News Quiz 3

lavish

(adj.) overly generous, extravagant; abundant; (v.) to spend or give freely or without limit

How Amy Klobuchar Treats Her Staff https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/politics/amy-klobuchar-staff.html

lede: As Ms. Klobuchar joins the 2020 presidential race, many of these former aides say she was not just demanding but often dehumanizing — not merely a tough boss in a capital full of them but the steward of a work environment colored by volatility, highhandedness and distrust. - Questions about Ms. Klobuchar's actions toward subordinates have shadowed the early days of her 2020 presidential campaign, with articles in HuffPost and BuzzFeed News by turns fueling the hard-driving reputation that has followed her for years in Washington and angering supporters who see sexism in the criticism. - Despite employee turnover that perennially ranks near the highest in the Senate, Ms. Klobuchar has defenders among her former staff. - Ms. Klobuchar is among them, but former aides said they were especially troubled by her willingness — in excess of other senators', they said — to embarrass staff members over minor missteps or with odd requests. - She was known to throw office objects in frustration, including binders and phones, in the direction of aides, they said. Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning — a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber. - The senator's defenders say her conduct must be viewed in the larger context of women in Washington, where male leaders with legendary tempers and famously exacting standards, like former President Bill Clinton, have long subsisted atop the political food chain - This much is not in dispute: For years, Ms. Klobuchar has had among the highest rates of staff turnover in the Senate, according to a review of congressional offices from the website LegiStorm. Over much of her Senate career, no one outpaced Ms. Klobuchar on this score; in 2017, two freshman senators, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, surpassed her. - Two people familiar with the policy said that those who took paid leave were effectively required, once they returned, to remain with the office for three times as many weeks as they had been gone. The policy, outlined in an employee handbook, called for those who left anyway to pay back money earned during the weeks they were on leave. Klobuchar denies this - She has been re-elected in two landslides, including a 24-point victory last year in a state President Trump lost narrowly. - Ms. Klobuchar's exasperation often appeared connected to two factors: an abiding fear of being embarrassed in front of colleagues or in the press and the conviction that she works harder than her staff.

'It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.' Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/it-is-not-a-closet-it-is-a-cage-gay-catholic-priests-speak-out.html

lede: Gregory Greiten was 17 years old when the priests organized the game. It was 1982 and he was on a retreat with his classmates from St. Lawrence, a Roman Catholic seminary for teenage boys training to become priests. Leaders asked each boy to rank which he would rather be: burned over 90 percent of his body, paraplegic or gay. Each chose to be scorched or paralyzed. Not one uttered the word "gay." They called the game the Game of Life. - Fewer than about 10 priests in the United States have dared to come out publicly. But gay men probably make up at least 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy, according to dozens of estimates from gay priests themselves and researchers. Some priests say the number is closer to 75 percent. One priest in Wisconsin said he assumed every priest was gay unless he knows for a fact he is not. A priest in Florida put it this way: "A third are gay, a third are straight and a third don't know what the hell they are." - Most are in active ministry, and could lose more than their jobs if they are outed. The church almost always controls a priest's housing, health insurance and retirement pension. He could lose all three if his bishop finds his sexuality disqualifying, even if he is faithful to his vows of celibacy. - Even before a priest may know he is gay, he knows the closet. The code is taught early, often in seminary. Numquam duo, semper tres, the warning goes. Never two, always three. Move in trios, never as a couple. No going on walks alone together, no going to the movies in a pair. The higher-ups warned for years: Any male friendship is too dangerous, could slide into something sexual or could turn into what they called a "particular friendship." - Study after study shows that homosexuality is not a predictor of child molestation. This is also true for priests, according to a famous study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the wake of revelations in 2002 about child sex abuse in the church. - found that same-sex experience did not make priests more likely to abuse minors, and that four out of five people who said they were victims were male. Researchers found no single cause for this abuse, but identified that abusive priests' extensive access to boys had been critical to their choice of victims. - "He said, 'I don't ever want you to call me to report about your pastor, unless he is a homo or an alchie,'" he said, referring to an alcoholic. "He didn't even know what he meant when he said homo, because we were all homos. He meant a predator, like serial predator." - A group of gay priests in the Netherlands recently took the unusually bold step of writing to Pope Francis, urging him to allow gay, celibate men to be ordained.

beguile

to deceive, to mislead, to persuade with charm

encroach

to trespass, to enter by gradual steps or by stealth into the possessions or rights of another, to advance beyond the usual or proper limits

For a Black Mathematician, What It's Like to Be the 'Only One' https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-mathematicians.html

- Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans. Edray Goins, who earned one of them, found the upper reaches of the math world a challenging place. lede: It was not an overt incident of racism that prompted Edray Goins, an African-American mathematician in the prime of his career, to abandon his tenured position on the faculty of a major research university last year. - One of only perhaps a dozen black mathematicians among nearly 2,000 tenured faculty members in the nation's top 50 math departments, Dr. Goins frequently asked himself whether he was right to factor race into the challenges he faced. - What about the chorus of chortling that erupted at a lunch with white and Asian colleagues when, in response to his suggestion that they invite underrepresented minorities as seminar speakers, one feigned confusion and asked if Australians qualified. - Black Americans receive about 7 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded each year across all disciplines, but they have received just 1 percent of those granted over the last decade in mathematics. - Experiences similar to Dr. Goins's are reflected in recent studies by academic institutions on attrition among underrepresented minorities and women across many disciplines. Interviews with departing faculty of color indicated that "improving the climate" would be key to retaining them, according to a 2016 University of Michigan report. Officials at Columbia, which has spent over $85 million since 2005 to increase faculty diversity, with disappointing results, suggested last fall that progress would hinge partly on majority-group faculty members adjusting their personal behavior.

A Model Detective. A Small-Time Thief. How 2 Lives Collided in a Deadly Robbery in Queens. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/nyregion/nypd-brian-simonsen-christopher-ransom.html

- The paths of the two men crossed at a T-Mobile shop in Queens last week. The veteran detective, Brian Simonsen, was among eight officers who responded when someone spotted a man forcing two employees into the store's back office with a pistol. Moments later, Christopher Ransom, 27, emerged and pointed what turned out to be a fake gun at officers, jerking it as if he were firing, the police said. - Sgt. Matthew Gorman was also wounded in the crossfire. Mr. Ransom's accomplice and lookout man, Jagger Freeman, sprinted away, only to be arrested several days later, the police said. - Had they met under different circumstances, friends of the detective said, Detective Simonsen's skill at calming down troubled people, coupled with Mr. Ransom's desire to connect with the police, might have led to a less tragic outcome. - Had they met under different circumstances, friends of the detective said, Detective Simonsen's skill at calming down troubled people, coupled with Mr. Ransom's desire to connect with the police, might have led to a less tragic outcome. - Friends, family and longtime neighbors of Mr. Ransom described a man of contrasts, prone both to deep displays of charity and to intense flashes of instability. He had trouble finding work. The one constant in his manic existence was a fascination with law enforcement and the criminal justice system, they said - Twenty-four hours later, Mr. Ransom, who once dreamed of becoming a police officer, would be accused of causing the death of one. Mr. Ransom and Mr. Freeman have both been charged with murder.

Smaller Tax Refunds Surprise Those Expecting More Relief https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/your-money/tax-refund-decrease.html

- The tax preparers at H&R Block had to take a new class before their busy season started this year: empathy training. lede: The playacting was prescient. The tax overhaul that took effect last year promised relief, but now that returns are being filed, some people are baffled. They're getting smaller refunds — or sometimes having to write a check — even though nothing in their situation seems to have changed. - The average refund among early filers was down 8.4 percent, according to the Internal Revenue Service. - The smaller checks, in some cases, stem from the loss of certain deductions. For others, it's because less money is being withheld from their paychecks. - The result is that taxpayers may be paying less over all but still getting a bill after filing their return. - The overhaul has been President Trump's signature accomplishment. It lowered tax rates for businesses and individuals, and it provided a break to self-employed people and those with so-called pass-through businesses, where income passes through the business to the owner's personal tax returns. - On Monday, the Treasury Department pushed back against reports of smaller refunds, saying it was still early in the filing season. "Refunds are consistent with 2017 levels and down slightly from 2018 based on a small initial sample from only a few days of data, - Ms. Bay blamed the withholding issue, and the loss of her husband's ability to deduct his business expenses, which are not reimbursed by the trucking company he works for. Even the larger standard deduction did not make up for it, Ms. Bay said. - learn more about a new tax rule that allows some business owners and self-employed people to deduct 20 percent of their "qualified business income." - If you are single with significant state income or real estate taxes, by choosing to deduct the lower amount of itemized deductions on your federal return you may reduce your overall federal and state tax due to the increased deduction on your Kansas return

'Friendly Fire' Killing of Detective: 42 Shots, 7 Officers, 11 Seconds https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/nyregion/nypd-cop-killed.html

The call came in just after dark on Tuesday — a masked man with a gun was robbing a T-Mobile store in Queens, holding two employees in a back room. Seven officers opened fire toward the store — a total of 42 shots within 11 seconds, the police said. "It goes from zero to 60," said Chief Terence Monahan, the Police Department's highest-ranking uniformed officer. When the barrage of gunfire ended, two men lay bleeding on the sidewalk outside the store. Neither was the robber. - The man in the store was wounded and quickly arrested. In a final, terrible twist, the gun he had carried turned out to be fake, the police said. Lethal in appearance, but harmless.

16 States Sue to Stop Trump's Use of Emergency Powers to Build Border Wall https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/politics/national-emergency-lawsuits-trump.html

lede: A coalition of 16 states, including California and New York, on Monday challenged President Trump in court over his plan to use emergency powers to spend billions of dollars on his border wall. - The lawsuit is part of a constitutional confrontation that Mr. Trump set off on Friday when he declared that he would spend billions of dollars more on border barriers than Congress had granted him. The clash raises questions over congressional control of spending, the scope of emergency powers granted to the president, and how far the courts are willing to go to settle such a dispute. - Joining California and New York are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Virginia. All have Democratic governors but one — Maryland, whose attorney general is a Democrat — and most have legislatures controlled by Democrats. - Congress is on its own separate track to challenge the president's declaration. The House of Representatives, now controlled by Democrats, may take a two-prong approach when it returns from a recess. One would be to bring a lawsuit of its own. - Lawmakers could also vote to override the declaration that an emergency exists, but it is doubtful that Congress has the votes to override Mr. Trump's certain veto, leaving the courts a more likely venue. - Presidents have invoked emergency-powers statutes nearly five dozen times since Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act of 1976, but never before has one been used to make an end-run around Congress after it rejected funding for a particular policy. - Two cases had already been filed after Mr. Trump's announcement on Feb. 15 — one by the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen, representing several Texas landowners and a Texas environmental group, and the other a case jointly brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. - Mr. Becerra, California's attorney general, suggested that plaintiffs in the states' lawsuits have standing for reasons that are unrelated to whether any portions of Mr. Trump's wall will be built in their territory, arguing that "the president's unconstitutional action could cause harms in many parts of the country." - The Justice Department is likely to argue that if no disputed spending is imminent, the case is not ripe for litigation and should be dismissed. - The Justice Department declined to comment on the wave of lawsuits. Mr. Trump has said he expected to be sued and to lose in lower courts, but he predicted he would eventually prevail before the Supreme Court.

The Dollar Is Still King. How (in the World) Did That Happen? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/business/dollar-currency-value.html

lede: A cursory assessment might find the United States a less than ideal candidate for the job of managing the planet's ultimate form of money. Its public debt is enormous — $22 trillion, and growing. Its politics recently delivered the longest government shutdown in American history. Its banking system is only a decade removed from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Its proudly nationalist president provokes complaints from allies and foes alike that he breaches the norms of international relations, setting off talk that the American dollar has lost its aura as the indomitable safe haven. - The dollar has in recent years amassed greater stature as the favored repository for global savings, the paramount refuge in times of crisis and the key form of exchange for commodities like oil. - In a clear indication that the American currency has been gaining power, dollar-denominated lending to borrowers outside the United States, excluding banks, soared between late 2007 and early 2018, according to the Bank for International Settlements. It increased to more than 14 percent of global economic output from less than 10 percent. - But China's unfolding economic slowdown, concerns about its soaring debts and unease from neighbors that its investment is really a new form of colonialism have combined to moderate its infrastructure plans. - The most formidable competitor to the dollar has long been the euro. In September, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, devoted part his final State of the Union address to lamenting that the bloc was paying for 80 percent of its energy imports in dollars, though just 2 percent came from the United States. - But the most trusted euro-denominated investment, German government bonds, are in chronically short supply. With a deep cultural aversion to debt, Germany has been reluctant to finance spending by selling bonds. As a result, investors seeking ultrasafe places to stash savings have very few options in the euro currency. By comparison, American savings bonds are in virtually limitless supply - A series of crises within the 19 countries that share the euro has provoked more animosity than unity, revealing a foundational defect: The euro is a common currency lacking a common political structure that can guarantee a robust response when trouble arises. - The certain endurance of the dollar has been a foundational truism in global affairs since the end of World War II. Perhaps counterintuitively, that notion was only strengthened by the global crisis that began in 2008. The conflagration centered on the terrifying possibility that global banks would not be able to find enough dollars to avoid a reckoning with dollar-based debts. The Fed — essentially the central bank for the world — unleashed an unfathomable gusher of dollars. The system survived. - Over the same time, reserves entrusted to the euro have slipped to 20 percent from 27 percent. Much of this shift reflects the euro's loss of value against the dollar. China's currency makes up only 2 percent of total reserves, according to the I.M.F.

Aurora Shooting Updates: 5 Killed and Several Others Wounded https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/us/aurora-shooting.html

lede: A former warehouse employee who had recently lost his job stormed through his old workplace in suburban Chicago on Friday, killing five workers and injuring five police officers. The gunman, whom the authorities identified as Gary Martin, 45, of Aurora, Ill., was killed in an exchange of gunfire with officers. - Four hospitals reported treating at least seven people who were hurt. Among the wounded were five Aurora police officers who were shot and a sixth officer who was injured responding to the gunfire inside the warehouse. The officers' injuries were not believed to be life threatening.

Obama Quietly Gives Advice to 2020 Democrats, but No Endorsement https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/politics/obama-2020-democratic-candidates.html

lede: A secret meeting of former President Barack Obama's financial backers convened in Washington early this month: Organized by David Jacobson and John Phillips, Mr. Obama's former ambassadors to Canada and Italy, the group interviewed an array of 2020 presidential candidates and debated whether to throw their wealth behind one or two of them. Mr. Obama had no role in the event, but it unfolded in his political shadow: As presidential hopefuls like Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Sherrod Brown auditioned before them, the donors wondered aloud whether Mr. Obama might signal a preference in the race, according to three people briefed on the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity. - that he does not see it as his role to settle the 2020 nomination, and prefers to let the primary unfold as a contest of ideas. Michelle Obama, the former first lady, also has no plans to endorse a candidate, a person familiar with her thinking said. - Even former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. does not expect to secure Mr. Obama's backing if he runs, according to allies of Mr. Biden's. - He has counseled more than a dozen declared or likely candidates on what he believes it will take to beat President Trump, holding private talks with leading contenders like Ms. Harris, Mr. Booker and Senator Elizabeth Warren; underdogs like Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind.; and prominent figures who remain undecided on the race, like Eric H. Holder, his former attorney general, and Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. - Known for his lack of interest in intraparty wrangling when he was president, Mr. Obama has privately voiced both an impatience to move on from politics and an urgent sense of responsibility to do what he can to thwart Mr. Trump. - Mr. Obama has indicated to candidates that he worries about the possibility of a damaging primary fight, and has urged them to avoid attacking each other in bitterly personal terms that could help Mr. Trump. He has also hinted that he sees a relatively open space for a more moderate Democrat, given the abundance of hard-charging liberals in the race.

Why the Amazon Deal Collapsed: A Tech Giant Stumbles in N.Y.'s Raucous Political Arena https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/nyregion/amazon-hq2-nyc.html

lede: A senior executive from Amazon, one of the world's biggest companies, found himself last weekend in a showdown with a suburban state senator. For Amazon, long accustomed to highly deferential treatment from localities across the country, the phone call was a further indignity after weeks of relentless criticism from lawmakers, unions and progressive activists that the company feared was staining its reputation. - An examination of the deal's collapse showed that Amazon badly misjudged how it would be received in New York, apparently because the company has rarely ventured into such a raucous political arena as it has pursued a breakneck expansion in recent years. - Amazon can deliver toothpaste in traffic-snarled Manhattan on the same day an order is placed. But when it came to navigating the politics of New York, the company appeared out of step, a giant stumbling onto a political stage that — despite its data-driven success — it never fully understood. - One of them, State Senator Michael Gianaris, refused repeatedly to even meet with Amazon representatives despite at least three requests. - So, too, did Corey Johnson, the speaker of the City Council; Mr. Johnson held hearings instead of the private meetings Amazon requested. Amazon met with 35 of the 51 council members, and more had been scheduled for this week. Mr. Johnson's staff did meet with the company. - The company instead felt that, with little sign that the opposition was dissipating, it was staring down a decades-long commitment to a political climate in which everything the company did would be scrutinized. - Feb. 26 special election for public advocate, a citywide position with a big megaphone. Company officials worried that the debate over the project could drag on and become ensnared in the 2021 mayoral election, and beyond. - A turning point came on Feb. 4, when Ms. Stewart-Cousins, the new Democratic leader in the State Senate, selected Mr. Gianaris, the state senator and one of Amazon's most vocal opponents, to the board with the power to block the deal. It was clear the opposition would not go away soon.

Why Amazon Is Caught in an Unexpected Brawl in New York https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/nyregion/amazon-nyc-hq2.html

lede: A state senator joined anti-Amazon activists on the streets of Queens. A city councilman railed against the company as a union-busting corporate behemoth. Even the governor, a supporter of Amazon's move into New York, faulted the company for not selling the public on the deal. - the company has announced plans for a sprawling corporate campus in Long Island City for more than 25,000 workers. - helped Democrats take control of the Republican-led State Senate, and tipped the scales in favor of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, driving from office the powerful leader of the Queens Democrats, Joseph Crowley. - The selection of Mr. Gianaris set off concern inside Amazon, whose executives now find themselves embroiled in the very sort of development battle they had hoped to avoid. The company fears spending the next year planning a corporate campus that could get voted down when it comes before the board in 2020. - So far, executives have not said they are pulling out and are still preparing for the move to New York City, including meeting with local business, residents and elected officials. - Amazon has also been encouraged by recent polls, including one by the Siena College Research Institute, which found wide approval for the deal in Queens, including among union households. Support was even stronger among black and Hispanic registered voters than among whites. - For their part, opponents have not coalesced around a set of goals. Some want to see the deal scrapped; others wants the company to be more amenable to unions; still others want to go much further and dismantle Amazon altogether. - "They want to crush unions. They want to work with ICE. They want to bypass community review. They want to take giant subsidies. I don't see them changing one bit and so, yeah, they're not welcome here." - The fight has drawn in unions on both sides. It has highlighted divisions between long-term residents of public housing in Long Island City, most of them black and Hispanic, and wealthier recent arrivals, many of whom are white. - They do not want the city and the state to offer up to $3 billion in incentives and direct subsidies to the company for bringing 25,000 to 40,000 jobs to Queens. - They do not want the city and the state to offer up to $3 billion in incentives and direct subsidies to the company for bringing 25,000 to 40,000 jobs to Queens. - Union leaders castigate Amazon for its workplace practices and resistance to unionization, but have said they would be more open to supporting the deal if the company made changes. - So far, the company has made a few small promises of community investments, including education programs for high schools and job training for local college students, and a small number of jobs for public housing residents at a call center. Asked if Amazon would remain neutral on unionization during a City Council hearing, a company executive quickly replied: "No." - Some who oppose the Amazon deal, she said, are the very gentrifiers whose influence they are trying to combat.

Amazon's Retreat on New York City Headquarters Followed Unexpected Backlash https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html

lede: Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from lawmakers, progressive activists and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives. - The agreement to lure Amazon to Long Island City, Queens, had stirred intense debate in New York about the use of public subsidies to entice wealthy companies, the rising cost of living in gentrifying neighborhoods, and the city's very identity. - The company's decision was at least a short-term win for insurgent progressive politicians led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upset victory last year occurred in the western corner of Queens where Amazon had planned its site. - Not only progressive activists took issue with the Amazon deal: Michael R. Bloomberg, who championed New York City as a technology hub while mayor, questioned the incentive package earlier this month. - The company also had its supporters — in the city's business community, among some unions and within nearby public housing, where some residents were hopeful that the project would bring jobs. A pair of polls showed broad support around the city and state. - Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio reacted in starkly different ways. The governor blamed the newly emboldened Democrats who now control the State Senate for derailing the project. - For his part, Mr. de Blasio turned on the company after having steadfastly backed the deal. - The mayor and the governor, who only rarely find common cause, met Monday in Albany and discussed how to save the deal, which had appeared increasingly imperiled, according to a person familiar with the conversations. After the meeting, Mr. de Blasio spoke to a senior Amazon executive by phone and was told that the company remained committed to New York, the person said. - Both the mayor's and the governor's offices reassured Amazon executives that, despite the vocal criticism, the deal they had negotiated would be approved. But the company appeared upset at even a moderate level of resistance - Over time, opposition to Amazon had spread from the specifics of the deal to the company's corporate practices. Elected officials and activists in New York drew attention to the company's anti-union stance and its work with federal immigration officials - Some unions supported the deal, and even those opposed had appeared willing to work with Amazon if the company agreed to not work against the unionization of its employees in New York. An Amazon representative, during one council hearing, pointedly said the company would not agree to such terms. - Last year, when the Seattle City Council proposed taxing large employers to pay for homeless services and affordable housing, Amazon took a rare public stance and threatened to halt its expansion. In the end, the city retreated and got rid of even a pared back version of the tax it had adopted. - Instead, Amazon will grow across its tech hubs, which include large outposts in cities like Boston, Austin, Tex., and Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as smaller ones in Pittsburgh and Detroit. It will lose the value it has said it finds in having employees in a centralized corporate camp

Amazon's Exit Forces a Reckoning for N.Y. Political Leaders https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/cuomo-aoc-amazon.html

lede: Amazon's sudden decision to cancel its plan to build a corporate campus in Long Island City, Queens, amounted to a stunning defeat for the two often-at-odds politicians who had heralded its arrival, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the biggest win yet for emboldened left-wing progressives in New York. - The turn of events on Thursday suggested a reordering of New York's political power structure, as one of the world's biggest companies was driven from Queens by a group of activists and elected officials who objected to a suite of corporate sweeteners and tax breaks. - The divisions among New York Democrats are being seen on the national level, as the party, once defined by the pragmatism of the Clintons and President Barack Obama, is now re-evaluating its economic policies and positions. - For Mr. Cuomo, who had gone so far as to joke that he would rename himself "Amazon Cuomo" to lure the company and its jobs to his state, the collapse of a deal that he helped negotiate in private represented perhaps the most severe setback of a governorship that has long been driven by a more moderate and pro-business approach. - The carve-out in the deal for a helipad on the East River for Amazon and its executives added to the early outrage in a city where the subways continue to underperform. - One of the leaders of the Amazon opposition was Mr. Gianaris, who represents Queens and has long been a thorn in Mr. Cuomo's side. The Senate nominated Mr. Gianaris to a crucial state board with authority over the Amazon plan, seen as a key signal of the depth and seriousness of the opposition.

McCabe Says Justice Dept. Officials Had Discussions About Pushing Trump Out https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/us/politics/mccabe-trump.html

lede: Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director, said in an interview aired on Thursday that top Justice Department officials became so alarmed by President Trump's decision in May 2017 to fire James B. Comey, the bureau's director, that they discussed whether to recruit cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office. - The dire concerns about the president's actions also prompted Mr. McCabe to order the bureau's team investigating Russia's election interference to look into whether Mr. Trump had obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey. The F.B.I. also began examining whether Mr. Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests. - the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, had suggested wearing a wire in meetings with Mr. Trump and that Justice Department officials had discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office. - In a statement released on Thursday morning after the interview with Mr. Pelley, a Justice Department spokeswoman said, "The deputy attorney general again rejects Mr. McCabe's recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect." - Mr. McCabe was fired because of statements he made to the Justice Department inspector general as part of an examination of F.B.I. actions in 2016. The inspector general found four instances in which he lacked candor while investigators interviewed him.

Chinese and Iranian Hackers Renew Their Attacks on U.S. Companies https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/technology/hackers-chinese-iran-usa.html

lede: Businesses and government agencies in the United States have been targeted in aggressive attacks by Iranian and Chinese hackers who security experts believe have been energized by President Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal last year and his trade conflicts with China. - The attacks, attributed to Iran by analysts at the National Security Agency and the private security firm FireEye, prompted an emergency order by the Department of Homeland Security during the government shutdown last month. - A summary of an intelligence briefing read to The New York Times said that Boeing, General Electric Aviation and T-Mobile were among the recent targets of Chinese industrial-espionage efforts. - Chinese cyberespionage cooled four years ago after President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China reached a landmark deal to stop hacks meant to steal trade secrets. But the 2015 agreement appears to have been unofficially canceled amid the continuing trade tension between the United States and China - Federal agencies and private companies are back to where they were five years ago: battling increasingly sophisticated, government-affiliated hackers from China and Iran — in addition to fighting constant efforts out of Russia — who hope to steal trade and military secrets and sow mayhem. And it appears the hackers substantially improved their skills during the lull. - Threats from China and Iran never stopped entirely, but Iranian hackers became much less active after the nuclear deal was signed in 2015. And for about 18 months, intelligence officials concluded, Beijing backed off its 10-year online effort to steal trade secrets. - A priority for the hackers, researchers said, is supporting Beijing's five-year economic plan, which is meant to make China a leader in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies.

Pope Opens Meeting on Clerical Sex Abuse Under Great Pressure From Victims for Change https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/world/europe/pope-francis-church-abuse.html

lede: Cloistered inside the Vatican on Thursday, Roman Catholic Church leaders heard searing prerecorded video testimonials from abuse survivors, including one made pregnant three times by a priest who started abusing her at age 15, beat her and forced her to have abortions. - A lack of forceful action by the Vatican has disheartened and disgusted many victims and their advocates, who are demanding a policy of zero tolerance and dismissal from the clerical state for abusive priests and the bishops who protect them. - They included deciding that priests and bishops found guilty of abuse should be dismissed from public ministry, but fell short of what most advocates consider zero-tolerance — the automatic dismissal from the clerical state. - The pope, who had initially inspired hopes for action after his election in 2013, placed himself in the ranks of abuse skeptics early last year when he accused victims of slandering bishops during a trip to Chile. - Some bishops have long denied that clerical sex abuse was a problem, or suggested that it existed only in the Anglo-Saxon world, or was a result of homosexuality in the church, a contention discredited by most scientific studies. When bishops have acknowledged abuse, they often treat it as a sin to forgive rather than a crime to prosecute, reflexively protect their own and believe bishops over victims. - They included codifying the participation of lay experts in sexual abuse investigations; preventing the publication of the names of accused clerics before they are convicted; and requiring reporting to civil authorities and church superiors.

With 2020 in Sight, de Blasio Turns Against Amazon https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/nyregion/de-blasio-amazon-hq2.html

lede: Ever since Amazon decided to withdraw its plans to build a corporate campus in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been in attack mode. He criticized Amazon for abandoning New York, characterizing its decision as an example of "the 1 percent dictating to everyone else." He ridiculed the company for not having the patience to work through community opposition, suggesting on NBC's "Meet the Press" that it showed the maturity of someone who "took their ball and went home." - For Mr. de Blasio, the aggressive posture toward Amazon, a company that has been criticized by the left for its opposition toward unions and its cooperation with federal law enforcement officials, may be a calculated political risk worth taking. - de Blasio might run in 2020 presidency - The union leader said he believed the mayor "changed over time," eventually agreeing that the city "needed to find a way to deal with these labor issues."

Trump Puts Best Face on Border Deal, as Aides Try to Assuage an Angry Right https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/us/politics/deal-government-shutdown.html

lede: In pursuit of a wall, President Trump ran into one. A single-minded drive to force Congress to finance his signature campaign promise has left Mr. Trump right back where he started, this time seeking a way to climb over the political barrier in his way after trying to charge through it did not work. - One call was made to Lou Dobbs, a favorite of Mr. Trump's whose Fox Business Network show he often tries to catch live. Another was placed to Sean Hannity, the Fox host who regularly talks with the president. The message: Mr. Trump deserved support because he still forced concessions that he would never have gotten without a five-week partial government shutdown. - it left the White House scrounging for other ways to pay for a wall on the southwestern border and rethinking its approach to a Congress now partly controlled by Democrats. - The agreement that lawmakers produced this week would allocate $1.375 billion for fencing along the border, even less than was on the table at one point last year. - Those options involve diverting money from other programs and potentially declaring a national emergency to access further funds. In the end, aides said, Mr. Trump may even secure more money than Congress denied him. But those options were just as available to Mr. Trump in December before the showdown that closed federal agencies. - Instead of Mexico directly paying for a $25 billion, 1,000-mile concrete barrier, as the president once said would happen, he has been seeking partial installments from Congress, arguing that his new trade agreement with Mexico will ultimately pay off enough to offset the cost. The partial installments have generally gone to replacing or repairing existing barriers, not to building the new concrete or steel walls Mr. Trump wants. - the president and Democrats were close to a deal in which he would get all $25 billion for the wall in exchange for protections for 1.8 million young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. But Mr. Trump ultimately turned away because he also wanted cuts to legal immigration that Democrats would not accept.

Blaming Political Climate, Trumps Give Up on New Hotels https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/us/trump-hotel-deals.html

lede: In the early months of the Trump administration, with the president no longer running his family business, his eldest sons embarked on a plan to roll out two new hotel lines in dozens of American cities. It reflected the ambitions of "the next generation of the company," President Trump's son Eric said at the time. Now, in a striking reversal, the Trump Organization is no longer pursuing the signature initiative, according to company officials. - The retrenchment comes as the company faces growing scrutiny from federal prosecutors and congressional investigators, and as a former employee, Michael D. Cohen, heads to prison for multiple crimes. - Some of those losses stem from an ethics code that Mr. Trump was encouraged to adopt: It has prevented the company from doing new business abroad during his presidency, halting the global growth that for years brought in millions of dollars in fees - In the United States, where the company intended to open the Scion and American Idea hotels, Mr. Trump's divisive rhetoric and polarizing politics have turned his brand into a target for opponents. - Trumps were required to compensate the Chawlas in some way for pulling out. In the joint statement, the Chawlas said, "We understand their position completely." - Donald Jr. told the story of how the families originally met — the Chawlas' immigrant father had sought business advice decades earlier from Donald J. Trump, who surprisingly returned the call. - The executives worried that any potential new deals could lead to accusations that the company — and its owner — were profiting from the presidency. - The Trump name became so toxic in some places that the company was paid to remove it from hotels in Toronto and New York. The majority owner of the Trump hotel in Panama took a more drastic step, ordering the T-R-U-M-P letters pried off the property with a crowbar. - The company has also faced a torrent of negative media coverage, most recently over revelations, first reported in The Times, about its employment of undocumented workers. The reports, which prompted a review of its properties' staffs and the firing of more than two dozen workers, came at a time when Mr. Trump was denouncing illegal immigration as a threat to national security. - The Trump International Hotel in Washington, which opened in 2016, has surpassed expectations, with its lobby regularly packed with Republican officials and operatives. It has also caused headaches for the company, having prompted lawsuits claiming that Mr. Trump is illegally profiting from the presidency. Two cases now working their way through the courts focus on whether patrons of his hotels hail from overseas or state governments, a potential violation of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution.

Spy Betrayed U.S. to Work for Iran, Charges Say https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/world/middleeast/air-force-monica-elfriede-witt-iran.html

lede: Inside the government, some officials called her "Wayward Storm." Her real name was Monica Elfriede Witt, an exemplary Air Force counterintelligence agent who had studied Persian and carried out covert missions in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But by mid-2013, Ms. Witt had become disillusioned with the government — why, exactly, remains a mystery — and had left the military. Thoughts of betrayal consumed her, federal prosecutors now say, until she finally acted on them at the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, where they say she "told all." - That indictment was made public on Wednesday as the Justice Department accused Ms. Witt, 39, of defecting to Iran in August 2013 to work with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in betrayal of the United States. Ms. Witt has been charged with two counts of espionage and other crimes - The authorities did not say whether Ms. Witt caused any damage to American intelligence operations, but any programs she gained access to while in the Air Force would probably have been considered compromised. She also worked closely with the F.B.I. on counterintelligence matters, and she knew the identities of Iranian informants whom the American intelligence agencies were using. - A person familiar with her case said she had grown disgruntled while working for the Air Force and at some point had become enamored with Persian culture and converted to Islam. In early 2012, she traveled to Iran to attend a conference called Hollywoodism. Prosecutors said the conference is sponsored by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite Iranian paramilitary force, and is intended to promote anti-American propaganda. - While at the conference, she agreed to appear in at least one video in which she was identified as a veteran and made statements that were critical of the United States. The videos were broadcast by Iranian news outlets. - "I think I can slip into Russia quietly if they help me and then I can contact wikileaks from there without disclosing my location," she wrote to Ms. Hashemi.

Cohen Gave Prosecutors New Information on the Trump Family Business https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/politics/michael-cohen-prosecutors-trump-organization.html

lede: Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer and fixer, met last month with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, offering information about possible irregularities within the president's family business and about a donor to the inaugural committee, according to people familiar with the matter. - Mr. Cohen, who worked at the Trump Organization for a decade, spoke with the prosecutors about insurance claims the company had filed over the years, said the people, who did not elaborate on the nature of the possible irregularities. - Although Mr. Cohen did not go through with the arrangement, he was building a consulting business at the time with clients who sought to understand and have access to the Trump administration. - There was no indication that Mr. Cohen, who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence in May, implicated Mr. Trump in the possible irregularities discussed during the meeting last month. If prosecutors concluded that Mr. Cohen's information was truthful and valuable, they could ask the judge who sentenced him to reduce his prison term. - In August, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws for his role in the hush money payments, as well as tax and bank crimes. In a separate case brought by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about the timing of negotiations to build a Trump skyscraper in Moscow, and about the extent of Mr. Trump's involvement in the plans - Mr. Trump had offered a different view, saying late last year that Mr. Cohen should serve a "full and complete" prison sentence. And as Mr. Cohen remained in the spotlight as a likely witness before Congress, Mr. Trump intensified his attacks on his former employee, urging prosecutors and the media to scrutinize Mr. Cohen's family. - The attacks led Mr. Cohen to postpone a planned appearance before the House oversight committee earlier this month. But this week, the committee announced that the testimony was back on for next Wednesday and that Democrats planned to question Mr. Cohen about "the president's business practices."

The English Voice of ISIS Comes Out of the Shadows https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/world/middleeast/isis-islamic-state-narrator.html

lede: More than four years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appealed to the public to help identify the narrator in one of the Islamic State's best-known videos, showing captured Syrian soldiers digging their own graves and then being shot in the head. - Now a 35-year-old Canadian citizen, who studied at a college in Toronto and once worked in information technology at a company contracted by IBM, says he is the anonymous narrator - A thin, diminutive man who occasionally broke into a grin during the hourslong conversation with The New York Times, Mr. Khalifa said he immigrated as a child from Saudi Arabia to Toronto, where he learned to speak much like a native Canadian. He said he had studied computer systems technology and worked for a contracting company before leaving for Syria — drawn to the battlefield by watching YouTube.That man, Mohammed Khalifa, captured in Syria last month by an American-backed militia, spoke in his first interview about being the voice of the 2014 video, known as "Flames of War." - The brief statement was enough for analysts to recognize the voice as that of the narrator, though officials with the militia group said Mr. Khalifa initially denied his role.

Bernie Sanders Stumbled With Black Voters in 2016. Can He Do Better in 2020? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/politics/bernie-sanders-black-voters-outreach.html

lede: Mr. Sanders had won 14 percent of the black vote there compared with 86 percent for Hillary Clinton, according to exit polls. Over seven pages, the team outlined a strategy for winning black voters that included using social media influencers and having Mr. Sanders give a major speech on discrimination in a city like St. Louis or Cincinnati. - For 2016, Mr. Sanders initially put together an all-white leadership team and campaigned heavily in predominantly white states like Iowa and New Hampshire, which vote early in the nomination process. The relationship between his inner circle and his black staff members frayed, and it is unclear if top Sanders aides were aware of the damage until it was too late. - This year, Mr. Sanders is already dealing with another thorny problem involving his 2016 staff: allegations from women who say they were mistreated or harassed during the campaign. Last month, after The Times published an investigation into complaints by female staff members, Mr. Sanders publicly apologized. - This year, Mr. Sanders is already dealing with another thorny problem involving his 2016 staff: allegations from women who say they were mistreated or harassed during the campaign. Last month, after The Times published an investigation into complaints by female staff members, Mr. Sanders publicly apologized. - But fresh interviews show that many former black employees still feel frustrated that they were not taken seriously or provided with the resources they needed to succeed — even though some continue to admire Mr. Sanders. Some black campaign workers described microaggressions — subtle interactions that, while not overtly discriminatory, still played on racial prejudice. One woman said her boss almost never spoke to her. - But Mr. Sanders did not attend the kickoff event at South Carolina State University, and the campaign often sent surrogates rather than the senator himself. The budget for the tour was soon cut, Mr. Glover said, and the events that were held were scaled back. - Mr. Sanders's "heart has been consistently in the right place," Mr. Tatem said. But he added that over time campaign leaders deprioritized black voters, especially after the South Carolina primary defeat. "The narrative became 'Bernie cannot win black voters,'" he said. - Advisers to Mr. Sanders say he is committed to having a more diverse campaign staff should he run again, and there have been signs he is trying to build his relationship with the black community - discuss issues that affect black communities, like economic justice and voter suppression.

In Bid to Conquer Oscars, Netflix Mobilizes Savvy Campaigner and Huge Budget https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/business/media/netflix-movies-oscars.html

lede: Netflix called it "'Roma' Experience Day." On a Sunday in December, the streaming giant rented two soundstages on a historic movie lot in Hollywood to evangelize for "Roma," Alfonso Cuarón's art film about a domestic worker in Mexico. Oscar voters perused a museum-style exhibit of "Roma" costumes. Mr. Cuarón and his crew sat for hours of panel discussions. - All of it struck some voters as over the top. It was certainly a display of just how badly Netflix wants an Oscar — and how much faith it has put in the person behind the event, a strategist named Lisa Taback, to get it done. - And now the costly Oscar push that Ms. Taback has orchestrated for "Roma" is starting to look historic. Mr. Cuarón's film, shot in Spanish and Mixtec and deemed a masterpiece by many critics, heads into the 91st Academy Awards next Sunday as a strong contender to win the Oscar for best picture. - If a film primarily distributed online wins, the debate in Hollywood about what constitutes cinema is over. It would strike a blow to the big multiplex chains, which have refused to show "Roma" because Netflix offered them an exclusive play period of only three weeks; three months is the norm. As far as box office figures, Netflix has said the film has appeared in about 250 theaters in the United States since it was released on Nov. 21, but it refuses to disclose ticket sales. A win by "Roma" could embolden old-line studios like Universal and Warner Bros. to shorten their own theatrical "windows." - Disney, WarnerMedia and Apple are all introducing megawatt streaming services this year. - Whatever the cost, the campaign is easily the most lavish in history for a foreign-language film. (No foreign film has ever won best picture.) - "BlacKkKlansman," "Roma," "Green Book" and "Black Panther" are in a dogfight for the prize

New Election Ordered in North Carolina Race at Center of Fraud Inquiry https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/mark-harris-nc-voter-fraud.html

lede: North Carolina officials on Thursday ordered a new contest in the Ninth Congressional District after the Republican candidate, confronted by evidence that his campaign had financed an illegal voter-turnout effort, called for a new election. - Mr. Harris had a 905-vote lead over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, but his success in Bladen County — where he won 61 percent of absentee ballots even though Republicans there accounted for just 19 percent of them — alarmed regulators. - But in a series of questions, Mr. Harris stumbled and appeared to mislead the board. When he returned to the crowded courtroom after a lunch recess, he asked whether he could read a statement. He apologized to the board and explained that recent medical issues, including two strokes, had impaired his abilities and recall. And then he asked for a new election. - But under no circumstances, Mr. Harris was assured, were the workers to collect the ballots.

Congress Poised to Help Veterans Exposed to 'Burn Pits' Over Decades of War https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/us/politics/veterans-burn-pits-congress.html

lede: Of the ailments endured by the newest generation of veterans — post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, lost limbs and more — among the least understood are those possibly related to exposure to toxic substances in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially from those fires known as burn pits. - Tens of thousands of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were exposed to burn pits, which were regularly used to dispose of all manner of refuse in giant dumps ignited by jet fuel. Discarding waste was an especially acute problem for troops there, as huge bases were established in locations that had no infrastructure for proper disposal or existing sanitation services had been shattered by combat. - processed 11,581 disability compensation claims with at least one condition related to burn pit exposure, according to Curt Cashour, a department spokesman. Of those, 2,318 claims were granted. - Both the House and Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs plan to review the process for adding diseases to the Department of Veterans Affairs' list of presumed service-connected illnesses used to determine disability compensation. That already worries department officials because of the potential for explosive costs — and the difficulty of accurately determining whether diseases are caused by burn pit exposure. - Lawmakers and some doctors say that the Pentagon has also been doubtful of claims. - Many believe that the small number of Americans serving in the military — less than 1 percent of the population — has kept the issue from public view. - Rosie Torres, the executive director of Burn Pits 360, which helps press for those who believe they were sickened by burn pits. Her husband, Le Roy Torres, an Army captain in Iraq in 2007, has been told he has constrictive bronchiolitis. She said her organization has tracked at least 130 deaths related to toxic exposure.

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Concludes a 15-Year Mission https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/science/mars-opportunity-rover-dead.html

lede: Opportunity, the longest-lived roving robot ever sent to another planet, explored the red plains of Mars for more than 14 years, snapping photos and revealing astonishing glimpses into its distant past. But on Wednesday, NASA announced that the rover is dead. - The golf cart-size rover was designed to last only three months - The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity — and from its twin, Spirit, which persisted until 2010 — brought Mars closer to people on Earth. - The rover has been quiet since June. During the dust storm, Opportunity's solar panels could not generate enough power to keep the spacecraft awake. - NASA had hoped that once the skies cleared, the rover would revive and continue its work. - 15 year mission - Instead of just 90 Martian days, Opportunity lasted 5,111, counting the days until its last transmission. (A Martian day is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.)

Trump Is 'Not Happy' With Border Deal, but Doesn't Say if He Will Sign It https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/us/politics/border-wall-deal.html

lede: President Trump appeared poised on Tuesday to end two months of scorched-earth confrontation without the money he demanded for a border wall as Republicans pressured him to accept a bipartisan spending deal rather than close the government again on Friday - Mr. Trump pronounced himself unsatisfied with the agreement brokered by House and Senate negotiators, and he refused to publicly commit to signing it. - Hours later, after a further briefing, Mr. Trump seemed to signal acceptance of the agreement, saying that it "will be hooked up with lots of money from other sources" and provide plenty of resources for border security even if not for the wall itself. - In an attempt to appease Mr. Trump, Republicans repeatedly referred to the deal as a "big down payment" on his wall and indicated that they were open to him transferring funds within the government to build more barriers. - Republicans also asserted that they scored a victory by fending off Democratic efforts to impose a stricter cap on the number of detention beds for arrested immigrants and by securing any money for a barrier given that Speaker Nancy Pelosi at one point rejected even a single dollar for a wall she deemed immoral. - "Trump talks a good game on the border wall but it's increasingly clear he's afraid to fight for it," she wrote on Twitter. "Call this his 'Yellow New Deal.'" - In fact, no new walls have been built or financed by Congress based on the prototypes that the Trump administration unveiled in October 2017. Projects to replace or repair about 40 miles of existing barriers have been started or completed since 2017. - Two Democratic aides said the Republican memo was accurate in theory, but added that such a drastic expansion in beds was unlikely because it would require taking money from other important programs, such as disaster relief.

Trump Declares a National Emergency, and Provokes a Constitutional Clash https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/us/politics/national-emergency-trump.html

lede: President Trump declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico on Friday in order to access billions of dollars that Congress refused to give him to build a wall there, transforming a highly charged policy dispute into a confrontation over the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution - Trying to regain momentum after losing a grinding two-month battle with lawmakers over funding the wall, Mr. Trump asserted that the flow of drugs, criminals and illegal immigrants from Mexico constituted a profound threat to national security that justified unilateral action. - But with illegal border crossings already down and critics accusing him of manufacturing a crisis, he may have undercut his own argument that the border situation was so urgent that it required emergency action. - Indeed, Public Citizen, an advocacy group, filed suit by the end of the day on behalf of three Texas landowners whose property might be taken for a barrier. California and New York likewise announced that they will sue over what Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called the president's "vanity project," and a roster of other groups lined up to do the same. - The House Judiciary Committee announced Friday that it would investigate the president's emergency claim, while House Democrats plan to introduce legislation to block it. That measure could pass both houses of Congress if it wins the votes of the half-dozen Republican senators who have criticized the declaration, forcing Mr. Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency. - The emergency declaration, according to White House officials, enables the president to divert $3.6 billion from military construction projects to the wall. - Presidents have declared national emergencies under a 1970s-era law about five dozen times, and 31 of those prior emergencies remain active. But most of them dealt with foreign crises and involved freezing property, blocking trade or exports or taking other actions against national adversaries, not redirecting money without explicit congressional authorization. - White House officials cited only two times that such emergency declarations were used by presidents to spend money without legislative approval — once by President George Bush in 1990 during the run-up to the Persian Gulf war, and again by his son, President George W. Bush, in 2001 after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

A Green New Deal Is Technologically Possible. Its Political Prospects Are Another Question. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/politics/green-new-deal.html

lede: President Trump derided the Green New Deal as a "high school term paper that got a low mark." Congressional Republicans mocked it as "zany." Even Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, called the proposal a "green dream," and some of the party's 2020 candidates are starting to describe it as merely aspirational. Yet, despite that disdain, the goals of the far-reaching plan to tackle climate change and economic inequality are within the realm of technological possibility, several energy experts and economists said in recent interviews. - Getting there will cost trillions of dollars, most agreed, and require expansive new taxes and federal programs. It certainly could not be accomplished within the 10-year time frame that supporters say is necessary, according to these experts. - The challenges in the Green New Deal for the economy, for Democratic presidential candidates running on it and for voters start with the fact that nearly 80 percent of America's energy now comes from relatively cheap and plentiful fossil fuels. - Replacing them with sources that do not emit greenhouse gasses will cost trillions of dollars; potentially increase energy costs for millions of families; and entail federal intervention in swaths of the economy, like transportation, where there is already a mixed record of government success. - He noted that 37 percent of electricity in the United States comes from zero-carbon sources, including 20 percent of which is nuclear. If no new policies are enacted and all existing nuclear plants are kept online, the United States can rise to about 44 percent clean energy by 2030. - He laid out a multistep plan: converting all energy to electricity and heat, and generating both solely with wind, solar and water resources; heating and cooling buildings with electric heat pumps; and powering factories with furnaces that use electricity. The only economic sector that can't be electrified with existing technology, he said, are long-distance airplanes and ships. - There are now about 786,000 Americans working in the renewable energy industry, according to the most recent figures from International Renewable Energy Agency, compared to 3.8 million in China and 1.2 million in Europe. - carbon tax enacted - Daniel C. Esty a Yale environmental law professor and former commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said a $5-per-ton price on carbon that increases $5 each year over 20 years would put the United States in "full transformation mode" within a decade. - Mr. Pyle argued that Green New Deal boosters are not being realistic about the environmental consequences of constructing high-speed rail, manufacturing zero-emission vehicles or retrofitting buildings. "How much steel is this going to involve? How much concrete? Think about the sheer amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere for retrofitting alone," he said. "It's almost as if they are suspending reality to get to their end goal."

Presidents Have Declared Dozens of Emergencies, but None Like Trump's https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/us/politics/trump-presidency-national-emergency.html

lede: President Trump on Friday pointed to nearly five dozen previous instances in which presidents of both parties have declared emergencies as justification for his invocation of extraordinary powers to build his border wall. But there is no precedent for what he has just done. None of the times emergency powers have been invoked since 1976, the year Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act, involved a president making an end run around lawmakers to spend money on a project they had decided against funding. Mr. Trump, by contrast, is challenging the bedrock principle that the legislative branch controls the government's purse. - The overwhelming majority of those instances were moves by presidents to impose sanctions on various foreign officials and groups — freezing their assets and making it illegal for Americans to do business with them — for wrongdoing like human rights violations, terrorism or transnational narcotics trafficking. They attracted no controversy because Congress has wanted the executive branch to operate that way. - Congress has also enacted a statute that gave presidents, in a declared emergency "that requires use of the armed forces," the power to redirect military construction funds to build projects related to that use. It is that statute that Mr. Trump is relying upon, and his administration argues that this means he is exercising authority that lawmakers wanted the presidency to be able to wield. - one under President George Bush's Persian Gulf war emergency declaration, the other under President George W. Bush's emergency declaration after the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither funded projects that Congress had previously weighed and rejected. - by violating that norm of self-restraint, Mr. Trump may prompt Congress to eventually take back some of that power from the presidency — at least in a post-Trump era, when a succeeding president might be willing, or believe that it is politically necessary, to sign such a bill. - Lawmakers could, for example, impose a strict definition of what qualifies as an emergency, taking away presidential flexibility to deal with unforeseen circumstances. Congress could also attach "sunset" clauses to emergency statutes, so that the president's special powers would automatically deactivate after a month or two without new action by lawmakers to extend them.

Trump Delivers Blunt Warning to Venezuela Military Over Aid Impasse https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/world/americas/venezuela-guaido-maduro-trump.html

lede: President Trump on Monday delivered his sharpest warning yet to Venezuela's military authorities in an increasingly tense showdown over that country's crisis, proclaiming they would "lose everything" by remaining loyal to President Nicolás Maduro and refusing to allow in emergency aid stockpiled on the border. - He spoke five days before a deadline that his administration and the Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, have declared for getting humanitarian aid into the country — a move aimed at weakening Mr. Maduro, who is no longer recognized by the United States and roughly 50 other nations as the country's president. - If Mr. Maduro's stranglehold on the food and medicine supply can be broken, and he can be shown to have lost control of the border, his legitimacy as the country's president will weaken, the reasoning goes. If the military can be convinced to not stand between the Venezuelan population and the humanitarian aid, he may fall. - For Mr. Guaidó, there is an additional risk: In accepting wholeheartedly Mr. Trump's embrace, Mr. Guaidó may look like a puppet of the United States. - For more than a week, activists and officials have said they are mulling the option of simply smuggling in aid through Venezuela's porous land borders, along routes long used to transport contraband products and fuel. Opposition activists have said they have already joined forces with the Pemones indigenous community in eastern Venezuela to bring in supplies by river, using their canoes. - Communications Minister Jorge Rodríguez said Venezuela would be sending 20,000 boxes of food into Cúcuta, citing Colombia's history of drug violence and poverty.

As Congress Passes Spending Bill, Trump Plans National Emergency to Build Border Wall https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/us/politics/trump-national-emergency-border.html

lede: President Trump will declare a national emergency as early as Friday to bypass Congress and build his long-promised wall along the nation's southwestern border even as he agreed to sign a spending package that does not finance it, White House officials said Thursday. - The president's plan would combine money included in the spending package for fencing along the border with funds that he can divert from other programs using traditional presidential discretion on top of still other money he would tap by declaring an emergency. - Altogether, an administration official said, Mr. Trump would be able to dedicate about $8 billion for barriers, more than the $5.7 billion that Congress refused to give him. - was urged by his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to tell Republican leaders to instead pass a short-term bill to keep the government open while reopening negotiations, according to a Republican briefed on the situation. Such a move would have unraveled the delicate bipartisan balance favored by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, who wanted to move beyond the wall fight. - Similarly, Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, and White House lawyers told him that he could still move money around, and Ms. Nielsen said that the spending package was actually better than a short-term measure. Mr. McConnell argued that it was a win over Speaker Nancy Pelosi. - In agreeing to end the spending fight for now, however, Mr. Trump essentially started a new one with his vow to declare a national emergency, one that crosses party and ideological lines as liberals and conservatives alike objected to what they called presidential overreach. - who expects that House Democrats will pass a resolution terminating it in a form that the Republican leader cannot block from a floor vote. At least five or six Republican senators are likely to vote against the president, making a majority along with the Democrats, and potentially forcing Mr. Trump to veto it. - The measure prohibits construction in certain areas along the Rio Grande Valley and includes a provision, pushed by Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, granting communities on the border time to weigh in on the location and design of the fencing. - The bill also prohibits funds from being used to keep lawmakers from visiting and inspecting Department of Homeland Security detention centers, following a number of highly publicized instances where Democratic lawmakers tried to visit detention centers and were turned away. - A Defense Department official said one likely scenario would be to divert up to $2.5 billion in counternarcotics funds to the Army Corps of Engineers. - Indeed, 31 national emergencies declared by Mr. Trump and his predecessors remain active.

Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Charged in Florida Prostitution Investigation https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/sports/robert-kraft-jupiter-orchids-arrest.html

lede: Robert K. Kraft, the billionaire owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, was charged on Friday with two counts of soliciting sex as part of a wide-ranging investigation into prostitution and suspected human trafficking in South Florida. - The charges against Mr. Kraft, 77, in Jupiter, Fla., came after the police used video surveillance to observe activity inside several day spas and massage parlors. The police said that the parlors had been used for prostitution and that many of the women involved were considered to be victims. - In addition, the legal problems may place Mr. Goodell in the uncomfortable position of having to mete out some kind of punishment for the personal conduct of a man who is essentially one of his bosses. - Friends said Mr. Kraft was set adrift after the death from cancer of Myra Kraft, his wife of nearly five decades, in 2011.

China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html

lede: The Chinese authorities turned to a Massachusetts company and a prominent Yale researcher as they built an enormous system of surveillance and control. - The authorities called it a free health check. Tahir Imin had his doubts. They drew blood from the 38-year-old Muslim, scanned his face, recorded his voice and took his fingerprints. They didn't bother to check his heart or kidneys, and they rebuffed his request to see the results. - China wants to make the country's Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, more subservient to the Communist Party. It has detained up to a million people in what China calls "re-education" camps, drawing condemnation from human rights groups and a threat of sanctions from the Trump administration. - Police forces in the United States and elsewhere use genetic material from family members to find suspects and solve crimes. Chinese officials, who are building a broad nationwide database of DNA samples, have cited the crime-fighting benefits of China's own genetic studies. - To bolster their DNA capabilities, scientists affiliated with China's police used equipment made by Thermo Fisher, a Massachusetts company. For comparison with Uighur DNA, they also relied on genetic material from people around the world that was provided by Kenneth Kidd, a prominent Yale University geneticist. - In Xinjiang, in northwestern China, the program was known as "Physicals for All." From 2016 to 2017, nearly 36 million people took part in it, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency - it has blamed Uighurs for a series of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, including a 2013 incident in which a driver struck two people in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. - The government locked up hundreds of thousands of them in what it called job training camps, touted as a way to escape poverty, backwardness and radical Islam. It also began to take DNA samples. - In 2014, ministry researchers published a paper describing a way for scientists to tell one ethnic group from another. It cited, as an example, the ability to distinguish Uighurs from Indians. The authors said they used 40 DNA samples taken from Uighurs in China and samples from other ethnic groups from Dr. Kidd's Yale lab. - China used Thermo Fisher's equipment to map the genes of its people, according to five Ministry of Public Security patent filings.

El Chapo Found Guilty on All Counts; Faces Life in Prison https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/nyregion/el-chapo-verdict.html

lede: The Mexican crime lord known as El Chapo was convicted on Tuesday after a three-month drug trial in New York that exposed the inner workings of his sprawling cartel, which over decades shipped tons of drugs into the United States and plagued Mexico with relentless bloodshed and corruption. - As Judge Brian M. Cogan read the jury's charge sheet in open court — 10 straight guilty verdicts on all 10 counts of the indictment — Mr. Guzmán sat listening to a translator, looking stunned. When the reading of the verdict was complete, Mr. Guzmán leaned back to glance at his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, who flashed him a thumbs up with tears in her eyes. - Mr. Guzmán now faces life in prison at his sentencing hearing, scheduled for June 25. - the guilty verdict a victory for law enforcement; for Mexico, where 100,000 people had died because of drug violence; and for families who had lost someone to the "black hole of addiction." - Toward the end of the proceeding, Alejandro Edda, an actor who plays El Chapo on the Netflix series "Narcos: Mexico," showed up at the trial to study Mr. Guzmán. The crime lord flashed an ecstatic smile when told Mr. Edda had come to see him. - Although Tuesday's conviction dealt a blow to the Sinaloa drug cartel, which Mr. Guzmán, 61, helped to run for decades, the group continues to operate, led in part by the kingpin's sons. In 2016 and 2017, the years when Mr. Guzmán was arrested for a final time and sent for prosecution to New York, Mexican heroin production increased by 37 percent and fentanyl seizures at the southwest border more than doubled, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. - The D.E.A., in its most recent assessment of the drug trade, noted that Mr. Guzmán's organization and a rising power, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, "remain the greatest criminal drug threat" to the United States. - he was originally pursued in 1993 for killing a cardinal - to purchase drugs from suppliers in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Mexico's Golden Triangle — an area including the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua where most of the country's heroin and marijuana are produced. - telling jurors that the real mastermind of the cartel was Mr. Guzmán's closest partner, Ismael Zambada García. "El Mayo"

U.S. Revives Secret Program to Sabotage Iranian Missiles and Rockets https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/us/politics/iran-missile-launch-failures.html

lede: The Trump White House has accelerated a secret American program to sabotage Iran's missiles and rockets, according to current and former administration officials, who described it as part of an expanding campaign by the United States to undercut Tehran's military and isolate its economy. - But in the past month alone, two Iranian attempts to launch satellites have failed within minutes. - In that time, 67 percent of Iranian orbital launches have failed, an astonishingly high number compared to a 5 percent failure rate worldwide for similar space launches. - The Trump administration maintains that Iran's space program is merely a cover for its attempts to develop a ballistic missile powerful enough to send nuclear warheads flying between continents. - created under President George W. Bush, to slip faulty parts and materials into Iran's aerospace supply chains. The program was active early in the Obama administration, but had eased by 2017, when Mr. Pompeo took over as the director of the C.I.A. and injected it with new resources. - French and British officials have joined the United States in calling for ways to counter Iran's missile program. - Long before Iran got serious about producing nuclear fuel for a future weapons program, it was on the hunt for powerful missiles. The spark was its long-running fear of Iraq. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein's forces shot waves of missiles at Iranian cities. Hundreds of civilians died, and Iran fired back with Soviet-designed missiles it acquired from Libya, Syria and North Korea. - When Mr. Pompeo arrived at the C.I.A., there was relatively little nuclear activity underway in Iran. Most of Tehran's centrifuges had been dismantled under the 2015 agreement, and 97 percent of the country's nuclear fuel had been shipped to Russia.

She's a Force of Nature, and She Just Declared War on Peace With the Taliban https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-peace.html

lede: The driver of a car that was stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic, was shocked when a passing motorist rolled down the window and shouted at him, "Dirty donkey." He was even more surprised when he looked up to see that the insult came from a woman. A woman driving a car. A woman driving a car without wearing the obligatory hijab. That was Laila Haidari, who runs a popular cafe in Kabul that allows men and women to dine together, whether married or not, with or without a head scarf, and uses the profits to fund a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts. - Now, Ms. Haidari plans to start a popular uprising against the continuing peace talks with the Taliban. - While most women's activists in Afghanistan have been Western-financed and supported, she has insisted on organizing her political activity herself, and on her own terms. - Few women's activists here challenge patriarchal social norms to the degree Ms. Haidari does, and those who do, tend to do it quietly and politely. They also tend to come from Western-educated, liberal families who support their rebellion. Ms. Haidari does it loudly and often rudely, and comes from a religiously conservative family who married her at 12 to a mullah two decades older. - At the treatment center, Mother's Trust, the 20 male addicts have their heads shaved and wear purple uniforms, to discourage them from leaving. "If they relapse and come here a second time, I shave their eyebrows off too," Ms. Haidari said. - Ms. Haidari says 1,000 graduates from her center have stayed clean for a year or more, out of some 5,000 she says she has treated since founding the clinic eight years ago. She has just opened a second treatment center for addicted women. - Ms. Haidari employs addicts who stay clean in her restaurant, and also in two small shoe factories she has financed. - Often arrested, she is always released. "I have a lot of friends on social media," she said. Neighborhood drug dealers came after her as well, angry at losing customers. She lives alone in an apartment, which she said two men broke into late one night, not expecting her to have a shotgun under her bed.

Parkland: A Year After the School Shooting That Was Supposed to Change Everything https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/us/parkland-anniversary-marjory-stoneman-douglas.html

lede: The name "Parkland" has become a shorthand for the tragedy that many hoped would mark the beginning of the end of school massacres. But ask the survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in more quiet moments about the awful year since last Feb. 14, and they tell you a different, more personal story. About innocence lost. Dreams undone. Grief delayed.

A Locked Door, a Fire and 41 Girls Killed as Police Stood By https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/world/americas/guatemala-shelter-fire-trial.html

lede: The police officers guarding the door — who had refused to unlock it despite the screams — waited nine minutes before stepping inside. They got water to cool down the scorching knob. Inside, dozens of girls placed in the care of the Guatemalan state lay sprawled on the blackened floor. Forty-one of them died. It was one of the deadliest tragedies in Guatemala since the end of its civil war decades ago, and it happened inside a group home for at-risk youth who had been put there by the government, supposedly for their own protection. - Now, nearly two years later, the trials against public officials accused of failing to prevent the deaths have all begun. - But a review of more than two dozen case files of victims and survivors — along with interviews of family members, group home employees and public officials — reveals a pattern of physical, psychological and sexual abuse allegations at the facility stretching back for years. - Six children had previously died in the government-run home from 2012 through 2015, mostly from preventable health-related complications, officials said. The authorities are also looking into 25 episodes of abuse reported in the year before the fire. - Beyond that, several girls had told their relatives well before the tragedy that they were forced to have sex with older strangers, according to interviews with members of three different families. - The nation has one of the highest child pregnancy rates, and the homicide rate for women is among the worst in the world. - Nearly 100 of the children in the state-run group home, known as the Virgin de Asuncion Hogar Seguro, had decided to flee en masse. - Instead, most of the girls died as more than a dozen police officers argued over whether their supervisor, standing 10 feet away, should unlock the door with the keys hanging from her belt. - Opened in 2010, it housed boys and girls from infancy to 17 in a gated facility on the edges of the capital, Guatemala City.

As McKinsey Sells Advice, Its Hedge Fund May Have a Stake in the Outcome https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/business/mckinsey-hedge-fund.html

lede: The sins of Valeant Pharmaceuticals are well known. Instead of spending to develop new drugs, Valeant bought out other drugmakers, then increased prices of lifesaving medicines by as much as 5,785 percent. Patients had no choice but to pay. - One executive went to prison for fraud. The company's share price collapsed. - a secretive hedge fund owned by McKinsey & Company, the world's most prestigious consulting firm. McKinsey, in fact, had deep ties to the drugmaker: Four top Valeant officials, including Mr. Pearson, were McKinsey veterans, and the firm was advising Valeant on drug prices and acquisitions. - McKinsey is alone among the leading consulting firms in operating the hedge fund, which invests for about 30,000 current and former McKinsey partners and other employees. The fund — McKinsey Investment Office, or MIO Partners — is as opaque as its parent. - McKinsey does not disclose the identity of its clients — the chief executives, prime ministers and princes who seek its counsel on management best practices - Hedge fund managers do not coordinate with McKinsey consultants, the firm says, and about 90 percent of MIO's capital, including the Valeant investment, is managed by outside funds.

R. Kelly Charged With 10 Counts of Sexual Abuse in Chicago https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/arts/music/r-kelly-charged-indicted.html

lede: Then, on Friday in Chicago, after weeks of renewed scrutiny, Mr. Kelly was indicted. The authorities accused him of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four victims, three of whom were underage, according to the Cook County state's attorney, Kim Foxx. Aggravated criminal sexual abuse can carry a sentence of three to seven years in prison for each count. Mr. Kelly, whose real name is Robert Kelly, faces 10 of them. - Ms. Foxx said the events related to Mr. Kelly's charges spanned from 1998 to 2010. Three of the victims were between the ages of 13 and 16 at the time of the events. - Mr. Kelly, who turned himself in to the police in Chicago on Friday night, is due in court on Saturday for a bail hearing. - Mr. Kelly was acquitted in 2008, but allegations of sexual misconduct have followed him for much of his career. More than 20 years ago, Vibe magazine questioned a marriage certificate that said the singer Aaliyah was 18 when she and Mr. Kelly were wed. She was, in fact, 15 at the time and the marriage was annulled. - In 2017, the allegations picked up again when Mr. DeRogatis, the music journalist, wrote articles for BuzzFeed News that described Mr. Kelly keeping women in a "cult," in which he separated them from their families and exerted tremendous control over their lives. - Mr. DeRogatis was in the room. "The first girl, who I met," he said, "it was 1991. She was 15. Thirty years the system has failed. I'd like to be optimistic today. I don't know if I am."

Turkey's Mass Trials Deepen Wounds Left by Attempted Coup https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/world/asia/turkey-mass-trials-coup.html

lede: Turkish courts are just weeks from concluding some 300 mass trials intended to draw a line under the most traumatic event of Turkey's recent history: the failed 2016 coup that killed 251 people, mostly civilians, and wounded more than 2,000. - the process has also widened political divisions in Turkey and deepened a sense of persecution among government opponents, who say the mass trials are emblematic of an increasingly arbitrary system of justice under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. - The crackdown has progressively widened to include an entire class of political opponents, as the government has purged tens of thousands from the judiciary and academia, as well as the police and military. The arrests go on virtually weekly. On Tuesday, the authorities issued warrants for more than 1,100 people across 75 provinces over suspected links to the Gulen network, the semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported. - But human rights activists and government critics say the process — which includes trying 100 to 200 people at a time — has been so deeply flawed that it has muddied the case against the coup makers. - The sentences being handed down against the senior officers are indeed crushing. Prosecutors are demanding multiple sentences of "aggravated life" — life without parole — the heaviest penalty in Turkey since it abandoned the death sentence under European pressure. - In the case concluded in December at the Silivri high-security court, 114 defendants faced charges, including attempting to overthrow the constitution and murder.

A Star's Shoe Breaks, Putting College Basketball Under a Microscope https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/sports/zion-nike-shoe-ncaa.html

lede: When the left sneaker of college basketball's biggest star split open on national television Wednesday night 30 seconds into the biggest game of the season, what spilled out was not only his foot but also questions about the future of a marquee player and about the huge influence shoe companies hold over big-time college basketball. - As the scene was replayed on countless highlight shows on Thursday, the damaged shoe threatened to become a nightmare for Nike, which pays tens of millions to elite college sports programs to be the exclusive sponsor for teams and supplier of their footwear. - For a quarter of a century, Nike has been paying Duke tens of millions of dollars to sponsor its teams, and to ensure that its athletes wear only footwear bearing the company's ubiquitous logo. The players receive enough shoes to carry them through the season, allowing them to serve largely as free human billboards. - Williamson, who has a mild knee sprain, will probably be sidelined for one to two weeks, and then continue being the favorite to become the No. 1 overall pick in the N.B.A. draft in June. By then, he will probably already be a millionaire, because of the endorsement deals he can sign when he ends his college career. For now, he is an N.C.A.A. amateur. - Standout basketball players were squeezed further in 2006, when the N.B.A. barred talented teenagers from following in the footsteps of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James by entering the league straight out of high school. - Then, in September 2017, federal prosecutors in New York's Southern District revealed more of the chasm between college basketball players, who can receive only scholarships and related costs of being on campus, and the administrators and coaches who reap the benefits of the revenue the athletes generate for their colleges, conferences and the N.C.A.A. itself. The men's basketball tournament yields about $1 billion a year for the television rights. - Contracts generally state that Nike is not liable for injuries suffered by athletes wearing its products. The contracts also require every player to wear the company's shoes unless a medical condition makes Nike footwear unsuitable. A player might, as stipulated in Nike's deal with the University of Michigan, be required to make himself available for examination by Nike or a local podiatrist before using a shoe made by another company.

Rift Between Trump and Europe Is Now Open and Angry https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/world/europe/trump-international-relations-munich.html

lede: in the last few days of a prestigious annual security conference in Munich, the rift between Europe and the Trump administration became open, angry and concrete, diplomats and analysts say. A senior German official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on such matters, shrugged his shoulders and said: "No one any longer believes that Trump cares about the views or interests of the allies. It's broken." - The most immediate danger, diplomats and intelligence officials warned, is that the trans-Atlantic fissures now risk being exploited by Russia and China. - His distaste for multilateralism and international cooperation is a challenge to the very heart of what Europe is and needs to be in order to have an impact in the world. - To show solidarity with Europe, more than 50 American lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats — a record number — attended the Munich Security Conference. They came, said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, "to show Europeans that there is another branch of government which strongly supports NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance." - he tried to pressure allies to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, a sign of the continuing anger at Washington's decision to scrap the deal unilaterally. European allies regard the pact as vital to European security and to the preservation of nuclear nonproliferation. - Even more, the Europeans are angry that renewed American sanctions hurt European companies far more than any American ones

Colin Kaepernick and the N.F.L. Settle Collusion Case https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/sports/nfl-colin-kaepernick.html

lede: some boycotted the N.F.L. with the belief that Mr. Kaepernick, who failed to land a job the next season, was being blacklisted for his leadership in the movement. Now, two and a half years later, Mr. Kaepernick and a former teammate, Eric Reid, have reached a surprise legal settlement with the N.F.L., which they had accused of colluding to keep them out of the league. In a terse joint statement issued on Friday afternoon, the league and the players' lawyers said that "the parties have decided to resolve the pending grievances" and that "there will be no further comment." - A confidentiality agreement means that, for all the debate and discussion the case generated, it ended with a silence that left hanging whether the league admitted there was any collusion and whether Mr. Kaepernick would ever play another down. - Mr. Kaepernick, 31, who played for the San Francisco 49ers and took them to the Super Bowl after the 2012 season, has not played in the N.F.L. since the 2016 season, when he began the kneeling campaign. (At first he sat during the anthem, but a former player who is a military veteran suggested he kneel instead to make his point while respecting the American flag.) - He filed a grievance under the league's collective bargaining agreement in October 2017, months after failing to find a job, and his lawyers have been busy gathering evidence and testimony from numerous N.F.L. owners and league executives. - After protesting while playing for the 49ers, Mr. Reid, 27, also went unsigned for a period before playing most of last season for the Carolina Panthers. This week he signed a three-year contract with the team. It is unclear whether Kaepernick will continue trying to play professional football again. - A year before, Nike executives had decided to end their contract with Mr. Kaepernick, before being talked out of it. But with Mr. Kaepernick's growing stature in the civil rights movement, the apparel company decided to make him a face of its "Just Do It" campaign, debuting a commercial narrated by Mr. Kaepernick during the opening game of the N.F.L. season.

At Venezuela's Border, a Strange and Deadly Showdown Over Aid https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/world/americas/brazil-venezuela-border-shooting.html

lede; The political showdown over the delivery of aid to Venezuela turned deadly Friday when its security forces fired on protesters near the country's Brazilian border, killing two and wounding a dozen in a confrontation that could signal a more violent and destabilizing struggle over who can claim to be the country's legitimate leader. - They were shot after closing a road to prevent security forces from passing. Outraged fellow protesters were reported to have seized a Venezuela National Guard commander and his deputies in retaliation. - The bloodshed came as the presidents of Chile, Colombia and Paraguay flew to the Colombian border town of Cúcuta in a display of anti-Maduro resolve — and were joined by Mr. Guaidó, who defied a travel ban. - President Trump said he views this moment as the "the twilight hour of socialism" in the hemisphere, a turning point where the Venezuelan military would abandon its president and hand Mr. Trump a foreign policy victory. - It was unclear whether Mr. Maduro would order border authorities to prevent Mr. Guaidó from re-entering Venezuela or have him arrested if he sought to return.

mollycoddle

pamper; coddle; baby; indulge excessively/a pampered or effeminate man or boy

swaddle

wrap very tightly in cloth, as a baby