for house seats largest breach democrats vying ahoo ry ... · 12/15/2016  · known security...

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For $6,189 a game, the Nets’ BrooklynExperience pampers fans with an exclu-sive dining room, courtside seats and aride to and from the game. PAGE B12

SPORTSTHURSDAY B12-16

Game Night, Platinum EditionNintendo is expanding its video gamefranchise to the iPhone and iPad, thefirst time it has put out a version foranother company’s device. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-11

Mario Goes Mobile

WASHINGTON — The FederalReserve raised its benchmark in-terest rate Wednesday for just thesecond time since the financialcrisis of 2008, saying the Ameri-can economy is expanding at ahealthy pace and setting itself upas a counterweight to President-

elect Donald J. Trump’s push forconsiderably faster growth.

The Fed cited the steady growthof employment and other eco-nomic measures, and signaledthat it expects to raise rates morequickly next year to prevent theeconomy from growing tooquickly.

“My colleagues and I are recog-nizing the considerable progress

the economy has made,” Janet L.Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman,said at a news conference after theannouncement. “We expect theeconomy will continue to performwell.”

The widely expected decisionmoves the Fed’s benchmark rateto a range of 0.5 percent to 0.75percent, still very low by historicalstandards. Low rates support eco-

nomic growth by encouragingborrowing and risk-taking.

The American economy has ex-panded by about 2 percent a yearover the last six years, and the un-employment rate has fallen to 4.6percent. The Fed’s assessmentthat the economy is growing at ahealthy pace — not too hot, not toocold — is starkly at odds with Mr.

Fed Raises Benchmark Rate and Signals More Increases for 2017By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Continued on Page B3

One attorney general, Eric T.Schneiderman, is already investi-gating Donald J. Trump over pos-sible violations of New York Statelaw at his charity foundation.

Another, Maura Healey ofMassachusetts, has joined Mr.Schneiderman in an investigationinto whether Exxon Mobil —whose chief executive, Rex W.Tillerson, is Mr. Trump’s choice forsecretary of state — lied to invest-ors and the public about the threatof climate change.

Ms. Healey also has a new fund-raising pitch: “I won’t hesitate totake Donald Trump to court if hecarries out his unconstitutionalcampaign promises,” she recentlywrote to supporters.

A third, Representative XavierBecerra, who was chosen thismonth to become California’s at-torney general, has dared theTrump administration to “come atus” over issues including immi-

gration, climate change andhealth care.

As Democrats steel themselvesfor the day next month when theWhite House door will slam ontheir backs, some of the country’smore liberal state attorneys gen-eral have vowed to use theirpower to check and balance Mr.Trump’s Washington.

To Combat Trump, DemocratsLook to G.O.P. Tactic: Lawsuits

By VIVIAN YEE

Eric T. Schneiderman, NewYork’s attorney general.

SAM HODGSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A22

They keep coming, both thebombs and the images fromAleppo, so many of them, themunitions raining indiscrimi-nately on trapped families, aid

workers and chil-dren. The Russianand Syrian gov-ernment forceswouldn’t let themleave.

But the photo-graphs and videos have made itout. The faces of the besieged,staring into the camera, at us,and at death, pleading for help,baffled by our indifference to theslaughter, describing the atroci-ties outside their bedrooms orjust on the other side of the door.We see their faces from an anglewe ordinarily see a friend’s face,up close, staring straight into oureyes.

They are bearing witness, inreal time, refusing to disappearwithout a trace. And in this era ofconnectedness, they are refusingto let us off the hook. Theseimages, spread via social media,unmediated, confirm that thepeople making them are stillalive — in that moment, anyway.

We have never before receivedsuch a deluge of images from anyfront, never gotten such an inti-mate, minute-by-minute, look atwhat the United Nations high

Aleppo’s FacesBeckon to Us,To Little Avail

Images of Syrians, especially those of children, top left and above right, have not resonated as other historic pictures have.CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT, MAHMOUD RASLAN/ALEPPO MEDIA CENTER; KEVIN CARTER; NILUFER DEMIR/DOGAN NEWS AGENCY, VIA AFP — GETTY IMAGES; NICK UT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A11

MICHAELKIMMELMAN

CRITIC’SNOTEBOOK

On a warm Tuesday night in theBronx, a couple of dozen youngpeople took refuge from theirstuffy apartments in a courtyardbetween two redbrick towers inthe Melrose Houses. Theylaughed, drank and smokedfreshly rolled blunts as a speakerpumped out rap music.

A few minutes before midnight,a gunshot cracked the air outside

305 East 153rd Street, echoingamong the towers of the publichousing project. People took coverunder the green wooden benchesin front of the building.

Adrian Maldonado, who dealtdrugs on a nearby corner,sprinted away from the batteredfront door, the police said. Hemade it across the street beforecollapsing next to a school play-

ground. A bullet had ripped intohis back and through his chest. Helay face up, arms out, blood bub-bling to his lips.

Mr. Maldonado, 24, was de-clared dead a half-hour later, at12:22 a.m. on July 20, at LincolnMedical and Mental Health Cen-ter. Around the Melrose Houses, astory spread like gospel: A 25-year-old woman who had beencarrying on an affair with Mr. Mal-donado lured him to the buildingwith a phone call and shot him be-

Bronx Killing Leaves Only the Police in the Dark

This article is by James C. McKin-ley Jr., Ashley Southall and AlBaker.

A memorial to Adrian Maldonado, who was fatally shot at a Bronx housing complex in July.EDWIN J. TORRES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A26

MURDER IN THE 4-0

A Dealer’s Last Sale

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo, al-ready reeling from its Septemberdisclosure that 500 million useraccounts had been hacked in 2014,disclosed Wednesday that a dif-ferent attack in 2013 compromisedmore than a billion accounts.

The two attacks are the largestknown security breaches of onecompany’s computer network.

The newly disclosed 2013 attackinvolved sensitive user informa-tion, including names, telephonenumbers, dates of birth, en-crypted passwords and unen-crypted security questions thatcould be used to reset a password.Yahoo said it is forcing all of the af-fected users to change their pass-words and it is invalidating unen-crypted security questions —steps that it declined to take inSeptember.

It is unclear how many Yahoousers were affected by both at-tacks. The internet company hasmore than a billion active users,but it is not clear how many inac-tive accounts were hacked.

Yahoo said it discovered thelarger hacking after analyzingdata files, provided by law en-forcement, that an unnamed thirdparty had claimed contained Ya-hoo information.

Security has taken a back seatat Yahoo in recent years, com-pared to Silicon Valley competi-tors like Google and Facebook. Ya-hoo’s security team clashed withtop executives, including the chiefexecutive, Marissa Mayer, overthe cost and customer inconven-ience of proposed security meas-ures.

And critics say the companywas slow to adopt aggressive se-curity measures, even after abreach of over 450,000 accounts in2012 and series of spam attacks —a mass mailing of unwanted mes-sages — the following year.

“What’s most troubling is thatthis occurred so long ago, in Au-gust 2013, and no one saw any indi-

Yahoo RevealsLargest BreachEver Reported

Attack in 2013 Affects One Billion Accounts

By VINDU GOELand NICOLE PERLROTH

Continued on Page B2

WASHINGTON — South Flor-ida has long been a laboratory forsome of the nation’s roughest poli-tics, with techniques like phantomcandidates created by political ri-vals to siphon off votes from theiropponents, or so-called boleterashired to illegally fill out stacks ofabsentee ballots on behalf of eld-erly or disabled voters.

But there was never anythingquite like the 2016 election cam-paign, when a handful of Demo-cratic House candidates becametargets of a Russian influence op-eration that made thousands ofpages of documents stolen byhackers from the Democratic Con-gressional Campaign Committeein Washington available to Floridareporters and bloggers.

“It was like I was standing outthere naked,” said Annette Tad-deo, a Democrat who lost her pri-mary race after secret campaigndocuments were made public. “Ijust can’t describe it any otherway. Our entire internal strategyplan was made public, and sud-denly all this material was outthere and could be used againstme.”

The impact of the informationreleased by the hackers on candi-dates like Ms. Taddeo in Floridaand others in nearly a dozenHouse races around the countrywas largely lost in the focus on thehacking attacks against the Dem-ocratic National Committee andHillary Clinton’s presidentialcampaign. But this untold storyunderscores the effect the Rus-sian operation had on the Ameri-can electoral system.

“This is not a traditional tit-for-tat on a partisan political cam-paign, where one side hits the

RUSSIANS HACKEDDEMOCRATS VYINGFOR HOUSE SEATS

NOT JUST CLINTON TEAM

Nearly a Dozen Races inCrucial States Were

Targets of Attack

By ERIC LIPTONand SCOTT SHANE

Continued on Page A20

France is unsettled by the arrests offour men, suspected of planning terror-ist activities, who showed no sign ofhaving been radicalized. PAGE A4

Terror’s Unassuming Profile

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Phil-ippines, who is now cracking down ondrugs, boasted about having personallykilled criminal suspects when he wasmayor of Davao City. PAGE A9

INTERNATIONAL A4-11

A President Says He Killed“Patriots Day,” a film about the 2013Boston Marathon bombing, looks tohold resonance, no matter the viewers’politics. The Carpetbagger. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-10

A Unifying Tear-Jerker

Work has resumed at the troubled siteof the huge American Dream Mead-owlands complex in New Jersey, nowset to open in fall 2018. PAGE A25

NEW YORK A24-27

A Megamall Back on Track

Gail Collins PAGE A29

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A28-29

Nostalgic for the art of home entertain-ing, one woman tries some of the newonline services that bring strangerstogether at a common table. PAGE D1

STYLES D1-12

The App That Came to Dinner

After a bitter election put a Democrat inthe governor’s mansion, Republicanlawmakers have called a special sessionto consider measures to curb the powerof the office. PAGE A12

NATIONAL A12-22

Power Play in North Carolina

VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,447 © 2016 The New York Times Company THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2016 $2.50

Today, windy, much colder, mostlysunny, high 29. Tonight, mostlyclear, very cold, low 18. Tomorrow,sunny to partly cloudy, cold, high 32.Weather map appears on Page A24.

Washington Edition