. Stucky was feeling much the same way, as he too had had a   experience, he said, a nightmare in which he was on his knees and looking up at a stranger who was telling him he had only 24 hours to live. Completely shaken, he awoke and began taking into account all the things in life that mattered most to him, and quickly realized that Ms. Mathiowetz was at the top of that list. Those shared experiences brought them back together, and in January 2015, Mr. Stucky proposed to Ms. Mathiowetz, for a second time, during a weekend trip at a    in Portsmouth, N. H. This time, she accepted. They were married June 11."
"Alicia Rivera, a    single mother with four children and big dreams, must budget her money and her time wisely. “I got my kids,” Ms. Rivera said. “I don’t want to waste my time. ” Ms. Rivera and her children  —   Joaquin, 17 Nelson, 16 Alyssa, 11 and Rafael, 2  —   live in a   apartment in the Bronx, near the southern tip of the Bronx River Parkway. The past few years have sometimes been overwhelming for her as she tries to raise her children by herself, get an education and lay the foundation for a professional career. When she was seven months pregnant with Rafael, Ms. Rivera injured her back while working as a home health aide. Soon after he was born, she switched to another job, helping   people navigate complicated real estate and tax forms and other paperwork. Ms. Rivera makes about $100 every week. She also receives $216 a month in Supplemental Security Income and $506 a month in food stamps. With a monthly rent of $308, she needs to keep a frugal budget. But Ms. Rivera has a plan. She is on track to receive an associate degree from Plaza College in April. Her goal is to then earn a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, both in business, from Metropolitan College of New York. She dreams of opening a dance studio in the Bronx. Ms. Rivera grew up in the Bronx with a mother who could not afford to send her to dance classes. But she loved dancing in front of the family’s television as they watched the   variety show “Sábado Gigante. ” “And you see these kids dancing, and you see me dancing in the living room, too,” Ms. Rivera said. “I used to wear my mom’s makeup, her heels. ” Ms. Rivera passed on her love of dancing to her children, especially Joaquin, who leads a dance team at his school, the Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy, near Fordham University in the Bronx. She watched him at a dance rehearsal at the school, and she said the students’ moves reminded her of the “Step Up” movie series. “Made me laugh, made me have a good time,” she said. “I felt like joining them,” she said, beaming. At times, Ms. Rivera has struggled to balance her obligations at home, school and work. As she devoted more time to her studies, her son Nelson, who attends the same academy as Joaquin, started having trouble at school. A counselor there contacted her, saying that Nelson did not want to go to class. The counselor referred her to the Family Assistance Program, which soon referred them to the Children’s Aid Society, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. At Children’s Aid, Ms. Rivera said, she learned how to improve her parenting. She said she used to get frustrated and yell at Nelson when he struggled to get up and get ready in the morning. A counselor told her that yelling at him was not going to solve the problem. Therapy sessions with the family also made it clear that her sons needed their own rooms. Ms. Rivera said she started to notice positive changes at home after several months of therapy. Her older sons now have their own rooms. Alyssa agreed to share a room with her mother and Rafael. Her elder sons are more focused now. Nelson comes to her with problems, not letting them linger, and they work them out together. Joaquin is starting to research colleges. The Children’s Aid Society also provided Ms. Rivera $413 in Neediest funds to replace her sons’ broken beds with new ones. Nelson and a friend put them together, she said. While still attending school, Nelson is taking some online courses, which cost $49 a month. Ms. Rivera wants to withdraw Nelson to take online classes full time so that she can monitor his schoolwork more carefully. In addition to opening a dance school, Ms. Rivera wants to start a business similar to her present workplace. While the family has learned to resolve problems, Ms. Rivera refuses to lower her expectations. She bristles when she hears her children or their friends say they cannot do something. “Don’t say, ‘I can’t,’” she said. “Joaquin never says, ‘I can’t,’ because he hears me. ” That is one way she lays the foundation for her children’s future. Ms. Rivera said Alyssa was struggling one day with homework. So she took time out of her own schoolwork, encouraged her daughter and patiently walked her through the steps of writing a   essay. “It took her three hours, and when she was done, I said, ‘You see? You could do it. ’”"
"WASHINGTON  —   Congress opened for battle over the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday as Republicans pushed immediately forward to repeal the health care law and President Obama made a rare trip to Capitol Hill to defend it. The bitterness that has long marked the fight intensified as Republicans seized the opportunity to make good on a central campaign promise to get rid of the law, a pledge reinforced on Wednesday by Vice   Mike Pence, who met with House Republicans not far from where the president gathered with Democrats. The Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature health care law, has created online insurance marketplaces, offered new protections to people seeking health insurance, and provided coverage to millions of people near the poverty line through expanded Medicaid. Health policy experts say that system could collapse if Republicans cut off funds for the expanded coverage and end penalties for people who go without health insurance. “The American people voted decisively for a better future for health care in this country,” Mr. Pence said, “and we are determined to give them that. ” He said that   Donald J. Trump would use his executive authority to help make the transition away from the health care law, but did not offer specifics. Democrats vowed aggressive resistance, however, and said they would not participate in drawing up a replacement for the law after the swift efforts to unravel it. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new Democratic leader, playing off Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan, said repealing the law would “make America sick again. ” Republicans are using a procedural approach that will allow them to repeal substantial parts of the health care law without Democrats’ being able to mount a filibuster in the Senate. By a vote of 51 to 48 on Wednesday, the Senate took the first step, agreeing to take up a budget resolution, or blueprint, that would clear the way for legislation repealing major provisions of the  law. But even as Republicans spoke of moving quickly to repeal the law, it remained far less clear how and when they would go about replacing it. Senate debate on the budget resolution is expected to continue for several days, and the House plans to take up the measure once the Senate has approved it. As Republicans charged ahead, both sides seemed cognizant of the possible fallout from unwinding the law, which has become deeply enmeshed with America’s health care system and has provided insurance for about 20 million people. Mr. Trump weighed in with several Twitter posts. He advised that Republicans needed to “be careful in that the Dems own the failed Obamacare disaster,” and added, “Don’t let the Schumer clowns out of this web. ” Mr. Trump predicted that the health care law would “fall of its own weight. ” Representative Chris Collins of New York, a Republican who is one of Mr. Trump’s top supporters in Congress and is part of his transition team, said it was important to be sure that Democrats bear responsibility for the failings of the health care law. Republicans point out that premiums have risen and that consumers in many places have fewer choices of insurers. “We have to make sure we keep reminding America, we are repealing it because it failed, we are repealing it because they all but demanded that we repeal it,” Mr. Collins said. “And that was a key piece of Donald Trump’s campaign. ” But as Republicans expressed eagerness to repeal the law, they acknowledged that replacing it would take more time. It is also unclear how insurance companies will react during this period and whether they will continue to offer the marketplace plans that millions of people have come to rely on. “There will naturally be a reasonable transition period,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “You can’t adopt new reforms all at once. ” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, noted that it had taken six years to get into “the ditch we find ourselves in now. ” “When your truck or car is in a ditch, the first thing you need to do is get out of the ditch,” Mr. Cornyn said. “And sometimes that takes a lot of hard work. ” To that, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, parried that when a car goes into a ditch, “the first thing I don’t do is dismantle the car. ” “That doesn’t help me get anywhere in terms of transportation,” she said. Democrats signaled little interest in helping Republicans determine what to do after repealing major parts of the health care law. Mr. Schumer predicted that in a year, Republicans would “regret that they came out so fast out of the box. ” He said Democrats would consider working on a replacement only after Republicans presented their own plan. “If you are repealing, show us what you’ll replace it with first,” Mr. Schumer said. “Then we’ll look at what you have and see what we can do. ” Later, Mr. Schumer said of Mr. Trump, “It’s his and their responsibility, plain and simple  —   name calling isn’t going to get anything done. ” He added, “They really need to calm things down a little. ” Speaker Paul D. Ryan tried to offer assurance that no change in coverage would be abrupt. “The point is, in 2017, we don’t want people to be caught with nothing,” he said. “We want to make sure that there’s an orderly transition so that the rug is not pulled out from under the families who are currently struggling under Obamacare while we bring relief. ” Mr. Obama huddled with congressional Democrats for about 90 minutes in what was billed by the White House as a strategy session to forge a unified Democratic response to the Republicans’ rollback effort. In reality, the session was essentially a   party for a man who passed his signature legislative accomplishment under   majorities in Congress and a “pep rally” for Affordable Care Act defenders, in the words of an attendee, Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia. The gathering, which could be Mr. Obama’s last trip to the halls of Congress that have been the site of alternating triumph and defeat, had a     air, with numerous Democratic lawmakers, including Mr. Johnson, sneaking out to attend to business more pressing than hearing the president’s words. Mr. Obama, for his part, did not ask his allies to block all efforts to alter the law, but warned Democrats against “rescuing” Republicans by defecting on votes that would dismantle it. The president provided an array of arguments for keeping the Affordable Care Act and offered a mild mea culpa for his shortcomings as a salesman over the years. Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, said, “He acknowledged the failures in selling the law in its entirety to the American people. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —   Republicans hope to repeal major parts of the Affordable Care Act using an expedited procedure known as budget reconciliation. The process is sometimes called arcane, but it has been used often in the past 35 years to write some of the nation’s most important laws. “Reconciliation is probably the most potent budget enforcement tool available to Congress for a large portion of the budget,” the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, has said. Here is a primer. Q. What is the budget reconciliation process? A. It is a way for Congress to speed action on legislation that changes taxes or spending, especially spending for entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Although conceived primarily as a way to reduce federal budget deficits, it has also been used to cut taxes and to create programs that increase spending  —   changes that can raise deficits. In the Senate, a reconciliation bill can ordinarily be passed with a simple majority. For other bills, a   majority is often needed to limit debate and move to a final vote. Q. Why is it called reconciliation? A. The term originated in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which was intended to give Congress more control over the budget process by allowing lawmakers to set overall levels of spending and revenue. The process begins with a budget blueprint, a resolution that guides Congress but is not presented to the president for a signature or veto. It recommends federal revenue, deficit, debt and spending levels in areas like defense, energy, education and health care. The resolution may direct one or more committees to develop legislation to achieve specified budgetary results. By adopting these proposals, Congress can change existing laws so that actual revenue and spending are brought into line with  —   reconciled with  —   policies in the budget resolution. Q. How has reconciliation been used? A. Since 1980, Congress has completed action on 24 budget reconciliation bills. Twenty became law. Four were vetoed. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 was a vehicle for much of the “Reagan revolution. ” It squeezed savings out of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the school lunch program, farm subsidies, student loans, welfare and jobless benefits, among many other programs. In 1996, Congress reversed six decades of social welfare policy, eliminating the individual entitlement to cash assistance for the nation’s poorest children and giving each state a lump sum of federal money with vast discretion over its use. Those changes were made in a reconciliation bill, pushed by Republicans but signed by President Bill Clinton. Congress reduced deficits with another reconciliation bill, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. That law also created the Children’s Health Insurance Program, primarily for uninsured children in   families. On the same day in 1997, Mr. Clinton signed a separate reconciliation bill that cut taxes. The Bush tax cuts were adopted in reconciliation bills signed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. On several occasions, Congress has increased assistance to   working families by increasing the   tax credit in reconciliation bills. Congress also made changes to the Affordable Care Act in a reconciliation bill passed immediately after President Obama signed the health care overhaul in 2010. Later, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, they passed a reconciliation bill to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, but Mr. Obama vetoed the bill in January 2016. Republicans say that measure will provide a template or starting point for their efforts to undo the health care law this year, with support from   Donald J. Trump, who calls the law “an absolute disaster. ” Q. How does the reconciliation process work in the Senate? A. In the House, leaders of the majority party can usually control what happens if their members stick together. In the Senate, by contrast, one member or a handful of senators can often derail the leaders’ plans. The reconciliation process enhances the power of the majority party and its leaders. Senate debate on a reconciliation bill is normally limited to 20 hours, so it cannot be filibustered on the Senate floor. The Senate has a special rule to prevent abuse of the budget reconciliation process. The rule, named for former Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, generally bars use of the procedure to consider legislation that has no effect on spending, taxes and deficits. The Senate parliamentarian normally decides whether particular provisions violate the Byrd rule, but the Senate can waive the rule with a   majority. Q. What does this mean for the Affordable Care Act? A. Republicans hope to use the   procedure of budget reconciliation to repeal or nullify provisions of the law that affect spending and taxes. They could, for example, eliminate penalties imposed on people who go without insurance and on larger employers who do not offer coverage to employees. They could use a reconciliation bill to eliminate tens of billions of dollars provided each year to states that have expanded eligibility for Medicaid. And they could use it to repeal subsidies for private health insurance coverage obtained through the public marketplaces known as exchanges. Republicans could also repeal a number of taxes and fees imposed on certain   people and on health insurers and manufacturers of   prescription drugs and medical devices: tax increases that help offset the cost of the insurance coverage expansions. Those provisions were all rolled back in the reconciliation bill Mr. Obama vetoed last January. That bill did not touch insurance market standards established in the Affordable Care Act, which do not directly cost the government money or raise taxes. The standards stipulate, for example, that insurers cannot deny coverage or charge higher premiums because of a person’s   conditions. Insurers must allow parents to keep children on their policies until the age of 26, and they cannot charge women higher rates than men, as they often did in the past. Such provisions are politically popular, but it is not clear how they could remain in force without the coverage expansions that help insurers afford such regulations. Without an effective requirement for people to carry insurance, and without subsidies, supporters of the health law say many healthy people would go without coverage, knowing they could obtain it if they became ill and needed it. Democrats say they will fight to preserve the law after Mr. Obama leaves office. Recent history shows that lobbying and public pressure can sometimes make a difference, altering the votes of individual lawmakers and changing the contents of a reconciliation bill."
"WASHINGTON  —   Majorities in Congress often overreach, but usually not on the very first day. House Republicans, on the verge of a Washington takeover as the new Congress convened Tuesday, couldn’t stop themselves from trying to dilute the power of a despised ethics watchdog as their first order of business. In the process, they created an unsightly spectacle that pretty much ruined an   celebration of unified Republican government, undermined their own leadership and perhaps foretold the shape of things to come. House Republicans take a stand on a contentious issue, Donald J. Trump turns to Twitter to break with House Republicans, then Republicans frantically reverse course. “Mr. Trump campaigned that he was going to drain the swamp, and here we are on Day 1 trying to fill the swamp,” Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina, said after he and his colleagues hurriedly jettisoned a plan seen as a brazen attempt to weaken an independent ethics office that some felt had been unfair to lawmakers. “That is not a good way to start. ” Deluged by angry phone calls and bad headlines, chagrined Republican officials say they were well on their way to abandoning the ethics revisions adopted Monday night in a   party meeting before Mr. Trump weighed in via Twitter and suggested that the overhaul shouldn’t be a top priority, urging Republicans to focus instead on taxes and health care. But the final decision did come after the  ’s Twitter posts, underscoring his sway over House Republicans who had moved ahead despite objections and warnings about the optics of the change from Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader. House Republicans might have amusedly applauded Mr. Trump’s cutting tweets when they were aimed at the news media and other common foes, but they found them measurably less funny when the criticisms were directed their way, raising alarms among Republicans about his power to corral them via social media. Following the decision to reverse course, several lawmakers were quietly fretting that Mr. Trump’s megaphone was much more powerful than they had realized. Other Republicans both on and off Capitol Hill were wondering how the   proposal got as far as it did, given the stated reservations of Mr. Ryan and Mr. McCarthy among others. They said it did not bode well that the rank and file was so willing to ignore leadership on such a potentially critical matter, demonstrating once again how hard it can be to manage the House Republicans even when the party is set to control both Capitol Hill and the White House. Mr. Ryan had already headed off an earlier rules change that was deemed potentially embarrassing: a proposal to let lawmakers resume funding of pet projects through designated “earmarks” as long as the money went to public entities. Abuse of earmarks was one of the main sources of congressional corruption that led to tighter ethics rules and a ban on such spending, and Mr. Ryan and his allies believed that a quick move to restore them so soon after Mr. Trump’s election would not send the proper signal. But Mr. Ryan has promised to revisit both the earmark issue and the revisions to the Office of Congressional Ethics later this year. The ethics office was created in 2008 at the urging of Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was then the House speaker. This was in response to criticism that the Select Committee on Ethics, comprising lawmakers from both parties, was ineffective, given a string of   corruption cases and other breakdowns such as a scandal involving teenage House pages. Lawmakers from both parties were against the office then, as well as now, and would much prefer to be judged by their peers  —   politicians currently serving in the House who might be more sympathetic  —   as opposed to a more discrete board and staff. But in moving ahead with the rules change on a strictly partisan basis, Republicans opened the door to Democrats berating them for the proposal, even though a significant number of Democrats are just as unhappy with the ethics office. It was similar to a move House Republicans made in 2005 when they used the   rules package to weaken the ethics committee itself after a series of rebukes against Tom DeLay, the majority leader. That decision sparked an outcry from Democrats and watchdog groups that helped Democrats regain the majority the next year with a message that Republicans were fostering a culture of corruption. “I think it is always better to do changes to the ethics process in a bipartisan manner,” said John Feehery, a former top Republican aide in the House. “It protects you from political attacks. ” The tussle over the ethics office is just one illustration of how Mr. Trump and his outsider ideas could clash with his own party in Congress. Mr. Trump has vowed to move forward with a proposal to impose term limits on Congress, and many in the party are not happy with that idea. Other sources of friction are bound to emerge, given his campaign message about shaking up Washington. “I just could not believe that the Congress does not understand that, if anything, we need to bring sunshine in,” Mr. Jones said. House Republicans may understand that idea a little bit better now."
"WASHINGTON  —   Ivanka Trump, who is weighing a prominent role in her father’s administration, is planning to move with her family to a mansion in the exclusive Kalorama section of Washington, two people familiar with the decision said Wednesday. The house was previously owned by a   financier with extensive investments in Russia and ties to a Russian opposition leader. Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, a close adviser to   Donald J. Trump who is expected to be an influential voice in the administration, have chosen a      house just around the corner from President Obama’s new home. The newly renovated house, with its sleekly modern décor, sold for $5. 5 million in December, the people said, insisting on anonymity because the transaction was private. The home was previously owned by Dan K. Rapoport and his wife, Irina, according to property records filed with the District of Columbia. Neither responded to emailed requests for comment. Ms. Trump’s relocation plans, first reported by Washingtonian magazine, are the latest evidence that she and Mr. Kushner will remain major players in Mr. Trump’s administration. Both played crucial roles in his presidential bid and have wielded outsize power during his transition. People close to the couple declined to comment on their impending move, as did William F. X. Moody, a   at Washington Fine Properties, who first disclosed the deal. But in the neighborhood where they are planning to live  —     of ambassadors and prominent figures on the Washington social circuit  —   residents have been buzzing about their    neighbors. “Everybody’s atwitter about it,” said Tony Podesta, chairman of the Podesta Group, a top Washington lobbying firm. “I’ve been getting lots of emails saying, ‘Here we go again,’ ” Mr. Podesta said, alluding to the burst of local mayhem that attended the decision by Mr. Obama and his family to rent a   home in the neighborhood after they leave the White House. “It will be great to have them as neighbors,” Mr. Podesta said of Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner, who have three children. The white house on Tracy Place where Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner plan to live with their children is just around the corner from the Obamas’ luxurious   home on Belmont Road, which has been undergoing extensive renovations directed by the Secret Service to fortify it for their arrival. A security checkpoint is expected to be built at the intersection of Tracy and Belmont before Mr. Obama moves in, residents said. There was no sign of Ms. Trump or her husband at the house on Wednesday afternoon. But the property was a flurry of activity, as workers and painters filed in and out past television reporters staked out on the sidewalk and   speculated about their new neighbors. John Damgard, who has owned a house on the block since 1971, said his new neighbors could expect to be welcomed “with open arms,” even by the neighborhood’s Democrats. “It’s quiet, it’s private, and they’ll be graciously received,” Mr. Damgard said. The house was home for several decades to Renee Zlotnick Kraft, a Washington fur heiress and socialite, who frequently opened its doors for events and even occasionally rolled out a pink carpet to welcome the city’s dinner party set. According to the website of his investment firm, Rapoport Capital, Mr. Rapoport was born in Riga, Latvia, and has lived in the United States, France and Russia. Vladimir Ashurkov, a top aide to Aleksei A. Navalny, a leading Russian opposition leader and critic of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, described Mr. Rapoport as a successful financier in Moscow and an investor in Soho Rooms, one of the city’s poshest nightclubs. He has also been a supporter of Mr. Navalny since 2010. He recently relocated from Washington to Kiev, Ukraine, where he manages a private equity fund, Mr. Ashurkov said. It was not clear whether Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner bought the house from the Rapoports or would be renting it from a new owner. But after scouting locations in other exclusive neighborhoods, including nearby Georgetown, the couple settled on a home less than two miles from the White House."
"The Wall Street lawyer Walter J. Clayton does not travel in political circles, nor is he well known in corporate America. He is the insider’s insider  —   a deal maker. As such, his nomination to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission is a strong signal that financial regulation in the Trump administration will emphasize helping companies raise capital in the public markets over tightening regulation. In contrast, the agency’s two chairwomen under President Obama had regulatory or enforcement backgrounds. Mr. Clayton, known as Jay, has spent nearly his entire career in corporate boardrooms. His regulatory experience stems from advising banks on dealings with the government and helping several financial institutions with their settlements related to mortgage securities. He had a   seat to the financial crisis, advising Barclays Capital in buying the assets of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers in 2008 and Bear Stearns in its fire sale to JPMorgan Chase in 2007. He has advised on mergers and initial public offerings, including the biggest ever, the $25 billion offering by Alibaba Group of China in 2013. If Mr. Clayton is confirmed, he may have to recuse himself from some matters. A similar scrutiny was applied to Mary Jo White, the agency’s current chairwoman. She had been a litigator at Debevoise  Plimpton, where her clients included JPMorgan Chase, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Kenneth D. Lewis, a former Bank of America chief executive. Still, such recusals are not unusual. Laura S. Unger, a former commissioner and acting chairwoman, said that during her tenure, she had to recuse herself from a number of matters before the commission. She said the process of deciding when to recuse oneself often took place in consultation with the commission’s ethics officer. “An ethics officer at the S. E. C. knows all of your intimate details, and the ethics officer flags for you what may be potential conflicts,” she noted. Yet Mr. Clayton’s nomination will be sure to fuel criticism that Goldman Sachs could wield too much influence in the Trump administration. Sullivan  Cromwell, where Mr. Clayton is a partner, has been Goldman’s   law firm for more than a century. Mr. Clayton advised Goldman Sachs on perhaps its most important deal, the $5 billion investment by Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway amid the financial crisis. Mr. Clayton’s wife works as a   adviser at Goldman. The S. E. C. nomination follows the appointment of Goldman’s No. 2 executive, Gary D. Cohn, to be the top economic policy adviser to   Donald J. Trump, and the selection of a hedge fund manager who was a former Goldman trader, Steven T. Mnuchin, to be Treasury secretary. Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, is a former Goldman banker. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump had repeatedly criticized Goldman Sachs as an emblem of a financial elite. Mr. Trump, who met with Mr. Clayton on Dec. 22, said in a statement that the lawyer “will ensure our financial institutions can thrive and create jobs while playing by the rules at the same time. ” Mr. Clayton is expected to face scrutiny on his confirmation as a Sullivan  Cromwell colleague, H. Rodgin Cohen, did in 2009. Mr. Cohen, the dean of Wall Street lawyers, withdrew his name from consideration for a senior Treasury role amid an outcry over his deep involvement in nearly all the bank deals struck during the financial crisis. “It’s hard to see how an attorney who spent his career helping Wall Street beat the rap will keep   Trump’s promise to stop big banks and hedge funds from ‘getting away with murder,’” Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said. “I look forward to hearing how Mr. Clayton will protect retirees and savers from being exploited, demand real accountability from financial institutions the S. E. C. oversees and work to prevent another financial crisis. ” One issue could be Mr. Clayton’s representation of Alibaba. The Chinese   giant is under investigation by the S. E. C. over its accounting practices. Mr. Clayton also represented   Capital Management in its $1. 2 billion initial public offering a decade ago, and subsequent offerings and financing. A unit of the New   hedge fund pleaded guilty for what federal prosecutors said were more than $100 million in bribes paid to officials in African countries. The hedge fund was forced to pay a $400 million settlement. Government authorities said in September that they were still investigating individuals related to case. Another issue could be a 2011 report critical of the government’s enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which argued that “the current   regime” was “causing lasting harm to the competitiveness of U. S. regulated companies and the U. S. capital markets. ” Mr. Clayton was the chairman of the New York City bar association committee that drafted the report. Requests to speak with Mr. Clayton at Sullivan  Cromwell were not answered. A number of fellow deal lawyers said they were glad that the    practitioner could be at the helm of the S. E. C. “He’s a very smart, pragmatic guy who has real deal experience and has seen this stuff firsthand,” said Richard Truesdell, a head of Davis Polk’s global capital markets group, who has worked with Mr. Clayton on several deals. “There’s been a lot of buzz today, and I have yet to talk to anyone who isn’t pleasantly surprised by the choice. ” The role of the Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors and enable companies to raise capital through the public markets in a way that fosters economic growth. The latter is a key tenet of Mr. Trump’s economic plan, with the aim that companies can use the excess capital to create jobs. Harvey Pitt, a former chairman of the S. E. C. appointed by President George W. Bush, said Mr. Clayton was a “  appointment. ” “It is especially logical with respect to the agency’s obligation to promote capital formation, a subject with which the incoming administration is appropriately concerned,” said Mr. Pitt in an email. “Mr. Clayton’s background is very impressive  —   both for the depth of his experience, and for the quality of his efforts. ” Mr. Clayton went to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge for separate bachelor’s degrees and then obtained his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Mr. Clayton donated to Mitt Romney and Mr. Obama in previous presidential elections and to Jeb Bush’s primary campaign in 2015, according to public records. Those who know Mr. Clayton describe him as the     type, a doer who is often in the shadows of the better known Mr. Cohen at Sullivan  Cromwell. “When I think about the position, the guy has a really deep understanding of the capital markets and financial regulatory matters, so he checks those boxes,” said Brad Whitman, vice chairman in mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley, who has worked with Mr. Clayton over many years. “He’s got a great appreciation for what drives business and growth. ”"
"CHARLESTON, S. C.  —   Seeming to abdicate one of his last chances to save his own life, the convicted killer Dylann S. Roof stood on Wednesday before the jurors who will decide his fate and offered no apology, no explanation and no remorse for massacring nine black churchgoers during a Bible study session in June 2015. Instead, in a strikingly brief opening statement in the sentencing phase of his federal death penalty trial, Mr. Roof repeatedly assured the jury that he was not mentally ill  —   undercutting one of the few mitigating factors that could work in his favor  —   and left it at that. “Other than the fact that I trust people that I shouldn’t and the fact that I’m probably better at constantly embarrassing myself than anyone who’s ever existed, there’s nothing wrong with me psychologically,” Mr. Roof, who is representing himself, told the jury, which found him guilty last month of the killings at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Three minutes after walking to the lectern, Mr. Roof returned to the defense table, exhaling deeply. Any prospects for mercy by the jury had perhaps already been drained by the prosecution’s disclosure, in its opening statement, of a white supremacist manifesto written by Mr. Roof in the Charleston County jail sometime in the six weeks after his arrest. “I would like to make it crystal clear I do not regret what I did,” he wrote in his distinctive scrawl. “I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed. ” Mr. Roof, who was then 21, continued: “I do feel sorry for the innocent white children forced to live in this sick country and I do feel sorry for the innocent white people that are killed daily at the hands of the lower race. I have shed a tear of   for myself. I feel pity that I had to do what I did in the first place. I feel pity that I had to give up my life because of a situation that should never have existed. ” As the government laid out its case for a death sentence, the prosecutor who read from the journal, Nathan S. Williams, an assistant United States attorney, told the jury of 10 women and two men that Mr. Roof’s deadly rampage was a premeditated act that had devastated the families of his victims. “The defendant didn’t stop after shooting one person or two or four or five he killed nine people,” Mr. Williams said, a few moments before he declared, “The death penalty is justified. ” Later, aided by a slide show, he described each of the victims and their lives, setting the stage for several days of   testimony by family members and friends of the victims. Mr. Williams emphasized that Mr. Roof was capable of remorse and regret, reminding jurors that he had left his mother a note of apology, but only for the pain he knew his actions would cause his own family. The presentations were a startling beginning to the trial’s sentencing phase, which is expected to run into next week in Federal District Court. On Dec. 15, after six days of testimony in which defense lawyers did not contest his guilt, the jury found Mr. Roof guilty of 33 counts, including hate crimes, obstruction of religion resulting in death, and firearms charges. Eighteen of those counts require the jury to decide whether to sentence Mr. Roof, now 22, to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. To impose a death sentence, jurors must unanimously find that aggravating factors like premeditation and the number and vulnerability of the victims outweigh any mitigating factors, like the absence of prior violent behavior and demonstrations of redemption and remorse. Mr. Roof is also facing a death penalty trial in state court. Although many people in the courtroom had already heard Mr. Roof’s flat,   monotone during the guilt phase, when prosecutors played a video recording of his   confession to F. B. I. agents, his statement on Wednesday was his first to the jury. Mr. Roof chose to allow his   legal team to represent him during the guilt phase, but sidelined them during the penalty proceedings to prevent them from introducing any evidence regarding his family background or mental capacity. “The point is that I’m not going to lie to you, not by myself or through somebody else,” Mr. Roof told the jury. As his paternal grandparents watched from the second row on the left side of the courtroom, several women on the right side, which is reserved for victims’ family members, left their seats, one of them muttering curses. Mr. Roof has said he does not plan to call witnesses or present evidence on his behalf, and he did not   any of the prosecution’s witnesses on Wednesday. His approach stands in sharp contrast to the strategy of Justice Department lawyers, who have said they may call more than 30 witnesses, including at least one survivor of the attack, family members of the victims and federal law enforcement officials. Prosecutors began Wednesday with the widow of the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the church’s slain pastor, and his two best friends. Jennifer Benjamin Pinckney, who was married to Mr. Pinckney for 15 years, narrated an affectionate and often lighthearted telling of their life together, illustrated by dozens of photographs of her husband  —   as a young saxophone player in a school band, attending the births of their two daughters, vacationing on Caribbean cruises and on a trip to Seattle. She described him as a   preacher who extended his ministry as “a voice for the voiceless” to his work in the South Carolina Legislature, where he served first in the House and then the Senate. Often exhausted by his dual roles, he was depicted in several pictures as having fallen asleep in the back seat of the family car and on a couch while reading to his daughters. “He was the person that I think every mom would be happy that her daughter would marry,” Ms. Pinckney, a school librarian, said. “He was that great catch. ” Ms. Pinckney also described her terror on the night of June 17, 2015, as she and the couple’s younger daughter, Malana, then 6, listened to the gunfire from their hiding place beneath a desk in her husband’s study. As her husband and the others were gunned down in the adjacent church fellowship hall, Ms. Pinckney struggled to keep her daughter quiet and still. “I was just like, ‘Shh, shh, shh,’ ” Ms. Pinckney said, “and I put my hand over her mouth, and she was holding on to me, and she put her hand on my mouth. ” “Mama, is Daddy going to die?” her daughter asked, Ms. Pinckney said. She said the hardest thing she had ever done was telling her two daughters early the next morning that their father had been killed. Ms. Pinckney said she had heard Mr. Roof try to open the door to the study, which she had locked when the shooting began. Another assistant United States attorney, Julius N. Richardson, asked why she thought she had been spared. “It wasn’t my time,” Ms. Pinckney answered. “I couldn’t see God taking both parents away from two small kids. ” The Rev. Kylon Middleton, an A. M. E. minister who had known Mr. Pinckney from childhood, described his lifelong friend as immensely precocious (he began preaching at 13) and strategically ambitious (he aspired to be both a bishop and, perhaps, the state’s first   governor). In addition to Mr. Pinckney, the victims were the Rev. DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49 Cynthia Hurd, 54 Susie Jackson, 87 Ethel Lee Lance, 70 Tywanza Sanders, 26 the Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr. 74 the Rev. Sharonda   45 and Myra Thompson, 59. Near the end of the day, Ms. Thompson’s widower, the Rev. Anthony B. Thompson, the vicar of a Reformed Episcopal Church here, told jurors about their   marriage, their anniversary date to a beach, his wife’s determined demeanor and her commitment to the historic congregation. In testimony that was mixed with laughter and tears, Mr. Thompson recounted their final day together as she prepared for the evening study of the Gospel of Mark. “She had her glow,” he said. “I mean, this smile on her face. She was radiant. I just kept looking at her. ” Word of a shooting came hours later, and Mr. Thompson rushed to the church. He demanded to know whether she had been injured or killed. He eventually found out. “My whole world was gone,” he said. “I literally did not know what to do. Everything I did was for her, and she was gone. What am I here for? If she’s gone, what am I here for?”"
"ISTANBUL  —   Turkish officials accused the United States of abetting a failed coup last summer. When the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated last month, the Turkish press said the United States was behind the attack. And once again, after a gunman walked into an Istanbul nightclub early on New Year’s Day and killed dozens, the   news media pointed a finger at the United States. “America Chief Suspect,” one headline blared after the attack. On Twitter, a Turkish lawmaker, referring to the name of the nightclub, wrote: “Whoever the triggerman is, Reina attack is an act of CIA. Period. ” Turkey has been confronted with a cascade of crises that seem to have only accelerated as the Syrian civil war has spilled across the border. But the events have not pushed Turkey closer to its NATO allies. Conversely, they have drifted further apart as the nation lashes out at Washington and moves closer to Moscow, working with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, to secure a   in Syria. One story in the Turkish press, based on a routine travel warning issued by the American Embassy in Turkey, was that the United States had advance knowledge of the nightclub attack, which the Islamic State later claimed responsibility for. Another suggested that stun grenades used by the gunman had come from stocks held by the American military. Still another claimed the assault was a plot by the United States to sow divisions in Turkey between the secular and the religious. Rather than bringing the United States and Turkey together in the common fight against terrorism, the nightclub attack, even with the gunman still on the run, appears to have only accelerated Turkey’s shift away from the West, at a time when its democracy is eroding amid a growing crackdown on civil society. All of this is a reflection, many critics say, of what they call the paranoia and authoritarianism of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose leadership has so deeply divided the country that, instead of unifying to confront terrorism, Turkish society is fracturing further with each attack. The West, symbolized by the United States, is the perennial bogeyman. While seeming to pile on the Obama administration in its waning days  —   by accusing it of supporting Turkey’s enemies, including the Islamic State Kurdish militants and supporters of an exiled Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom Mr. Erdogan blamed for directing the coup  —   Turkish officials are also telegraphing something else: that they are willing to open the door and improve relations with the United States once   Donald J. Trump takes office. “Our expectation from the new administration is to end this shame,” Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, said this week while accusing the United States of providing weapons to Kurdish militants in Syria who are fighting the Islamic State, but are also an enemy of Turkey. “We are not holding the new administration responsible for this,” Mr. Yildirim said. “Because this is the work of the Obama administration. ” Meanwhile, the nightclub assailant is on the loose. The Turkish authorities said on Wednesday that they had identified the killer, but refused to release any other details, although photographs of the man, from surveillance cameras, have been released. Also, a video surfaced that appeared to show the assailant recording himself in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. A senior United States official, who has been briefed on the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential details, said the Turks had recovered the video from a raid on a house in Istanbul. The official said the Turks now believed the killer was from Uzbekistan, not Kyrgyzstan, as many reports this week had first suggested. The official expressed alarm at the growing   in Turkey, which seems to accumulate after each crisis here, and said it put the lives of Americans in the country in jeopardy. The chaotic investigation has added to the anxiety on Istanbul’s streets, with vehicle checkpoints, night raids on houses and   helicopters. “There is significant fear in ordinary people,” said Aydin Engin, a columnist at the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, who was detained last year as part of the government’s crackdown on the news media. “Fear prevails when it comes to going to an entertainment place, being in a crowd, going to a shopping mall, getting on the metro. ” With each passing day, public life descends deeper into what many Turks concede is a mix of darkness and seeming absurdity, with growing fears of violence and expressions of xenophobia set next to repressions on civic life. In the days before and after the nightclub massacre on the shores of the Bosporus, nationalists staged a mock execution of Santa Claus in the name of defending Islam a reporter for The Wall Street Journal was detained,   and placed in solitary confinement  —   for, according to the newspaper’s account, “violating a government ban on publication of images from an Islamic State video” and a   fashion designer was beaten up at the Istanbul airport and arrested for his social media posts. “In a way, it’s basically a breakdown of order,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish columnist and academic, seeking to explain the tumult in society. “Everyone feels entitled to do whatever they want to do and how they want to do it. ” Tugrul Eryilmaz, another longtime Turkish journalist, recalled the country’s military coup in 1980 and the crackdown on civil society that followed, and said, “I have never been in such a situation like today. ” He brought up the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who was known for surreal and absurd themes. “I feel like I am in his movies,” he said. While Turkey faces a growing terrorism threat, the country is also largely at war with itself, with deep divisions along many lines  —   religion, class, ethnicity  —   that make unity difficult even in a time of crisis. Perhaps the greatest source of division is between supporters of Mr. Erdogan, about half the country, and opponents who assert that he has become too powerful. “Turkey is so deeply polarized around the powerful persona of Erdogan that, instead of asking why terror attacks are happening and how they can be stopped, the   and   blocks in the country are blaming each other,” said Soner Cagaptay, a specialist on Turkey at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is why I am deeply worried about Turkey and the country’s ability to stymie further terror attacks. ” Parliament voted overnight to extend by three months the state of emergency that went into effect last summer after the failed coup. The emergency grants Mr. Erdogan’s government extraordinary powers to detain perceived opponents and hold them in pretrial detention. Tens of thousands of people have either been arrested or been purged from their jobs, on suspicion of having links to Mr. Gulen, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Mr. Erdogan on Wednesday made his first public remarks since the attack on Sunday morning, a striking period of silence for a man who is normally ubiquitous in the public sphere, often giving speeches daily. Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist, rejected criticism that his government, in pushing an Islamist agenda, had deepened divisions between the secular and the pious. Many on social media, in the aftermath of the nightclub attack, noted that the Turkish government’s religious authorities had denounced New Year’s celebrations as  . “As the president of all 79 million citizens,” Mr. Erdogan said, “it is my duty to protect everyone’s rights, law and spaces of freedom. ” Mr. Erdogan, who spoke this week with President Obama in a condolence call, also told his audience what he believed Turkey, in facing so many terrorist attacks, was really up against: a plot by the West. Invoking the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the subsequent Turkish war against Western armies and their proxies, he said, “Today Turkey is in a new struggle for independence. ”"
"BEIRUT, Lebanon  —   For millions of Damascus residents,   concerns about the direction of the war in Syria have been replaced by worries about where to get enough water to do the dishes, wash clothes or take a shower. For nearly two weeks, the Syrian capital and its vicinity have been afflicted by a water crisis that has left taps dry, caused long lines at wells and forced people to stretch whatever thin resources they can find. “When the world gets hard for us, we work something out,” said a woman in a video posted on Facebook showing how she used a   cola bottle to wash teacups. “When you cut off the water, we dig for water. When you cut off the tap, we make a tap. ” Like most of Syria’s problems, the Damascus water crisis is a symptom of the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced about half the country’s prewar population of 22 million and left its territory divided into zones controlled by the government, armed rebels and jihadist groups. While a   brokered by Russia and Turkey and announced last week has reduced overall violence across the country, it has not stopped the fighting everywhere, nor has it resolved what happens when resources needed by one side are controlled by its enemies, as appears to be the case with Damascus’s water. Historically, most of the water for the capital, which is controlled by the government of President Bashar   has come from the Barada Valley north of the city, which is controlled by rebels who want to oust Mr. Assad. The crisis began on Dec. 22, when the water stopped flowing. Each side has accused the other of damaging infrastructure near the spring, halting the flow. Antigovernment activists have posted photos online, purporting to show structures around the spring that they say were damaged by exploding barrels dropped from government helicopters. The government first accused the rebels of polluting the water, then of damaging the infrastructure. Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations humanitarian office in Geneva, said by email Tuesday that the “deliberate targeting of the water infrastructure” had caused the  . “But we are not in a position to say by whom,” he said. “The area has been the scene of much fighting, so we have not been able to access it. ” Now, 5. 5 million people in Damascus and the vicinity lack water, which has raised the risk of waterborne disease, especially among children, he said. Fighting near the Barada Valley has continued despite the  . Antigovernment activists say that government forces, and fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization, have continued to attack the area in an apparent attempt to take it over. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts in Syria, said the government launched 15 airstrikes on the area Monday amid clashes between rebels and   forces. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, accused the Syrian government and its allies on Wednesday of violating the   saying that the new violence could derail peace talks meant to be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, on Jan. 23. Rebel groups have threatened to boycott the talks if government attacks do not stop. Few Damascus residents expect much from the talks or have time to think about them. While generally safe from the violence that had reduced other parts of the country to rubble, they were struggling through a cold winter of high prices and scarce commodities before the water crisis, making things worse. The Syrian government has sought to ease the crisis by trucking water from wells around the city, and the United Nations has rehabilitated 120 wells to cover about   of the city’s daily needs, Mr. Laerke, the spokesman, said. But many residents said they had received nothing. Some were buying water from men with private tankers, while others took advantage of whatever they could get. A    shopkeeper said he had not had a shower in 10 days but that he and his sons went to the mosque every day to wash their hands, feet and faces, an option not available to the women of the house. At home, he said, they used plastic utensils because they could not wash dishes. One    woman said she had not had running water in her home for 10 days. Her two sons have spent hours each day lining up to fill jugs from the well at their mosque. They use that to drink and to wash dishes, collecting the runoff to flush the toilet. “My family’s dream is to get a warm shower,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions for communicating with a foreign news outlet without government permission. “It has become our ultimate hope in Damascus to have enough water to take showers and wash clothes in the automatic washing machine. ” She expressed anger that Syria’s   news media had said little about the water crisis, instead focusing on the military’s battles with rebels. “We are fed up with the news of military operations,” she said. “We want news about water and water supply schedules. ” Despite the water crisis, conditions in Damascus are far better than those in Aleppo, the northern city and former commercial epicenter of the country, where Syrian and Russian forces prevailed last month after prolonged bombardments of its eastern side. While the   appears to be holding there, the formerly   eastern quarters are abandoned wastelands, United Nations relief officials said. “Nothing prepared us for what we saw,” Sajjad Malik, the United Nations acting humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters Wednesday in a telephone briefing from Aleppo. “The infrastructure was destroyed in almost every neighborhood. ” Mr. Malik said more than 100 United Nations relief workers from several agencies were helping civil defense teams remove debris and provide emergency food, water, shelter and medical care in the city, where four million people once lived. He estimated that 1. 5 million people remain in Aleppo, mostly on the western side, including roughly 400, 000 Syrians displaced from other areas. He also said thousands of displaced residents from the eastern side were starting to return, even if their homes and businesses were badly damaged or destroyed. “They’re beginning to talk about rebuilding their lives and livelihoods,” Mr. Malik said. But he cautioned that “Aleppo’s reconstruction is going to take a much longer time and way more resources than we have right now. ”"
"Canada, our No. 1 pick for this year’s 52 Places to Go list, spans millions of square miles. It also contains multitudes, not just of people and locations, but of memories. We asked five Canadian authors to reflect on places that have lodged in their psyches. My mother always kept a bright yellow hard hat in her car, an unexpected accessory for a petite Hong Kong immigrant in her  . She was the senior purchaser for a British Columbia forestry company that, in lean years, laid off everyone in her department except her. (More’s the pity she dreamed of early retirement.) In the meantime, she shuttled between the province’s pulp and paper mills, doing the job of six people, negotiating contracts for hotels, log loaders, harvesters and more. One year, when I was 25, I finally said yes to her persistent invitations to tag along. She wanted me to meet the men and women who earned their living in the mill towns, and who called her by her English name, Matilda. We set out in her car, exploring the    of Vancouver Island, heading for the northern tip, Port Hardy. This would turn out to be the last trip we took together. I remember the wet October chill eagles descending over corridors of evergreens a seemingly endless highway. At twilight, the world took on the shifting depths of an Emily Carr painting. I had to put up with my mother’s terrible driving, and her devotion to Celine Dion. She had to put up with my moods. I was going through a breakup and had decided that, in order to strengthen my moral fiber, I should camp, alone, for three days in the woods. I instructed my mother to drop me off at my campsite, work for a few days in Port Hardy, and then pick me up again. Port Hardy is a microcosm of Canada: a   town with a complex human and environmental history. The archaeological site of the island’s oldest known human habitation (circa 5850 B. C.) the area is the place of origin for the Kwakiutl peoples. The land of the Kwakiutl, whose name translates to “smoke of the world,” was taken into ownership  —   both private and national  —   by gunpoint, dishonored treaties and restrictive and discriminatory laws. The scramble for artifacts and the theft of Kwakiutl art  —   work that was celebrated by Claude   as among the most sophisticated in the world  —   has meant that much of the community’s historical work is housed in museums elsewhere. After 1849, the Kwakiutl population was decimated, but it survives. In 2013, British Columbia was found to have once again breached the Kwakiutl’s 1851 Treaty rights. This is not a history I learned in school. Alone in the woods, I pitched my tent. The dark fell suddenly. I made it five hours before calling my mom, telling her I was afraid, and asking her to come get me. That night, we shared a bed in a small lodging provided by her company. I smelled of the fire I had briefly managed to start. It felt good to lie beside my mother in a place that was complex and old. A little over a year later, my mother died suddenly in a town where she was working, much like this one, on a November night when her heart gave out. It was her   two kind forestry men who, worried about my mother, entered her hotel room in the morning, to find her gone. So peaceful, they told us, as if she were only sleeping. Fourteen years later, I understand better how the smoke of the world is never still. Many of the mills my mother visited have closed, jobs have been lost, and, as of a decade ago, a staggering 75 percent of Vancouver Island’s productive   forest has been logged. It is a place that will tell us much about the balance between jobs and environmental stewardship, about our respect for First Nations treaty rights and our obligations to the land. This is the Canada still to come. Madeleine Thien is the author of “Do Not Say We Have Nothing. ” Grindstone Island is a   dot of green leaves and Victorian gingerbread structures in the middle of Big Rideau Lake, halfway between Kingston and Ottawa.   in the 19th century to make way for its eponymous grindstone quarry, the island later became the summer home of Charles Kingsmill, the first admiral of the Royal Canadian Navy, and served as a genteel hub for Ottawa society life. Kingsmill’s daughter, Diana, who had a lifelong association with pacifist Quakers, took over Grindstone and turned it into a nonviolent resistance education center, staging legendary   games that recreated the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment as a way to train the “prisoners” to fight oppression with noncooperation  —   a practice that ended after a disastrous fake “invasion” by a local biker gang retained for the purpose. I came to Grindstone as a young teenager in the   attending the annual summer camps run by the nonprofit cooperative the Quakers put together to manage the island. The camps’ explicit mission was to train a new generation of activists, another step on the ladder that they had climbed, through trade unionism, farmers’ unions, suffragism and feminism, to antiwar activism. Grindstone was full of kids like me:   babies who attended alternative public schools in Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa, who could rhyme the classic protest chant “   ” with the facility of lifelong practice. Today it sounds hopelessly idealistic. But in the ’80s, Grindstone was a perfect incubator for young activists. With its quiet paths, crisp lake swimming and isolated spots with names like Moonwatcher’s Point, the Grindstone experience was one part lazing around and chatting, one part intense, practical instruction. The Victorian cottages we slept in had once housed the political elites of Ottawa society and their celebrity friends. Now they were ours. I’ve always been an early riser, and it was on Grindstone that I became addicted to sunrises, swimming around the island to catch them on the still lake amid the loon calls, then rushing in a shiver back to my cabin to change for breakfast and morning meeting on the broad, shaded porch of the main lodge. As I graduated out of the summer camps, I became active in the maintenance and management of the island, volunteering in the kitchens and serving on the  ’s board. When the  ’s finances crashed with the   recession, we sold the island to a dentist from Kingston who planned to commute by small pontoon plane. I was devastated. Today, Grindstone is the private home of David Bearman and Jennifer Trant  —   museum technology pioneers who fell in love with the island the first time they saw it, immediately dissolved their successful consultancy and took up residence there, running small conferences for people interested in museums and the web. Five years ago my family and I were their guests. The island felt haunted by the ghosts of the friends I’d made there and the dreams we’d shared. It has been 25 years since I left Grindstone on its final weekend as a social justice education center, and not a week goes by without my yearning for it with a kind of joy and sorrow that is sunk very deep in my heart. I visit it in my dreams, and in the photo feeds from its current owners when I see them at museum conferences, I demand to know all the minutiae of the island’s upkeep, which trees survived the winter storms and what color they’re painting the porch this year. I live in Burbank, Calif. now, and I take my    daughter on hikes in the nearby mountains. Sometimes, when we sit on a trailside boulder and listen to the winds soughing in the trees, I can almost pretend that I’ve brought her back to Grindstone, the place I had always assumed I would raise my own family. Cory Doctorow is the author of the forthcoming novel “Walkaway” and a special adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Hawker Siddeley HS 748 is a delightful,   turboprop relic of an airplane, with metal everywhere you expect plastic, made to land on gravel or ice. Nestled in a Hawker, I flew north from Whitehorse, Yukon’s capital city, past 300 miles of moonscape  —   gray craters scarred by the white lines of mining roads that seemed to loop and go nowhere  —   before Dawson City appeared through a hole in the cloud cover. The subarctic town, nicknamed “Paris of the North” during the late   Gold Rush, looked like a strange, solitary incursion on the land. I was there to spend three months living in the childhood home of the Canadian writer Pierre Berton, who had donated the house for this purpose. A volunteer picked me up at the   airport. On the drive through town, we passed a truck with an animal carcass in the bed, antlers poking out past a tarp.   black birds pecked at the exposed edges. “If you leave your moose out, the ravens will get at it,” the volunteer said. The Yukon River divided the town into Dawson proper and West Dawson, a scattered community of   cabins whose inhabitants hauled their own wood, water and propane. I walked down to the river almost every day. It was October, and the black, bottomless water flowed fast toward Alaska. Over the next few weeks, the river changed. First the water took on the faint sheen of an oil slick. Then slivers of ice began to race along the current, catching the light like the heads and bellies of surfacing seals. Then bigger,   chunks of ice formed, audibly colliding and jostling for space until they clustered and   at a bottleneck bend. Finally, one morning in November, I woke to an eerie, noticeable silence. I went down to the river’s beach sheets of ice overlapped where they’d heaved onto the shore, their exposed   resembling massive blocks of turquoise glass. A government employee had drilled into the ice and laid out orange flags indicating where the ice was thick enough to walk safely. I watched a dogsled cross. Because of the snow cover, it wasn’t immediately clear where the ground ended and the river began. As I stepped out, I could hear ice continuing to crack, the sound of trickling water running in open rivulets. Under my feet, I’d been told, ran water deep enough to swallow a truck. This would be a stupid way to die, I thought. Halfway across, I stopped and looked south, toward where the Yukon River met the Klondike River. At this time of year, the sun rose so late and set so early that it circled the horizon in a continuous blaze of orange. Part of the Canadian identity is that we’re a hardy people, thriving in the inhospitable north. It’s one of those myths so ingrained and pervasive that you believe it even if, like me  —   like most  —   you have lived your whole life in cities less than 60 miles north of the American border. For just a moment, my breath clouding around me, icicles forming on my chin, I stood in that mythical Canada. I crossed and hiked triumphantly around West Dawson, which had been inaccessible except by helicopter during the  . The temperature dropped below   degrees Celsius. When I returned to the house, hours later, I peeled off my jeans and saw that my thighs, like my cheeks and nose, were a raw, violent red. Out on the river, I had seen two other people crossing. The first glided past on   skis with a baby strapped to his chest. The second was an acquaintance pulling a sled. “Just picking up my mail!” he called. Kim Fu is the author of the novel “For Today I Am a Boy” and the poetry collection “How Festive the Ambulance. ”  Hans Johann was a capitalist pig farmer, a man who owned the pigs and the farm. His wife was Barbara. They were both German Mennonites. After World War II, both had fled with their families from what was once Prussia to Niagara, which is where, on some acres between the lake and the waterfalls, they stayed and became Mama and Papa, then Oma and Opa. My mother, Linda, was the fourth of Oma and Opa’s seven children, born and christened at such a rate that the family could not afford middle names. Mama made up for this by calling me “Sarah Nicole,” while my father, one of four from the suburbs, has never said anything but “Sarah. ” At home in London, Ontario, I sided with my dad, thinking two names were less smart than one but when we went to the pig farm, my name was turned by thick German tongues into “   . ” This older, extrinsic version of me was the one I liked best. Summers belonged to Niagara. Driving to the farm in a station wagon with no empty seats, we knew we were close when the asphalt turned to dirt and had arrived when the dirt turned to gravel. A long lane,   in birches, led to an ancient Mercedes or two and a big John Deere tractor, a nameless cat curled under the exhaust pipe. In the kitchen, we ate Oma’s bread with havarti cheese and   summer grapes, on which a skim of dust belied a   of gold. What did we need money for? Nothing. Ice cream, maybe, if we wanted it in a cone from Avondale Dairy. Turtles swam with us in the pool, the water cold and unchlorinated under scum, colored the dim vegetative green of fairy tales before they’re Americanized. Oma said her ferns would grow better if we urinated in the soil, and we rolled our eyes but did it, one at a time. I sneaked away to the gully, read my aunt’s ahistorical romance novels. My brother shot a dove with a BB gun. Pigs screamed in the barn. It seemed in those summers impossible that the sun could either burn me or fail to wake me up, that I could ever be sick for more than three days or have an allergy. I was no more friends with nature than I was friends with my kin, yet it seemed that nature and I felt the same way: indifferent to the rules, remote no matter how we were tamed. My grandfather is alive, freshly widowed. Though he no longer capitalizes on much or practices animal husbandry, he lives in the bungalow on the farm and makes and sells peach and grape jam. Everyone thinks they know what peach and grape jam taste like, but I maintain that Opa’s jam can make you forget what a fruit is. Sarah Nicole Prickett is a writer in New York and the founder of Adult Magazine.  A few years ago, I got to pick a small village to stay in for a while and write poetry. I chose the Missisquoi Valley, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, because I liked what the bay’s First Nations name meant: many aquatic birds. Indeed, I saw birds everywhere: in my dreams, above my head, through the windows. I saw the wind, too, moving across the cornfields. The region also brought me back to my love of New England. When choosing the town I was to stay in, I’d randomly pointed at a little village called Mystic. It was an enticing name. I’d also found a sister city in the United States with the same name, which had a museum with a room dedicated to Herman Melville. When I write, I always let myself be led by coincidence. I quickly started inventing connections between Melville and the Québécois Mystic between me scribbling notes in a rented Cavalier and the trailblazers of real and fictional territory that were the great American writers of the 19th century. I also imagined stories of the devil whirling around in the town’s   barn, and created my own private numerology. I would look for covered bridges on the road, round barns built by utopian Quakers and Victorian houses. I thought about loyalists fleeing north after the Revolutionary War, about Irish Catholics fleeing famine, about all the immigrants who left their mark along the path. I knew that by venturing further, to the shores of the great Lake Memphremagog, I would also think about the Vietnam War deserters who’d found refuge there. I thought about the First Nation Abenakis, how they named the lakes and rivers, and about our ignorance. I began my stay at Pike River, but I understood that this road was one where each stop would lead to another. I walked into the office of tourism in Stanbridge Station, my next stop, and asked a petite historian a thousand questions. She showed me Chemin St.  on the map, which she called the second prettiest road in Quebec. (I never learned where the first was.) I didn’t stay in Mystic. As soon as I caught sight of the old cemetery in Hunter Mills, I became fascinated by the border zone between Quebec and the United States. It represented the state I was in myself: a wandering state of mind, looking for ghosts, mine and others’ looking for my words, my promised land, my house built stone by stone throughout my life. And that is how, having been asked to stay in a small village, I found myself gathering the rosary beads of hamlets strung along the border area. I’m still enamored with the scenery I found there: isolated villages in the shadow of the mountains, whose grandeur lorded over long lakes and rivers farms and cornfields a Mercedes up on four blocks amid the junk strewn in front of an abandoned house old   cemeteries that pop up at every turn leafy trees of maple, walnut, beech, oak, birch a few wayside crosses old churches and train stations and checkpoints and in the morning, at the inn by the river, a little black cat sitting on a tree branch listening to the sound of the falls and the purring coffeepot. Élise Turcotte, a poet and novelist, is the author of “The Sound of Living Things” and “Guyana. ” Translated by Allison M. Charette. En français: Il y a quelques années, on m’a demandé de séjourner dans un petit village de mon choix afin d’y écrire des poèmes. J’ai choisi la vallée de la Missisquoi dans les cantons de l’est en Québec, parce que j’aimais la signification du nom donné par les Premières Nations à la baie: beaucoup d’oiseaux aquatiques. Déjà, je voyais des oiseaux partout, dans mes rêves, autour de ma tête, derrière les fenêtres. Je voyais aussi le vent bouger à travers les champs de maïs. Cette région me ramenait aussi à mon amour de la  . Afin de choisir le village de mon séjour, j’avais pointé mon doigt sur un petit village appelé Mystic. Ce nom m’attirait. J’avais aussi découvert une ville homonyme aux   où il y avait, dans un musée, une salle dédiée à Melville. Je me laisse toujours guider par les coïncidences pour écrire. J’inventais d’ores et déjà des liens entre Melville et le Mystic québécois entre moi prenant des notes dans une Cavalier louée, et ces défricheurs de territoires réels et fictifs que sont les grands écrivains américains du 19e siècle. J’imaginais aussi des histoires de diable tournant en rond dans la Grange à douze côtés, et créais une numérologie intime à moi. Je chercherais les ponts couverts sur la route, les granges rondes construites par des quakers utopiques, les maisons à façade victorienne je pensais à la fuite des loyalistes vers le nord, aux Irlandais catholiques fuyant la famine, à tous ces immigrants ayant laissé leurs traces sur le chemin. Je savais qu’en m’aventurant plus loin, aux abords du grand lac Memphrémagog, je penserais aussi aux déserteurs de la guerre du Vietnam. Je pensais aux Abénaquis des Premières Nations, qui ont donné les noms aux lacs et aux rivières, à notre ignorance. À   là où mon séjour commençait, j’ai compris cependant que j’étais sur une route où chaque arrêt menait à un autre. Je suis entrée dans le bureau du tourisme, j’ai posé mille questions à une petite historienne de Stanbridge Station. Elle m’a indiqué sur la carte où se trouve Chemin   la deuxième plus belle route du Québec. (Je n’ai pas jamais appris où se situe la première). Et je ne suis pas restée à Mystic: dès que j’ai aperçu le vieux cimetière de Hunter Mills, c’est la zone frontalière entre le Québec et les   qui m’a fascinée. Elle était l’illustration de l’état dans lequel je me trouvais, dans l’esprit de l’errance, à la recherche de fantômes, les miens, ceux des autres à la recherche de mes mots, ma terre promise, ma maison construite pierre après pierre tout au long de ma vie. Et c’est ainsi qu’appelée à séjourner dans un petit village, je me suis retrouvée à ramasser les grains d’un chapelet de hameaux dispersés sur le chemin de la frontière. Le décor que j’y ai trouvé m’enchante toujours: villages enclavés dans l’ombre des montagnes, dont le grandeur veillaient sur les lacs longs et les rivières fermes et champs de maïs une Mercedes sur quatre blocs à travers le débarras devant une maison à l’abandon de vieux cimetières   qui surprennent à chaque détour des arbres feuillus, érables, noyers, êtres, chênes, bouleaux quelques croix de chemin d’anciennes gares et églises, de vieux postes de frontière et le matin, à l’auberge, un petit chat noir perché sur une branche d’arbre écoutant le bruit des chutes et de la cafetière qui ronronne."
"For the 12th straight year, the Travel section presents its annual Places to Go issue. You will likely have some questions: How did the No. 1 spot get there? Why is my favorite spot not on the list? What’s the deal with those 360 videos online at nytimes. ? Here are some frequently asked questions about how we chose our 52 Places to Go in 2017.  What made Canada the top choice? And why would you choose a country?  Canada has it all (O. K. maybe not tropical beaches). It’s a world unto itself, with Vancouver Island surf breaks, culinary delights in Toronto and Montreal, and natural glories of parks like Banff in Alberta. And, let’s face it, clichés of Mounties and hockey aside, Canada remains a terra incognita for Americans and much of the world. It’s a great time to correct that, as the country celebrates its 150th anniversary this year (which means free admission all year to those national parks) and currently offers a generous exchange rate with the United States dollar. What is special about the list online? And in print? Look at the interactive version of the list on a computer or mobile device and you’ll notice a bunch of 360 videos that allow you to explore some of these places in a newly immersive way. “Travel is a great match for 360 videos because the medium provides a vivid sense of place,” said Maureen Towey, the senior producer for 360 News at The New York Times. “We ask our shooters to be adventurous in their camera placement. When they ask if they can rig the camera to a motorcycle, a   balloon or a ski lift, we say yes every time. ” On a computer, you’ll also notice a stunning drone video, shot in Tofino, on the western coast of Vancouver Island. “After many wet days, there was one morning the clouds broke and the waves were a bit better,” said Josh Haner, a staff photographer who shot the footage. “As my drone’s batteries were running out, I looked to the right and a beautiful rainbow filled the beach. It was a spectacular 45 minutes. ” And print readers will notice something new as well: a special   presentation of the list that can be removed from the section and pored over (or hung on the wall). How do you start the process? We ask our regular contributors, many of whom live overseas or roam the globe, for ideas. We get hundreds of them. What are you looking for in those ideas? First, why now? That is, why is this the year to go to a particular place? We also aim for a geographic and thematic diversity. And we look for a mix of destinations both   and off the beaten path. (That means we often exclude the very obvious spots even though cities like London, Berlin and Tokyo are always exciting, they didn’t make this year’s list.) How do you narrow it down to the final list? A   meeting, in which we discuss each idea. We get pretty punchy toward the end but are always happy with the final list. My favorite destination didn’t make the list. Why not? The 52 places we select are, of course, just the start. There are thousands of wonderful destinations to consider. We’d love to hear your suggestions  —   use the #52Places2017 hashtag on Instagram to suggest yours."
"Whether the music to your ears is pop, classical, jazz, country or another type of tune altogether, the rhythms of 2017 have you covered. Dance the days and nights away at Summerfest, June 28 to July 9 in Milwaukee, an   bonanza that includes 800 acts spread out across 11 stages at Henry Maier Festival Park on Lake Michigan. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pink are among the headline performers this year, the festival’s 50th, but other genres such as   classic rock, Latin and reggae are also represented. The Monterey International Pop Festival, June 16 to 18 in Monterey, Calif. is also turning 50 this year, and celebrating in style, on the same weekend and at the same location  —   the Monterey County Fair and Events Center  —   where the original festival was held in 1967. That event helped establish the careers of many legendary musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, the Who and the Grateful Dead, and this year, over the course of three days, nine bands will take the stage to pay tribute to them. In Monte Carlo, it’s all jazz all the time at the 12th annual   Jazz Festival (November and December, exact dates to be determined) featuring performances by the world’s top jazz players such as Manu Katché, the drummer and singer, the bassist Richard Bona, and Ibrahim Maalouf, the trumpet player, all of whom were guests in 2016. The heart of the action takes place at the Opéra Garnier   an ornate   building, but the shows spill over into the Casino de   and glitzy oceanfront bars. Mellower sounds are in store on the Caribbean island of Mustique from Jan. 18 to Feb. 1, at the Mustique Blues Festival, a   secret among discerning fans. The event unfolds over nearly two weeks at the beachside Basil’s Bar, where spectators can sip sundowners while listening to the music of renowned blues players from around the world, including the San   guitarist and singer Joe Louis Walker. Festivalgoers should be on the lookout for other attendees, both famous and not, giving impromptu shows Mick Jagger and Michael Kors have jumped on stage in past years to belt out the blues before a stunned crowd. On the classical music scene, a prestigious orchestra celebrates a big birthday while another is born. In Austria, the Vienna Philharmonic is marking its 175th anniversary with more than 100 concerts throughout the year, including the free and   Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn on May 25, in the Baroque gardens of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, and four opera productions at the Salzburg Festival in Salzburg from July 21 to Aug. 30, most notably “Aida,” in which the Russian superstar soprano Anna Netrebko will sing the title role. And in Germany, Hamburg anticipates a January opening for the Elbphilharmonie, a striking new building set atop a former warehouse, with a glass facade, a scalloped roofline and two concert halls. Festivities at the new cultural landmark will unfold all year, like the ¡Viva Beethoven! series, March 19 to 23, when the highly regarded Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel will conduct. In Montreal, traditional opera takes on a contemporary edge with “Another Brick in the Wall,” on select dates from March 11 to 24 the production honors the city’s 375th anniversary and is based on Pink Floyd’s 1979 album “The Wall. The band’s chief songwriter, Roger Waters, collaborated with Opéra de Montréal on the work, which is inspired by his life. There are stories of isolation and the destruction of love, and it promises to be   and emotional, just the way a captivating opera should be."
"Whether by train, ship or   trail, transit alternatives are poised to proliferate in 2017. Midyear, the Brightline express train in South Florida is expected to open, linking Miami and West Palm Beach. When it’s finished in 2019, travelers can make the trip between Miami and Orlando in three hours, while driving takes four. The terminus at the new downtown MiamiCentral station will include a food hall known as Central Fare. In Switzerland, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world’s longest and deepest railway passage, ceremonially opened last June, but officially opened in December. Eventually the   tunnel through the Alps will cut 45 minutes off the trip between Zurich and Lugano. Offering more leisurely tours, the luxury sleeper train Belmond Andean Explorer will begin in May, linking Cusco, in the Peruvian Andes, to Lake Titicaca and Arequipa. The itinerary takes two nights, but the company, which also operates the   Belmond Hiram Bingham trains to Machu Picchu, will offer   trips between Cusco and Lake Titicaca. Japan welcomed its newest   train, Hokkaido Shinkansen, last March, traveling between Tokyo and the northern Hokkaido island in just over four hours. This spring, the   Train Suite   will offer   luxury tours in sleeper cars that will travel from Tokyo to the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions. Among 2017 cruise ship launches in the mega class, the   MSC Meraviglia from Europe’s MSC Cruises, coming in the summer to the Mediterranean, will be among the largest at sea, with a   dome featuring light shows in the central promenade, a   bowling alley and entertainment by Cirque du Soleil. In November, the line will introduce another large ship, the   MSC Seaside, sailing   between Miami and the Caribbean. In March, Celebrity Cruises plans to add two small ships to its fleet, both sailing in the Galápagos Islands. The   Celebrity Xperience will offer trips lasting from seven to 13 nights, providing snorkeling gear, wet suits and binoculars to guests. A smaller craft, the Celebrity Xploration, will accommodate 16 guests. Lindblad Expeditions will introduce its first newly built ship, the   National Geographic Quest, in June in the Inside Passage of Alaska, with kayaks, paddle boards and landing craft for ventures into the wild. The   sailing ships of Star Clippers only look retro. The line’s newly built Flying Clipper, making its debut late in 2017, will be powered by 32 sails, and it can carry 300 passengers. The   luxury line Silversea will add the   Silver Muse in April in the Mediterranean. Highlights include larger and connecting suites for friends and family, and eight restaurants, including French, Japanese and one that encourages diners to cook for themselves on heated lava stones. Among river launches, Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection will begin the       Joie de Vivre in France in March. Crystal River Cruises will unveil the Crystal Bach on the Danube in June and the Crystal Mahler on the Rhine in August. Both will accommodate 106 guests and include butler service, five restaurants and lounges and a spa. Crystal has also announced it will start Crystal AirCruise in 2017: private jet trips aboard its   Boeing  . The inaugural trip ($159, 000 a person) circumnavigates the globe over 27 days, beginning Aug. 31, via Peninsula Hotels. Canada aims to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its confederation by completing its transcontinental Great Trail, a   or roughly   multiuse recreational trail linking Newfoundland in the east to British Columbia in the west, with northern spurs to the Yukon and the Northwest Territories."
"Broadway shows often fold their tents at the end of the year, fearing the winter blues at the box office. But this year a few shows of note are holding on, at least for a week or two. You’ve got a few more days to catch Stephen Karam’s gorgeous “The Humans,” last season’s Tony winner for best play (ending on Jan. 15) and even fewer to jump on the exhilarating emotional roller coaster that is the sublime revival of the musical “Falsettos” (ending on Sunday). Looking further ahead, here are other notable shows and events I’d put at the top of my    list. The first of the majestic   cycle of plays written by the great August Wilson, this drama set in the 1970s (and written in 1979) was, until now, the only piece of the cycle not to be produced on Broadway. A classic Wilson ensemble drama, about a group of gypsy cab drivers in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the new Manhattan Theater Club production is directed by Ruben   who has both appeared in and directed Wilson’s plays  —   notably the superb recent revival of “The Piano Lesson” from the Signature Theater. (In previews for a Jan. 19 opening at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.) Normally I frown on theater as a rarefied form of stargazing. But with a star as luminous as Cate Blanchett, I will grant an exception. And, of course, Ms. Blanchett, who graces this new adaptation of “Platonov,” an early Chekhov play, is not merely a movie star burnishing her reputation with a Broadway debut. During the past decade she has made regular, acclaimed appearances on the New York stage, in productions imported from the Sydney Theater Company (as is this one). An unwieldy drama about the familiar Chekhovian concerns  —   lives full of regret, stomachs bloated with vodka  —   the play has been moved from Russia in the 19th century to Russia in the late 20th century for this version by Andrew Upton, Ms. Blanchett’s husband. The esteemed Australian actor Richard Roxburgh is Platonov. (In previews for a Sunday opening at the Barrymore Theater.) I have been saving this lovable classic as a cure for the   blues. The small but enterprising Irish Rep first produced this delicious musical whimsy, with a glorious, multihued score by Burton Lane and E. Y. Harburg, a dozen years ago, with Melissa Errico as the ingénue, Sharon (she who wonders “How Are Things in Glocca Morra? ”). The seemingly ageless Ms. Errico, I am delighted to report, is unfurling her silvery soprano once again in this revival, directed by the company’s artistic director, Charlotte Moore. (Through Jan. 29 at the Irish Repertory Theater.) [Read the review] This is not a single show (as downtown theatergoers will, of course, know) but a whole feast of international theater, presented by the Public Theater at its home base and elsewhere. Along with P. S. 122’s Coil and other festivals, it has come to make January a dizzying smorgasbord of experimental theater. Highlights this year include a new production from one of my favorite companies, the imaginative 600 Highwaymen, presenting “The Fever,” which is said to be “performed in complete collaboration with the audience. ” Bring your tap shoes  —   or at least a willingness to blast your way through the fourth wall on a regular basis. (Various locations,  .) Martin McDonagh’s     was the first of his trilogy of plays set in the impoverished Irish village of the title. It returns in a   production from the Druid Theater, the company that first made a splash internationally with a pungent production that ultimately moved to Broadway. Once again the company’s longtime chief, Garry Hynes, directs. And Marie Mullen, who won a Tony Award as the embittered daughter of a manipulative terror of a mother, with the aptly monstrous name Mag, now takes on that formidable role. (Begins performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Jan. 11.)"
"Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Wednesday that with a complete overhaul of La Guardia Airport underway, he wants to rebuild New York City’s other airport, John F. Kennedy International. Mr. Cuomo outlined a plan to spend more than $10 billion modernizing Kennedy’s terminals and improving the highway and transit systems connected to the airport. He did not provide a timetable for the plan or say specifically where all of the money would come from. “The next step is to tackle J. F. K. because La Guardia isn’t enough,” Mr. Cuomo said, speaking at a meeting of the Association for a Better New York, a business group, in Manhattan. “We need to build a new airport at J. F. K. and go through the same process as we did with La Guardia. ” In promoting big infrastructure projects, including the Second Avenue subway, which opened Sunday, Mr. Cuomo is building his legacy in New York, and perhaps raising his national profile. The plans offered by Mr. Cuomo on Wednesday suggest that he does not intend to stop trying to impose his will on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates La Guardia and J. F. K. The authority’s commissioners are scheduled to meet on Thursday to vote on a $30 billion   spending plan that includes only about $1 billion for improvements at J. F. K. When Mr. Cuomo formed an advisory group in 2015 to study how to improve J. F. K. he said the panel would make recommendations to the authority. But the authority’s chairman, John J. Degnan, did not see the panel’s final report until Tuesday. “We await an opportunity to review the details of the governor’s proposal,” Mr. Degnan said on Wednesday. “We will have to evaluate it against other compelling capital needs identified by the Port Authority, both within other airports and within other operations that we oversee. ” Mr. Degnan, an appointee of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, has been at odds with Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, over the authority’s spending priorities. The agency also operates the main commuter bus terminal in Manhattan and Newark Liberty International Airport. Mr. Cuomo pushed for $2. 5 billion in the capital plan for improvements at the New York airports, possibly including an AirTrain link from New York City’s subway system to La Guardia. Mr. Cuomo’s advisory panel suggested that most of the rest of the money  —   up to $7 billion  —   could come from private sources, including airlines that use J. F. K. Kennedy is a collection of   terminals, some of which were built, at least in part, by the airlines that occupy them. JetBlue Airways and the authority split the cost of building Terminal 5, which opened in 2008. Delta Air Lines has spent more than $1 billion in the recent years to improve its facilities at Terminals 2 and 4. At La Guardia, the authority has committed $600 million to the rebuilding of Terminals C and D against an estimated cost of about $4 billion. That investment would come on top of a $4 billion rebuilding of the Central Terminal Building there, which began last year. Mr. Cuomo hopes to entice airlines to make similar investments at J. F. K. to compete for customers. He challenged airlines to make offers, saying Delta had called him at 5:45 a. m. on Wednesday. Mr. Cuomo did not mention seeking federal financing.   Donald J. Trump has said he plans to make an ambitious investment in infrastructure a priority of his administration. As part of Mr. Cuomo’s plan for J. F. K. Matthew Driscoll, New York State’s transportation commissioner, said his agency would spend as much as $2 billion to improve the flow of traffic to and from the airport. The changes would include adding a lane to the Van Wyck Expressway and widening ramps at the busy interchange in Kew Gardens, Queens, which Mr. Driscoll said handles 250, 000 vehicles per day. Thomas F. Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that transit agencies would explore creating a   ride between Manhattan and J. F. K. Travelers must now switch to the AirTrain from the subway or Long Island Rail Road, a transfer that Mr. Prendergast described as “schlepping with your luggage. ” Though New York City owns the land under J. F. K. no one from City Hall attended Mr. Cuomo’s speech. “Investments in New York City’s airports are vitally important to our region’s   development,” said Melissa Grace, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We look forward to hearing more details about the plans for J. F. K. in the months to come. ”"
"On the morning of May 18, 2014, Violeta Lagunes was perplexed by a series of strange messages that appeared in her Gmail inbox. It was Election Day to choose the leadership of Mexico’s   Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN, and Lagunes, a former federal congresswoman, was holding a strategy meeting in her office in Puebla city. The emails seemed harmless, at least at first. One appeared to come from the account of a trusted colleague. It asked her to download and review a document. Lagunes clicked on the link, but it seemed to be broken, so she wrote back to her colleague and asked him to send it again. Elsewhere in her inbox was an email from Google warning her that someone had tried to log in to her account. Meanwhile, she began to receive phone calls from PAN allies, who claimed that they had received emails from Lagunes’s account that she did not remember sending. Now Lagunes was worried. Around 1 o’clock, she called the colleague who appeared to have emailed her. She reached him at a restaurant, where he was finishing lunch with other campaign allies. “I did not send you an email,” he insisted. A consultant with the campaign  —   who asked to remain anonymous in order to preserve his relationships with other candidates  —   overheard the conversation. He knew of other campaign workers who had been receiving similar messages: emails with vague subject lines, asking the recipient to review a document or click a link. The campaign, he realized, had been hacked. In the vote for party leader, Lagunes and her allies in Puebla  —   a   drive southeast from Mexico City  —   were supporting the challenger, a senator who promised to return the party to its conservative roots. But the incumbent was backed by Puebla’s powerful governor, Rafael Moreno Valle. One of Mexico’s rising political stars, Moreno Valle is close to Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and has forged an alliance between PAN and Nieto’s centrist Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI, long the dominant force in Mexican politics. Since winning the governorship in 2010, Moreno Valle’s opponents say, his ambitions have grown, and he has resorted to increasingly harsh measures to keep Puebla state  —   including members of his own party  —   under control. “In the beginning, the governor was   and respectful,” Rafael Micalco, a former leader of PAN in Puebla state, told me. “When he became governor, he transformed. Now he controls the party through threats. ” This race to retain control of the party leadership in 2014 was a crucial test for the governor, who was rumored to be considering a run for Mexico’s presidency in 2018. (This past September, Moreno Valle publicly announced his intent to run.) Clashes between the two camps were especially intense in Puebla, where backers of the challenger, Ernesto Cordero, claimed that the governor was using public money to support the incumbent, Gustavo Madero, though the governor’s office has denied these charges. Shortly before the election, Madero’s campaign manager said that Cordero’s side was trying to undermine the legitimacy of the process. “Their strategy is clear from the outset,” he said in an interview with a Mexican magazine. “’u2009‘If I win, good. If not, I was cheated. ’’u2009” After Lagunes’s call on Election Day, her colleagues rushed from the restaurant back to their local headquarters, a hotel conference room that they had nicknamed “the bunker. ” All morning, they had been trying to reach their field network, a group of 40 Cordero canvassers who were working to get out the vote in Puebla state. But the field network seemed to have gone dark. Few of the canvassers were even answering their phones. Hackers, the team concluded, must have found the list of the canvassers’ names and phone numbers  —   widely circulated by email within the campaign  —   and begun to intimidate them. “The day before,” the consultant told me, the field network was “motivated and eager to do this work. After the hack, it was very hard to reach them. The few who did answer said that they had received phone calls saying that their lives were at stake. They were worried that if they went out, they or their families would get hurt. ” According to another worker on Cordero’s campaign, who also requested anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, the message to the canvassers was simple and direct: “We know who you are. If you don’t want any trouble, shut down your cellphone and stop your activity. ” The worker added: “It’s an authoritarian regime. ” Madero won the election, with 57 percent of the 162, 792 votes cast over all. In Puebla, his margin was substantially larger, roughly 74 percent. Cordero’s team decided not to contest the result. They had suspicions about how they were hacked. But it would be another year before any evidence emerged. Their political enemies, leaked documents seemed to show, had built a spying operation using software made by an Italian firm called Hacking Team  —   just one of many private companies that, largely below public notice, have sprung up to aid governments in surveilling the private lives of individual citizens. The industry claims that its products comply with local laws and are used to fight crime and terror. But in many countries around the world, these tools have proved to be equally adept at political espionage. On average, an American office worker sends and receives roughly 120 emails per day, a number that grows with each passing year. The ubiquity and utility of email has turned it into a   record of our    lives, rich with mundane and potentially embarrassing details, stored in a perpetual archive, accessible from anywhere on earth and protected, in some cases, by nothing more than a single password. In the case of Violeta Lagunes, her email login represented a point of vulnerability, a seam where the digital walls protecting her campaign were at the mercy of her human judgment  —   specifically, whether she could determine if a message from an apparently reputable source was real or fake. Nearly two years later, John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, was faced with a similar judgment call. An email warned him that someone in Ukraine had tried to access his Gmail account and asked him to click on a button and reset his password. His senior adviser forwarded the email to one of the campaign’s technology experts. “This is a legitimate email,” he replied, in what the expert later would clarify was a simple typing error on his part he meant to say it was not legitimate. “The gmail one is REAL,” the senior adviser wrote to Podesta and another aide. And so, like Lagunes, Podesta fell into a trap. The button appeared to lead to an official Google page, but it was in fact a meticulously personalized fake, with a domain address linked to a remote cluster of atolls in the South Pacific. The details were designed to trick Podesta into entering his password. This technique is known as “spear phishing. ” It is an especially potent weapon against companies and political organizations because it needs to succeed only one time, against one target. After that, attackers can use the trusted identity of the first compromised account to more easily lure colleagues into opening infected attachments or clicking on malicious links. Not only will a working email password yield years of intraoffice chatter, invoices,   bills and confidential memos it can often be leveraged into control of other personal accounts  —   Twitter, Facebook, Amazon  —   and even access to company servers and internet domains. The Podesta and Lagunes episodes are far from the only cases in which hackers have used information from stolen emails as a weapon against an entire institution. The 2009 “Climategate” incident, which exposed troves of emails from prominent climate researchers, began when hackers remotely broke into servers at a British university with the help of illicitly obtained passwords. The 2014 hack of internal Sony files, which American officials attributed to the North Korean government, began with a series of   emails that attackers then used to dig deeper into Sony’s servers. Each hack yielded the most private thoughts and deeds from the members of each respective organization: their blunt insults, their quashed dissents, their   plans, their smarmy flattery, all chronicled in time down to the hundredth of the second when the author clicked “send. ” In an earlier era, the hackers might have had to engage in riskier behavior, like bribery or burglary. Now, in many cases, all they had to do was send along a link. The White House, C. I. A. and F. B. I. have all claimed that, based on classified evidence, they can trace the hacks of Podesta’s email account (and other hacks of people close to the Clinton campaign) back to the Russian government. But with the rise of private firms like Hacking Team, penetrating the email accounts of political opponents does not require the kind of money and expertise available to major powers. A   website called Insider Surveillance lists more than a dozen companies selling   ethical malware, including   Hacking Team and the German firms FinFisher and Trovicor. Compared with conventional arms, surveillance software is subject to few trade controls a recent attempt by the United States to regulate it under a   pact called the Wassenaar Arrangement failed. “The technology is morally neutral,” says Joel Brenner, a former inspector general of the National Security Agency. “The same program that you use to monitor your babysitter might be used by Bashar Assad or Abdel Fattah   to keep track of whomever they don’t like. ” Hacking Team has fewer than 50 employees, but it has customers all over the world. According to internal documents, its espionage tool, which is called the Remote Control System, or R. C. S. can be licensed for as little as $200, 000 a year  —   well within the budget of a provincial strongman. After it has been surreptitiously installed on a target’s computer or phone, the Remote Control System can invisibly eavesdrop on everything: text messages, emails, phone and Skype calls, location data and so on. Whereas the N. S. A. ’s   programs grab data in transit from switching rooms and undersea cables, the R. C. S. acquires it at the source, right off a target’s device, before it can be encrypted. It carries out an invisible, digitized equivalent of a    . The United States government is almost certainly the world’s most formidable repository of hacking talent, but its most powerful cyberweapons are generally reserved for intelligence agencies and the military. This might explain why, according to company documents, at least two federal   agencies have been Hacking Team clients: the F. B. I. beginning in 2011, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, beginning in 2012. The F. B. I. contract paid Hacking Team more than $700, 000 the D. E. A. appears to have used the software to go after targets in Colombia. Documents show that the company has also sold its software to some of the world’s most repressive governments. Some, like those of Honduras, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are Western allies. Other countries, like Uzbekistan and Turkey, have a more troubled relationship. A few are openly hostile to the West. Between 2012 and 2014, Hacking Team was paid nearly one million euros by the government of Sudan, a United   state sponsor of terrorism. Even more notable, in light of recent events, is the   relationship that Hacking Team carried on with the F. S. B. one of Russia’s main intelligence agencies. As with Puebla, Hacking Team used a middleman, a research agency called Kvant, to handle its sales to Russia. Between 2012 and 2014, the agency paid Hacking Team 451, 000 euros to license the Remote Control System. Hacking Team claims that it draws the line at customers who commit “gross   abuses” and that it sells exclusively to governments operating within the laws of their own countries. In at least one case, David Vincenzetti, Hacking Team’s founder and chief executive, told a salesman to hold off on a potential Mexican client. “We sell to official, governmental LEAs”  —     agencies  —   “and security agencies ONLY,” Vincenzetti wrote in an email. But at other times, a more casual attitude prevailed inside the company. “If one sells sandwiches to Sudan, he is not subject, as far as my knowledge goes, to the law,” one Hacking Team lawyer wrote in an internal email. “Hacking Team should be treated like a sandwich vendor. ” When asked about its arrangements in various countries, the company responded that it “does not comment on confidential business dealings. ” Its American spokesman, Eric Rabe, did tell me that neither Russia nor Sudan is a current Hacking Team customer. (The relationships, Rabe wrote, ended in 2014, Russia because “the Putin government evolved from one considered friendly to the West to a more hostile regime” and Sudan “because of concerns about the country’s ability to use the system in accordance with the H. T. contract. ”) Separately, the company confirmed that the state of Puebla was, in fact, a former client. Until recently, most of what was known about the world of private surveillance companies was a matter of hearsay and speculation. Industry players kept a low profile, operating discreetly from rented offices and meeting potential customers in person a few times a year at carefully screened trade shows. This is why it was so notable when, in July 2015, an unusual tweet appeared in Hacking Team’s Twitter feed. “Since we have nothing to hide,” it read, “we’re publishing all our emails, files and source code. ” Then came another tweet, with links to a downloadable file called Hacked Team. The file was huge, 420 gigabytes of material scraped from Hacking Team’s internal servers. Inside were 33 folders containing the company’s contracts, payroll documents, invoices, legal memos,   records and a   cache of email correspondence from the chief executive on down. Hacking Team had itself been hacked. WikiLeaks pounced on the breach and quickly uploaded the emails into a searchable database. Anyone with an internet connection could now read the chief executive joking about how his company was in the business of selling “the evilest technology on earth. ” You could browse Hacking Team’s source code, including one line using “bomb_blueprints. pdf” as a placeholder for files that might be found on a target’s device. On Reddit, an online peanut gallery formed around the   online habits of one Hacking Team engineer and his own notably weak passwords  —   HTPassword! P4ssword, Passw0rd. But the most damaging exposures in the leak by far were Hacking Team’s client list and the names of some of the clients’ targets. In South Korea, newspapers focused on evidence suggesting that Hacking Team’s software had helped the nation’s intelligence service rig an election after the leak, one agent who had reportedly used the system there committed suicide. In Ecuador, a magazine found an email with seven phone numbers that the government appeared to have targeted with the R. C. S. Three belonged to lawmakers a fourth to the mayor of Quito all four were members of the opposition party. With the source code for the Remote Control System now public, the company and its clients had to stop using it temporarily. By the end of the year, though, Hacking Team had updated its product and was trying to rebuild its reputation. I was curious whether a company that profited from online breaches could recover from its own. Eric Rabe, the American spokesman, sounded eager to meet me for coffee in Philadelphia. A grandfather and former   anchor, he exudes   credibility. “If you disagree with someone on the internet,” he said, of the Hacked Team files, with a wave of his hand, “there’s no need to have a   debate. Just go destroy them. ” A couple of months later, I went to Milan to visit Hacking Team’s headquarters, a stately gray apartment building with boxes of limp flowers adorning a few of its sooty sills. Waiting to demonstrate the company’s software were Rabe Philippe Vinci, a company vice president and Alessandro Scarafile, a young engineer. Scarafile had gathered a Dell desktop computer and three smartphones: iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. The screen from his own laptop, which represented the console of a client intelligence agency, was projected on the wall. Several icons represented the various streams of data that could potentially be acquired by gaining control of the target’s computer: images from   cameras, sound from   mikes, screenshots, detailed records of applications opened and bitcoins transferred, a continuous log of location with latitude and longitude, and logs of address books, calendars, phone calls, Skype calls and passwords, as well as websites visited. A key logger recorded every key that was pressed. It was a lot to keep track of. Two other views, called “line of events” and “line of actions,” assembled the information into chronological order. Scarafile, who was playing both the customer and the target, or “bad guy,” turned on the Dell. Judging by the background on the desktop, a gothic scene framed by castlelike silhouettes, our target seemed to be planning a terrorist attack from Transylvania. There are three methods, Scarafile explained, for getting the Remote Control System onto a target’s device. Customers can gain physical access to the device and then infect it with a USB stick or memory card. They can beam the R. C. S. in over a   network. Or they can send the customer an email and get him to click on an infected attachment  —   usually a file from a   program like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. Scarafile did not mention a fourth method, one described by Hacking Team’s critics and referred to in its internal emails: the installation of the R. C. S. through a more elaborate process called “network injection,” which is said to involve pinpointing the target’s exact location on the internet, observing the person as he orders up, say, a YouTube cat video, and then serving up a doctored version of the same page, one with the desired cat video playing in the foreground  —   YouTube logo and all  —   as the R. C. S. discreetly rolls in past the digital gates. Whatever the method of infection, the malicious code, known as an “agent,” then communicates with its masters anonymously, its dispatches routed through a series of dedicated servers scattered around the world. Even if the target gets suspicious and figures out that something is wrong, this chain of servers makes it nearly impossible for him to figure out exactly who is using Hacking Team’s product to spy on him. For the demo, Scarafile opted for the third method, which he referred to as “a bit of social engineering. ” Using the customer’s computer, he sent the target an email with a Word file attached. Then he returned to the target’s computer and   on it, just as Lagunes had clicked on the link in her inbox. “From now on,” he said, “this system is currently infected, or monitored, by the Remote Control System. ” It would remain so even if the suspect turned off his machine or logged out. On the timeline, the target appeared as a stubbly lout in an undershirt, named “Jimmy Page . .. head of the terrorist cell. ” Using Jimmy Page’s Dell, Scarafile logged into Page’s Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. He opened up Skype, perused Page’s criminal colleagues (Don Corleone, Harry Potter, Keyser Soze) and left one of them a voice mail message from Page’s phone. Accessing a USB drive attached to the infected computer, Scarafile opened an encrypted file that turned out to contain an order to “kill David Vincenzetti. ” R. C. S. captured it all, including periodic snapshots of Scarafile, as Page, at work. “I don’t like the words ‘inject’ and ‘infect,’’u2009” Vinci, the vice president, said. “R. C. S. is deploying the agent into the device of the target because you want to monitor some of his activities. Exactly the way that law enforcement is listening to some of your phone calls, right?” Rabe had told me that Vincenzetti was “a fighter,” and his combative side was apparent from a collage of magazine clippings and printouts taped to the wall beside his desk  —   a sort of mood board, like those used in the advertising industry to gather inspiration before the unveiling of a new brand. Vincenzetti’s mood board, though, wasn’t about sneakers or cola. It was about the global struggle for power, which he seemed to envision as one big conflict, a battle between the good guys and the bad guys. On the good side was a photo of the bell that aspiring Navy SEALs can ring should they want to quit the program during Hell Week, and a quote from another entrepreneur that “business is war. ” On the bad side, Vincenzetti had taped up a satellite image showing one of the hottest zones of international tension, the artificial islands rising in the South China Sea, a line of terrestrial pawns advancing China’s sphere of influence. Beside it was a chart about Iran, depicting how the country could continue to advance its nuclear program despite the recent   deal. “I think the Iran deal is just terrible,” Vincenzetti said, and then added, sarcastically, “Oh, it’s such a very peaceful expansion. Very peaceful. ” “That is not an official company position,” Rabe interjected. Vincenzetti, now 48, is a familiar type  —   a ferociously competitive, driven entrepreneur whose existence is organized around his work. He has a wife, who was born in Morocco, and no children. His small,   eyes can make him seem sleepily blasé. On the morning we met at Hacking Team’s offices, he wore jeans, a   cardigan and a striped shirt, unbuttoned to midchest. He seemed more comfortable on his feet than sitting down. As we talked in a conference room, he periodically leapt to his feet and stalked around the table, considering in turn the espresso machine, the view from the window, a case of bottled water. “If I wanted to break into this room, how would I do it?” he asked. “There is a door, and there are two windows. ” He pressed his hands against the glass panes. “The perimeter is the first thing you must secure,” he continued. Securing data was what he did earlier in his career. Now he had moved on. “If you cannot break into a bank, you cannot protect a bank. So when you are in security, really there is no difference between thinking offensively and defensively. ” In the   Vincenzetti’s parents, a salesman and a schoolteacher, bought him a Commodore 64, one of the earliest personal computers. He soon created a   clone, a Tron   game and a   adventure game. As a   student at the University of Milan in the ’90s, he became fascinated by cryptography he corresponded with programmers around the world about new cryptographic theories and wrote code for email encryption. In his senior year, he was appointed to administer the university’s internal network, a post that was usually reserved for a graduate student. Vincenzetti remembers these early days as a time when “everything was free and no one was trying to harm you. We were wide open and accessible. All the best were called hackers, and I was a hacker. ” Vincenzetti left university early and founded three companies, all of them focused on defensive cybersecurity. After he founded Hacking Team in 2003, he tried to sell his services to Italian police agencies but found them skeptical that Mafiosi and other   criminals would ever bother to encrypt their communications. In Italy, the police were also used to getting whatever they needed through wiretaps, arranged with varying degrees of formality through their contacts at telecommunications firms. But after the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which were coordinated via cellphones and the internet, police officers and intelligence agents not just in Italy but all across Europe became interested in contracting with   vendors, part of an emerging arms race over   encryption. The growth of Skype made it easy for users to encrypt their communications, and the authorities were eager to pay for countermeasures like the Remote Control System. Singapore, Hacking Team’s first   client, signed on in 2008. The company’s Middle Eastern business took off in 2011, a boom that coincided with the beginning of the Arab Spring. By then, Hacking Team had entered a growth phase, its business driven in part by demand among   governments for   surveillance tools. According to two former employees, the company held talks with Col. Muammar  ’s chief security officer, who wanted to build a countrywide   scheme that could be embedded in every Libyan cellphone. (Rabe would not confirm or deny that this meeting occurred, and added: “The company often receives requests to provide services that it does not have available or would sell. ”) The United Nations, which prohibits the export of “electronic weaponry” to Sudan, has investigated Hacking Team’s activities there. Nineteen members of the Italian Parliament signed a petition raising the question of whether the Egyptian government might have used the R. C. S. to track Giulio Regeni, a    Italian student who appears to have been under government surveillance and whose mutilated body turned up on the side of a road in Egypt last year. Hacking Team’s software has not been connected to the case, but the company has done business with the current Egyptian regime. As part of the controversy, the Italian government temporarily revoked Hacking Team’s global export license, so that for several months the company had to file a separate application for each of its customers outside the European Union. (When I brought up the Regeni case with Rabe, he called the dead student “this Italian national who got himself killed in Egypt. ” He cited Hacking Team’s official policy  —   the company neither knows nor desires to know the identities of the people its customers choose to target. “There is no evidence that Hacking Team’s software had anything to do with Regeni’s demise,” Rabe said.) All Hacking Team customers sign contracts agreeing to comply with local laws. The company says that it vets potential customers and studies reports from journalists and   groups, looking for “objective evidence or credible concerns” that its products are being abused. But when it comes to Hacking Team’s own interactions with customers, leaked documents suggest that employees have sometimes turned a blind eye. In the case of the Puebla government and other Latin American customers, Hacking Team employees appeared to ignore warnings suggesting that the Remote Control System was being used to gather intelligence on the political opposition. On multiple occasions, customers emailed Hacking Team attachments with   content, including polling data, party registration forms and invitations addressed to and signed by elected officials. Rather than ask what these files had to do with fighting crime and drug trafficking, Hacking Team   members simply emailed them back, as requested, with an embedded “exploit,” turning the document into a surveillance tool to be used against whomever it was sent on to. Asked about these cases, Rabe replied that customers “are not supposed to be using it for political purposes, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that an Italian computer programmer,” i. e. a support technician, “would have seen these files and known what was going on. . .. I think that’s a stretch, that an Italian software guy could know that an individual is a dissident. ” Hacking Team’s most persistent critic is Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. Before the Hacked Team leak, Citizen Lab documented cases in which Hacking Team software turned up on the devices of activists in Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, as well as an   journalist in Alexandria, Va. Ronald Deibert, Citizen Lab’s director, told me that Hacking Team “is a company that appears to have no internal controls on abuse of its products. ” When I asked Vincenzetti about this, he said that Citizen Lab was motivated by money, noting that the group won a   grant a week after publishing a report on Hacking Team’s sales to Ethiopia. “Their identity,” he said, “is: ‘I am the defender of free speech, I am the defender of liberty and democracy.’ O. K. So am I. So is every rational guy. ” If Citizen Lab really cared about good and evil, he said, it would be fighting China and Iran. Almost immediately after the Hacked Team documents went online, they were being pored over by R3D, a Mexico     group. Luis Fernando García, R3D’s director, says that intimidation and online surveillance have increased under Peña Nieto’s presidency, and he took notice when Citizen Lab, in 2014, released a report that traced a chain of servers associated with Hacking Team that routed data through Hong Kong, London, Amsterdam and Atlanta before terminating somewhere inside Mexico. Exactly who was on the receiving end of the traffic and what they were doing with it was unknown at the time, but now R3D’s team recognized that this could be their chance to find out. Shortly thereafter, R3D published three invoices from the Hacked Team cache showing that one state government  —   that of Jalisco, on the Pacific Coast  —   had paid the company nearly half a million euros for the Remote Control System. Soon other documents were found in the leak to implicate several more states, including Puebla, though most of the states denied ever using the software. (Jalisco later admitted to purchasing the system, which it claimed was for its prosecutor’s office.) The story failed to get much traction in the Mexican press, except in Puebla, after R3D connected with Lado B, a small   collective there. The site’s name translates to “B Side,” as in the back of a hit single  —   symbolizing its dedication to telling stories that would otherwise go untold. Lado B’s editor, Ernesto Aroche, was not surprised that Puebla’s government had been using the Remote Control System. In Moreno Valle’s six years as governor there, he has spent lavishly on new surveillance systems, including multiple “security arches,”   structures that scrutinize traffic with video cameras and   and whose cost had raised some questions in the local press. Beginning in 2013, Aroche began noticing solicitations on the   website for hidden cameras and other spying equipment. When he filed a   request about them, the government’s form response indicated that these orders had never been filled, but Aroche was skeptical, given the mounting evidence that Moreno Valle’s administration had begun using its security apparatus for political purposes. There were periodic   of homes belonging to dissident politicians and journalists, with the burglars sometimes taking little besides their victims’ laptops. Politicians would answer calls from unknown numbers, only to hear their own taped conversations played back to them. Another journalist, Fernando Maldonado, received an unmarked envelope full of what were purportedly transcripts of 400 private phone calls made by Puebla politicians. As Aroche and R3D sifted through the Hacked Team file dump, they discovered that the files on Puebla had more detail than those dealing with Hacking Team’s other Mexican accounts. The Puebla client often wrote emails asking for help with infecting a particular document with a malicious virus. Some of these came from an account  —   soporteuiamx@gmail. com  —   that also appears in many of Hacking Team’s internal support tickets. One of those tickets documents a client’s request for help in infecting an attachment: an invitation to attend an event for a Mexican political organization, signed by Violeta Lagunes and addressed to another party colleague opposed to the governor. Aroche interviewed politicians and journalists who were on the receiving end of the infected emails contained in the Hacked Team trove. According to a 2015 article that Lado B published in conjunction with a politics website, the Puebla group sent Hacking Team at least 47 requests to infect specific files that it would then forward on to their targets. Almost all of those fil"
” Aroche said. “I’m sorry if they’re a little bit stained  —   I dropped some coffee on them. ” (Sym Servicios Integrales says it “never sold H. T. technology to the state of Puebla. ”) In a brief written statement from Sagrario Conde Valerio
"It hasn’t been a great time to be a man without a job. The jobs that have been disappearing, like machine operator, are predominantly those that men do. The occupations that are growing, like health aide, employ mostly women. One solution is for the men who have lost jobs in factories to become health aides. But while more than a fifth of American men aren’t working, they aren’t running to these new   jobs. Why? They require very different skills, and pay a lot less. They’re also seen as women’s work, which has always been devalued in the American labor market. The two occupations predicted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to decline most quickly from 2014 to 2024 are locomotive firers, shrinking 70 percent, and vehicle electronics installers and repairers, down 50 percent. They are 96 percent and 98 percent male. Of the   jobs, many are various types of health aides, which are about 90 percent female. When men take these     jobs, they have more job security and wage growth than in   work, according to recent research. But they are paid less and feel stigmatized. “The jobs being created are very different than the jobs being eliminated,” said David Autor, an economist at M. I. T. “I’m not worried about whether there will be jobs. I’m very worried about whether there will be jobs for   adults, especially the males, who seem very reluctant to take the new jobs. ” Take Tracy Dawson, 53, a welder in St. Clair, Mo. He lost several jobs, some because his employers took the work to China and Mexico and others because the workers were replaced by robots. He has heard the promises of   jobs in the health care field: His daughter trained to be a medical technician. But he never considered it. “I ain’t gonna be a nurse I don’t have the tolerance for people,” he said. “I don’t want it to sound bad, but I’ve always seen a woman in the position of a nurse or some kind of health care worker. I see it as more of a woman’s touch. ” Also, health aides earn a median wage of $10. 50 an hour. Mr. Dawson used to earn $18 an hour making railroad traction motors. “I was a welder  —   that’s all I know how to do,” said Mr. Dawson, who is living on disability insurance because he has rheumatoid arthritis. Women were hit harder than men by the decline in   jobs, according to Mr. Autor. But they have more easily moved into the expanding occupations, and earn more college degrees than men. Women have always entered   fields  —   usually   professional ones  —   more than men enter   ones. There are now many female lawyers, but male nurses are still rare. One reason is that jobs done by women, especially caregiving jobs, have always had lower pay and lower status. Yet when men, especially white men, enter   fields, they are paid more and promoted faster than women, a phenomenon known as the glass escalator. Much of men’s resistance to   jobs is tied up in the culture of masculinity, say people who study the issue. Women are assumed to be empathetic and caring men are supposed to be strong, tough and able to support a family. “Traditional masculinity is standing in the way of   men’s employment, and I think it’s a problem,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist and public policy professor at Johns Hopkins and author of “Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the   Family in America. ” “We have a cultural lag where our views of masculinity have not caught up to the change in the job market,” he said. But telling   men to take feminine jobs plays to their anxieties and comes off as condescending, said Joan Williams, a law professor at U. C. Hastings and author of “Reshaping the   Debate: Why Men and Class Matter. ” “White   men’s wages have plummeted, and what happens to men in that context is anxieties about whether they’re ‘real men,’ ” she said. It’s no surprise, then, that Donald J. Trump appealed to men who feel this way  —   not just his promises to bring back factory jobs, but also his machismo. Many unemployed men who did manual labor say they can’t take the time and make the effort to train for a new career because they have bills to pay. And they say they chose their original careers because they wanted to build things, not take care of people. Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard, has a term for this: “retrospective wait unemployment,” or “looking for the job you used to have. ” “It’s not a skill mismatch, but an identity mismatch,” he said. “It’s not that they couldn’t become a health worker, it’s that people have backward views of what their identity is. ” Jon Ray, 31, of Inez, Ky. was an electrician at a coal mine until it was shuttered a year ago. He applied unsuccessfully for maintenance and repair jobs, and got a job in manufacturing after enrolling in a program to learn how to operate computerized tools.   jobs weren’t an option, he said. “I couldn’t afford to go back to school,” he said. “And I’m used to working with my hands. ” If more men do   jobs, they could erase the stigma and turn them into men’s jobs, said Janette Dill, a sociologist at the University of Akron, at least for jobs that require less   caregiving. “More men will go into care because they don’t have a choice, but they’re going to carve out spaces for themselves that feel less like women’s work,” she said. Ms. Dill was a   of a study published in April that looked at what happens when men move into   jobs in the health care field. Men in the   health jobs, like the nursing assistants who change patients’ sheets and help them bathe, earned 10 percent less than men in   jobs. But they were less likely to be laid off and their wages rose over time, while   wages were stagnant. Technical health care jobs like ultrasound technician  —   requiring more training but not a college degree  —   paid 22 percent more than other   jobs, after controlling for things like education. They involve less interaction with patients and more with computers, so they are less stereotypically feminine. There is an education and race divide among the men who take these jobs, the study found. Black men were 3. 3 times as likely as white men to take the   health jobs, and other minority men were 1. 8 times as likely. White men were more likely to take the   technical jobs. For men without college degrees, more technical training that equips them for those jobs could help. And if health aide jobs paid more and offered better benefits, they’d probably attract more men. Some hospitals are trying to make caregiving jobs seem manly  —   like with a recruitment poster comparing the “adrenaline rush” of being an operating room nurse to mountain climbing. Perhaps then men could take the same pride in their work that Mr. Dawson, the unemployed welder, showed when he talked about making pilings for the rebuilt World Trade Center. “I had a good life as a welder,” he said. “It always amused me. That’s one reason I picked the job. ”"
"Apple, complying with what it said was a request from Chinese authorities, removed news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month. The move limits access to one of the few remaining channels for readers in mainland China to read The Times without resorting to special software. The government began blocking The Times’s websites in 2012, after a series of articles on the wealth amassed by the family of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister, but it had struggled in recent months to prevent readers from using the   app. Apple removed both the   and   apps from the app store in China on Dec. 23. Apps from other international publications, including The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, were still available in the app store. “For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations,” Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesman, said of the Times apps. “As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China. ” Mr. Sainz declined to comment on what local regulations the Times apps were said to have violated, who had contacted Apple and when, and whether a court order or other legal document had been presented. China’s main internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, did not respond to faxed questions. The Times bureau in Beijing said it had not been contacted by the Chinese government about the matter. A Times spokeswoman in New York, Eileen Murphy, said the company had asked Apple to reconsider its decision. “The request by the Chinese authorities to remove our apps is part of their wider attempt to prevent readers in China from accessing independent news coverage by The New York Times of that country, coverage which is no different from the journalism we do about every other country in the world,” Ms. Murphy said in a statement. The request appears to have been made under regulations released in June 2016 called Provisions on the Administration of Mobile Internet Application Information Services. The regulations say apps cannot “engage in activities prohibited by laws and regulations such as endangering national security, disrupting social order and violating the legitimate rights and interests of others. ” The cyberspace administration says on its website that apps also cannot publish “prohibited” information. The ruling Communist Party tightly controls media inside China and employs one of the world’s most sophisticated systems of internet censorship. Chinese law prohibits the publication of “harmful information” online, and officials often take action without legal procedures or court orders against material they deem objectionable. Apple has previously removed other, less prominent media apps from its China store. It is unclear how the company evaluates requests from Beijing to take down apps and whether it ever resists them. Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, has said that the company complies with all local laws. While in early 2016 Apple resisted a court request in the United States for it to help federal officials unlock an iPhone for a criminal investigation, Mr. Cook said he would obey whatever order the court ultimately handed down. In the end, the government was able to unlock the device without Apple’’s help and the case was dropped. Farzana Aslam, associate director of the Center for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, noted that in matters involving customer privacy, Apple requires governments to submit subpoenas, search warrants or other legal documents. “Maybe in the end they have to do it, but I think there’s something to be said about standing up for what you believe in and purporting to put principle before profit in a country like China, to show that actually there is this tension there,” Ms. Aslam said. “It’s not as simple as, ‘Because we operate in your jurisdiction, we’ll do anything you ask of us. ’” She added that it was “very worrying” that Apple had not disclosed what laws the authorities said were violated, making it difficult for The Times and other publishers to file an appeal or challenge the government’s requests. In the weeks leading up to the withdrawal of the Times apps, The Times was working on various articles related to the Chinese government. One of them, posted online on Dec. 29, revealed the billions of dollars in hidden perks and subsidies that the Chinese government provides to the world’s biggest iPhone factory. China is also one of Apple’s largest iPhone markets, though sales in that region have slowed. On Dec. 23, David Barboza, a Times reporter, spoke with members of Apple’s media team about the article. Mr. Barboza had previously been in touch with the iPhone factory owner, Foxconn. He had also contacted the Chinese government as part of his reporting. Later that day, a separate team from Apple informed The Times that the apps would be removed, Ms. Murphy said. In another article, published on Dec. 22 as a post on its Sinosphere blog, The Times described an   internet video that had been widely promoted by Chinese public security offices. The Times news apps remain available in Apple’s app stores for other countries, as well as the Hong Kong and Taiwan stores, but people must have a credit card with a billing address outside mainland China to download them. The Times crossword puzzle and virtual reality apps remain available throughout China. When the Chinese government began blocking the Times websites in 2012, it also prevented users with Times apps from downloading new content. But readers in China can still gain access to The Times using software that circumvents the government’s firewall. And in July 2015, The Times released a new version of its   app that adopted a different method for retrieving articles, one that the government appeared unable to stop. Apple’s decision to remove the app from its China store should not affect those who have already installed it. But users in China will not be able to download new releases unless they use another region’s app store. The Times discovered after being blocked in 2012 that hackers with possible ties to the Chinese military had targeted the newspaper’s computer systems and that the attacks coincided with the reporting for that Times investigation. Foreign tech companies face increasing pressure from government authorities in China. In April, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies were shut down in the country, just six months after they were introduced there. Mark Natkin, the   managing director of Marbridge Consulting, who advises American technology firms in China, said he did not think any such company entering the Chinese market could “ever fully comprehend how challenging it’s going to be. ” Mr. Natkin said that Apple had a certain amount of leverage against the Chinese government in terms of the total amount of jobs created but that “the technology gap has started to close. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —   Federal Reserve officials expect Donald J. Trump’s election to result in somewhat faster economic growth over the next several years, but they see little chance of the boom Mr. Trump has promised, according to an account of the Fed’s most recent meeting in  . That is in part because the Fed plans to raise interest rates more quickly if growth accelerates. For now, however, Fed officials plan to wait and see what happens next, the account said. “While the Fed signaled that it would likely respond to expansionary fiscal policies with a faster pace of rate hikes, the Fed believes it is too early to embed this into its baseline,” Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays, wrote on Wednesday following the release of the minutes. “Any real shift in the stance of monetary policy will require more clarity on the stance of fiscal policy. ” At the December meeting, the Fed raised its benchmark rate for just the second time since 2008, citing the continued expansion of the economy and the steady decline of unemployment. The Fed debated and delayed that increase for most of last year, but the account published on Wednesday  —   after a standard   delay  —   described the final decision as uncontroversial. Officials instead spent the meeting talking about what comes next. Mr. Trump has promised a bevy of major changes in economic policy, including tax cuts and spending increases, reductions in regulation, and restrictions on trade and immigration. As a result, the account said, Fed officials regard both faster growth and slower growth as more likely than before the election, when the economy seemed locked into its longstanding pattern of slow and steady growth. “The job of conducting U. S. monetary policy has not become any easier over recent months,” said James Marple, senior economist at TD Bank, referring to the increased uncertainty. The Fed, led by Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman, predicted in December that it would raise rates three times this year. The account said officials were not yet ready to predict how the pace of rate increases might change as a result of new policies pursued by Mr. Trump and Congress. “Participants emphasized their uncertainty about the timing, size and composition of any future fiscal and other economic policy initiatives as well as about how those policies might affect aggregate demand and supply,” the minutes said. The Fed’s   committee, the Federal Open Market Committee, has 17 members, 10 of whom cast votes on monetary policy. The Fed’s caution amounts to a bias in favor of growth. The economy is expanding at roughly the pace Fed officials regard as sustainable. The work force is growing slowly as more baby boomers retire, and productivity is rising slowly. Two percent growth may be about as good as it gets. Ms. Yellen has warned that fiscal stimulus, like a tax cut or a spending increase, could increase economic growth to an unsustainable pace in the near term, resulting in increased inflation. The Fed quite likely would seek to offset such policies by raising interest rates more quickly. Instead of acting   the Fed is choosing to wait for more information. But the minutes said officials were concerned about the challenge of communicating their increased uncertainty. They want to be clear that the Fed’s prediction about the pace of rate increases depends on its prediction about economic growth. Faster growth will mean faster increases. The account said Fed officials were confident in their ability to raise rates quickly enough to prevent overheating, seeing “only a modest risk” of a “sharp acceleration in prices. ” By holding rates at low levels, the Fed has sought to increase economic growth by encouraging borrowing and   higher rates reduce the stimulative effect. The benchmark rate now sits in a range from 0. 5 percent to 0. 75 percent, still very low by historical standards. “Consumers have no reason to panic about the rate hike last month, or even about additional rate increases in 2017,” said Alan MacEachin, chief corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. He noted that the last rate hike would add $1 to the monthly payment on a $5, 000 credit card balance. The economic forecast prepared by the Fed’s staff for the December meeting anticipated that Mr. Trump’s election would result in “slightly higher” growth over the next several years. It said a likely increase in fiscal stimulus would be “substantially counterbalanced” by higher interest rates and a stronger dollar, which would reduce exports of American goods and services. Several Fed officials reported that Mr. Trump’s election had increased optimism among business executives in their districts. “Some contacts thought that their businesses could benefit from possible changes in federal spending, tax and regulatory policies,” the minutes said. The minutes also noted, however, that some executives were concerned about the negative impact of proposed policy changes. In a recent interview, John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said many executives in his district, which encompasses the western United States, worried about the potential impact of restrictions on immigration and on foreign trade, both of which have been important drivers of regional growth. Businesses across the country also reported increased difficulty in hiring qualified workers, the minutes said. The unemployment rate fell to just 4. 6 percent in November. The lack of readily available workers could further limit the benefits of a fiscal stimulus."
"Rajiv J. Shah, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, was asked about six months ago to join the committee that would select the foundation’s next president. He said no. Instead, Mr. Shah, who until recently had been the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, ultimately said he wanted to be considered for the post. He got the job. On Thursday, the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the country’s largest and most influential philanthropies, will name Mr. Shah to succeed Judith Rodin, who has been president for 12 years. The appointment will make Mr. Shah one of the most powerful forces in charitable giving, overseeing a foundation that donates roughly $200 million each year and corrals governments, companies and organizations to contribute money and resources in tandem. Mr. Shah, 43, will be the first   to lead the Rockefeller Foundation, which has gained stature in recent years through some prominent projects but has sometimes been criticized as being more interested in its publicity than its grantees. Founded in 1913 by the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the foundation says it has given away the equivalent of more than $17 billion in today’s dollars. Its first grant was to the American Red Cross, and it went on to play pivotal roles in establishing the field of public health, creating vaccines for yellow fever and malaria, and bringing agricultural advances to the developing world. In recent years, the foundation has focused on the themes of “resilience” and “inclusive economies. ” That has resulted in programs aimed at establishing “resilience officers” in 100 cities to focus on disaster relief and a plan that is sending 100, 000   students to see the musical “Hamilton. ” These efforts have struck critics as public relations stunts more than meaningful agents of change. And Ms. Rodin has drawn fire for spending too much time with corporate partners and not enough time with the recipients of grants. Much of the foundation’s work concerns improving health and   in Africa, aiding economic development in impoverished areas and developing strategies to combat climate change. It was these diverse causes that attracted Mr. Shah to the job. With advanced degrees in medicine and health finance from the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Shah worked at the Bill  Melinda Gates Foundation for nearly a decade, rising to be director for agricultural development. From 2009 to 2015, he ran U. S. A. I. D. leading the response to disasters including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. After leaving the agency, he founded Latitude Capital, a private equity firm focused on emerging markets. In those roles, Mr. Shah said, he came to understand the power of   partnerships, a strategy that Ms. Rodin has embraced at the Rockefeller Foundation. “I’ve seen what’s possible when people come together,” he said in an interview this week. “We were able to save tens of thousands, if not millions, of lives. ” Ms. Rodin was not involved in the search for her successor but has known Mr. Shah for years. They worked together on an agricultural project when he was at the Gates Foundation, and he joined the Rockefeller Foundation board in 2015. “He’s a marvel,” Ms. Rodin said in an interview this week. “He’s very strategic and very innovative. He shows an interpersonal dexterity that is well beyond his years. ” Ms. Rodin said she believed that Mr. Shah was a good fit for the job thanks in part to his time at U. S. A. I. D. which required that he forge alliances with a vast array of governments, organizations and companies. “One of the things we tried to emphasize during my time at Rockefeller was broadening the scope of partnerships,” Ms. Rodin said. “We see in Raj someone who has the capacity to take advantage of this, and has the capacity to be a great partner. ” Richard Parsons, the chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation board, said Mr. Shah was the unanimous choice of the search committee after a competitive process that considered hundreds of candidates. “Raj is the perfect guy to come in after her,” Mr. Parsons said in an interview. “He’s a performer. You put him up in front of a group and people come away impressed. Now, he’s got a platform. ” Mr. Shah said he was committed to the broad themes of resilience and inclusive economies. “That core concept of resilience is extraordinarily important going forward,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to evolve into the future. ” But he said he would look for opportunities to address schisms in the American electorate in this divisive political moment. “It is a different time today than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he said. “We live in a more fractured world. ” The Rockefeller Foundation is viewed by some has having a liberal bent. During Ms. Rodin’s tenure, the foundation donated money to the Clinton Foundation. Mr. Shah is close with President Obama but said he maintained good relations with Republicans in the House and Senate and believed that the foundation’s core mission had bipartisan appeal. “It’s widely acknowledged that tackling hunger and ensuring health around the globe are in our own national interest,” Mr. Shah said. “I have always been passionate about delivering social justice results at a massive scale. ” He will now have a $200 million a year to try to deliver those results."
"MANILA  —   A manhunt was underway Wednesday for more than 150 inmates who escaped from a jail in the southern Philippines after it came under attack by gunmen overnight. One guard was killed and another wounded in the assault on a jail in Kidapawan City on the   southern island of Mindanao, according to Peter Bungat, the warden. The gunmen were thought to be from a bandit group that had broken away from a Muslim rebel organization, Mr. Bungat told a radio station on Mindanao, which is home to a   insurgency. Five of the 158 inmates who escaped from the facility, the North Cotabato District Jail, were later killed in a shootout with pursuing officers, Senior Inspector Xavier Solda, a spokesman for the Philippine Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, told a radio station in Manila. A village official was also killed when he was mistaken for one of the escaped inmates, the police said. Mr. Bungat said the attack began early Wednesday, when the jail’s power supply was cut. Armed men then approached from behind the compound and began firing. “It was well planned,” Mr. Bungat said. He said it was unclear whether any “high profile” inmates were among the escapees. At least a dozen were involved in drug trafficking, according to officials from the jail management bureau. Mr. Bungat said the assault was believed to have been led by a bandit known as Commander Derbie, who once led a faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Philippines’ largest rebel group. Commander Derbie is widely believed to have broken away from that organization, which has signed a peace deal with the government. Philippine security officials have said that Commander Derbie joined a breakaway group called the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. A spokesman for that group, Abu Misry, denied any involvement in the jailbreak. Ernesto Abella, a spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, said there was no “specific information” as to the identities of the gunmen, “though speculation is rife. ” Three inmates who had been charged with possessing drugs and explosives escaped from the North Cotabato District Jail last August. Eight years ago, three inmates accused of carrying out a bombing also escaped from the jail."
"BEIJING  —   China’s leaders thought they had a solution to the torrent of snark, jibes and condemnation on Twitter: They banned access to it at home. Yet China has become the country that   Donald J. Trump seems to enjoy criticizing the most on his    Twitter feed. In bursts of 140 characters or less, he has jabbed at Beijing over Taiwan, trade, the South China Sea and, most recently, North Korea. “China has been taking out massive amounts of money  wealth from the U. S. in totally   trade, but won’t help with North Korea. Nice!” Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Monday. How and when President Xi Jinping reads about these broadsides remains a mystery to outsiders. Translating Mr. Trump’s sarcasm  —   “Nice!”  —   could be tricky. But Chinese officials and the state news media want Mr. Trump to know that their leaders prefer doing diplomacy the   way, behind closed doors and muffled in platitudes. Xinhua, the state news agency, has more or less asked Mr. Trump to shut up. “An obsession with ‘Twitter foreign policy’ is undesirable,” read the headline of  a Xinhua commentary on Tuesday about Mr. Trump’s posts. “Everyone recognizes the common sense that foreign policy isn’t child’s play, and even less is it like doing business deals,” said the article, published after Mr. Trump’s latest barbed comments on China. “Twitter shouldn’t become an instrument of foreign policy,” the article said. Earlier that day, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected Mr. Trump’s accusation that Beijing had coddled North Korea. But the article acknowledged that it was probably too late to detach Mr. Trump from Twitter. Mr. Trump’s designated press secretary, Sean Spicer, has indicated that Mr. Trump will keep using the terse, punchy format after he settles in the White House. “Issuing tweets has become a habit for Mr. Trump,” Xinhua noted. Mr. Trump, it said, appeared to assume that “issuing   comments and taking up sensitive issues may perhaps add to his chips for negotiating with other countries. ” Mr. Xi is most unlikely to joust directly with Mr. Trump on Twitter. The service has been banned in China since 2009, though residents find ways to poke through the firewall of censorship. And while Chinese politicians love slogans, they prefer to communicate with foreign leaders through long, tranquilizing disquisitions. Open sarcasm is rare. Sad!"
"DORAL, Fla.  —   Inside a clandestine Carnival Corporation complex here, two former Disney executives have been plotting a drastic cruise industry overhaul. Their mission: Take lessons learned at Walt Disney World, where they helped bring about a $1 billion vacation management system involving   bracelets that link to personal information, and apply them to cruises. The result: Millions of passengers on Carnival ships will soon be using a similar but more advanced system that allows travelers to do everything from plan vacations to open stateroom doors to order poolside cocktails. “As long as bigger, newer, cooler ships have kept coming, the cruise industry has treated guest liabilities  —   standing in long lines, having a frustrating embarkation experience  —   as acceptable,” said John Padgett, who joined Carnival in 2014 as chief experience and innovation officer after 18 years at Disney. “That thinking stops now. ” Carnival, which operates more than 100 ships worldwide under 10 brands, will unveil its ambitious technology initiative on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In a keynote speech, Arnold W. Donald, Carnival’s chief executive, intends to announce that the system  —   an app called Ocean Compass paired with a     smart medallion that can be carried in a pocket or worn as jewelry  —   will arrive on the company’s Princess Cruises fleet this year. Mr. Donald declined in an interview to give a timeline for bringing the technology (code name: Trident) to other Carnival brands. But he emphasized that rolling out the personalized disks and app was a companywide priority. “The cost is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and, over time, more than that,” Mr. Donald said. “People want the world to be organized around them. On vacation, even more so. ” Analysts expect the technology to increase profits in multiple ways, including allowing Carnival to charge more for tickets, particularly on older ships. Ease of purchase is another big component  —   cruisers will be able to pay for food, drinks and merchandise simply by having their credit   Ocean Medallion in their pocket. Carnival’s disks, each   with the guest’s name, will also power a new, shipwide gambling platform. And Carnival gift shops will be stocked with a wide array of jewelry, clips and key chains that passengers can buy to carry and display their disks. Carnival’s top rival, Royal Caribbean Cruises, already offers smartbands on   ships like the Anthem of the Seas. Called WOW bands, they serve as room keys, allow for wireless payment and make it faster and easier to embark and disembark. But Carnival says that its offering takes such systems much further, in part because its technology is designed to be invisible. Unlike with smartbands, there is no need to tap a sensor on a stateroom door for entry simply approaching the correct room with the Ocean Medallion in your pocket will unlock the door. Among the medallion system’s other offerings is a navigation tool designed to help family members find one another on the   ships. Under Mr. Donald, who took over Carnival in   after a string of ship debacles, the company has boomed. In the most recent quarter, Carnival had a record $1. 4 billion in net income, a 17 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. But he remains under pressure to recruit new customers. About 24. 2 million people worldwide took a cruise in 2016, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. That sounds like a lot, but “cruise vacations only represent about 2 percent of all vacations,” said David Beckel, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Because there is such a low penetration rate, any increase in penetration  —   even a minor, minor one  —   represents a big difference, and hence the effort to improve the customer experience,” Mr. Beckel said. As part of its Ocean Medallion plan, Carnival has turned to television, paying to produce three travel shows designed to make cruising look fun and easy. The shows has been broadcast on weekends in recent months on ABC, NBC and the CW. In one   episode of “The Voyager with Josh Garcia,” the host is seen chatting with artists in Puerto Rico about making masks from coconuts. Carnival plans to produce at least 80 episodes in total. Analysts have praised the effort. “People have a lot of preconceived notions about cruising that largely aren’t true,” said Robin M. Farley, an analyst for UBS. The system that Carnival plans to introduce on Thursday still has a lot to prove. The technology will require the mass retraining of employees and substantial retrofitting of ships, including the installation of roughly 7, 000 sensors per boat. And do passengers really want to sacrifice privacy for personalization? One feature will allow guests to watch live entertainment in ship lounges on their stateroom televisions  —   and the performers will know who is watching and will be trained to do  . (“Hello to Brooks, tuning in from his bed on the Promenade Deck! ”) Mr. Padgett acknowledged that some guests will have “creepiness factor” questions. But he expects the vast majority to participate. “As long as you benefit the guest, they don’t mind sharing” personal information, he said. Using the connected app, guests can order food to be delivered wherever they plan to be at a designated time. (Waiters will know who you are because your photograph will pop up on an   device when they get close to your medallion.) By loading preferences into the app while still at home, Carnival will be able to offer tailored lists of activities. “The goal of preplanning is learning more about our guests,” said Michael G. Jungen, who joined Carnival in 2015 as vice president for design and technology after 15 years at Disney. He noted that passengers would have the option of linking their medallions with social media accounts, allowing Carnival to delve even deeper. As Carnival designed the Ocean Medallion system inside an unmarked building here in suburban Miami, it built a replica set of staterooms, corridors and other ship facilities to test concepts. Scribbles on a monumental white board in one area contained algorithms and personalization ideas. (“What time you eat dinner. What channels you watch. ”) When they were leading Disney’s technology effort in 2013, Mr. Padgett and Mr. Jungen built a similar laboratory, experimenting with ideas that ultimately became MyMagic+ the theme park wristband system that serves as wallet, room key, admission ticket, photograph collector and   pass. As he gave a reporter a tour of the Carnival site, Mr. Padgett continually returned to the topic of Disney  —   how the cost of cruising compares with a family trip to Disney World, and how Disney frames vacations as overarching stories. “The ultimate goal here,” he said, turning to a   Disney phrase, “is to delight and surprise our guests. ”"
"The nation’s consumer watchdog agency on Tuesday ordered the   agencies TransUnion and Equifax to pay more than $23. 2 million in fines and restitution for deceiving customers about the usefulness of credit scores and the cost of obtaining them. The watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the payments would resolve charges that TransUnion and Equifax had lured consumers into enrolling in credit services advertised as free or costing only $1, but which could cost more than $200 a year. TransUnion will reimburse $13. 93 million to consumers and pay a $3 million civil fine, while Equifax will reimburse $3. 8 million and pay a $2. 5 million civil fine, the bureau said. Both companies will also modify their marketing practices. Among the changes, they will obtain customers’ consent to enroll them in services in which fees begin after free trials and make it easier for them to cancel services they do not want. The bureau said the wrongful conduct had violated the     law and had occurred at TransUnion since July 2011 and at Equifax between July 2011 and March 2014. Many lenders rely on credit scores from TransUnion, Equifax and their rival Experian when lending money. But TransUnion and Equifax falsely represented the credit scores they sold to consumers as being the same scores that lenders used, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said. “Credit scores are central to a consumer’s financial life, and people deserve honest and accurate information about them,” Richard Cordray, the bureau’s director, said in a statement. Neither TransUnion, which is based in Chicago, nor Equifax, which is based in Atlanta, admitted or denied wrongdoing. A TransUnion spokesman, David Blumberg, and an Equifax spokeswoman, Ines Gutzmer, said their companies believed that they had complied with the law and were committed to better educating consumers about their credit. Experian was not charged. A spokesman for the bureau did not immediately have additional comment. In 2015, under a separate settlement with 31 state attorneys general, the   agencies agreed to improve how they fixed mistakes and addressed disputes."
"LONDON  —   Maybe it wasn’t just the iceberg. Ever since the Titanic sank more than 104 years ago, killing more than 1, 500 men, women and children, mystery has swirled around the tragedy. No one doubts that the ship collided at high speed with an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. But a new documentary posits that the sinking of the ship  —   hailed at the time as the largest ever built, and praised for its professed unsinkability  —   may have been accelerated by a giant coal fire in its hull that appeared to have started as long as three weeks before it set off on its fateful journey to New York from Southampton, England. In the documentary, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in Britain on New Year’s Day, Senan Molony, an Irish journalist who has spent more than 30 years researching the Titanic, contends that the fire, in a    bunker next to one of the ship’s boiler rooms, damaged its hull, helping to seal its fate long before it slammed into the iceberg. “It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence,” he argues in the documentary, “Titanic: The New Evidence,” which will air in the United States on the Smithsonian Channel on January 21. “The fire was known about, but it was played down. She should never have been put to sea. ” Mr. Molony’s potential breakthrough can be traced to an attic in Wiltshire, in southwest England, where a previously unpublished album of photographs chronicling the ship’s construction and the preparations for its maiden voyage had been gathering dust for more than a century. The photographs were discovered by a descendant of a director of the   company, Harland and Wolff, that built the Titanic. About four years ago, a collaborator of Mr. Molony’s acquired the rare photographs of the ship, meticulously taken by Harland and Wolff’s engineering chief before it left a Belfast shipyard. When the two men looked closely at the images, Mr. Molony said, they were shocked to discover a    diagonal black mark on the hull’s front starboard side, close to where the ship was pierced by the iceberg. An analysis by engineers at Imperial College London subsequently revealed that the mark was most likely caused by a fire in a coal bunker of the ship. Mr. Molony called the photographs “the Titanic equivalent of Tutankhamen’s tomb,” because of the richness of historical detail they conveyed, including the mark highlighting the extent of the damage. Experts said the theory was compelling but were divided over how important a role the fire may have played. In an interview, Richard de Kerbrech, a marine engineer based on the Isle of Wight who has written two books on the Titanic disaster, said that the fire would have damaged the ship’s bulkhead, a wall of steel within the ship’s hull, and made it more vulnerable after it was pierced by an iceberg. An official British inquiry, in 1912, mentioned the fire, but the judge who presided over it, whom critics saw as sympathetic to shipping interests, played it down. “This discovery is a revelation and could change our knowledge of the history of what happened,” Mr. de Kerbrech said. Mr. Molony contends that the ship’s owners knew about the fire but chose to let it go, since delaying the ship’s journey would have been financially ruinous. At the time of departure, the ship was berthed so that the marks caused by the fire were facing the sea, away from the dock, and therefore concealed from passengers. The Titanic disaster has long fanned conspiracy theories, among them that it was not the Titanic that sank on April 15, 1912, but, rather the Olympic, its sister ship that the Titanic was torpedoed by a German   or that the ship was brought down by a sarcophagus containing an Egyptian priestess’s mummy. Popularized by Hollywood, the story of the Titanic continues to exert a hold on popular culture. Construction of a   replica recently began at a theme park in China. Mr. Molony said his fascination took root when he was 12 and was gripped by “A Night to Remember,” Walter Lord’s 1955 book recounting the Titanic’s final night. He said he was so captivated that he finished the book in two hours and 40 minutes, the same time it took the Titanic to sink. Now the political editor at The Irish Daily Mail, Mr. Molony, who has also written a book called “The Irish Aboard Titanic,” was also drawn to the social divisions reflected on the ship, where   cabins hosted millionaires while hundreds of   passengers, many of them Irish, stayed below. Mr. Molony said he believed the fire had been played down, in part because death by iceberg was a more dramatic explanation. “The ship was seen as a heroic unsinkable ship and, as a result, people focused on explanations that fed that narrative,” he said. Not everyone is convinced. David Hill, a former honorary secretary of the British Titanic Society, who has been studying the cause of the sinking since the 1950s, argued that, while the damage caused by the fire to the steel walls protecting the hull may have hastened the disaster, the blaze was not the decisive factor. “When the Titanic hit the iceberg close to midnight on April 14, 1912, it created a    line of damage on the starboard section of the hull, including punctures and gashes, that opened up too many compartments to the sea, so that the weight of the water dragged the bow down so low that the ship eventually sank,” he said. “A fire may have accelerated this. But in my view, the Titanic would have sunk anyways. ” He added: “It amazes me how this ship still captures the global imagination. It was not the   catastrophe at sea. But it is the one everyone remembers. ”"
"When a Wall Street banking institution starts throwing   bonuses at credit card customers, it may be best to grab them before they inevitably disappear. And so it goes with Chase Sapphire Reserve, a card that the bank, JPMorgan Chase, introduced last summer. The bank offered a   bonus worth $1, 500 to people who spent $4, 000 on the card in the first three months they had it and then redeemed the bonus for travel. Now the bank is cutting the bonus in half. Jan. 12 will be the last day that people can earn it by applying for the card online, though people who apply at a bank branch will still be able to get the bonus until March 12. You need not be a current bank customer to apply at a branch, according to a bank spokeswoman, Ashley E. Dodd, who confirmed the changes. The bonus played a big role in bringing the card so much attention, landing it on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek and leading the bank to hand out so many perks that it caused a $200 million to $300 million hit to its earnings. Even without the outsize bonus, which was very rare in the history of credit card bonus offers, the card is likely to remain popular. While it has a steep $450 annual fee, cardholders receive a $300 credit each year for any travel spending they put on the card. And customers earn three points for every dollar they spend on all travel and dining, which can lead to better value than the rewards that most other cards offer for customers who spent a lot in those areas. The Points Guy blog first reported the slashing of the   bonus. Many such sites now exist to help consumers take advantage of the most lucrative   offers, while collecting commissions when they pass readers on to card issuers’ application sites. If those customers keep the cards for a few years (and especially if they run up balances and pay interest) the banks can come out ahead. With too many people gaming the offer, however, bank profitability can suffer, especially when the   bonuses are so large that they attract hordes of   consumers."
"Broadway rang out 2016 with a very big bang. The 33 plays and musicals running last week brought in a whopping $49. 7 million, making it the   week in Broadway history. It was also the   week on record, with 359, 495 people seeing Broadway shows. All around Times Square, records were toppled like pins in a bowling alley: It was the best week ever for   shows like “Chicago,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King” the most money ever grossed at multiple theaters built more than a century ago (for example, $911, 000 by “Oh, Hello” at the Lyceum, which was built in 1903) the most performances ever by a single show during a   period (17, by “The Illusionists”) and the most money ever grossed by a single show ($3. 3 million, by “Hamilton”). An astonishing 24 shows grossed more than $1 million last week, including seven that grossed more than $2 million, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. Three shows topped the $3 million mark: “Hamilton,” “Wicked” and “The Lion King. ” The grosses for the week ending Jan. 1 were 63 percent higher than the previous week, and 15 percent higher than the same week the previous year (even though there were five more shows playing at the same time last year). Why? The most significant factor appears to be pricing: The base prices for many Broadway shows are high, and the premium prices charged over the holiday period were even higher.   shows had an average price over $100. And for “Hamilton,” now the industry leader in pricing, the average price was $310, and the top price was $998. (That’s the price charged by the box office the first time a ticket was sold many people paid higher prices purchasing from resellers.) There were other factors contributing to the Broadway bonanza. New York City was wrapping up a banner year for tourism: an estimated 60. 3 million visitors, up from 58. 5 million the previous year, according to Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC  Company, the city’s tourism agency. The period between Christmas and New Year’s is always popular for tourists  —   and lucrative for Broadway  —   but especially so this winter, because Christmas and New Year’s fell on weekends, and many people took off work the week in between. Multiple shows that aim heavily at tourists did extraordinarily well. For example: Cirque du Soleil’s first Broadway venture, “Paramour,” had its best week yet, at $1. 9 million, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the   Broadway show and a reliable barometer for tourist traffic, had its best week too, also at $1. 9 million. Broadway took advantage of the expected high tourism last week by staging more performances. The usual Broadway schedule sees shows staged eight times a week, but last week 25 shows had nine performances. And then there was “The Illusionists,” a holiday season magic show, which managed to have 17 performances by scheduling shows three times a day Monday through Friday, and then twice on Sunday. Other factors: Broadway is on an upswing. Grosses and attendance have been growing for several years, and the current season has already featured strong starts for three new musicals: “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” “A Bronx Tale” and “Dear Evan Hansen. ” “The record just broken for both attendance and grosses for the last week reflects the continuing success of the range of theater being produced on Broadway,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League. Several shows that had announced closing dates had a surge of   patrons. “Matilda” closed on Sunday after its best week ($1. 9 million) and “Jersey Boys,” which closes on Jan. 15, set a record, too ($1. 8 million). Some plays benefited as well: “The Humans,” which won the Tony for best new play last year, grossed an impressive $815, 000 as it prepared to close on Jan. 15. Of course, the good news is not likely to last. January and February are generally soft months for Broadway. Thirteen shows are scheduled to close between Dec. 31 and Jan. 29, as theaters clear the decks for a round of openings in late winter and spring."
"LECCE, Italy  —   One of his first students was a young man he had arrested four years earlier. Others have been convicted of armed robbery, drug trafficking and criminal association with the mafia. The classrooms are frugally equipped, behind windows protected by vertical and horizontal bars, although one has brightly colored paintings covering the walls. But none of that deterred Marco Albanese, a police officer for 19 years and a trained sommelier for five, from teaching a class of rapt students the finer points of deconstructing the bouquet of a chardonnay or pouring a rare vintage. Mr. Albanese, 43, is an instructor in an innovative effort at Lecce Penitentiary to teach inmates to be sommeliers, or wine stewards. The courses are part of a program to teach prisoners new professional skills, as well as to help them develop a bond with the region, which is renowned for its negroamaro grapes. The program has been enthusiastically embraced by the prisoner students, who were tasting white wines on a recent afternoon. It has also been an eye opener for Mr. Albanese. “I could see their human aspect, once they were out of their context,” Mr. Albanese, who traded in his police uniform for the crisp blue jacket and tie of a sommelier for the class. “And I didn’t have to keep the same distance, now that I was their ‘professor. ’” He added, “They also deserve a second chance, and it’s important that they know that the institutions do believe that they can be educated to a different life. ” In eight lessons, the group of 30 men and women, who are instructed in separate classes, learn how to taste, choose and serve local wines. “We hope to teach them the social value of work and the preciousness of their own territory, so that they can later choose to work here, already having the right skill set,” said Rita Russo, the director of Lecce Penitentiary, which is the largest in the region of Apulia. Inmates can also study for their high school diplomas, cultivate tomatoes, take theater classes and learn to be painters or tailors. Class begins with a slide show on the history of wine, explaining how it was drunk by the ancient Greeks and introducing the students to the Roman ancestors of modern sommeliers in Italy. On a school table, covered with a khaki tablecloth, stood wine glasses, ready for use. Three bottles of chardonnay, a red primitivo and a negroamaro stood on a table nearby. Mr. Albanese then addressed the prisoners, who sat facing him on stools listing the temperatures at which different wines should be served and how to store them in cellars. For a finale, he offered a   tip. “Do remember, even if you had Trump over for dinner, the pope would still be served first. The clergy does come first, even before heads of state,” he said, to raucous laughter. The prisoners, whose identity is being protected by the prison, were not allowed to be interviewed or photographed for this article. Roberto Giannone, who works for the local sommelier association, then demonstrated how to open a bottle, neatly slicing off the capsule covering the bottleneck in three cuts, inserting the corkscrew and smoothly pulling out the cork. “Once the cork is out,” he said, “use a napkin to show it to your customers. It’s an easy way to be polite and avoid objections. ” Since the 1970s, the Italian penal system has focused on   for inmates. However, a lack of funds for rehabilitation, as well as chronic overcrowding, means that thousands of incarcerated men and women have little to do all day. That has sparked some innovative rehabilitation programs, including a restaurant inside a   prison near Milan in which the waiters and cooks are inmates. But the sommelier class at the Lecce prison is believed to be unique in Italy. “Of course, sommelier courses can’t be considered a treatment,” said Georgia Zara, the head of a program at the University of Turin that offers a master’s degree in criminological and forensic psychology. “But they do educate inmates and create social interaction, which is very important. ” The classes also offer a “bridge between the jail context and the world outside, so it’s a small investment to reduce the risk of recidivism,” Ms. Zara said. Gianvito Rizzo, 53, is the chief executive at the Feudi di Guagnano, a local vintner that provides wine, like negroamaro, for the classes. He is also the creator of the sommelier classes at the prison. Mr. Rizzo has proposed that inmates start working on his nearly 75 acres of vines in the coming year under certain circumstances, some inmates in Italy are allowed to work outside prisons. “I see wine in a democratic way,” Mr. Rizzo said as he walked through his vineyard recently. “The countryside is the opposite to a cell. You are free. You smell nature, and learn to care for it. I think it’d be good also for inmates to try it out. ” Mr. Rizzo said that when he had received a master’s degree from the Bocconi University business school in Milan three decades ago, he had been “fixated” on doing something for his native region of Salento, in Apulia, on the heel of the Italian boot. He settled on going into the wine business, which had been struggling to convert farmers who cultivated for personal or local use into becoming larger producers. He now produces 16 different wines from grapes grown in vineyards that he and two friends and business partners inherited from their fathers, added to those that other friends asked them to cultivate on their behalf. He calls this collaborative effort his “first social experiment. ” When Mr. Rizzo heard about the penitentiary’s activities for prisoners, he proposed the sommelier classes to Ms. Russo. While it is unclear if any of the students will ever become professional sommeliers, the exposure to the world of wine provided by the classes has been very welcome. “I don’t even drink, but I’ve learned to sip it, smell it and taste it,” said one inmate, who is serving a   sentence and who was granted an exception to speak anonymously. “You can think it’s a small thing, but it means the world to us. ”"
"In the first episode of “One Day at a Time,” Netflix’s reboot of the   Norman Lear sitcom, Penelope (Justina Machado) has an argument with her    son, Alex (Marcel Ruiz) who wants an expensive new pair of sneakers. “Mom,” he says, “I know we’re not rich. But are we poor?” It’s a casual line that sets up a joke. (Penelope reminds Alex that they have a TV, a refrigerator and a laptop. “Those are things poor people have!” he says.) But it’s based on an acknowledgment you don’t really hear in prime time anymore: that there is a class divide, nebulous but real, and that your family is closer to the bad side of it. The new “One Day at a Time,” arriving on Friday, is lively and full of voice, a rare reboot that’s better than the original. It’s a throwback in the best sense, to an era of mainstream, socially engaged   sitcoms. And just as the political debate has pitted diversity against class in a   contest, it’s a reminder that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. In the 1970s, TV was full of characters living paycheck to paycheck, whether cabbies (“Taxi”) waitresses (“Alice”) auto mechanics (“Chico and the Man”) or brewery workers (“Laverne and Shirley”). Mr. Lear, the sitcom maestro of the era, produced a suite of shows like this: “All in the Family,” “Good Times,” “Sanford and Son. ” Mr. Lear, an   populist liberal, made   TV about the little guy. In part, the programming reflected the economy of the time. The average American wage peaked in 1973, and the middle class was broader. But, as income inequality began to grow in the 1980s and ’90s, TV, like any neighborhood buffeted by market forces, got gentrified. Advertising rates became increasingly tied to audience demographics, which made poorer viewers less valuable. Basic cable fragmented the viewership  —   more shows, made for smaller niches  —   and premium networks like HBO focused on series about the kind of people who could afford to pay for networks like HBO. TV courted upscale audiences by showing them versions of themselves. Goodbye, Roseanne Conner hello, Carrie Bradshaw. With few exceptions (like ABC’s “The Middle”) sitcoms moved into offices, cafes and living rooms populated by comfortably   characters. (A recent “ ” slyly acknowledged this remove its affluent parents were mortified when their youngest son took an aptitude test that pegged him as a future “skilled laborer. ”) Work  —   nonprofessional,     work  —   became the stuff of   reality TV (“Deadliest Catch”). Just as actual labor became increasingly invisible to consumers, shunted off overseas or hidden through     people entered TV through the poor door, or not at all. With “One Day at a Time”  —   like “Fuller House” and “Gilmore Girls,” another product of Netflix’s drive to exhume our every nostalgic memory  —   peak TV is restoring something of what peak TV took away: the kind of family that buys discounted meat at the grocery store and whose old car stalls when you turn on the  . The original “One Day at a Time,” based on the   Whitney Blake’s experience as a divorced mother, was lighter and more disposable than “All in the Family. ” (I still have warm memories of Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli duetting on “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” but let’s not kid ourselves.) But it spoke to the times. Compared with Mr. Lear’s outspoken Maude, Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin) expressed her feminism practically  —   bouncing from job to job, getting the rent paid and raising two independent girls. (This was in 1975, just five years after it was deemed too outrageous to have Mary Richards be divorced in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show. ”) The update, which Mr. Lear produces with Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce, moves the setting from Indianapolis to Echo Park, Los Angeles, and reimagines the family as  . (Mr. Lear’s   remake of his own work recalls how he adapted the British “Steptoe and Son” as “Sanford and Son,” with an   cast.) Gloria Estefan reprises the theme song, now syncopated. There’s a   third generation: a   Rita Moreno as Penelope’s   mother, Lydia. The    daughter, Elena (Isabella Gomez, a charmer) is a school debate champ who sees her coming quinceañera as a tool of the patriarchy. The omnipresent apartment super, Schneider (Todd Grinnell)  —   played in the original by Pat Harrington, with a mustache that defined ’70s    —   is now a stubbly   hipster whose dad owns the building. The most productive rethinking involves Penelope, a veteran of Afghanistan who works as a medical assistant. The war ended her marriage  —   she separated from her husband, also a soldier, who developed a drinking problem from stress  —   and left her with anxiety and a bum shoulder. The show understands, in a way comedies about more privileged families don’t have to, that circumstances shape choices and exact costs. Despite the   laughs, the series works best in   dramedy mode. The season has a serial arc, and Ms. Machado (previously of “Six Feet Under”) handles the emotional material with a light touch. One of the strongest episodes is built around a long, frustrating phone call with the Department of Veterans Affairs as Penelope tries to wrangle a chiropractor referral. The   humor is clunkier. Stephen Tobolowsky carries some familiar workplace subplots as Penelope’s   boss, and the show leans heavily on Ricky   jokes about Lydia’s accent. Still, if the comedy can be dated, the retro approach  —   multicamera, theatrical,    —   feels current, as the headlines recall the tumult of the ’70s and the   seems to be tweeting from Archie Bunker’s armchair. (One of the season’s themes, immigration, lands harder, if differently, from the way it might have before the election.) Of course, one sitcom can represent only so much. Scripted TV still neglects   rural America, though Netflix has lately stepped into that gap with “The Ranch. ” NBC’s affable workplace sitcom “Superstore” speaks to an economy that, campaign rhetoric aside, is more about service and retail jobs than about assembly lines. Maybe they’ll have company soon: ABC, for instance, is talking about making its programming more    after the election. If efforts like this manage to find us the next “Roseanne,” that’s all good. But the new “One Day at a Time,” which arrives while Hispanic TV families are still a rarity, also casually refutes the lazy postelection punditry that “ ” is a euphemism for “white,” that there is an   choice between the “identity politics” of representing the underrepresented and a   focus on people’s economic struggles. If TV can help divided Americans see one another better, it’s by telling more specific stories of every kind. It’s true that we don’t see enough   people on TV, or military veterans or Hispanic families. And guess what? Sometimes, this “One Day at a Time” reminds us, you find all those people under the same roof."
"Your forthcoming book, “Tears We Cannot Stop,” is subtitled “A Sermon to White America. ” Which part of white America do you envision reading it? I envision the audience to be that ocean of white folk I encounter who are deeply empathetic to the struggles of minorities  —   they are the ones who ask me, “What can I do, as a white person?” This is my attempt to address them in the most useful and, hopefully, edifying manner. What’s your strategy for getting through to the white people who may not be particularly sympathetic? What I’ve seen under the wonderful presidency of Barack Obama is the tendency to not tell white people the truth, for obvious reasons  —   they don’t vote for you. But I’m not a politician. I don’t have that power or influence, but what I do wield is a different kind of bully pulpit. We have to have enough belief in white people to tell them the truth. They are grown! There are a lot of areas within race relations that seem like less of a conversation and more of an attempt to prove to white people that these issues  —   police brutality, for instance  —   are a real and present danger. I open this book with horror stories about my engagement with the police. These are the stories that have shaped me, that join me to the mass of people who, regardless of our station in life, regardless of educational attainment and achievement, have felt this. The president of the United States has these stories, the former attorney general has these stories and a prominent black intellectual like me has these stories. The reality is that this is part and parcel of what it means to be black in America, and I wanted to spend time talking and thinking about it from a number of different perspectives to show white brothers and sisters that we aren’t making this up. This is not fabricated. I can’t help but think that if the same levels of police brutality were happening to white people, we would just disband the police. Police brutality would not be seen as the price of keeping our society safe. Recently, I was outside of Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington at 3 a. m. and a young white kid is cursing the police, and I’m going, “Oh, my God, they’re going to shoot him. ” And then it occurred to me that they wouldn’t  —   he’s a white kid. And what did I hear the police say? “Now, son, you’re clearly inebriated. You need to go home and sleep this off. ” And I said to myself: “My God! This is what we want!” We can’t even afford a display of anger that many white people have. At the end of your sermon, you do a “benediction” section, in which you talk about making reparations on the local and individual level: donating to groups like the United Negro College Fund or a scholarship program, but also, to cite your example from the book, paying “the black person who cuts your grass double what you might ordinarily pay. ” That gave me pause! Good! I used to say in church, “If the sermon ain’t making you a little bit uncomfortable, it ain’t effective. ” Look, if it doesn’t cost you anything, you’re not really engaging in change you’re engaging in convenience. You’re engaged in the overflow. I’m asking you to do stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’m asking you to think more seriously and strategically about why you possess what you possess. I agree with reparations, but maybe this is my white privilege speaking: I can’t imagine actually doing that. That is what I meant by an I. R. A.: an individual reparations account. You ain’t got to ask the government, you don’t have to ask your local politician  —   this is what you, an individual, conscientious, “woke” citizen can do. But charity can’t be the end of it, right? The Koch brothers gave the United Negro College Fund $25 million, but I doubt you would consider them “woke. ” No. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that charity is a poor substitute for justice. But I ain’t turning $25 million down."
"Condé Nast Publications might be sitting on a gold mine: its archive of some eight million photographs and illustrations from Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue, Architectural Digest and other magazines. Now, given the tenuous state of the media industry, the company has plans to exploit it. The archive is housed on the 15th floor of a building not far from Condé Nast’s headquarters at One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Photographs and magazines, some going back more than 100 years, are stored in plastic slips and stacked in folders or tucked away in cabinets. Down the hall from the main room is a   locker, where original slides and transparencies are cataloged out of harm’s way. Here you will find the first cover of Vogue, from Dec. 17, 1892, a sketch of a debutante clad in a ball gown and floating on what appears to be a cloud pillow. And here is a photograph of Coco Chanel lounging on a sofa, taken by the Vogue photographer Horst P. Horst, who died in 1999. Binders stand on metal shelves, packed with transparencies from   runway shows in New York and Paris, a chronicle of shifting necklines, hems and bejeweled bodices. “This is the history of fashion,” said Ivan Shaw, 48, the former executive photo director of Vogue, who was named Condé Nast’s photography director for the archive in June. If all goes according to plan, much of this material will soon be the stuff of   prints,      coffee mugs, tote bags, pillows and such. Further, the company will invite the   known as influencers to explore the archive  —   videographers in tow  —   to discuss their favorite pieces and grab the interest of their   audiences. Mr. Shaw is part of a team charged with expanding sales of the archival goods. Since his appointment, as a major part of the initiative, he has been readying an online store, to be called Condé Nast Editions. Until recently, the archive team’s priority was preservation. But given the industrywide losses in print advertising, Condé Nast and other media companies are turning to new sources of revenue. “These images have unprecedented value,” said Cathy Hoffman Glosser, who was hired as the company’s senior vice president for licensing in 2015. “And we want these assets to become more accessible. ” Mr. Shaw calls the trove a time machine. “There is a story about every picture from an artist, what he or she has taken,” he said. He mentioned Edward Steichen, who worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair for 15 years beginning in the 1920s. “When I’m holding a photograph by Edward Steichen, for that moment, I am there. ” One of the photographers whose work has gained new attention since the opening of the archive is Horst, a favorite of Mr. Shaw’s, whose Vogue career flourished under the editor Diana Vreeland in the 1960s. In October, Condé Nast published a Horst volume, “Around That Time: Horst at Home in Vogue,” edited by Hamish Bowles. In addition to producing the book, Mr. Shaw curated exhibitions of Horst’s work at SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, N. C. and Venus Over Los Angeles in California. Others of note whose work sits in the archive and may soon be available to the wider world include Arthur Elgort, Robert Frank, George   Herbert Matter, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, John Rawlings and Bert Stern, and the illustrators Miguel Covarrubias and Bob Staake. Condé Nast is not free to make commercial use of all its artists’ works, however Annie Leibovitz, who shoots for Vanity Fair and Vogue, owns the rights to her photographs. In a   of the archive’s appeal, Paddle8 recently offered three limited editions of The New Yorker’s May 2, 2016, “Purple Rain” cover illustration, a tribute to Prince by the artist Bob Staake, for $2, 700 apiece. (One has sold thus far.) Buyers with lighter wallets paid $95 for prints of the same cover at The New Yorker online store (189 were sold, Mr. Shaw said) or $325 for a signed,   version of the magazine cover (fans bought 121 of those). Mr. Shaw said he had two exhibitions and book projects in development on 1970s fashion photography, drawing on Vogue’s library, and a documentary in the works on Mr. Elgort, 76, the   Vogue photographer. Camilla Nickerson, a fashion editor at Vogue who worked with Mr. Shaw, said, “He has had to deal with a lot personalities and egos and he is good at being able to cope with their enormous needs. ” But Mr. Shaw seems most interested in the images themselves. While flipping through a 1957 copy of Architectural Digest, he lingered over a picture by Julius Shulman, whose photographs of Southern California architecture captured midcentury style. “You really feel like what the room would be like,” Mr. Shaw said, gazing at a Shulman photograph of a chic living room. “It’s not just a document. Look at the reproduction quality. I could look at these pictures all day long. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —   A united front of top intelligence officials and senators from both parties on Thursday forcefully reaffirmed the conclusion that the Russian government used hacking and leaks to try to influence the presidential election, directly rebuffing   Donald J. Trump’s repeated questioning of Russia’s role. They suggested that the doubts Mr. Trump has expressed on Twitter about the agencies’ competence and impartiality were undermining their morale. “There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” James R. Clapper Jr. the director of national intelligence, said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Russian hacks. He added that “our assessment now is even more resolute” that the Russians carried out the attack on the election. The Senate hearing was the prelude to an extraordinary meeting scheduled for Friday, when Mr. Clapper and other intelligence chiefs will repeat for Mr. Trump the same detailed, highly classified briefing on the Russian attack that President Obama received on Thursday. In effect, they will be telling the   that the spy agencies believe he won with an assist from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Then Mr. Trump will have to say whether he accepts the agencies’ basic findings on Russia’s role or holds to his previous contention that inept, politicized American spies have gotten the perpetrator of the hacking wrong. That would throw the intelligence agencies into a crisis of credibility and status with few, if any, precedents. In a pair of Twitter posts early Thursday, Mr. Trump appeared to back away from the scorn he had previously expressed for the intelligence agencies’ work, as well as from his embrace of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which released most of the hacked emails of Democratic officials. “The dishonest media likes saying that I am in agreement with Julian Assange  —   wrong,” he wrote. “I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!” But on Thursday night, the   returned to Twitter and appeared to underscore his doubts about the F. B. I. ’s investigation of the hacking. “The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia,” he wrote, a day after a report by BuzzFeed on the issue. “So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?” Early next week, the public will get its fullest information to date on the evidence the agencies have to support their contention that Mr. Putin’s government used the hacked emails to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and help Mr. Trump’s. Mr. Clapper said he would “push the envelope” to include as much detail as possible in the unclassified version of the intelligence agencies’ report on the Russian operation. The hacking, he added, was only one part of that operation, which also included the dissemination of “classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news. ” Mr. Clapper will step down as intelligence director later this month after a career in intelligence and military service that began when he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1961. His replacement is expected to be Dan Coats, a retired senator from Indiana, a Trump transition official said Thursday. A   conservative who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Coats would oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies in a job that was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve the sharing of information, but that is sometimes criticized as adding a layer of bureaucracy. The Coats news came on the same day that R. James Woolsey, a former C. I. A. director, stepped down as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, citing his diminishing role in the transition. The Senate hearing on Thursday, devoted to foreign cyberthreats, was unusual as much for its context as its content  —   a public, bipartisan display of support for the intelligence community that seemed aimed, at times, at an audience of one. Though Mr. Clapper and most Republican senators were careful to avoid antagonizing the   directly, the hearing spoke to the rift Mr. Trump has threatened to create between the incoming administration and the intelligence officials assigned to inform it. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the committee, said the purpose of the gathering was “not to question the outcome of the presidential election” but to move forward with a full understanding of what had happened. Repeatedly, though, Mr. McCain and his colleagues seemed to undercut Mr. Trump’s past messages of support for Russia, and for Mr. Assange of WikiLeaks. “Do you think there’s any credibility we should attach to this individual?” Mr. McCain asked. “Not in my view,” Mr. Clapper said. Another witness at the hearing, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, said he agreed. The intelligence director said he welcomed skeptical questioning from Mr. Trump, allowing that the intelligence community was “not perfect. ” “We are an organization of human beings, and we’re prone, sometimes, to make errors,” Mr. Clapper said. But he said the agencies had learned from their failures, notably their declaration that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Democrats on the committee repeatedly coaxed intelligence leaders to rebut Mr. Trump’s multiple assertions that a random individual hacker might have hacked Democratic targets. Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, told Mr. Clapper that in the conflict between the intelligence agencies and Mr. Assange over Russian responsibility for the attack, “We’re on your side every time. ” He asked Mr. Clapper to convey his level of confidence in attributing the election attack to Russia, rather than “someone in his basement. ” “It’s, uh, very high,” the laconic intelligence director replied. At one point, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, wondered aloud “who benefits from a   trashing the intelligence community. ” Ms. McCaskill said there would be “howls from the Republican side of the aisle” if a Democrat had spoken about intelligence officials as Mr. Trump had. Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and Mrs. Clinton’s running mate, used the occasion for an aside about Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, who has a history of sharing discredited news stories and conspiracy theories. Mr. Kaine said that he was unsure whether Mr. Flynn was acting out of “gullibility” or “malice,” but that it was a cause for “great concern” that Mr. Flynn shared stories that “most fourth graders would find incredible. ” No Republican lawmakers embraced Mr. Trump’s remarks casting doubt on the intelligence conclusions, though some were more conspicuous than others in their efforts to distance themselves. Perhaps the closest to a defense of Mr. Trump came from Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas. Denouncing “imprecise language” stating that Russia “hacked the election,” Mr. Cotton asked Mr. Clapper to confirm that the actual balloting was not affected. Mr. Cotton also suggested that the conventional wisdom that Mr. Putin favored Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton might be wrong. Mr. Trump promised a stronger military and more American oil and gas production  —   policies Mr. Cotton suggested would not be to Russia’s advantage. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, criticized the Obama administration for its response to the Russian attack. He said the White House had lobbed mere “pebbles” in retaliation for the interference. “When it comes to interfering with our election, we better be ready to throw rocks,” he said. Then Mr. Graham issued a warning for fellow Republicans who might be inclined to brush off any attack on an opposing party. “Could it be Republicans next election?” he asked. “It’s not like we’re so much better at cybersecurity than Democrats. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —     Donald J. Trump is expected to choose as director of national intelligence   Senator Dan Coats, a former ambassador to Germany, secret foodie and lover of all things Indiana who also served as a member of his chamber’s Intelligence Committee. Known for a   style, Mr. Coats was popular among his colleagues. “I always thought he should wear a red cardigan,” said Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado. “He was the closest thing to Mister Rogers we could come up with. ” While fiscally conservative, Mr. Coats, an Indiana Republican who completed his second Senate stint this month, often found common cause with Democrats, who described him as thoughtful on intelligence and national security issues, with a sharp intellect and disarming humor. “I have always been impressed with his demeanor,” said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and who served on the Intelligence Committee with Mr. Coats and traveled with him in Eastern Europe. “He’s not a fierce partisan and knows the intelligence community. He’s very amiable and easy to work with. ” The position of America’s top intelligence official was created by Congress in 2004, as a response to criticism that the nation’s spy agencies had failed to detect and prevent the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, the director has been charged with coordinating the   and analysis of the country’s 16 civilian and military spy agencies, helping to prevent a terrorist attack and serving as a central liaison to presidents and their White House staff. But bureaucratic turf wars have dogged the office of the director of national intelligence since its creation. Officials who run the C. I. A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, among others, have sought to maintain control over parts of the spying apparatus, and to exert influence with presidents and members of Congress. In 2009, for example, Leon E. Panetta, President Obama’s incoming C. I. A. director, clashed with Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence at the time, after Mr. Blair sought to select the top American spies for overseas postings. Mr. Panetta sent a dispatch to the agency’s employees telling them to ignore Mr. Blair’s message  —   an assertion that the C. I. A. was in charge. The rivalries have weakened the national intelligence office and led some critics in the government to question its effectiveness. The year that Mr. Obama took office, an internal report criticized the office of national intelligence for adding to  —   not removing  —   bureaucratic bloat and doing little to end the tensions among the various spy agencies. In 2010, James R. Clapper Jr. the current director of national intelligence, insisted during his Senate confirmation hearings that he would not be a “hood ornament,” saying that despite the inherent limitations on his job, he would try to bring an end to turf battles among the nation’s spy agencies. Six years later, the job appears to have limited appeal to some intelligence professionals, several of whom were not eager to serve in the position for fear that they would not be empowered. Mr. Coats had been an early and strong contender for secretary of defense in the first term of President George W. Bush, until Mr. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, successfully pressed for Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Coats, 73, graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois, and served in the Army before studying at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He began a career in life insurance in Fort Wayne, Ind. before joining the office of   Dan Quayle as a district representative. Mr. Coats owed much of his political career to his ties to Mr. Quayle, the former vice president. Mr. Coats won Mr. Quayle’s House seat in 1980, the year the latter was elected to the Senate. After Mr. Quayle was elected vice president in 1988, Mr. Coats was appointed to fill his seat he served on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. In 1998, Mr. Coats decided to not seek   largely because the Democratic challenger, Evan Bayh, was considered unbeatable. In 2001, Mr. Coats was named ambassador to Germany, arriving only three days before the Sept. 11 attacks. “Ambassador Coats found himself thrown into a role he couldn’t have foreseen a day earlier, a role in which he would excel but one that would forever change him,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said on the Senate floor last year in remarks praising Mr. Coats. “Those who know Dan Coats say that day in September affected him profoundly,” he said. “He may not have known it then, but he would feel the tug of that responsibility many years later, and answer the call. ” After a brief foray into lobbying, Mr. Coats returned to the Senate in January 2011, serving again on the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Coats was also one of only a few Republican senators who supported compelling Congress to officially authorize the use of military force abroad. “You’re asking our sons and daughters to take up our cause,” he said, “and every person who is here has to decide with their own conscience if that’s something we’re going to do. ” Mr. Coats enjoys visiting restaurants both in Indianapolis and in small hamlets that serve    food, and featured several interesting restaurants and food purveyors when it was his turn to host lunch for his Republican colleagues."
"WASHINGTON  —   When Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the Democratic National Committee in September 2015 to pass along some troubling news about its computer network, he was transferred, naturally, to the help desk. His message was brief, if alarming. At least one computer system belonging to the D. N. C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government. The F. B. I. knew it well: The bureau had spent the last few years trying to kick the Dukes out of the unclassified email systems of the White House, the State Department and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the government’s   networks. Yared Tamene, the   contractor at the D. N. C. who fielded the call, was no expert in cyberattacks. His first moves were to check Google for “the Dukes” and conduct a cursory search of the D. N. C. computer system logs to look for hints of such a cyberintrusion. By his own account, he did not look too hard even after Special Agent Hawkins called back repeatedly over the next several weeks  —   in part because he wasn’t certain the caller was a real F. B. I. agent and not an impostor. “I had no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call,” Mr. Tamene wrote in an internal memo, obtained by The New York Times, that detailed his contact with the F. B. I. It was the cryptic first sign of a cyberespionage and   campaign devised to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, the first such attempt by a foreign power in American history. What started as an   operation, intelligence officials believe, ultimately morphed into an effort to harm one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and tip the election to her opponent, Donald J. Trump. Like another famous American election scandal, it started with a   at the D. N. C. The first time, 44 years ago at the committee’s old offices in the Watergate complex, the burglars planted listening devices and jimmied a filing cabinet. This time, the burglary was conducted from afar, directed by the Kremlin, with   emails and zeros and ones. An examination by The Times of the Russian operation  —   based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response  —   reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack. The D. N. C. ’s fumbling encounter with the F. B. I. meant the best chance to halt the Russian intrusion was lost. The failure to grasp the scope of the attacks undercut efforts to minimize their impact. And the White House’s reluctance to respond forcefully meant the Russians have not paid a heavy price for their actions, a decision that could prove critical in deterring future cyberattacks. The   approach of the F. B. I. meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top D. N. C. officials were alerted to the attack and hired cyberexperts to protect their systems. In the meantime, the hackers moved on to targets outside the D. N. C. including Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, whose private email account was hacked months later. Even Mr. Podesta, a savvy Washington insider who had written a 2014 report on cyberprivacy for President Obama, did not truly understand the gravity of the hacking. By last summer, Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day  —   procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media, including The Times. Mr. Trump gleefully cited many of the purloined emails on the campaign trail. The fallout included the resignations of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the chairwoman of the D. N. C. and most of her top party aides. Leading Democrats were sidelined at the height of the campaign, silenced by revelations of embarrassing emails or consumed by the scramble to deal with the hacking. Though   by the public, confidential documents taken by the Russian hackers from the D. N. C. ’s sister organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, turned up in congressional races in a dozen states, tainting some of them with accusations of scandal. In recent days, a skeptical   the nation’s intelligence agencies and the two major parties have become embroiled in an extraordinary public dispute over what evidence exists that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia moved beyond mere espionage to deliberately try to subvert American democracy and pick the winner of the presidential election. Many of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides believe that the Russian assault had a profound impact on the election, while conceding that other factors  —   Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate her private email server the public statements of the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, about her handling of classified information  —   were also important. While there’s no way to be certain of the ultimate impact of the hack, this much is clear: A     weapon that Russia had   in elections from Ukraine to Europe was trained on the United States, with devastating effectiveness. For Russia, with an enfeebled economy and a nuclear arsenal it cannot use short of   war, cyberpower proved the perfect weapon: cheap, hard to see coming, hard to trace. “There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of United States Cyber Command, said at a postelection conference. “This was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily,” he said. “This was a conscious effort by a   to attempt to achieve a specific effect. ” For the people whose emails were stolen, this new form of political sabotage has left a trail of shock and professional damage. Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a key Clinton supporter, recalls walking into the busy Clinton transition offices, humiliated to see her face on television screens as pundits discussed a leaked email in which she had called Mrs. Clinton’s instincts “suboptimal. ” “It was just a sucker punch to the gut every day,” Ms. Tanden said. “It was the worst professional experience of my life. ” The United States, too, has carried out cyberattacks, and in decades past the C. I. A. tried to subvert foreign elections. But the Russian attack is increasingly understood across the political spectrum as an ominous historic landmark  —   with one notable exception: Mr. Trump has rejected the findings of the intelligence agencies he will soon oversee as “ridiculous,” insisting that the hacker may be American, or Chinese, but that “they have no idea. ” Mr. Trump cited the reported disagreements between the agencies about whether Mr. Putin intended to help elect him. On Tuesday, a Russian government spokesman echoed Mr. Trump’s scorn. “This tale of ‘hacks’ resembles a banal brawl between American security officials over spheres of influence,” Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote on Facebook. Over the weekend, four prominent senators  —   two Republicans and two Democrats  —   joined forces to pledge an investigation while pointedly ignoring Mr. Trump’s skeptical claims. “Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyberattacks,” said Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed. “This cannot become a partisan issue,” they said. “The stakes are too high for our country. ” Sitting in the basement of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, below a   2012 portrait of a smiling Barack Obama, is a   filing cabinet missing the handle on the bottom drawer. Only a framed newspaper story hanging on the wall hints at the importance of this aged piece of office furniture. “GOP Security Aide Among 5 Arrested in Bugging Affair,” reads the headline from the front page of The Washington Post on June 19, 1972, with the bylines of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Andrew Brown, 37, the technology director at the D. N. C. was born after that famous  . But as he began to plan for this year’s election cycle, he was well aware that the D. N. C. could become a   target again. There were aspirations to ensure that the D. N. C. was well protected against cyberintruders  —   and then there was the reality, Mr. Brown and his bosses at the organization acknowledged: The D. N. C. was a nonprofit group, dependent on donations, with a fraction of the security budget that a corporation its size would have. “There was never enough money to do everything we needed to do,” Mr. Brown said. The D. N. C. had a standard email   service, intended to block phishing attacks and malware created to resemble legitimate email. But when Russian hackers started in on the D. N. C. the committee did not have the most advanced systems in place to track suspicious traffic, internal D. N. C. memos show. Mr. Tamene, who reports to Mr. Brown and fielded the call from the F. B. I. agent, was not a   D. N. C. employee he works for a   contracting firm called The MIS Department. He was left to figure out, largely on his own, how to respond  —   and even whether the man who had called in to the D. N. C. switchboard was really an F. B. I. agent. “The F. B. I. thinks the D. N. C. has at least one compromised computer on its network and the F. B. I. wanted to know if the D. N. C. is aware, and if so, what the D. N. C. is doing about it,” Mr. Tamene wrote in an internal memo about his contacts with the F. B. I. He added that “the Special Agent told me to look for a specific type of malware dubbed ‘Dukes’ by the U. S. intelligence community and in cybersecurity circles. ” Part of the problem was that Special Agent Hawkins did not show up in person at the D. N. C. Nor could he email anyone there, as that risked alerting the hackers that the F. B. I. knew they were in the system. Mr. Tamene’s initial scan of the D. N. C. system  —   using his    tools and incomplete targeting information from the F. B. I.  —   found nothing. So when Special Agent Hawkins called repeatedly in October, leaving voice mail messages for Mr. Tamene, urging him to call back, “I did not return his calls, as I had nothing to report,” Mr. Tamene explained in his memo. In November, Special Agent Hawkins called with more ominous news. A D. N. C. computer was “calling home, where home meant Russia,” Mr. Tamene’s memo says, referring to software sending information to Moscow. “SA Hawkins added that the F. B. I. thinks that this calling home behavior could be the result of a   attack. ” Mr. Brown knew that Mr. Tamene, who declined to comment, was fielding calls from the F. B. I. But he was tied up on a different problem: evidence suggesting that the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mrs. Clinton’s main Democratic opponent, had improperly gained access to her campaign data. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, then the D. N. C. ’s chairwoman, and Amy Dacey, then its chief executive, said in interviews that neither of them was notified about the early reports that the committee’s system had likely been compromised. Shawn Henry, who once led the F. B. I. ’s cyber division and is now president of CrowdStrike Services, the cybersecurity firm retained by the D. N. C. in April, said he was baffled that the F. B. I. did not call a more senior official at the D. N. C. or send an agent in person to the party headquarters to try to force a more vigorous response. “We are not talking about an office that is in the middle of the woods of Montana,” Mr. Henry said. “We are talking about an office that is half a mile from the F. B. I. office that is getting the notification. ” “This is not a    delicatessen or a local library. This is a critical piece of the U. S. infrastructure because it relates to our electoral process, our elected officials, our legislative process, our executive process,” he added. “To me it is a   serious issue, and if after a couple of months you don’t see any results, somebody ought to raise that to a higher level. ” The F. B. I. declined to comment on the agency’s handling of the hack. “The F. B. I. takes very seriously any compromise of public and private sector systems,” it said in a statement, adding that agents “will continue to share information” to help targets “safeguard their systems against the actions of persistent cybercriminals. ” By March, Mr. Tamene and his team had met at least twice in person with the F. B. I. and concluded that Agent Hawkins was really a federal employee. But then the situation took a dire turn. A second team of   hackers began to target the D. N. C. and other players in the political world, particularly Democrats. Billy Rinehart, a former D. N. C. regional field director who was then working for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, got an odd email warning from Google. “Someone just used your password to try to sign into your Google account,” the March 22 email said, adding that the   attempt had occurred in Ukraine. “Google stopped this   attempt. You should change your password immediately. ” Mr. Rinehart was in Hawaii at the time. He remembers checking his email at 4 a. m. for messages from East Coast associates. Without thinking much about the notification, he clicked on the “change password” button and half asleep, as best he can remember, he typed in a new password. What he did not know until months later is that he had just given the Russian hackers access to his email account. Hundreds of similar phishing emails were being sent to American political targets, including an identical email sent on March 19 to Mr. Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign. Given how many emails Mr. Podesta received through this personal email account, several aides also had access to it, and one of them noticed the warning email, sending it to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the “change password” button. “This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately. ” With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account  —   a total of about 60, 000  —   were unlocked for the Russian hackers. Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an “illegitimate” email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since. During this second wave, the hackers also gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and then, through a virtual private network connection, to the main computer network of the D. N. C. The F. B. I. observed this surge of activity as well, again reaching out to Mr. Tamene to warn him. Yet Mr. Tamene still saw no reason to be alarmed: He found copies of the phishing emails in the D. N. C. ’s spam filter. But he had no reason, he said, to believe that the computer systems had been infiltrated. One bit of progress had finally been made by the middle of April: The D. N. C. seven months after it had first been warned, finally installed a “robust set of monitoring tools,” Mr. Tamene’s internal memo says. The United States had two decades of warning that Russia’s intelligence agencies were trying to break into America’s most sensitive computer networks. But the Russians have always managed to stay a step ahead. Their first major attack was detected on Oct. 7, 1996, when a computer operator at the Colorado School of Mines discovered some nighttime computer activity he could not explain. The school had a major contract with the Navy, and the operator warned his contacts there. But as happened two decades later at the D. N. C. at first “everyone was unable to connect the dots,” said Thomas Rid, a scholar at King’s College in London who has studied the attack. Investigators gave it a name  —   Moonlight Maze  —   and spent two years, often working day and night, tracing how it hopped from the Navy to the Department of Energy to the Air Force and NASA. In the end, they concluded that the total number of files stolen, if printed and stacked, would be taller than the Washington Monument. Whole weapons designs were flowing out the door, and it was a first taste of what was to come: an escalating campaign of cyberattacks around the world. But for years, the Russians stayed largely out of the headlines, thanks to the Chinese  —   who took bigger risks, and often got caught. They stole the designs for the   fighter jet, corporate secrets for rolling steel, even the blueprints for gas pipelines that supply much of the United States. And during the 2008 presidential election cycle, Chinese intelligence hacked into the campaigns of Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, making off with internal position papers and communications. But they didn’t publish any of it. The Russians had not gone away, of course. “They were just a lot more stealthy,” said Kevin Mandia, a former Air Force intelligence officer who spent most of his days fighting off Russian cyberattacks before founding Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm that is now a division of FireEye  —   and the company the Clinton campaign brought in to secure its own systems. The Russians were also quicker to turn their attacks to political purposes. A 2007 cyberattack on Estonia, a former Soviet republic that had joined NATO, sent a message that Russia could paralyze the country without invading it. The next year cyberattacks were used during Russia’s war with Georgia. But American officials did not imagine that the Russians would dare try those techniques inside the United States. They were largely focused on preventing what former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned was an approaching “cyber Pearl Harbor”  —   a shutdown of the power grid or cellphone networks. But in 2014 and 2015, a Russian hacking group began systematically targeting the State Department, the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Each time, they eventually met with some form of success,” Michael Sulmeyer, a former cyberexpert for the secretary of defense, and Ben Buchanan, now both of the Harvard Cyber Security Project, wrote recently in a    published paper for the Carnegie Endowment. The Russians grew stealthier and stealthier, tricking government computers into sending out data while disguising the electronic “command and control” messages that set off alarms for anyone looking for malicious actions. The State Department was so crippled that it repeatedly closed its systems to throw out the intruders. At one point, officials traveling to Vienna with Secretary of State John Kerry for the Iran nuclear negotiations had to set up commercial Gmail accounts just to communicate with one another and with reporters traveling with them. Mr. Obama was briefed regularly on all this, but he made a decision that many in the White House now regret: He did not name Russians publicly, or issue sanctions. There was always a reason: fear of escalating a cyberwar, and concern that the United States needed Russia’s cooperation in negotiations over Syria. “We’d have all these circular meetings,” one senior State Department official said, “in which everyone agreed you had to push back at the Russians and push back hard. But it didn’t happen. ” So the Russians escalated again  —   breaking into systems not just for espionage, but to publish or broadcast what they found, known as “doxing” in the cyberworld. It was a brazen change in tactics, moving the Russians from espionage to influence operations. In February 2014, they broadcast an intercepted phone call between Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state who handles Russian affairs and has a contentious relationship with Mr. Putin, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the United States ambassador to Ukraine. Ms. Nuland was heard describing a   American effort to broker a deal in Ukraine, then in political turmoil. They were not the only ones on whom the Russians used the    strategy. The Open Society Foundation, run by George Soros, was a major target, and when its documents were released, some turned out to have been altered to make it appear as if the foundation was financing Russian opposition members. Last year, the attacks became more aggressive. Russia hacked a major French television station, frying critical hardware. Around Christmas, it attacked part of the power grid in Ukraine, dropping a portion of the country into darkness, killing backup generators and taking control of generators. In retrospect, it was a warning shot. The attacks “were not fully integrated military operations,” Mr. Sulmeyer said. But they showed an increasing boldness. The day before the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April, Ms. Dacey, the D. N. C. ’s chief executive, was preparing for a night of parties when she got an urgent phone call. With the new monitoring system in place, Mr. Tamene had examined administrative logs of the D. N. C. ’s computer system and found something very suspicious: An unauthorized person, with   security status, had gained access to the D. N. C. ’s computers. “Not sure it is related to what the F. B. I. has been noticing,” said one internal D. N. C. email sent on April 29. “The D. N. C. may have been hacked in a serious way this week, with password theft, etc. ” No one knew just how bad the breach was  —   but it was clear that a lot more than a single filing cabinet worth of materials might have been taken. A secret committee was immediately created, including Ms. Dacey, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Brown and Michael Sussmann, a former cybercrimes prosecutor at the Department of Justice who now works at Perkins Coie, the Washington law firm that handles D. N. C. political matters. “Three most important questions,” Mr. Sussmann wrote to his clients the night the   was confirmed. “1) What data was accessed? 2) How was it done? 3) How do we stop it?” Mr. Sussmann instructed his clients not to use D. N. C. email because they had just one opportunity to lock the hackers out  —   an effort that could be foiled if the hackers knew that the D. N. C. was on to them. “You only get one chance to raise the drawbridge,” Mr. Sussmann said. “If the adversaries know you are aware of their presence, they will take steps to burrow in, or erase the logs that show they were present. ” The D. N. C. immediately hired CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, to scan its computers, identify the intruders and build a new computer and telephone system from scratch. Within a day, CrowdStrike confirmed that the intrusion had originated in Russia, Mr. Sussmann said. The work that such companies do is a computer version of   crime scene investigation, with fingerprints, bullet casings and DNA swabs replaced by an electronic trail that can be just as incriminating. And just as police detectives learn to identify the telltale methods of a veteran burglar, so CrowdStrike investigators recognized the distinctive handiwork of Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear. Those are CrowdStrike’s nicknames for the two Russian hacking groups that the firm found at work inside the D. N. C. network. Cozy Bear  —   the group also known as the Dukes or A. P. T. 29, for “advanced persistent threat”  —   may or may not be associated with the F. S. B. the main successor to the   K. G. B. but it is widely believed to be a Russian government operation. It made its first appearance in 2014, said Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s   and chief technology officer. It was Cozy Bear, CrowdStrike concluded, that first penetrated the D. N. C. in the summer of 2015, by sending   emails to a long list of American government agencies, Washington nonprofits and government contractors. Whenever someone clicked on a phishing message, the Russians would enter the network, “exfiltrate” documents of interest and stockpile them for intelligence purposes. “Once they got into the D. N. C. they found the data valuable and decided to continue the operation,” said Mr. Alperovitch, who was born in Russia and moved to the United States as a teenager. Only in March 2016 did Fancy Bear show up  —   first penetrating the computers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and then jumping to the D. N. C. investigators believe. Fancy Bear, sometimes called A. P. T. 28 and believed to be directed by the G. R. U. Russia’s military intelligence agency, is an older outfit, tracked by Western investigators for nearly a decade. It was Fancy Bear that got hold of Mr. Podesta’s email. Attribution, as the skill of identifying a cyberattacker is known, is more art than science. It is often impossible to name an attacker with absolute certainty. But over time, by accumulating a reference library of hacking techniques and targets, it is possible to spot repeat offenders. Fancy Bear, for instance, has gone after military and political targets in Ukraine and Georgia, and at NATO installations. That largely rules out cybercriminals and most countries, Mr. Alperovitch said. “There’s no plausible actor that has an interest in all those victims other than Russia,” he said. Another clue: The Russian hacking groups tended to be active during working hours in the Moscow time zone. To their astonishment, Mr. Alperovitch said, CrowdStrike experts found signs that the two Russian hacking groups had not coordinated their attacks. Fancy Bear, apparently not knowing that Cozy Bear had been rummaging in D. N. C. files for months, took many of the same documents. In the six weeks after CrowdStrike’s arrival, in total secrecy, the computer system at the D. N. C. was replaced. For a weekend, email and phones were shut off employees were told it was a system upgrade. All laptops were turned in and the hard drives wiped clean, with the uninfected information on them imaged to new drives. Though D. N. C. officials had learned that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had been infected, too, they did not notify their sister organization, which was in the same building, because they were afraid that it would leak. All of this work took place as the bitter contest for the Democratic nomination continued to play out between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders, and it was already causing a major distraction for Ms. Wasserman Schultz and the D. N. C. ’s chief executive. “This was not a bump in the road  —   bumps in the road happen all the time,” she said in an interview. “Two different Russian spy agencies had hacked into our network and stolen our property. And we did not yet know what they had taken. But we knew they had very broad access to our network. There was a tremendous amount of uncertainty. And it was chilling. ” The D. N. C. executives and their lawyer had their first formal meeting with senior F. B. I. officials in   nine months after the bureau’s first call to the   contractor. Among the early requests at that meeting, according to participants: that the federal government make a quick “attribution” formally blaming actors with ties to Russian government for the attack to make clear that it was not routine hacking but foreign espionage. “You have a presidential election underway here and you know that the Russians have hacked into the D. N. C. ,” Mr. Sussmann said, recalling the message to the F. B. I. “We need to tell the American public that. And soon. ” In   on Mr. Sussmann’s advice, D. N. C. leaders decided to take a bold step. Concerned that word of the hacking might leak, they decided to go public in The Washington Post with the news that the committee had been attacked. That way, they figured, they could get ahead of the story, win a little sympathy from voters for being victimized by Russian hackers and refocus on the campaign. But the very next day, a new, deeply unsettling shock awaited them. Someone calling himself Guccifer 2. 0 appeared on the web, claiming to be the D. N. C. hacker  —   and he posted a confidential committee document detailing Mr. Trump’s record and half a dozen other documents to prove his bona fides. “And it’s just a tiny part of all docs I downloaded from the Democrats networks,” he wrote. Then something more ominous: “The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks. They will publish them soon. ” It was bad enough that Russian hackers had been spying inside the committee’s network for months. Now the public release of documents had turned a conventional espionage operation into something far more menacing: political sabotage, an unpredictable, uncontrollable menace for Democratic campaigns. Guccifer 2. 0 borrowed the moniker of an earlier hacker, a Romanian who called himself Guccifer and was jailed for breaking into the personal computers of former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other notables. This new attacker seemed intent on showing that the D. N. C. ’s cyberexperts at CrowdStrike were wrong to blame Russia. Guccifer 2. 0 called himself a “lone hacker” and mocked CrowdStrike for calling the attackers “sophisticated. ” But online investigators quickly undercut his story. On a whim, Lorenzo   a writer for Motherboard, the tech and culture site of Vice, tried to contact Guccifer 2. 0 by direct message on Twitter. “Surprisingly, he answered right away,” Mr.   said. But whoever was on the other end seemed to be mocking him. “I asked him why he did it, and he said he wanted to expose the Illuminati. He called himself a Gucci lover. And he said he was Romanian. ” That gave Mr.   an idea. Using Google Translate, he sent the purported hacker some questions in Romanian. The answers came back in Romanian. But when he was offline, Mr.   checked with a couple of native speakers, who told him Guccifer 2. 0 had apparently been using Google Translate as well  —   and was clearly not the Romanian he claimed to be. Cyberresearchers found other clues pointing to Russia. Microsoft Word documents posted by Guccifer 2. 0 had been edited by someone calling himself, in Russian, Felix Edmundovich  —   an obvious nom de guerre honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police, Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. Bad links in the texts were marked by warnings in Russian, generated by what was clearly a   version of Word. When Mr.   managed to engage Guccifer 2. 0 over a period of weeks, he found that his interlocutor’s tone and manner changed. “At first he was careless and colloquial. Weeks later, he was curt and more calculating,” he said. “It seemed like a group of people, and a very sloppy attempt to cover up. ” Computer experts drew the same conclusion about DCLeaks. com, a site that sprang up in June, claiming to be the work of “hacktivists” but posting more stolen documents. It, too, seemed to be a clumsy front for the same Russians who had stolen the documents. Notably, the website was registered in April, suggesting that the Russian hacking team planned well in advance to make public what it stole. In addition to what Guccifer 2. 0 published on his site, he provided material directly on request to some bloggers and publications. The steady flow of Guccifer 2. 0 documents constantly undercut Democratic messaging efforts. On July 6, 12 days before the Republican National Convention began in Cleveland, Guccifer released the D. N. C. ’s battle plan and budget for countering it. For Republican operatives, it was insider gold. Then WikiLeaks, a far more established outlet, began to publish the hacked material  —   just as Guccifer 2. 0 had promised. On July 22, three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, WikiLeaks dumped out 44, 053 D. N. C. emails with 17, 761 attachments. Some of the messages made clear that some D. N. C. officials favored Mrs. Clinton over her progressive challenger, Mr. S"
 expressed delight at the continuing jolts to his opponent
"When the United Nations’ top   official tried to inspect an infamous prison in Gambia two years ago, officials there denied him access. So he protested all the way up the country’s chain of command. In a tense meeting with members of the cabinet of the country’s autocratic ruler, the United Nations official, Juan E. Méndez, was again denied, this time with a jeering dismissal. “They said, ‘Why don’t you go to Guantánamo instead,’” recalled Mr. Mendez, a former United Nations special rapporteur on torture. In Bahrain, officials were a little more subtle, but the message was the same, as they twice canceled prison inspection visits. “They said we face the same threats to national security as other countries face,” Mr. Mendez said. “It was clear they were referring to the United States, and they didn’t feel that they needed to give me access. ” Now, after   Donald J. Trump’s campaign vows to reinstate the sort of torture used in the   war on terrorism  —   and to fill the Guantánamo Bay prison with “some bad dudes”  —   human rights experts fear that authoritarian regimes around the world will see it as another green light to carry out their own abuses. A return to such “enhanced interrogation”  —   and even to techniques that Mr. Trump has pledged will be “much worse”  —   would also send a powerful message just as nations around the world have begun to examine their own past abuses to ensure that they will not be repeated. “Sometimes we see progress, and then we see ” said Victor   the   of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, a   umbrella organization for   groups. “When the U. S. was engaging in torture, that created an enormous   of the pendulum,” he added. “There were a lot of officials in other countries during the Bush administration who were saying, ‘The Americans are doing it, so why can’t we?’ Now, with Trump saying, ‘I will bring a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,’ you can imagine how far we could go backwards. ” Nils Melzer, who succeeded Mr. Mendez as the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture in November, warned that if the Trump administration revived the use of torture, the consequences around the world “would be catastrophic. ” A fragile consensus against torture, said José Miguel Vivanco, the regional director for the Americas for Human Rights Watch, could be shattered “when you have the White House openly advocating for torture. ” During the campaign, Mr. Trump declared that “torture works,” and he vowed to “immediately” reinstate techniques like waterboarding because “we have to beat the savages” of the Islamic State, who “deserve” such treatment even if it is fruitless. Since the election, Mr. Trump has indicated that he might be reconsidering his position, citing the firm stance against torture by James N. Mattis, his Pentagon nominee. In an interview with The New York Times in November, Mr. Trump said that he was “surprised” when Mr. Mattis told him that he opposed torture and instead favored more humane interrogations of prisoners based on rapport building. But Mr. Trump did not close the door entirely. If Americans feel strongly about bringing back waterboarding and other tactics, he said, “I would be guided by that. ” Nora Sveaass, a psychologist at the University of Oslo and a former member of the United Nations Committee Against Torture, warned that if Mr. Trump revived the use of torture by the United States, it would have a ripple effect around the globe. “The U. S. is a very strong voice,” Ms. Sveaass said. “It’s just like putting a bomb into all of those major principles  —   the absolute prohibition on torture the absolute obligation to provide redress and justice to victims of torture, including rehabilitation the obligation to investigate and hold people to account,” she added. “If one country such as the U. S. openly torpedoes those principles, you can just forget about asking for compliance from states already challenging the absolute prohibition. ” The signal from Mr. Trump that torture is acceptable again comes just as countries from Argentina to Tunisia, either through courts or special truth commissions, are engaged in tentative efforts to hold themselves accountable for past conduct. In Argentina, Omar Graffigna, the    former chief of the country’s air force, was sentenced to prison in September for the 1978 kidnapping and torture of two   activists, Patricia Roisinblit and José Manuel Pérez Rojo. The prosecution of Mr. Graffigna was just one in a series of old cases that have been brought into the courts this year in Argentina, as the nation comes to grips with the legacy of its “dirty war” of the 1970s and early 1980s. In Tunisia, a new Truth and Dignity Commission held its first hearings in November, allowing torture victims to tell their harrowing stories before a national television audience. The commission was created to investigate torture and other human rights violations dating to 1955, primarily by the regime of President Zine   Ben Ali, who was deposed during the Arab Spring in 2011. And in December, Bolivia’s legislature voted to create a truth commission to investigate torture, murders and other crimes committed by a series of authoritarian regimes from 1964 to 1982. Even in countries that have not conducted such   investigations, new     organizations have begun to take root, and those groups are trying to make it more difficult for their governments to continue to engage in torture with secrecy and impunity. Samuel Herbert Nsubuga, the chief executive of the African Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, based in Uganda, said   legislation that the country passed in 2012 had still not been put into effect. When the law finally takes effect, “our challenge will be to bring some people to trial in Uganda for torture,” he said. In the meantime, his group has enlisted doctors and psychologists to provide medical help and therapy to torture victims, as well as lawyers to provide legal advice. But the moves toward examining past abuses are so far limited to relatively small nations or countries where the focus is on historical events rather than the current use of torture. The inquiries are also often being conducted in the face of strong resistance from top government officials, who oppose aggressive investigations even of past crimes. Those modest efforts could face sharp setbacks if Mr. Trump brings back banned practices. “I am afraid that Trump’s government will question the basic values of the international order, and torturing people will be justified,” said Carlos Jibaja, a psychologist with CAPS, a group in Lima, Peru, that helps victims of torture. At the same time, Mr. Trump’s advocacy of torture may encourage some major countries, like Russia and the Philippines, to be even more open and aggressive in their use of torture. Olga Sadovskaya, the vice chairwoman of the Committee Against Torture, a human rights group in Russia, said that torture was already common in the country. She noted that Russian prison and police officials routinely used torture tactics with cruel nicknames, such as the “President Putin,” which involves attaching wires from an office telephone to a victim’s body and then running electric current through it. The police like that tactic, she said, because it does not leave marks. Edeliza Hernandez, the executive director of the Medical Action Group in the Philippines, an organization that documents cases of torture and provides treatment and rehabilitation, estimated that there were 200 political prisoners in detention centers in the country, and said that most of them had been tortured. “The government has soldiers watch us while we inspect prisoners,” she said. Mr. Melzer, the United Nations official, warned that if Mr. Trump followed through on his pledges, more countries would follow his lead and get back into the torture business. “What kind of message would that be to the world?” Mr. Melzer asked. “It couldn’t be worse. What happens to the role of the United States as an example in the world, and what would that mean for the policies of other states? If the United States does it, those other countries will know they can get away with it. The last thing the world needs is a U. S. president legitimizing this. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —   Vice   Mike Pence and the top Republicans in Congress made clear on Wednesday, more powerfully and explicitly than ever, that they are dead serious about repealing the Affordable Care Act. How they can uproot a law deeply embedded in the nation’s health care system without hurting some of the 20 million people who have gained coverage through it is not clear. Nor is it yet evident that millions of Americans with   medical conditions will be fully protected against disruptions in their health coverage. But a determined Republican president and Congress can gut the Affordable Care Act, and do it quickly: a    health care revolution in reverse that would undo many of the changes made since the law was signed by President Obama in March 2010. The Senate intends to pass a budget resolution next week that would shield repeal legislation from a Democratic filibuster. If the Senate completes its action, House Republican leaders hope that they, too, can approve a version of the budget resolution next week. Whether they can meet that goal is unclear. The resolution contains seemingly innocuous language, instructing four committees that control health care policy  —   two in the Senate, two in the House  —   to draft legislation within their jurisdiction that would cut at least $1 billion from the deficit over 10 years. But that language has real teeth. The legislation produced to meet those instructions can pass the Senate with a simple majority  —   51 votes if all senators are present  —   obliterating the power of the Democratic minority to block it. Those four committees would have just a few weeks, until Jan. 27, to produce legislation repealing major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans have some practice at this, because they have voted more than 60 times since 2011 to repeal some or all of the law. The budget blueprint will guide Congress but will not be presented to the president for a signature or veto. The committees  —   House Energy and Commerce, House Ways and Means, Senate Finance, and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions  —   will quickly assemble legislation intended to eviscerate the health care law. The repeal legislation will be in the form of a reconciliation bill, authorized by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Such bills can be adopted under special   procedures. But Senate rules generally bar the use of those procedures for measures that have no effect on spending or revenue. So the legislation, as now conceived, would probably leave the most popular provisions of the health law intact, such as the prohibition on insurers’ denying coverage to people with   conditions. Instead, the legislation would: ■ Eliminate the tax penalties imposed on people who go without insurance and on larger employers who do not offer coverage to employees. ■ Eliminate tens of billions of dollars provided each year to states that have expanded eligibility for Medicaid. ■ Repeal subsidies for private health insurance coverage obtained through the public marketplaces known as exchanges. It could also repeal some of the taxes and fees that help pay for the expansion of coverage under the Affordable Care Act. But some Republicans have indicated that they may want to use some of that revenue for their    plan to replace the health care law. The 2010 law imposed taxes and fees on certain   people and on health insurers and manufacturers of   prescription drugs and medical devices, among others. Republicans have not said for sure which taxes they will scrap and which they may keep. Republicans say they will delay the effective date of their repeal bill to avoid disrupting coverage and to provide time for them to develop alternatives to Mr. Obama’s law. They disagree over how long the delay should last, with two to four years being mentioned as possibilities. Within days of taking office,   Donald J. Trump plans to announce executive actions on health care. Some may undo Obama administration policies. Others will be meant to stabilize health insurance markets and prevent them from collapsing in a vast sea of uncertainty. “We are working on a series of executive orders that the   will put into effect to ensure that there is an orderly transition, during the period after we repeal Obamacare, to a   health care economy,” Mr. Pence said at the Capitol on Wednesday. He did not provide details, and Trump transition aides said they had no information about the executive orders. But some options are apparent. The federal government could continue providing financial assistance to insurance companies to protect them against financial losses and to prevent consumers’ premiums from soaring more than they have in the last few years. Even as they move full speed toward gutting the existing health law, Republicans are scrambling to find a replacement. At the moment, they have no consensus. Mr. Pence said on Wednesday that the replacement would probably encourage greater use of personal health savings accounts and make it easier for carriers to sell insurance across state lines. Also, he said, it would encourage small businesses to band together and buy insurance through “association health plans” sponsored by business and professional organizations. Some type of subsidy or tax credit for consumers, to help defray the cost of premiums, is also likely. States would have more authority to set insurance standards, and the federal government would have less. Mr. Trump has also endorsed the idea of   “  pools” for people with   conditions who would otherwise have difficulty finding affordable coverage. Many experts have said that repealing the health law without a clear plan to replace it could create havoc in insurance markets. Doctors, hospitals and insurance companies do not know what to expect. Without an effective requirement for people to carry insurance, and without subsidies to buy it, supporters of the law say many healthy people would go without coverage, knowing they could obtain it if they became ill and needed it. Democrats in Congress say they will do everything they can to thwart Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. They plan to dramatize their case by publicizing the experiences of people whose lives have been saved or improved by the law. In the Senate next week, Democrats will demand votes intended to put Republicans on record against proposals that could protect consumers. Defenders of the law also hope to mobilize groups like the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association to speak up for patients. The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, and the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, are encouraging their colleagues to organize rallies around the country on Jan. 15 to oppose the Republicans’ health care agenda. And to buttress their case, Democrats are compiling statistics from the White House and from researchers at   groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Commonwealth Fund and the Urban Institute, which warn of catastrophic consequences if the law is repealed."
"WASHINGTON  —     Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods. The mandate  —   issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said  —   threatens to leave the United States without   envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a    basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with   children, to remain in place for weeks or months. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has taken a hard line against leaving any of President Obama’s political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20 with a mission of dismantling many of his predecessor’s signature foreign and domestic policy achievements. “Political” ambassadors, many of them major donors who are nominated by virtue of close ties with the president, almost always leave at the end of his term ambassadors who are career diplomats often remain in their posts. A senior Trump transition official said there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring that Mr. Obama’s overseas appointees leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal deliberations, said the ambassadors should not be surprised about being held to a hard end date. The directive has nonetheless upended the personal lives of many ambassadors, who are scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to remain in their countries so their children can remain in school, the diplomats said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. In Costa Rica, Ambassador Stafford Fitzgerald Haney is hunting for a house or an apartment as his family  —   which includes four   children and his wife, who has been battling breast cancer  —   struggles to figure out how to avoid a move back to the United States with five months left in the school year, according to the diplomats. In the Czech Republic, they said, Ambassador Andrew H. Schapiro is seeking housing in Prague as well as lobbying his children’s   school to break with policy and accept them back midyear. In Brussels and Geneva, Denise Bauer, the United States ambassador to Belgium, and Pamela Hamamoto, the permanent representative to the United Nations, are both trying to find a way to keep daughters from having to move just months before their high school graduation. Ronald E. Neumann, the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a   nonprofit association for former ambassadors and senior diplomats, said it was reasonable to expect ambassadors to return at the end of a term, given that they are direct representatives of the president with broad grants of authority. But he could not recall an occasion on which such a strict timeline had been applied. “When you have people out there whose only reason for being an ambassador is their political connection to the outgoing president of a different party, it’s pretty logical to say they should leave,” said Mr. Neumann, a career Foreign Service officer who held ambassadorships in Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan. “But I don’t recollect there was ever a guillotine in January where it was just, ‘Everybody out of the pool immediately. ’” W. Robert Pearson, a former ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the rule was “quite extraordinary,” adding that it could undermine American interests and signal a hasty change in direction that exacerbates jitters among allies about their relationships with the new administration. With the world already primed to be worrying about such an abrupt change, “this is just a very concrete signal that it is going to happen,” Mr. Pearson said. At a White House farewell reception that Mr. Obama held on Wednesday night for noncareer ambassadors, many of them commiserated, attendees said, comparing notes about how to handle the situation. Some expressed dismay that Mr. Trump, whose wife, Melania, has chosen to stay in New York to avoid moving the couple’s    son, Barron, to a new school midyear, would not ensure that such allowances were made for American ambassadors. They are weighing a direct appeal to Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, or other top transition officials to reconsider the policy. Derek Shearer, a professor of diplomacy at Occidental College who is a former United States ambassador to Finland, said it was difficult to see a rationale for the decision. “It feels like there’s an element just of spite and payback in it,” he said. “I don’t see a higher policy motive. ” The State Department informed all politically appointed ambassadors in a letter the day after the election that they were to submit letters of resignation effective Jan. 20. It instructed those who wanted to seek extensions to submit formal requests explaining their justifications. Incoming presidents of both parties have often made exceptions to allow ambassadors to wrap up personal affairs and important diplomatic business while their successors were in the confirmation process, which can take months. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Mr. Obama all granted extensions for a few politically appointed ambassadors. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell offered particularly wide latitude to ambassadors facing family issues, said Marc Grossman, a longtime diplomat and former top State Department official who is vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a Washington consultancy. “This was something that was important to Secretary Powell because of his own experience living and serving all over the world, so when people asked him, ‘Could I stay another couple of weeks, couple of months my kids are finishing school,’ he was very accommodating,” Mr. Grossman said, adding that his flexibility was an “exception” to the general practice. “He was trying to, I think, send a message that family was important. ”"
"WASHINGTON  —     Donald J. Trump lashed out at Democrats on Thursday over their efforts to preserve President Obama’s health care coverage law, insulting their top legislative leader and denouncing the measure as a “lie” as he called for a less expensive and more effective system. “The Democrats, lead by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad ObamaCare is and what a mess they are in,” Mr. Trump wrote in the first of three   posts on Twitter. The posts arrived the day after Mr. Obama huddled with Democrats on Capitol Hill to strategize over protecting the Affordable Care Act and Vice   Mike Pence met with Republicans about how to gut it. “Instead of working to fix it, they do the typical political thing and BLAME,” Mr. Trump continued on Twitter. “The fact is ObamaCare was a lie from the beginning. ‘Keep you doctor, keep your plan! ’” He said it was time for Republicans and Democrats to work together on a “plan that really works  —   much less expensive  FAR BETTER!” The messages could be seen as Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to seize the narrative of the day and deflect attention from a story line less favorable to him. Senate Republicans convened a hearing on Thursday to examine intelligence that the Russians engaged in computer hacking to affect the outcome of the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump has disputed that the Russians were to blame, and he has criticized American intelligence agencies for their work. Mr. Trump also used the social media platform to push back against criticism he attracted on Wednesday for siding with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, over United States intelligence officials in rejecting Russian responsibility for the hacking. Mr. Trump’s latest Twitter salvo also appeared to be an attempt to mount a political defense of his bid to scrap the law that has provided health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans, as Democrats work to make that effort politically toxic. Mr. Schumer responded later Thursday, saying the   was in a “difficult spot” on the issue. “Instead of calling names,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump “should roll up his sleeves and show us a replacement plan that will cover the 20 million Americans who gained coverage, that will cover students or   students, 21 to 26, who want to stay on their parents’ plan, that will show how we cover people with   conditions. ” On Wednesday, the   appeared to acknowledge the challenges of doing so without being saddled by voters with a share of blame for the shortcomings of the measure. “Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed ObamaCare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, adding in a separate post: “Don’t let the Schumer clowns out of this web. ” His comments on Thursday came as Mr. Obama took a subtle swipe at the   in a farewell letter, without naming him, writing that Americans never voted for rolling back the health care measure. “What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again  —   none of which   Americans voted for,” Mr. Obama said in the   letter. As the debate unfolded in Washington, Mr. Trump on Thursday spent more than an hour sitting for a deposition in New York as part of his legal feud with the renowned chef José Andres, whom Mr. Trump is suing for pulling out of a plan to open a new restaurant in his luxury hotel near the White House. Mr. Andres, who is   has said he canceled the project because of Mr. Trump’s disparaging rhetoric about Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign. Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, called the case “fairly straightforward. ” “In short, the parties entered into a valid and enforceable lease, which the tenant clearly breached by walking out and failing to perform its obligations, thereby entitling the landlord to recover damages in the form of unpaid rent, cost of build out, lost profits and other expenses,” Mr. Garten said in a statement."
"TALLADEGA, Ala.  —   For a band at a tiny,   historically black college, it seems in some ways to be the gig of a lifetime: a chance to march and perform at the Jan. 20 presidential inaugural parade in Washington. Some of the musicians at Talladega College have been excited to see the capital for the first time. But because the   is Donald J. Trump, the school has become the subject of an impassioned national outcry, with online petitions, threats to end donations and a flurry of    from alumni who feel that performing in the parade would betray the values of an institution founded by newly freed slaves 150 years ago. On Thursday, after days of speculation that the college administration might bow to the pressure and remove the band from the parade roster, the president of Talladega College, Billy Hawkins, issued a statement confirming the participation of the band, the Marching Tornadoes, and argued, in essence, that the 58th presidential inauguration is about something bigger than Mr. Trump. “We respect and appreciate how our students and alumni feel about our participation in this parade,” Dr. Hawkins said. “As many of those who chose to participate in the parade have said, we feel the inauguration of a new president is not a political event but a civil ceremony celebrating the transfer of power. ” Similar issues have been raised about other entertainers scheduled to perform, among them the Radio City Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But because of Talladega’s history, the issues have been especially intense here, with calls for the college to reverse its decision to take part in the festivities. And beyond Talladega, the controversies raise tough questions for Mr. Trump’s most ardent critics as his presidency dawns: What is the proper response to a president as polarizing as Mr. Trump? Should the office of the president be honored, no matter who fills it? Or should there be four years of pure rejection and defiance? And if Mr. Trump’s opponents refuse to participate in his presidency, can critics on the right do the same thing to some other   in the future? To a number of Talladega alumni, the Dec. 30 announcement that the band would march in the parade was an insult to the very principles of the college, which was established two years after the end of the Civil War. The school is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination that was deeply involved in the civil rights movement, and for decades it served as an incubator for theories and practices of social justice. Nikky Finney, a poet and Talladega graduate who is now a professor at the University of South Carolina, said in a statement this week that the band should not help celebrate Mr. Trump, who, she said, has maligned women and Mexican immigrants and has proposed barring all Muslims from entering the country. In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Finney, channeling a James Brown lyric, said the college had “sold out the history of Talladega College for chicken change” and “maybe a tin star on a hatemonger’s parade route. ” As of Thursday afternoon, an online petition calling for the band to withdraw from the inaugural parade had attracted more than 1, 900 signers, some of them supporters of the college who have threatened to withhold future contributions. But a second petition, which had nearly 300 supporters, argued that the parade was not about politics but “about seeing firsthand the process of a transition” and giving the students a chance to be a part of history. “We are not   thinkers and believe everyone is entitled” to their own beliefs, it stated. “However, we are in support of the United States of America. ” As the debate heated up this week in online forums for students and alumni, the leadership at the private,   college hunkered down to consider how best to proceed. The campus police ordered reporters off the   campus. Brief interviews with a few band members on Tuesday evening revealed a group divided. Jerome Haynes, 18, a freshman who plays the snare drum, said he hoped politics would not get in the way of an exciting opportunity for the band. In contrast, Ronald Peterson, 21, a sophomore who plays cymbals, said he was going to talk to the director about staying home. “I feel that those who are not Republicans should not have to play for it,” he said. On Thursday afternoon, some students said the administration had done the right thing, despite the protests from alumni. Antonio Phillips, 24, a senior and a drum major, welcomed the exposure. “We’re musicians, so this is a good platform for us to showcase our talent in front of the world,” he said. His friend Ken Randolph, 20, a junior who is not in the band, said the concerns of alumni like Ms. Finney “weigh heavily on the students of Talladega. ” But he said Mr. Trump might benefit from the exposure to a black art form. “This is a part of our culture,” Mr. Randolph said. “With it being on his front doorstep, he might be able to apprehend the vibe and the culture. ” That drama in Talladega, a city of 15, 000 about an hour’s drive east of Birmingham, played out as black activists, including the N. A. A. C. P. president, Cornell William Brooks, were arrested on Tuesday in Mobile in a   action at the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican nominated to be attorney general in the Trump administration. Mr. Sessions, who is white, was rejected by the Senate for a federal judgeship in 1986 after he was accused of making racially insensitive statements. To some Talladega alumni, the possibility that policies long opposed by   could now be enacted by a   Congress and executive branch was what made the notion of a black band marching for Mr. Trump seem so distasteful. “There’s a great deal of fear in this country that the Voting Rights Act is going to be abolished, that the Affordable Care Act is going to be abolished, that Planned Parenthood is going to be cut off from funding, that Medicaid is going be cut off from funding,” said J. Mason Davis, a Birmingham lawyer who graduated from the college in 1956. “Don’t you understand why we have a fear of the man?” Donavon Jackson, 24, a former trumpet player in the band who graduated last year, said performing as part of the inauguration would be particularly special for a college of about 1, 000 students whose band program is only about five years old. The school does not have a football team, which makes parade invitations all the more important. “I’m honored to go to a school that can say they marched in an inauguration parade,” said Mr. Jackson, who received a chemistry degree and now lives in Houston. “Not necessarily for the person  —   and that’s not necessarily saying he’s a bad person. ” In the statement on Thursday, school officials said they still faced the “challenge” of raising more than $60, 000 to cover expenses for the trip. The population of the city of Talladega is divided about evenly between blacks and whites, and to a visitor, it can feel like a place where racial harmony and discord coexist on seemingly parallel planes. Whites speak with pride about the historic black college downtown  —   though one white person was overheard on Wednesday warning of a liberal plot to foment a “race war” so that President Obama might declare martial law before the inauguration. While some residents said the band should stay home, and others said it should attend the event in Washington, a few spoke harshly of Mr. Trump while hoping the inauguration would help the band get noticed  —   something the city, which was bypassed by the interstate highway system, has struggled with in recent decades. Bonquita McClellan, 26, manages her father’s restaurant, Big Mac’s Open Pit BBQ, near campus. Ms. McClellan, who is black, said the disdain for Mr. Trump among her   peers was universal. “If anybody would have had us in concentration camps,” she said, “it’d be him. ” But she also said the band should go and make a name for itself in the nation’s capital. “How often,” she asked, “does Talladega College get a chance to play for the president?” Up the street at a real estate office near the   courthouse, Randy and Heather Roberts, a white couple who voted for Mr. Trump, raved about the Talladega College band and its performance at the Dec. 5 Christmas parade. Ms. Roberts showed a video of the band on her phone. “They were phenomenal,” Ms. Roberts said. Ms. Roberts, 41, said she grew up with black and white friends. Mr. Roberts, 48, said he and his wife were pleased to cater to their multiracial clientele. But when they spoke about politics, the couple sounded like people who knew something was broken but did not know how it might be fixed. “It is not going to be pleasant for the next four years,” Ms. Roberts said. “It is going to be a battle. ”"
"After more than five years of investigations and negotiations, the curious case of MF Global is finally closed. On Thursday, federal regulators announced a $5 million settlement with Jon S. Corzine, who ran MF Global when it collapsed into bankruptcy in 2011 and lost more than $1 billion in customer money. The settlement, reached unanimously at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the waning days of the Obama administration and approved by a federal judge this week, caps a   spectacle that derailed Mr. Corzine’s career and spurred a number of congressional, criminal and regulatory investigations. The regulatory case arose in 2013, when the commodities agency sued Mr. Corzine, a Democratic former New Jersey senator and governor, saying he had failed to “diligently supervise” the firm as it jeopardized the clients’ accounts. The agency did not directly link Mr. Corzine, 70, to the missing money, but it did accuse a   employee in Chicago, Edith O’Brien, of “aiding and abetting” the misuse of customer money, saying she allowed it to be used to plug holes in MF Global’s own accounts. To resolve the case, Mr. Corzine has agreed to pay the $5 million penalty out of his own pocket. While the sum is manageable for someone who reaped many millions of dollars as a top Goldman Sachs executive before pursuing a career in politics, it is an unusual step. In other federal cases involving Wall Street, insurance money often covers settlement amounts, sparing the executives themselves. While Mr. Corzine was willing to settle the case, Ms. O’Brien nearly took it to trial. But in recent weeks she, too, agreed to settle, striking a deal that has imposed a $500, 000 penalty and an   prohibition on her associating with a futures broker like MF Global. Mr. Corzine agreed to a harsher undertaking  —   accepting a lifetime prohibition from leading a futures broker or registering with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In effect, that means he will not personally trade other people’s money in the futures industry, except for smaller trades under certain threshold limits. Mr. Corzine, in theory, could still operate a hedge fund that does futures trading, and he could trade for his own account. The settlement also does not prevent him from trading in other markets. “This resolution demonstrates the importance that the commission attaches to customer protection, which has long been a hallmark of our mission,” Aitan Goelman, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission enforcement division, said in a statement announcing the settlement. The settlements, the contours of which were reported by The New York Times in October, bring a   close to the MF Global ordeal. The criminal investigations ended with the conclusion that MF Global employees did not intentionally break the law. Just last year, Mr. Corzine settled much of the private MF Global litigation. And a trustee has long recovered the missing customer money (much of it wound up at MF Global’s banks and clearinghouses) and made whole the farmers and hedge funds whose accounts were raided in the firm’s final days. In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Corzine said, “As the C. E. O. of MF Global in 2011, I have accepted responsibility for its failure, and I deeply regret the impact it had on customers, employees, shareholders and others. ” He added: “I remain gratified that several years ago all customer money was recovered and returned to MF Global customers. ” His lawyer, Andrew J. Levander, said: “Mr. Corzine has given more than 10 days of testimony under oath, and these matters have been investigated exhaustively by two U. S. attorney’s offices, the F. B. I. the S. E. C. the C. F. T. C. Finra and Congress. ” (Finra is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.) And yet, Mr. Levander said, “None of these investigations have led to allegations that Mr. Corzine engaged in any kind of intentional misconduct or fraud, or that he was at any time not truthful in his many hours of testimony. ” The case also concludes a   political challenge for the commodities agency, which came under fire for not preventing a breach of customer money at a firm it regulated. Compounding the pressure, Mr. Corzine was a sensitive target, a prominent Democrat who has been a confidant of leaders in Washington and on Wall Street. Against that backdrop, the agency extracted the $5 million payout from Mr. Corzine, a sum far greater than what it could have expected to win if he had been found liable at trial. During negotiations with Mr. Corzine last year, the commission also strengthened aspects of the deal after some of the agency’s commissioners questioned it, The New York Times reported at the time. The case against Mr. Corzine was among the agency’s biggest enforcement actions in the Obama administration. And after MF Global’s demise, on Halloween in 2011, the commodities agency used the episode to tighten the rules for protecting customer money. The disappearance of the money from MF Global unnerved the futures industry and raised broader concerns about the safety of customer funds across Wall Street. Further review showed that MF Global’s financial straits left it vulnerable to a breach. Mr. Corzine joined MF Global as chief executive and chairman in 2010 after the firm had lost money in each of the previous three years. In hopes of returning the firm to profitability  —   and perhaps transforming it into a miniature Goldman Sachs  —   Mr. Corzine placed a large wager on European sovereign debt at a time when investors feared defaults in the eurozone. Although his bet ultimately would have been profitable for MF Global, and the European bonds paid out for other firms that bought the debt, it was not enough to save the firm from unrelated woes. MF Global’s auditor, for example, made the firm write down the value of a significant future tax benefit, a move that appeared to unnerve MF Global’s investors as well as ratings agencies. And after a series of ratings downgrades, the firm started to unravel. In MF Global’s final days, it overdrew an account at JPMorgan Chase, one of its banks, and scrambled to patch that hole. That is when the improper transfers of customer money accelerated, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s complaint. Minutes after learning of the overdrawn account, Mr. Corzine told Ms. O’Brien that meeting the bank’s demands was “the most important thing” she could get “done that day. ” Ultimately, in the chaos and confusion of those final days, customer money was transferred to JPMorgan. And yet, Mr. Corzine was not accused of instructing Ms. O’Brien to use customer money for this purpose. According to court records submitted by his lawyers, Mr. Corzine was not told that the firm was at risk of violating the rules until the eve of the bankruptcy, after the breach had happened. In an email, Ms. O’Brien told Mr. Corzine that the transfer to JPMorgan was a “house wire,” meaning it came from the firm’s accounts. In the years since, Mr. Corzine has visited Central America for a humanitarian project and has traded with his own money. His philanthropic efforts have included working with Covenant House, a nonprofit focused on helping homeless children. “With this matter resolved,” he said, “I am eager to move forward and plan to spend my time focused on issues that have always been important in my life: my family, community and philanthropic causes, and markets. ”"
"The question from the analyst on Thursday was delicate enough. In agreeing to buy the Craftsman tool brand from Sears Holdings, how would Stanley Black  Decker protect itself from legal issues that could arise at the seller down the line? But the response from Stanley Black  Decker’s chief executive, James M. Loree, acknowledged a concern that many on the conference call were likely to have harbored: that Sears could be forced to file for bankruptcy protection someday. “We expect to get this approved before there is any indication whatsoever that there would be any restructuring of that nature from Sears,” Mr. Loree said, adding that he believed such a move was not imminent. The sale of Craftsman, valued at more than $775 million, was meant to prevent that day of reckoning by raising   cash for Sears. For Sears, selling one of its classic brands  —   one it created nearly a century ago  —   is the latest move to bolster its balance sheet during a prolonged sales slump. Edward S. Lampert, the chairman and chief executive of Sears, has struggled for years to find  ways to help the company, as much through esoteric financial maneuvers as through operational fixes. These have been tough times for retailers. Macy’s and Kohl’s said this week that their holiday sales were weaker than expected. Macy’s also announced plans to cut more than 10, 000 jobs and close 100 stores. Sears also suffered during the season, with   sales at its Sears and Kmart units down at least 12 percent. Sears has been in trouble far longer. Under Mr. Lampert, who is also a hedge fund manager, Sears has consistently lagged behind its peers, as analysts said, pointing to underinvestment in stores and slumping sales. Last September, analysts at Moody’s estimated that the company’s negative cash flow for its 2016 fiscal year would be $1. 5 billion. As of Oct. 29, Sears had $258 million in cash and equivalents on hand, compared with $3. 1 billion in   debt, the company said. Its market value Thursday morning, by comparison, was $1. 2 billion, even with a jump in its stock price after the Craftsman news. Sears shares surged as much as 8 percent on Thursday, before ending up 0. 3 percent on a day when some retail stocks tumbled. Sears has long been dogged by predictions that it would eventually be forced into bankruptcy. But on Thursday, the company listed its latest initiatives for shoring up its cash position, including closing 150 more stores and raising up to $1 billion through a $500 million loan backed by its real estate and a previously announced loan from Mr. Lampert’s hedge fund. “We are taking strong, decisive actions today to stabilize the company and improve our financial flexibility in what remains a challenging retail environment,” Mr. Lampert, the company’s biggest shareholder, said in a statement. Stanley Black  Decker will be able to sell Craftsman tools in even more outlets. Today, only 10 percent of the product lineup is sold outside Sears stores. “Craftsman is a legendary American brand,” Mr. Loree said in a statement. “This agreement represents a significant opportunity to grow the market. ” Reaching the deal took months, as Mr. Loree acknowledged on the analyst call. Last spring, Sears announced that it had hired the banks Citigroup and LionTree as advisers to explore the sale of some of its   brands, including Craftsman, DieHard and Kenmore, to raise money. Stanley Black  Decker was one of several dozens of companies approached during the summer about bidding on the tool business. But after the company and its bankers at Deutsche Bank spent time devising a potential takeover bid, Stanley Black  Decker turned its eyes toward buying Newell Brands’ tool business, a deal announced in October. By late fall, however, Sears returned to ask if Stanley Black  Decker would reconsider a bid for Craftsman. Under the deal, Stanley Black  Decker will pay $525 million when the transaction closes, which is expected to occur by   and an additional $250 million at the end of the third year after closing. Sears will also collect a percentage of new Craftsman sales for 15 years after the deal closes. The transaction is now valued at $900 million. “We literally spent months putting this transaction together and to cover each other’s needs and manage the risk profile for both parties,” Mr. Loree told analysts."