Yxxx,2017-04-29,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
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National Edition
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VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,582
SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2017
© 2017 The New York Times Company
$2.50
Printed in Chicago
N.S.A. Curtails ECONOMY GROWS
Email Spying AT SLOWEST RATE
Across Border
IN 3 YEARS: 0.7%
U.S. Won’t Tap Notes
Simply Citing Targets CHALLENGE FOR TRUMP
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
DANIEL BEREHULAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The cemetery where Pedro Tamayo Rosas, a reporter, was interred last summer after being fatally shot in Tierra Blanca, Mexico.
‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’ in Veracruz State
By AZAM AHMED
TIERRA BLANCA, Mexico —
The calls come often now: another
body discovered, broken and left
in rags, felled by bullets. They surface at daytime, midnight and
dawn, the deaths keeping to no
clock.
Members of the tribe gather to
pay their respects, the grainy photographs and stripped-down dispatches a testament to another
journalist killed here in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is the
most dangerous place to be a reporter in the entire Western
Hemisphere.
“We have lived in this hell for
some time now,” said Octavio
Bravo, a journalist staring at the
Unsolved Killings and
a Crisis in Mexico’s
Press Freedom
coffin of a colleague gunned down
in Veracruz last year. “You can’t
imagine the frustration, the impotence we are feeling.”
Mexico is one of the worst countries in the world to be a journalist
today. At least 104 journalists have
been murdered in this country
since 2000, while 25 others have
disappeared, presumed dead. On
the list of the world’s deadliest
places to be a reporter, Mexico
falls between the war-torn nation
of Afghanistan and the failed state
of Somalia. Last year, 11 Mexican
journalists were killed, the country’s highest tally this century.
And there is little hope that 2017
will be any better.
March was the worst month on
record for Mexico, ever, according
to Article 19, a group that tracks
crimes against journalists worldwide. At least seven journalists
were shot across the country last
month — outside their front doors,
relaxing in a hammock, leaving a
restaurant, out reporting a story.
Three of them died, dispatched by
armed men who vanished without
a trace.
The reasons for such killings
are often varied: cartel assassins
Continued on Page A8
NEWS ANALYSIS
U.S. President
And a Dictator
In a Snarl-Off
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — It was only
a few hours after his secretary of
state cracked open the door on
Thursday to negotiating with the
North Koreans that President
Trump stepped in with exactly
the kind of martial-sounding
threats against the country that
the White House, until now, had
carefully avoided.
“There is a chance that we
could end up having a major,
major conflict with North Korea,”
he said to Reuters during a
round of his 100-days-in-office
commemorations. “Absolutely.”
Viewed in the most charitable
light, Mr. Trump was, in his own
nondiplomatic way, building
pressure to force the North to
halt its nuclear and missile tests,
the first step toward resuming
the kind of negotiations that
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has begun to talk about.
If so, the North Koreans did
not pick up on the hint: A few
hours after Mr. Tillerson told the
United Nations Security Council
it must vigorously enforce sanctions against the North, Pyongyang launched another missile.
Like many before it, the launch
failed, leaving open the question
of whether an American saboContinued on Page A5
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency said Friday that it had halted one of the
most disputed practices of its warrantless surveillance program,
ending a once-secret form of wiretapping that dates to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 expansion of national security powers.
The agency is no longer collecting Americans’ emails and
texts exchanged with people overseas that simply mention identifying terms — like email addresses
— for foreigners whom the agency
is spying on, but are neither to nor
from those targets.
The decision is a major development in American surveillance
policy. Privacy advocates have argued that the practice skirted or
overstepped the Fourth Amendment.
The change is unrelated to the
surveillance imbroglio over the investigations into Russia and the
Trump campaign, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Rather, it stemmed from a discovery that N.S.A. analysts had violated rules imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court barring any searching for
Americans’ information in certain
messages captured through such
wiretapping.
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon
Democrat who sits on the Intelligence Committee and has long
been an outspoken critic of what
he saw as N.S.A. overreach, hailed
the decision and said he would offer legislation to codify the new
limit in federal law.
“This change ends a practice
that allowed Americans’ communications to be collected without a
warrant merely for mentioning a
foreign target,” Mr. Wyden said.
“For years, I’ve repeatedly raised
concerns that this amounted to an
end run around the Fourth
Amendment. This transparency
should be commended.”
The government had argued
that the practice was important
for fighting terrorism, saying it
could uncover new suspects it
might otherwise never find.
The legal issue behind the
N.S.A.’s decision, first reported
Friday by The New York Times
and later acknowledged by the
agency, is rooted in the complicated technical steps the agency
takes to conduct surveillance.
Under one aspect of the warrantless surveillance program,
Continued on Page A16
Feeble Spending Despite
Consumer Optimism
in First Quarter
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Americans say they feel more
optimistic about the economy
since President Trump was
elected. But they certainly are not
acting that way, and that is shaping up to be a challenge for his administration.
Consumers pulled back sharply
on spending in early 2017, the
Commerce Department said on
Friday, reducing the economy’s
quarterly growth to its lowest level in three years. In fact, the 0.7
percent annual growth rate for the
period is far below the 2.5 percent
pace in President Barack Obama’s
final three months in office, let
alone Mr. Trump’s 4 percent target.
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT Annual rate
+5%
1 Q. INITIAL
+0.7%
+4
+3
+2
+1
0
–1
’14
’15
Source: Commerce Dept.
’16
’17
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The caution among consumers
was particularly notable on big
purchases like automobiles. Other
indicators were stronger — businesses invested at a healthy pace
— but that was not enough to offset the headwinds from feeble retail sales and falling inventories.
Through eight years of a fundamentally tepid recovery, the
promise of stronger economic
growth that is always just around
the corner has had a waiting-forGodot quality. Investors and Wall
Street seem confident that this
time, the predictions will finally
come true — hence the 11 percent
surge in stocks since the election
— but some independent economists are wary.
The softness last quarter also
provides crucial ammunition for
the Trump administration’s arguments that big tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks are necessary for
the economy to grow the way it
Continued on Page A17
LIGHTS ON Congress approved a one-week spending measure to avoid
a shutdown on President Trump’s 100th day in office. PAGE A14
FOUNDATION SHIFT The Heritage Foundation, a conservative research
group, is expected to replace Jim DeMint as its leader. PAGE A17
FLORENCE FINCH, 1915-2016
PATRICK T. FALLON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Los Angeles, 25 Years Later
Looking back on riots that convulsed the city in 1992, some say little has improved. Page A11.
Amid Rikers Chaos, Jails Chief Often Left Town
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Joseph Ponte, the correction
commissioner brought to New
York to overhaul the city’s troubled jail system, has been reprimanded in a Department of Investigation report that found he had
spent 90 days outside the city last
year, even as violence at Rikers Island was spiraling out of control.
Mr. Ponte repeatedly took his
city-owned vehicle on trips to
coastal Maine in violation of city
guidelines, the report said.
The inquiry found that many
Correction
Department
employees routinely misused their
agency vehicles for trips to outlet
malls, casinos, weekend getaways
in the Hamptons, and area airports to go on vacation. All told, 21
employees were referred for discipline.
But the report singled out Mr.
Ponte and his three highest-ranking aides for the “most serious
misuse.”
The 17-page report detailing the
city investigation agency’s findings did not delve deeply into Mr.
Ponte’s extended absences. But
his time away from the city raises
questions about how engaged he
was in managing the department
during a crucial period, as hundreds of millions of dollars were
being spent on a prominent overhaul effort.
While he was away from New
Continued on Page A21
Unsung War Hero Who Subverted the Japanese
By SAM ROBERTS
Florence Finch was an atypical
hometown hero. For nearly 50
years after World War II, virtually
no one outside of her family knew
that she was a highly decorated
Coast Guard veteran and a former
prisoner of war whose exploits
had been buried in time.
“Women don’t tell war stories
like men do,” her daughter, Betty
Murphy, of Ithaca, N.Y., said recently.
And even on those rare occasions when she recalled her
heroics in the Philippines — supplying fuel to the Filipino underground, sabotaging supplies destined for the Japanese occupiers,
smuggling food to starving American prisoners and surviving tor-
INTERNATIONAL A4-10
ture after she was captured —
Mrs. Finch did so with the utmost
modesty.
“I feel very humble,” she once
said, “because my activities in the
NEW YORK A20-21
THIS WEEKEND
General Strike Disrupts Brazil
Brooklyn’s Grave of Secrets
Protests and shutdowns spread through
Brazil’s cities over austerity measures
put forward by a government accused
of widespread corruption.
PAGE A4
The site dug into a Green-Wood Cemetery hill will have no body, no mourners,
no funeral — just slips of paper with
confidences to be buried.
PAGE A20
BUSINESS DAY B1-6
Pope’s Stern Message in Egypt
ARTS C1-6
Funds Upset the Mango Cart
Pope Francis spoke out bluntly against
wrapping violence and terror in the
language of religion.
PAGE A6
A Story in 3 Choreographers
A shake-up at Whole Foods shows how
relations between public companies and
big investors are changing.
PAGE B1
UNITED STATES COAST GUARD, VIA AP
Florence Finch, in an undated
photo, kept her efforts quiet.
NATIONAL A11-19
A City Ballet festival starts with programs by Christopher Wheeldon, Justin
Peck and Alexei Ratmansky.
PAGE C1
Agonizing Over College Aid
Methodist Bishop Loses Ruling
In the Bronx, Tennis for All
With students’ school choices due soon,
families are wrestling with complex
questions. Your Money.
PAGE B1
A church court rejected the consecration of a gay bishop, compounding a rift
over homosexuality.
PAGE A19
A striking new public tennis center
caters to underserved city youths. A
review by Michael Kimmelman. PAGE C1
war effort were trivial compared
with those of the people who gave
their lives for their country.”
It was perhaps reflective of that
modesty that when she died on
Dec. 8 at 101 in an Ithaca nursing
home, the news did not travel
widely. Newspapers in central
New York carried a brief obituary,
but her death went unreported
virtually everywhere else.
It was only after the announcement by the Coast Guard on
Thursday that she would be buried with full military honors on
Saturday at Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Cayuga Heights, N.Y., that
word of her death spread nationwide.
Indeed, the almost five-month
delay in her memorial owed something to Mrs. Finch’s solicitous naContinued on Page A19
SPORTSSATURDAY B7-12
Yanks Flourish; Mets Flounder
The surprise of the young baseball
season has been how the Yankees are
having the success that was projected
for the Mets. On Baseball.
PAGE B7
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
Bret Stephens
PAGE A23
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