CMYK
Nxxx,2015-12-19,A,001,Bs-BK,E2_+
Late Edition
Today, a windy and colder day, sunshine and patchy clouds, high 41.
Tonight, clear, colder, low 33. Tomorrow, sunny, seasonable, high
45. Weather map is on Page B8.
VOL. CLXV . . . No. 57,085 +
© 2015 The New York Times
$2.50
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2015
SECURITY COUNCIL
APPROVES A PLAN
FOR SYRIA TALKS
AVOIDING RANCOR,
CONGRESS PASSES
A FISCAL PACKAGE
UNANIMOUS VOTE AT U.N.
$1.8 TRILLION MEASURE
U.S. and Russia Still at
Odds on Portions of
Peace Process
Spending Rise and New
Tax Breaks Suggest
End of Austerity
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
and DAVID E. SANGER
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
UNITED NATIONS — For the
first time since the nearly fiveyear-old Syrian civil war began,
world powers agreed on Friday
at the United Nations Security
Council to embrace a plan for a
cease-fire and a peace process
that holds the distant prospect of
ending the conflict.
A resolution adopted unanimously by the Security Council
reflected a monthslong effort by
American and Russian officials,
who have long been at odds over
the future of Syria, to find common national interests to stop the
killing, even if they cannot yet
agree on Syria’s ultimate future.
But there remain sharp disagreements to be reconciled between the American and Russian
positions, and huge uncertainty
about what the plan will mean on
the ground. A dizzying array of
armed forces have left Syria in
ruins, killed 250,000 and driven
four million refugees out of the
country, threatening to destabilize the nations where they are
seeking new homes.
“This council is sending a clear
message to all concerned that the
time is now to stop the killing in
Syria and lay the groundwork for
a government” that can hold the
country together, Secretary of
State John Kerry said at the Security Council.
Later on Friday, he added: “No
one is sitting here today suggesting to anybody that the road
ahead is a gilded path. It is comContinued on Page A9
BASSAM KHABIEH/REUTERS
Medics treated victims in a field hospital last weekend after what activists said were air and missile strikes in Damascus, Syria.
Scarred Riverbeds and Dead Pistachio Trees in a Parched Iran
By THOMAS ERDBRINK
POUZE KHOON, Iran — The
early-morning sun meagerly
brightened the gloom of this sad
township, a collection of empty,
crumbling houses along a highway through the dusty desert
landscape in southeastern Iran.
Until a decade or so ago, Amin
Shoul would come here every
year to help his father harvest
pistachios, the nuts that are as
much a symbol of Iran as caviar.
Now, with the last reserves of
groundwater tapped out, the family’s grove and the seemingly
endless fields beyond it are filled
with dead trees, their bone-colored branches a deathly contrast
to the turquoise sky.
Mr. Shoul, 32, a journalist, said
he and his family had moved
away years ago, leaving the
house to squatters, unemployed
laborers living off meager government stipends — and even
they had started to leave. “I don’t
see how we can ever return to the
past,” he remarked, matter-offactly.
As Iran emerges from isolation
after signing a nuclear agreement with the West, attention has
focused on its business relations,
particularly in the oil and airline
industries. But Iran needs expertise in a number of areas, including the environment. Most
pressing in that regard is its impending water crisis.
Iran is in the grip of a seven-
Water Crisis Looms as
Seven-Year Drought
Tightens Its Grip
year drought that shows no sign
of breaking and that, many experts believe, may be the new
normal. Even a return to past
rainfall levels might not be
enough to head off a nationwide
water crisis, since the country
has already consumed 70 percent
of its groundwater supplies over
the past 50 years.
Always arid, Iran is facing
desertification as lakes and rivers dry up and once-fertile plains
become barren. According to the
United Nations, Iran is home to
four of the 10 most polluted cities
in the world, with dust and desertification among the leading
causes.
In Zanjan, northwest of Tehran, the historic Mir Baha-eddin
Bridge crosses a riverbed of
sand, stones and weeds. In Gomishan, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, the fishermen who once
built houses on poles surrounded
by freshwater now have to drive
for miles to reach the receding
shoreline. In Urmia, close to the
Turkish border, residents have
held protests to demand that the
government return water to a
once-huge lake that is now the
Continued on Page A6
Calls to Erase
Digital Legacy
Of a Militant
By SCOTT SHANE
In case after terrorism case,
from the Fort Hood, Tex., shootings to the Boston Marathon
bombing and now to the slaughter in San Bernardino, Calif., the
inflammatory videos and bombmaking instructions of Anwar alAwlaki, easily accessible on the
Internet, have turned up as a
powerful influence.
Four years after his death in a
drone strike on the orders of
President Obama, the question of
what can and should be done
about the digital legacy of Mr.
Awlaki, the American cleric and
propagandist for Al Qaeda, is being asked with increasing urgency. Killing him, it is clear, only enhanced the appeal of his message
to many admirers, who view him
as a martyr.
Pressure on Internet companies to take down his work is
growing, because legal experts
say the First Amendment would
prohibit the government from ordering restrictions. With emotions running high after the most
lethal terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, there
is widespread frustration among
counterterrorism officials and independent experts at his continuing impact. But possible solutions
are divisive and complex, raising
a tangle of issues involving technology, national security, religion
and freedom of speech.
On Friday, the Counter Extremism Project, an advocacy
group based in Washington,
Continued on Page A3
WASHINGTON — After years
of dysfunction and abysmal public approval ratings, a chastened,
even beaten-down Congress on
Friday passed a $1.8 trillion package of spending and tax cuts with
remarkably little rancor.
The sweeping deal was the
product of a convergence of
forces: Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s
deftness in pacifying rebellious
conservatives, the recognition by
Republicans that a government
shutdown could cripple them in
the races for the White House
and Senate and a recovering
economy that helped end an era
of austerity.
The relatively swift passage of
the prodigious year-end package
— by wide margins in the House
and in the Senate — in many respects showed lawmakers bowing to the hard realities of a divided government.
President
Obama
quickly
signed the measure, praised Mr.
Ryan for his work and acknowledged the sacrifice of his predecessor as speaker, John A. Boehner, for also making the accord
possible.
“I mean, we’ve gotten kind of
used to last-minute crises and
shutdown threats, and so forth,”
Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “And this is a messy process that doesn’t satisfy everybody completely, but it’s more
typical of American democracy.
And I think that Speaker Ryan
deserves a role in that.”
The agreement also showed
just how easily a fractious legislature can seem functional again
when there is agreement to
spend more money, adding at
least $2 trillion in debt over the
next 20 years, according to the
Committee for a Responsible
Budget, a nonpartisan group.
For Republican leaders in Congress, there was particular motivation to show that they were capable of governing.
As soon as the Senate adopted
the year-end measure, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky, declared, “By any objective standard, I think, the Senate is back to work.”
Mr. McConnell also took credit
for ending the threats of a govContinued on Page A13
Obama Frees Prisoners
NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A dry salt lake near Sirjan, Iran. The country has consumed 70 percent of its groundwater supplies over the past 50 years.
President Obama commuted
the sentences of 95 federal inmates, most of them nonviolent
drug offenders. Page A12.
Realty Firm’s Power Laid Bare Democrats and Sanders Clash Over Data Breach
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
The recent federal trials that
ended in the quick convictions of
Sheldon Silver and Dean G. Skelos laid bare a world of greed, flagrant corruption and abuse of
power in Albany, with evidence
showing payoffs taking a deceptively circular route from business interests to the elected officials whose help they sought.
But one man who was a key
player in both cases — and identified by the government as a coconspirator at the trial of Mr. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate, and
his son, Adam — never appeared
in the courtroom.
That man was Leonard Litwin,
the 101-year-old owner of Glen-
NATIONAL A11-16
Adults Only, F.D.A. Proposes
A nationwide ban on tanning beds for
minors would strike a blow against skin
cancer, medical experts said. PAGE A16
wood Management, an influential
developer of luxury high-rise
apartment buildings in Manhattan that is among the state’s most
prodigious political donors. Prosecutors named Mr. Litwin as a
co-conspirator during a sidebar
conference with the judge and defense lawyers that went largely
unnoticed.
In addition to its role at the
heart of the government’s case
against the Skeloses, both of
whom were convicted of bribery,
extortion and conspiracy this
month, Glenwood also figured
prominently in the federal corruption trial of Sheldon Silver, the
Democratic assemblyman and
Continued on Page A21
By MAGGIE HABERMAN
and NICK CORASANITI
A fight between the campaign
of Senator Bernie Sanders and
the Democratic leadership went
public on Friday as the party
punished the campaign over a
data breach and the Sanders
camp sued the party and accused
it of actively trying to help Hillary Clinton.
The dispute came after members of Mr. Sanders’s data team
were found to have gotten access
to, searched and stored proprietary information from Hillary
Clinton’s team during a software
glitch with an important voter
database. The Democratic National Committee acted swiftly to
deny the Sanders campaign fu-
ture access to the party’s 50-state
voter file, which contains information about millions of Democrats and is invaluable to campaigns on a daily basis.
Late Friday night, the national
committee and the Sanders campaign said they had come to an
agreement to restore the campaign’s access to the voter file by
Saturday morning. The committee, however, would continue to
investigate the breach, according
to a statement from the chairwoman, Representative Debbie
Wasserman Schultz of Florida.
The committee wants to “ensure that the data that was inappropriately accessed has been
deleted and is no longer in possession of the Sanders campaign,” the statement said. “The
Sanders campaign has agreed to
fully cooperate with the continuing D.N.C. investigation of this
breach.”
Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, had accused
the party committee of stacking
the scales to help Mrs. Clinton,
claiming that it was being unfairly penalized for the data
breach. At a news conference,
Mr. Weaver insisted that the
campaign had dealt with the situation by firing its national data
director. Later Friday, the campaign filed a federal lawsuit seeking to have its access to the file
restored.
The Democratic committee is
“actively” working to “undermine” the Sanders campaign, Mr.
Continued on Page A15
INTERNATIONAL A4-10
SPORTSSATURDAY D1-7
THIS WEEKEND
Another Step to Sainthood
N.F.L. Partner Blurs a Line
The Breaking Point?
Pope Francis recognized a second miracle attributed to the Nobel laureate
Mother Teresa, clearing the way for her
PAGE A4
canonization next year.
The N.F.L. signed a deal this year with a
Swiss-based company to provide live
data from games, but that company,
Sportradar, is also well known in another industry with a need for live staPAGE D1
tistics: online sports betting.
A refugee crisis with no end in sight, a
showdown over Greek debt, Russian aggression and terrorism in the streets
that stirs xenophobia across the Continent: How 2015 has threatened to undo
the 28-member European Union.
Stirring the Migrant Debate
Hungary says that refugees have been
recruited as terrorists, a claim that other European nations dismiss. PAGE A4
BUSINESS DAY B1-7
Chinese Currency’s Steady Fall
NEW YORK A17-21
Lesson on Islam Shuts Schools
A School’s Controversial Donor
Students in a Virginia high school were
asked to copy a Muslim creed in Arabic
calligraphy. An outcry ensued. PAGE A11
Martin Shkreli’s arrest has intensified
debate on his $1 million gift to Hunter
PAGE A20
College High School.
To gain acceptance for the renminbi as
one of the world’s reserve currencies,
Chinese officials had to loosen some of
their currency controls. But that has
made the renminbi more susceptible to
PAGE B1
market forces.
ARTS C1-7
THE MAGAZINE
A Box Office Force Awakens
Experts said that the latest “Star Wars”
movie had a chance to set records for
ticket sales on its opening.
PAGE C1
Twist on ‘Tradition’
A brief nod in Broadway’s revival of
“Fiddler on the Roof” to the global refuPAGE C1
gee crisis has stirred debate.
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
Gail Collins
PAGE A23
U(D54G1D)y+,!#!.!=!\