Yxxx,2016-12-31,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
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National Edition
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VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,463
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2016
© 2016 The New York Times Company
Printed in Chicago
$2.50
PUTIN WILL FORGO
MATCHING OBAMA
WITH SANCTIONS
Waiting for Trump, the Russian Leader
Rejects Advice to Eject Diplomats
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
In Mosul, ISIS Digs In
A tactic used by the Islamic State is to burn oil wells. The Times recently spent three weeks on battlegrounds in Iraq. Page A10.
In Public Rebuke Over Israel, Britain Nods to the President-Elect
By STEVEN ERLANGER
LONDON — Even the so-called
special relationship is subject to
limits, it seems.
With a Republican administration under Donald J. Trump only
weeks away, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain scolded Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday night for his speech criticizing
Israel — a public jab that would
have been highly unlikely any
other time during the Obama administration.
In a statement that echoed Mr.
Trump’s fierce criticism of the
Obama administration, Mrs. May
chided Mr. Kerry for, among other
things, describing the Israeli government as the “most right-wing
in Israeli history, with an agenda
China Banning
Ivory, Thrilling
Nature Groups
By EDWARD WONG
and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
China announced on Friday
that it was banning all commerce
in ivory by the end of 2017, a move
that would shut down the world’s
largest ivory market and could
deal a critical blow to the practice
of elephant poaching in Africa.
The decision by China follows
years of growing international
and domestic pressure and gives
wildlife protection advocates hope
that the threatened extinction of
certain elephant populations in
Africa can be averted.
“China’s announcement is a
game changer for elephant conservation,” Carter Roberts, the
president and chief executive of
the World Wildlife Fund, said in a
written statement. “With the
United States also ending its domestic ivory trade earlier this
year, two of the largest ivory markets have taken action that will reverberate around the world.”
According to some estimates,
more than 100,000 elephants have
been wiped out in Africa over the
past 10 years in a ruthless scramble for ivory driven by Chinese demand. Some Chinese investors
call ivory “white gold,” while
carvers and collectors call it the
“organic gemstone.”
Elly Pepper, a wildlife advocate
with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is based in
New York, wrote that China’s announcement “may be the biggest
sign of hope for elephants since
the current poaching crisis began.”
Wildlife advocates have said for
years that the most important
step in putting poachers out of
business would be shutting down
the ivory industry in China.
The advocates have promoted
Continued on Page A3
driven by the most extreme elements.”
Mrs. May does “not believe that
it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically
elected government of an ally,” a
spokesman for the prime minister
said, using the department’s customary anonymity.
Mr. Kerry’s speech was praised
by other European nations, in-
cluding France and Germany. So
the British slap — especially after
Mrs. May’s government voted last
week for a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning
Israeli settlement construction —
was something of a shock to
Washington.
“We are surprised by the U.K.
Prime Minister’s office stateContinued on Page A6
Death, Mistrust and Too Few Officers
By BENJAMIN MUELLER
and AL BAKER
A still from video footage of drug deals in the
Betances Houses in the South Bronx.
WASHINGTON — Presidentelect Donald J. Trump, who has
pledged to reset relations with
Russia, may have been tossed a
lifeline by President Vladimir V.
Putin on Friday. The Russian
leader, skilled at keeping several
steps ahead of his adversaries,
announced that he would not
retaliate against the Obama
administration for imposing new
sanctions and expelling Russian
diplomats from the United
States.
That clears the way for Mr.
Trump and Mr. Putin to declare
that they are starting anew —
just what both men have publicly
called for.
By Friday afternoon, Mr.
and the Obama administration’s
unusual move. PAGE A7
Trump took to Twitter to embrace Mr. Putin: “Great move on
the delay (by V. Putin),” he
wrote. “I always knew he was
very smart!”
For effect, Mr. Trump “pinned”
the post to the top of his Twitter
feed, ensuring that it will remain
the first message seen on his
page. In a rapid demonstration of
digital glasnost, within minutes
the Russian Embassy in Washington had retweeted it.
“Putin is going out of his way
to not take Obama seriously,”
said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who
spent decades in the C.I.A. tracking Russia while Mr. Putin was
rising in the K.G.B. Instead, he
said, “he is making a good-will
gesture, presumably with the
hope and expectation that DonContinued on Page A7
By ELI ROSENBERG
The footage was taken by James Fernandez,
whose family was threatened by the dealers.
Mr. Fernandez said he performed his own surveillance after the police brought little relief.
Judith Clark, who drove a getaway car in the infamous 1981 robbery of a Brink’s armored car in
Rockland County, N.Y., that left a
guard and two police officers
dead, went into prison defiant,
with seemingly little chance of
getting out. The judge who sentenced her saw her as beyond rehabilitation, giving her a minimum of 75 years in prison and all
but ensuring she would die there.
But Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, citing what he called Ms. Clark’s long
sentence and “exceptional strides
in self-development” commuted
her sentence on Friday.
Mr. Cuomo’s action does not
undo Ms. Clark’s conviction on
second-degree murder and robbery charges, but it reduces her
sentence to 35 years to life and
makes her eligible for parole in
OBITUARIES A18-19
‘Camp David North’ Awakes
Greek Diplomat Killed in Brazil
‘Life-Changing’ Drug, at a Cost
Heavy Toll in Pop Music
Bedminster, N.J., finds itself in the glare
of attention as home to Donald J.
Trump’s weekend getaway.
PAGE A15
Among those arrested in the Greek
ambassador’s killing were his wife and
her lover, a police officer.
PAGE A4
Spinraza, which treats a fatal muscle
disease in infants, will cost as much as
$750,000 for the first year.
PAGE B1
Skakel Conviction Reinstated
NATIONAL A12-13
Closing a Tech Diversity Gap
Of all the fields of endeavor that suffered mortal losses in 2016, the pop
music world seemed to have the bleakest year.
PAGE A18
As Texan as Cowboy Boots
Tech firms rush to recruit talented women like Amy Chang as they face pressure
to diversify their boards.
PAGE B1
Celebrity mothers and daughters like
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher
capture fans’ imagination in a way that
fathers and sons do not.
PAGE A13
CAT AND MOUSE Gamesmanship
Radical’s Shift
To Role Model
Brings Mercy
BUSINESS DAY B1-5
Mother-Daughter Star Turns
and its allies try to buy influence
in other countries. PAGE A9
Trump’s Path to Resetting Relations Is Risky
INTERNATIONAL A4-11
The pickup is always at home on the
range in Texas, where the supreme
display of the state’s love of the truck is
the Texas Truck Rodeo.
PAGE A12
PAY TO PLAY How the Kremlin
From Russia, an Opening
NEW YORK A14-17
Connecticut’s Supreme Court rejected a
lower-court ruling that freed Michael C.
Skakel in a 1975 murder.
PAGE A14
and Russian officials had been
threatening to retaliate for days.
Then Mr. Putin abruptly changed
course.
“While we reserve the right to
take reciprocal measures, we’re
not going to downgrade ourselves
to the level of irresponsible
‘kitchen’ diplomacy,” Mr. Putin
said, using a common Russian idiom for quarrelsome and unseemly
acts. “In our future steps on the
way toward the restoration of
Russia-United States relations,
we will proceed from the policy
pursued by the administration” of
Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Putin has a flair for smart,
unexpected tactics, and his announcement on Friday appeared
to be in keeping with that. To some
observers, the sudden shift
Continued on Page A8
NEWS ANALYSIS
This article is by David E. Sanger,
Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon.
Police and Residents Divided as Killings Persist in South Bronx
After the bullet shells get counted, the
blood dries and the votive candles burn
out, people peer down from housingproject windows and see crime scenes
gone cold: a band of yellow police tape
blowing in the
breeze.
MURDER IN THE 4-0
The South
Thin Blue Ranks
Bronx,
just
across
the
Harlem River
from Manhattan and once shorthand for
urban dysfunction, still suffers violence at
levels long ago slashed in many other
parts of New York City. And yet the city’s
efforts to fight it remain splintered, underfunded and burdened by scandal.
In the 40th Precinct, at the southern tip
of the Bronx, as in other poor, minority
neighborhoods across the country, people
long hounded for small-time infractions
are crying out for more protection against
grievous injury or death. By September,
four of every five shootings in the precinct
this year were unsolved.
Out of the city’s 77 precincts, the 40th
has the highest murder rate but the
fewest detectives per violent crime, reflecting disparities in staffing that hit
hardest in some neighborhoods outside
Manhattan, according to a New York
Times analysis of Police Department
data. Investigators in the precinct are
saddled with twice the number of cases
the department recommends, even as
their bosses are called to Police Headquarters to answer for the sharpest crime
rise in the city this year.
And across the Bronx, investigative resources are squeezed. It has the highest
violent-crime rate of the city’s five boroughs but the thinnest detective staffing.
Nine of the 14 lowest-staffed precinct detective squads for violent crime in the city
are there. The borough’s robbery squad is
smaller than Manhattan’s, even though
Continued on Page A16
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced
Friday that he would not retaliate
against President Obama’s decision to expel Russian diplomats
and impose new sanctions — only
hours after his foreign minister
recommended doing just that.
Mr. Putin, betting on improved
relations with the next American
president, said he would not eject
35 diplomats or close any diplomatic facilities, rejecting a tit-fortat response to the actions taken
on Thursday by the Obama administration.
The switch was remarkable,
given that Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had just
recommended the retaliation in
remarks broadcast live on national television. He called for punitive measures mirroring the
ones imposed by the Obama administration, which accuses Russia of intimidating American diplomats and hacking institutions
like the Democratic National
Committee to influence the 2016
election.
The two countries have a long
history of reciprocal expulsions,
DAVID HANDSCHUH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Judith Clark after being taken
into custody in a 1981 robbery.
2017.
If Ms. Clark is freed, it would be
in recognition of her evolution
from radical to model prisoner,
and serve as a coda to a notorious
case that was among the last
gasps of violent left-wing extremism seen in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ms. Clark, 67, must still win over
the parole board, and law enforcement groups are expected to fight
her release.
Ms. Clark’s efforts to obtain
clemency have gained wide attention in recent years, particularly
Continued on Page A3
THIS WEEKEND
SPORTSSATURDAY B7-12
Midfielder to Defensive Line
Coaches on each side of the Fiesta Bowl
— Ohio State and Clemson — have
embraced multisport participation,
resisting a tide of specialization in
youth and high school sports. PAGE B7
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A20-21
Roger Cohen
PAGE A21
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