Liberals across the country are looking to Bill de Blasio, who takes office as mayor on Wednesday, to morph New York City’s municipal machinery into a closely watched

laboratory for populist theories of government.

The elevation of an assertive, t a x - t h e - r i c h liberal to the nation’s most prominent mu-nicipal office has fanned hopes

that causes like universal prekin-dergarten and low-wage worker benefits could be aided by the im-primatur of being proved workable in New York.

“The mayor has a remarkable opportunity to make real many pro-gressive policies and prove their merit,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, who as mayor of San Francisco in-troduced a form of universal health care, raised the minimum wage and allowed same-sex couples to wed.

In de Blasio, advocates on the left see a unique aligning of the stars: a champion of their values who is stepping into office at a time when the national debate over inequality and social justice has reached a fe-ver pitch. His administration could be a redemptive moment for a na-tional left whose policies were often blamed for the crumbling of urban centers in the 1960s and 1970s, yet has now started to reassert itself in smaller jurisdictions with bold new approaches on issues like income equality and poverty.

But de Blasio must also grapple with the restraints placed on local executives: He is barred from uni-laterally setting income tax policy, meaning he must persuade legisla-tors in Albany and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to approve his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy. And he has never experienced the day-to-day demands of managing an enter-prise near the size of the city he will lead. MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

WASHINGTON — Millions of Americans will begin receiving health insurance coverage un-der the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday.

The decisively new moment in the effort to overhaul the coun-try’s health care system will test the law’s central premise: that extending coverage to far more Americans will improve the na-tion’s health and help many avoid crippling medical bills.

Starting Wednesday, health insurance companies can no lon-ger deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and can-not charge higher premiums to women than to men for the same coverage. In most cases, insur-ers must provide a standard set of benefits prescribed by federal law and regulations.

Though this is an important milestone for the law, it is unlikely to end the partisan battles that be-gan before its passage nearly four years ago. Late Tuesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor temporarily blocked the Obama administra-tion from forcing some religious groups to provide coverage of birth control or face penalties.

Doctors, hospitals and phar-macists say consumers could initially experience some delays and difficulties as they try to use their new insurance.

“I feel a huge sense of relief,” said Katie R. Norvell, a 33-year-old music therapist in St. Louis, who has been uninsured for three and a half years and has a pre-existing gynecological condition, endometriosis. She signed up Dec. 22 for a midlevel silver plan offered by Coventry Health Care.

“With coverage,” she said, “I can be my best self. Health insurance won’t control my job choices.”

A series of last-minute changes in rules and deadlines for people to sign up and pay premiums have left less time for insurers to activate coverage.

“There will be a lot of confu-sion,” said Brian D. Caswell, a former president of the Kansas Pharmacists Association. “Many people will get insurance cards, but will not have a clue what’s covered, what’s not covered and what they are supposed to pay.”

Others may find their insur-ance companies have no record of their enrollment because the

information was not sent by the online marketplace where they signed up for coverage.

And as newly insured consum-ers sort through details of their coverage, others will find that they are no longer insured by their old plans, which were canceled or discontinued because they did not comply with minimum cover-age requirements of the law. Of several million who received can-cellation notices, most should be able to obtain other coverage, the Obama administration says.

Toby Mitchell, a self-employed recruiter in Napa, Calif., said she considered forgoing insurance when Kaiser Permanente can-celed her plan because it did not meet the requirements of the new law. But Mitchell, 60, decided to buy a bronze plan that will cost al-most twice as much. Her monthly premiums will now be $575, com-pared with $288 on her old plan.

“I was really shocked,” she said. “It’s just painful because there are other things I’d rather do with that money, especially when it’s hard to see the value is there for me personally.” ROBERT PEAR

and ABBY GOODNOUGH

DETROIT — For some who have been around this city the longest, expectations for a new mayor have become understand-ably low: Turn some streetlights on. Do not get indicted. Wait for the lawyers to get Detroit out of bankruptcy.

Yet Mike Duggan, a former hos-pital executive and prosecutor, has anything but modest plans as he steps into uncertain circum-stances unprecedented among major American cities.

On Wednesday, Duggan will become Detroit’s first white mayor in 40 years, presiding over a mostly black, bankrupt city that has seen more residents leave — more than a million since 1950 — than are left. Though he has a mandate to make things better, Duggan also starts his term yoked to an agreement in which he must share control with a powerful, appointed emergen-

cy manager, Kevyn D. Orr, a Washington b a n k r u p t c y lawyer.

While Orr will direct the city’s finances, it is Duggan who will be left to sort out

some of the most politically vex-ing long-term questions about the fate of Detroit. Do services and infrastructure designed for all of this city’s 139 square miles still make sense with a population of 700,000? Or must the city shrink to survive?

Many people say Detroit must come to terms with the continu-ing exodus, but Duggan says he has no plans to retreat. He plans, he says, to reverse the trend of half a century.

“Everything that we are doing,

from the time we get up in the morning, we’re thinking about: How are we going to build the city where the population is growing again?” Duggan said. “And that’s ultimately what’s going to define this: Do more people want to move in, or do more people want to move out?”

If the dynamics in all of this are daunting, Duggan — whose friends recall an old nickname for him, the Pit Bull, and whose crit-ics call him unrealistic — shows no sign of noticing.

“I’d like to see a city where the police show up when you call, where the streetlights work at night, where the buses run on time and where the abandoned properties are gone,” Duggan said recently. “But more than anything else, five years from now, I expect the population of the city of Detroit to be growing again.” MONICA DAVEY

new mayor Draws All liberal Eyes to new york city

Power Curbed, Detroit’s Mayor Faces a Big Job

Millions Gain Health Coverage Today

Mike Duggan

Bill de Blasio

F R O M T H E PAG E S O F

Wednesday, January 1, 2014 © 2014 The new york TimesFROM THE PAGES OF

midnight in New York

JUBA, South Sudan — Few mo-ments conjure as much fear in South Sudan as the massacre of Bor.

Long before South Sudan be-came a nation, while it was still in the throes of one of Africa’s longest civil wars, fighters tied to a leader named Riek Machar stormed through the city of Bor in 1991, killing 2,000 fellow south-erners in an attack that would lay bare the deep divisions here.

Since then, the people of South Sudan have had periods of peace, compromise and even shared jubilation at the birth of their na-tion in 2011. Machar became vice president, apologizing for the massacre.

But there was never a real and lasting reconciliation between the factions threatening to pull this new nation apart, and on Tues-day fighters allied with Machar charged into Bor once again.

“This was a fire waiting to be ignited,” said John Prendergast of the Enough Project, a nonprofit anti-genocide organization. “It was just when and not if.”

When leaders from around the world pressed South Sudan into existence, they were well aware that the bitter internal rivalries in the south had never been fully resolved. To help this fledgling na-tion’s chances, international do-nors like the United Nations and the United States have pumped in billions of dollars of aid.

But what has long been missing, analysts say, is any reliable struc-ture for settling conflicts in a way that would keep the new nation from spinning into a civil war.

The fighting now tearing at the

seams of this nation broke out in a military barracks here in Juba, the capital, on Dec. 15. President Salva Kiir accused Machar of staging a coup attempt. Machar denied it but fled to the bush, de-manding that Kiir resign. Fighting between forces loyal to each side quickly spread to at least 20 cities, killing at least 1,000.

But the makings of a crisis exist-ed well before then, in the tenuous marriage that placed the hopes of this country in the hands of po-litical rivals. “We didn’t suggest who should be No. 1, 2 or 3 in the government; that was their own” choice, said a senior American of-ficial, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the negotiations years before independence. “They accepted Riek Machar back into the government.”

Instead of governing through strong institutions, many power brokers and generals in this nation still command their own forces, their loyalties to the government often determined by their cut of national oil revenues.

“It is an extortion racket with bargaining ongoing on a regular

basis, with either violence or the threat of violence” as a form of negoti-ation, said Alex de Waal, executive di-rector of the World

Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

When things break down, the situation quickly plunges into vio-lence. Rebel forces attacked Bor on Tuesday, engaging in fierce fighting with government troops. A spokesman for the United Na-tions said the rebels had captured an airstrip and a major crossroads leading to the capital.

Jacob Achiek Jok, 29, fled Bor on Tuesday morning when the fighters were about to enter town. Many other terrified residents tried to flee as well, he said, either by road or across the White Nile. Some did not make it.

“Many people drowned,” Jok said. “They are normal citizens, not soldiers.”

International mediators are rushing to bring the parties to the negotiating table before the cycle of violence escalates any further. Both sides agreed on Tuesday to send negotiators to the Ethio-pian capital, Addis Ababa, but the fighting continued and some news agencies reported that Machar said he would march on the capital next. NICHOLAS KULISH

KABUL, Afghanistan — Just months after American officials ceded control over all detention operations in Afghanistan, Presi-dent Hamid Karzai’s government has quietly planned dozens of prisoner releases that Ameri-can and Afghan officials said on Tuesday would include commit-ted insurgents who had attacked Americans.

The pending wave of releases has revived one of the most caus-tic issues between the allies just as relations have hit a new low over Karzai’s refusal to sign a long-term security agreement.

The Afghan commission charged with reviewing detainee cases at the main military prison near Bagram Air Base is planning to release more than 85 prison-ers who the coalition and Afghan defense officials say should face trial. The plans were detailed by American and Afghan officials alarmed by the move.

In an interview on Tuesday, Ab-dul Shakor Dadras, a member of the three-man commission, said that Karzai ordered the panel to give the international military co-alition and the main Afghan intel-ligence agency until Friday to pro-duce evidence against the detain-ees. If none is produced, the men will be released, Dadras said.

But American and Afghan se-curity officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they had already given the commission enough evidence to send all the detainees in question to trial, or at least to hold them pending further investigation. (NYT)

WASHINGTON — In an inten-sifying diplomatic effort, Secre-tary of State John Kerry is mak-ing a major push to secure what Obama administration officials are calling a “framework” accord that would be a critical first step to a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement. But critics are already branding it as an effort to play for time.

Kerry leaves on Wednesday for Jerusalem, on the first of what are expected to be repeated trips to the region in January and Feb-ruary. His goal is to secure the framework agreement quickly, before his target of the end of April

for completing a comprehensive peace treaty.

The framework document is aimed at achieving enough of a convergence on core issues that the two sides can make headway toward a formal peace agree-ment leading to an independent Palestinian state. It is expected to be short, perhaps fewer than a dozen pages and without detailed annexes.

“Once they have a shared vision of what that will look like, then it will become easier to finalize the details,” said a senior State De-partment official, who asked not to be identified.

The core issues to be resolved include the borders between Is-rael and a future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem as a pos-sible capital for the new state as well as Israel, Israel’s insistence that its identity as a Jewish state be recognized and the Palestin-ians’ demand that refugees should have the right to return to their former homes.

The agreement might be made public to prepare Israelis and Palestinians for what a potential peace treaty might look like. So far there have been about 20 rounds of closed talks.

Critics said the move was main-

ly a maneuver to buy time and a way to institutionalize the nego-tiating process so that it could continue beyond the nine-month timeline that Kerry set over the summer. “It is clear that Kerry cannot get a comprehensive ‘final status agreement’ in his nine-month timetable, so now he appears to be looking at a ‘frame-work agreement’ instead,” said Elliott Abrams, who was a senior official in President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.

“I don’t think it will work,” Abrams added.

MICHAEL R. GORDON and JODI RUDOREN

Old Rivalries Reignited a Fuse in South SudanAfghanistan Plans To Free Prisoners

Kerry to Press for ‘Framework’ Accord to Keep Mideast Peace Effort Moving

Ben Curtis/AssoCiAteD Press

A displaced girl carrying water to a united nations compound in south sudan.

InternatIonal Wednesday, January 1, 2014 2

A federal judge ruled on Tues-day that New York’s strict new gun laws, including an expanded ban on assault weapons, were constitutional, but struck down a provision forbidding gun owners to load more than seven rounds into a magazine.

The ruling offered a victory to gun control advocates at the end of a year in which efforts to pass new legislation on the federal lev-el suffered a high-profile defeat in Congress, although some new re-strictions were approved in state capitals.

The judge, William M. Skretny of Federal District Court in Buf-falo, said expanded bans on as-sault weapons and high-capacity magazines were legally sound because they served to “further the state’s important interest in public safety.”

In his ruling, Skretny struck down a portion of the law, which prohibited gun owners from load-ing more than seven rounds into a magazine. He called the limit “an

arbitrary restriction” that violat-ed the Second Amendment.

But, saying that “whether reg-ulating firearms is wise or war-ranted is not a judicial question; it is a political one,” he found that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers had acted within their bounds when they crafted the gun laws, and specifically cited the Bushmaster rifle and 30-round magazine used in the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

“Of course, this is only one in-cident,” Skretny wrote. “But it is nonetheless illustrative. Studies and data support New York’s view that assault weapons are often used to devastating effect in mass shootings.”

He said that the gun law “applies only to a subset of firearms with characteristics New York State has determined to be particularly dangerous and unnecessary for self-defense; it does not totally disarm New York’s citizens; and it does not meaningfully jeopardize their right to self-defense.”

Gun control advocates said the ruling confirmed their position that the government had the right to pas strict controls on firearms.

“A lot of states can take courage and take heart from this ruling, and maybe even Congress will take notice,” said Leah Gunn Bar-rett, the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.

But the states that have passed new gun restrictions have seen a backlash. In Colorado, where there have been two high-profile mass shootings, lawmakers voted to expand background checks and limit the size of ammunition mag-azines. But the laws prompted re-calls of two state senators in Sep-tember; a third resigned in No-vember rather than face a recall, and some sheriffs have declined to enforce the laws.

And in New York, the laws have damaged Cuomo’s standing as he prepares to seek re-election. A spokeswoman for the governor de-clined to comment on the judge’s ruling. THOMAS KAPLAN

Judge Upholds Most New York Gun Limits Chicago Killings SlowA year after Chicago drew na-

tional notice for its staggering number of homicides, killings have slowed. In 2012, Chicago witnessed more than 500 killings, many of them shootings tied to gang rivalries. As of Dec. 30, Chicago had reported 413 homi-cides, a 17 percent drop from the same period a year before and the fewest killings to date since 1965. Shootings were also down by about 24 percent in 2013 from a year earlier, and reports of crime overall had dropped by about 16 percent. (NYT)

Drug-test law tossedA federal judge on Tuesday

struck down as unconstitution-al a Florida law that required welfare applicants to undergo mandatory drug testing, setting the stage for a legal battle that could affect similar efforts na-tionwide. Judge Mary S. Scriven of the U.S. District Court in Or-lando held that the requirement violated the protection against unreasonable searches. (NYT)

natIonal Wednesday, January 1, 2014 3

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“ The BeST FiLM oF The Year!”

It was the market rally that de-fied gravity and left many with a case of vertigo.

Despite turbulence in Wash-ington, China and Europe, which threatened to pull the world into another recession, stock prices just kept rising.

The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index led the way, ending the year almost 30 percent higher, or 32.4 percent higher with dividends counted in. That’s the biggest jump since 1997.

As 2013 drew to a close, Wall Street was feeling giddy. But the feeling was tinged with a sense of anxiety that the ascent might have been fed by a bit too much hot air.

“It’s really great, but you just don’t feel entirely comfortable with it,” said Dan Morris, the chief investment strategist at the asset manager TIAA-CREF.

Most analysts delivered their forecasts for 2014 with a good dose of caution, warning that cor-porate profits would have to catch up with stock prices.

In other corners of the financial markets, investors were left nurs-ing their wounds after previously reliable assets turned negative. Goldbugs were routed as the price of gold plummeted 28 percent.

More investors felt the sting of a decline in the bond market after decades in which it was trumpet-ed as the safest place for retire-ment money. The price of bonds fell as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury nearly doubled during the year, ending Tuesday at 3.03 percent. A Bank of Amer-ica index of the total returns on U.S. government bonds fell 3.2 percent for the year, the first annual decline since 2009. Few

are predicting much of a turn-around given the likelihood of a continuing rise in interest rates.

All of the steep moves of 2013 were much greater than most fi-nancial analysts were expecting at the start of the year. The con-sensus prediction among strate-gists at the big banks was that the S. & P. 500 would rise a modest 7.3 percent in 2013, according to a tally done by Bloomberg.

The consensus as the year end-ed was that stocks will most likely continue to chug upward, albeit more slowly. The forecast among Wall Street strategists is for a 6 percent rise in the S. & P. 500, according to Bloomberg figures. That, though, is not far from the cautious predictions that kicked off 2013 and turned out to be wild-ly understated.

NATHANIEL POPPER

WASHINGTON — It was a great year for the stock market. And it was also a pretty good year for many people’s biggest invest-ment: their homes.

In 2013’s last glimpse at the housing market, figures released Tuesday showed that home prices in major metro areas kept rising in October. Year-over-year, prices were up 13.6 percent, the biggest gain in more than seven years.

Prices in 20 major American metro areas increased a modest 0.2 percent between September and October, without seasonal ad-justment, evidence that the quick rebound in prices is slowing, ac-cording to the closely watched S & P/Case-Shiller data. Higher mortgage rates might continue

to slow the pace of improvement going forward, analysts say.

Nationally, the increase in home prices is moderating, the S & P/Case-Shiller analysis said.

“Monthly numbers show we are living on borrowed time and the boom is fading,” said David M. Blitzer of S & P Dow Jones Indices in an analysis of the new housing numbers. A big question, he said, is how quickly the Federal Re-serve pulls back from its efforts to keep rates low.

“The key economic question facing housing is the Fed’s future course to scale back quantitative easing and how this will affect mortgage rates,” Blitzer said. “Most forecasts for home prices point to single-digit growth in

2014,” Blitzer added.In many metro areas where

prices declined sharply — par-ticularly those encompassing Sun Belt and Rust Belt cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and De-troit — similarly sharp rebounds followed. But generally, prices have not touched their pre-bust heights, with prices across the country remaining about 20 percent lower, the S & P/Case-Shiller data show. In Dallas and Denver, however, prices have hit new peaks, the report said.

Many economists expect price increases to moderate next year, with higher prices and higher mortgage costs making homes less affordable.

ANNIE LOWERY

If Shinzo Abe and Mario Draghi were being compensated by in-vestment banks rather than tax-payers, they would both be look-ing forward to some pretty hefty year-end bonuses.

Abe, the prime minister of Ja-pan, and Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, were responsible for policies that helped deliver huge gains to stock market investors in 2013.

How many hedge fund manag-ers can boast 56.7 percent gains? That was how much Tokyo’s Nik-kei average rose in 2013, thanks

in large part to Abe’s aggressive stimulus policies intended to shake Japan out of its economic torpor. It was the Nikkei 225’s best performance in 40 years.

And who would have thought a year ago that the best-performing stock markets in Europe would include Greece, up 28.1 percent during the year, and Ireland, up 33.6 percent? Much of those gains can be attributed to Draghi’s success in convincing investors that the European Central Bank would not allow the euro zone to break apart.

“This year has marked the end of the financial crisis,” said David Thébault, head of quantitative sales trading at Global Equities in Paris. “Now we’re beginning to see recovery in the real economy. The U.S. is growing and the Euro-pean economy is stabilizing.”

Yet the unexpected swiftness of the rebounds in equity mar-kets has also created a palpable nervousness among investors. Gains that robust will be almost impossible to repeat in 2014, and could easily be reversed, analysts say. (NYT)

For Stock Market, an Amazingly Good Year

House Prices Rise Again, but the Pace Could Slow

Optimism Across Globe for 2014, With an Eye on Risks

onlIne: More PrICeS anD analYSIS

Information on all United States stocks, plus bonds, mu-

tual funds, commodities and for-eign stocks along with analysis of industry sectors and stock indexes: nytimes.com/markets

CoMMoDItIeS/BonDS

GOLD

D 1.20

$1,201.90

10-YR. TREAS. YIELD

0.06 0.87U

3.03% $98.42

CRUDE OIL

D

thE mArkEts

Foreign exchange Fgn.currency Dollarsin inDollars fgn.currency

Australia (Dollar) .8929 1.1199Bahrain (Dinar) 2.6527 .3770Brazil (Real) .4234 2.3618Britain (Pound) 1.6559 .6039Canada (Dollar) .9414 1.0622China (Yuan) .1652 6.0537Denmark (Krone) .1844 5.4220Dom. Rep. (Peso) .0235 42.6200Egypt (Pound) .1439 6.9485Europe (Euro) 1.3757 .7269Hong Kong (Dollar) .1290 7.7540Japan (Yen) .0095 105.28Mexico (Peso) .0766 13.0490Norway (Krone) .1650 6.0614Singapore (Dollar) .7925 1.2618So. Africa (Rand) .0958 10.4400So. Korea (Won) .0009 1055.2Sweden (Krona) .1555 6.4304Switzerland (Franc) 1.1211 .8920

Source: Thomson Reuters

16,576.66

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DJIA

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17.82 0.26%

FTSE 100

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Market holiday

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40.16 0.30%

TSX

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22.39 0.54%

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61.52 0.26%

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23,306.39U

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S&P 500

1,848.36

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2,115.98U

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BUSIneSS Wednesday, January 1, 2014 4

FRANKFURT — The euro not only survived 2013, it thrived. And, at the stroke of midnight in Eastern Europe on Tuesday, the currency added a new member.

Latvia is the 18th nation to adopt the euro, a development that might have seemed unlikely just two years ago, when many wondered whether the euro would even survive.

But now that the European economy has stabilized, the euro is actually appreciating in value. The euro rose 4.5 percent against the dollar in 2013, its best show-ing in years. It is now at 1.38 to the dollar.

Latvia, a tiny Baltic nation, is the first to join the euro zone since neighboring Estonia in 2011.

With 2.2 million people, Latvia is unlikely to shift the balance of power in the euro zone, which will have a total of 333 million resi-

dents. But Latvia at least keeps alive the idea that despite its problems the euro club still has potential to grow.

As a euro member, Latvia gains more influence over monetary policy. The governor of the cen-tral bank, Ilmars Rimsevics, will automatically become a member of the governing council of the Eu-ropean Central Bank, which sets benchmark interest rates for the

euro zone.Rimsevics will have one vote

on the council as its 24th member. At least on paper, he has the same clout as presidents of the central banks of larger countries like Germany or France.

Despite whatever doubts some Latvians may have about yoking themselves to a currency still emerging from a severe crisis, the euro signifies another stage in the country’s trek from Soviet state to a full-fledged member of Europe.

“Joining the euro marks the completion of Latvia’s journey back to the political and economic heart of our continent, and that is something for all of us to cele-brate,” said Olli Rehn, vice presi-dent of the European Commission responsible for economic and monetary affairs and the euro, in a statement. JACK EWING

PHILADELPHIA — On a deso-late North Philadelphia street, an isolated block of five Victorian rowhouses is surrounded by va-cant lots and a commuter rail line.

All but one of the two-story houses are vacant. Two display metal signs announcing they are up for property auction by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

The city lists the market value of each empty house at $27,900.

The houses are among an es-timated 40,000 vacant, derelict or underused buildings and lots — both publicly and privately owned — that are candidates for the city’s new Land Bank.

Philadelphia, with a population of about 1.5 million, is the larg-est American city to adopt a land bank, experts said.

But critics are concerned about a provision in the ordinance cre-ating the Philadelphia Land Bank that requires City Council approv-al for all sales, saying that could delay the disposal of properties.

Rick Sauer, executive director of the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Cor-porations, which has helped lead the Land Bank initiative, said he believed it would offer devel-opers a much easier process to navigate. Previously, developers sometimes walked away from potential projects if they had to acquire land or buildings from dif-ferent city agencies with different

requirements.The new city ordinance aims

to consolidate ownership of the properties. And to encourage de-velopers to buy through one-stop shopping, the ordinance gives the Land Bank power to acquire title to privately owned vacant properties if they are delinquent in taxes.

Once the Land Bank is op-erational, developers will be in a better position to take control of whole blocks that show a “gap-tooth” patchwork of public and private buildings and land, pro-ponents say.

“If all the properties are con-solidated in one place with one application, one set of rules, one time frame, that’s going to help a lot for the properties that are in the public inventory,” Sauer said.

The vast stock of vacant prop-erties also costs the city some

$20 million a year in maintenance to attend to matters like cleaning lots or responding to fires, accord-ing to a 2010 study for the commu-nity development organization. The study also estimated that blighted properties had eroded the value of neighboring proper-ties by $3.6 billion citywide.

Still, how rapidly the Land Bank’s appeal will translate into changes depends greatly on the health and strength of the real es-tate market.

“What you can expect to see from this land bank is significant progress in the near term on the removal of the properties that are posing the liabilities, and then that begins to stimulate private reinvestment,” said Frank Alex-ander, a professor of real estate law at Emory University and an author of land bank laws in many cities. JON HURDLE

In Latvia, the New Year Also Rings In the Euro

Philadelphia Plans to Rebuild From Decay

Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Tuesday:

Hertz Global Holdings Inc., up $2.71 to $28.62. The rental car company ad-opted a “poison pill” stock plan after seeing “unusual and substantial” trad-ing of its shares.

Twitter Inc., up $3.14 to $63.65. The social media site bounced back from a bruising two days during which inves-tors dumped stock they felt had grown too expensive.

Illinois Tool Works Inc., up 64 cents to $84.08. A five-year strategic plan re-leased this month and a strong outlook from the manufacturer sent the stock to an all-time high.

Phillips 66, up $2.41 to $77.13. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is trading roughly $1.4 billion of its stock in the refiner for a business owned by Phil-lips 66.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd., up 62 cents to $14.38. A regulatory filing revealed that investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. has taken a 6.8 percent stake in the chip maker.

UniPixel Inc., down $1.78 to $10.01. C.E.O. Reed Killion will step down at the touch-display technology maker and be replaced by the chairman and a board director. (aP)

Stocks on the Move

roMAn KoKsArov/AssoCiAteD Press

the new Latvian euro coins.

Most Active, GAiners And Losers % VolumeStock(TICKER) Close Chg Chg (100)

10MoSTACTIVEBank of Am (BAC) 15.57 +0.03 +0.2 572036Facebook I (FB) 54.65 +0.94 +1.7 430963Sirius XM (SIRI) 3.49 ◊0.02 ◊0.6 419837Cisco Syst (CSCO) 22.43 +0.18 +0.8 332412Hertz Glob (HTZ) 28.62 +2.71 +10.5 326871General El (GE) 28.03 +0.14 +0.5 303100Ford Motor (F) 15.43 +0.15 +1.0 278298Twitter In (TWTR) 63.65 +3.14 +5.2 278236Micron Tec (MU) 21.75 +0.45 +2.1 251227DryShips I (DRYS) 4.70 +0.32 +7.3 248983

10TopGAInERS

Fonar (FONR) 21.21 +3.52 +19.9 7739BOS Be (BOSC) 7.75 +1.08 +16.2 2145Valhi (VHI) 17.58 +2.35 +15.4 1358Accele (XLRN) 39.60 +4.34 +12.3 2542USEC I (USU) 6.62 +0.71 +12.0 9438Daily (DJCO) 191.85 +19.85 +11.5 2Adept (ADEP) 16.89 +1.74 +11.5 4508Tremor (TRMR) 5.80 +0.57 +10.9 3404Reed’s (REED) 7.98 +0.78 +10.8 3634Hertz (HTZ) 28.62 +2.71 +10.5 326871

10TopLoSERS

UniPix (UNXL) 10.01 ◊1.78 ◊15.1 31837Accele (AXDX) 12.20 ◊1.31 ◊9.7 4254Donega (DGICB) 23.65 ◊2.35 ◊9.0 3ARC Gr (ARCW) 24.86 ◊2.45 ◊9.0 1334Americ (APFC) 37.26 ◊3.62 ◊8.9 3247Yadkin (YDKN) 17.04 ◊1.64 ◊8.8 3080Maui L (MLP) 6.09 ◊0.48 ◊7.3 795Amyris (AMRS) 5.29 ◊0.40 ◊7.0 11408Raptor (RPTP) 13.02 ◊0.96 ◊6.9 6549LGL Gr (LGL) 5.41 ◊0.39 ◊6.7 104

% VolumeStock(TICKER) Close Chg Chg (100)

% VolumeStock(TICKER) Close Chg Chg (100)

Source: Thomson Reuters

MArK MAKeLA for the new YorK tiMes

the Land Bank intends to put together packages of abandoned properties, like these in lower north Philadelphia, and entice developers to rebuild.

BUSIneSS Wednesday, January 1, 2014 5

New Year’s resolutions tend to be big, impressive promises that we adhere to for short periods of time — that blissful stretch of January when we’re starving ourselves, exercising daily and reading Proust. But — and you know this — rather than making extreme changes that last for days or weeks, we’re better off making tiny ones that last more or less forever.

Mostly, though, when it comes to diet, we’re told the opposite. We’ve got a billion-dollar industry based on fad diets and quick fixes: Eat nothing but foam packing pea-nuts and lemon tea, and you’ll lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Then what? Resolutions work only if we are resolute, and changes are mean-ingful only if they are permanent.

What follows are some of the easiest food-related resolutions you will ever make, from cooking big pots of grains and beans once a week, to buying frozen produce, to pickling things à la “Portlandia.”

Committing to just a few of these, or even one, will get you moving in the right direction to-ward eating more plants and few-er animal products and processed foods. My suggestions are incre-mental, but the ease with which you can incorporate them into your shopping, cooking and eat-ing routines is what makes them sustainable and powerful.

Flexitarianism is about mak-ing a gradual shift, not a complete overhaul. It is a way of eating we are much more likely to stick to for the long term — which, after all, is the point of resolutions.

Cook simple, unseasoned veg-etables every few days.

You can steam or parboil or mi-

crowave. Once cooked, vegetables keep a long time. And then they’re sitting there waiting to top pastas and grains, to bolster soups and salads, to whip up veggie wraps or just to reheat in oil or butter with seasonings.

Cook big batches of grains and beans.

Because it’s nearly effortless, and having cooked grains and beans on hand at all times makes day-to-day cooking a breeze. They will keep in the fridge up to a week.

Buy half as much meat, and make it better meat.

Thinking of eating meat as an indulgence lets you buy tastier, healthier, more sustainable meat without breaking the bank.

Splurge when you can.That way, the foods you consid-

er special treats are truly special.

For me it’s dark chocolate, meat and cheese.

Buy frozen fruits and vegeta-bles.

Because out-of-season produce from halfway around the world doesn’t make much sense or taste best. Fruits and vegetables (from peaches, to corn, to squash) frozen when they are ripe are a bet-ter alternative, and incredibly convenient.

Pickle.So the copious

amounts of fresh produce you buy never have to go to waste. And it tastes good.

Eat vegetables for breakfast.You already eat fruit for break-

fast, so what’s so strange? Veggie-based breakfasts are common around the world: cucumber and tomato salads in Israel, pickled vegetables in Japan, a bean and tomato stew in parts of Africa. Think of it as a très chic interna-tional trend.

Cooking for carnivores? Make extra sides.

Let the people around you have their fill of meat while you eat a bit, but fill up on vegetables, beans and grains.

Cook out of your comfort zone.Because some of the best veg-

etable-centric food comes from halfway around the world, where it is “food,” not “flexitarian.”

MARK BITTMAN

SWOOPE, Va. — Hog heaven, it turns out, is a place on earth, a sun-dappled mountainside in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where one day this fall a herd of Gloucestershire Old Spots, Hampshires, Yorkshires and Durocs contentedly gorged their way toward 300 pounds.

“Better pull them away,” Joel Salatin warned as curious porcine lips nibbled at a visitor’s sandal-clad toes.

After star turns in Michael Pollan’s best-selling book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and the documentary “Food, Inc.”, Salatin has been hailed as America’s proselytizer of the pasture, a busy advocate for the benefits of turning open land over to livestock.

Among the nation’s most famous farmers,

he has lately turned to preaching the gospel of the forest-fed pig. At a time when 90 percent of America’s pork is produced in huge confine-ment operations, Salatin, 56, is urging the re-turn of the pig to its ancestral home.

In “Pigs ‘n Glens,” the inaugural video in his new how-to series, Polyface Primer, Salatin contends that a simple electric fence can trans-form marginal land into an income source and an entry point for young farmers.

As students at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Jason Story and his wife, Carolina, heard Salatin lecture about his system and values. In 2012, they opened Three Little Pigs Charcuterie and Salumi in Washington, D.C., and now buy pigs from him.

“The whole sustainable thing amounts to

nothing if we can’t make it what everyone can afford,” Story said. “I respect that Joel is taking it on the chin as an ambassador to bring this to the nation, and that he embraces training other farmers.” KATHRYN SHATTUCK

With his new encyclopedic and entertaining “Beachbum Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean,” the tiki expert Jeff Berry distills 500 years of tropical-drink history into

300-plus pages. He takes you from the days of pirates, explor-ers and sugar plantations to the adventures of those twin purveyors of Polynesian fan-

tasy, Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic. Among the book’s 77 cocktail recipes are some never before published: $34.95, Cocktail Kingdom.

lIKe a SloW CooKerWItHoUt tHe PlUG

The Wonderbag is big and cumbersome, about the size of a dog bed, and hardly suggests an efficient appliance. But put a pot of stew or soup that has boiled on high heat for 15 minutes inside, and the insulated bag functions like a slow cooker without calling on additional energy. It was de-signed for developing countries where energy is precious, and when you buy one, another one will be donated to a family in rural Africa: $50, amazon.com.

FLORENCE FABRICANT

Evangelist for Pastured Pigs Has Followers

Read in the Shade Of a Tiny Umbrella

Sustainable New Year’s Resolutions

AnDrew shurtLeff for the new YorK tiMes

Joel salatin says that allowing pigs to forage is good for cooks and the earth.

tonY CeniCoLA/the new YorK tiMes

PhotogrAPhs BY gettY iMAges; Photo iLLustrAtion BY the new YorK tiMes

DInInG Wednesday, January 1, 2014 6

The arrests began almost as soon as the concertgoers amassed outside Madison Square Garden on Monday. Police officers moved through the crowd, picking off targets and leading them to a police van where they were patted down and loaded in.

A man, briefly questioned by the police, tried to run and was grabbed by two officers who threw him to the ground and slapped on handcuffs, as fans in dreadlocks, fishnet stockings and tie-dyed shirts looked on.

It was the start of another night of revelry and arrests that has become something of a ritual within the traveling circus that accom-panies the jam band Phish. At least 228 people were arrested or received summonses at

shows on the first three nights of a four-night stand that was to end Tuesday with a New Year’s Eve performance.

Illegal drugs have been woven into the fabric of the rock concert experience since be-fore Woodstock. But fans of Phish, a Vermont band with an obsessed following reminiscent of the Grateful Dead, seem to have developed an outsize reputation for heavy drug use.

Given the enormous police presence in Midtown Manhattan on a typical day, selling drugs outside a heavily policed event like a concert at Madison Square Garden would seem to require a heavy dose of pluck, if not something more potent.

In one episode before the Phish concert

on Saturday, a man the police identified as John Picrqlisi, 34, offered to keep watch as his partners, Steven Powers, 47, and Jeffrey Pow-ers, 52, sold some mushrooms. “Make sure you don’t get caught, cops are everywhere,” Picrqlisi yelled to his two partners, according to a criminal complaint.

The buyer, who paid $40 for the drugs, was an undercover officer. The three men were arrested and charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance. According to the com-plaint, Jeffrey Powers had 424 capsules of MDMA, 71 strips of LSD and 14 bags of mush-rooms in his pants.

Undercover officers have confiscated mari-juana, hash, psychedelic mushrooms, LSD, MDMA or ecstasy, amphetamine and pre-scription drugs like Oxycodone, OxyContin and Xanax, the authorities said.

A website called PholkTales.com that publishes stories written by fans about Phish-related antics has a subsection about encoun-ters with law enforcement with titles like “Caught with a Bong,” “What Pipes? What Paper?” and “I smell herb!! No you don’t.”

In October, the police department in Hamp-ton, Va., produced a YouTube video welcom-ing fans to the city, with an officer saying that they were “eagerly awaiting Phish,” while cautioning that there would be additional po-lice in the area. “Yes, we will be enforcing the violations of law,” Sgt. Jason Price said.

Outside the Garden on Monday, fans of the band, known as Phish Heads, complained that they were being singled out for scrutiny because of the band’s reputation.

“I hate to feel like just because of a certain look that Phish fans have, or a certain idea that goes with Phish, they’re targeted in a very certain way that maybe other fans are not,” said Julia Johnson, 21, a senior at George Washington University. “We’re all here to see music that people love and the drugs and all that are just a part of the experience that ev-eryone is trying to have together.”

ELI M. ROSENBERG and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Drug Use and Arrests Accompany Phish at Madison Square Garden

ACROSS 1 Frank’s partner

in the funnies

7 Old ___ (London theater)

10 À la mode

14 Asian entertainer

15 Have a mortgage, say

16 ___ O’Neill

17 Tree with extra-large acorns

18 ___ Cob, Conn.

19 NASA component: Abbr.

20 Card holder: Abbr.

21 Eponymous sitcom star of the 2000s

23 After-dinner wine

25 Narrow inlet

26 Model Porizkova

28 Dine

29 Ad nauseam

31 Far sides of ranges

33 ___ King Cole

34 Actor McKellen and others

36 Hawaiian singer with many 1960s-’70s TV guest appearances

37 New Year’s greeting

40 Spelunker

43 Sleek swimmers

44 N.Y.C. line

47 Teresa Heinz or Christina Onassis

49 Spartan

52 Roth ___

53 People of Rwanda and Burundi

55 K.G.B. rival

56 2000s TV drama set in the 1960s

58 Smile

59 Like some sale goods: Abbr.

60 Tailor’s case

61 The White Stripes or OutKast

63 Declutter

65 The White Stripes’ genre

66 Rap sheet letters

67 Little-known

68 Johnson of “Laugh-In”

69 Permit

70 Aslant

DOWN 1 First king of the

English

2 After-school activity?

3 Band with the 10x platinum album “Nevermind”

4 That, in Toledo

5 Economics Nobelist William F. ___

6 Sample the hooch

7 Not shy about expressing opinions

8 ___ Jima

9 Business jet maker

10 Dunce cap shape

11 Make rough

12 “Actually …”

13 Afro-Caribbean music

22 Capital spanning the Danube

24 Achieved through difficulty

27 1971 #1 hit for Carole King

30 Alternative

32 “Try!”

35 Bill ___, the Science Guy

38 “___ there yet?”

39 Classic Stephen Foster song

40 Fire-breathing creature of myth

41 Faucet attachment

42 Span across a gorge, say

45 Soloist’s performance

46 Persian Wars vessel

48 Bit of beachwear

50 San ___, Calif.

51 Took home

54 W.W. II menace

57 Love from the Beach Boys?

62 Instrument for 36-Across, informally

64 “Life of Pi” director Lee

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

PUZZLE BY PETER A. COLLINS

1/1/14

A F L A C M Y B A D B H TL L A M A A E R I E L E EL I V I N G L A R G E I N NS P A O U T S J U N C O

H O R A T I O A L G E RX A N A D U S K Y ET W I R L P O L E F O BR O C K E T S R E D G L A R EA L E H A G S I B I Z A

I D O L A V A L O NP R E M I U M L A G E RL O U P E E T T A A R FA I R C H I V A S R E G A LG L O U M B E R I M A G EE S S T O M E I P U R E E

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14 15 16

17 18 19

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25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67

68 69 70

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 5,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS.Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

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CroSSWorD Edited By Will Shortz

joUrnal Wednesday, January 1, 2014 7

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President Obama has done the predict-able thing by sending more weapons to Iraq to counter an alarming rise in violence. But arms alone will not solve a problem that has its roots in the political alienation of Sunnis and other minorities and the undermining of democratic processes, especially by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The bloodshed has reached catastrophic proportions. More than 8,000 Iraqis died in 2013, including 952 members of the Iraqi se-curity forces. Over all, it is the highest death toll since 2008 and shatters a trend that in 2012 prompted a top administration official to as-sert that “Iraq today is less violent” than “at any time in recent history.”

The deadly surge is attributed to Al Qaeda’s regional affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a Sunni group that is a potent force in northern and western Iraq. Its predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq, waged the insurgency that brought the country near civil war in 2006 and 2007 before suffering big defeats from Iraqi Sunni tribal groups and American forces. Since the United States withdrew at the end of 2011, the group has gained strength against Iraqi security forces that are incapable of fully protecting civilians. American officials say that Islamic State is deliberately trying to tear the country apart.

Maliki sought help from Obama at the White House in November, a turnabout after he failed to reach a deal to keep a small num-ber of American troops in the country after 2011 for training and intelligence gathering.

Some 75 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, to be fired at militant camps with the C.I.A. pro-viding targeting assistance, were delivered to Iraq last week and 10 reconnaissance drones

are expected to follow in March. The Obama administration also plans to provide 48 other reconnaissance drones and the first of an or-der of F-16 fighter jets.

The United States has a strategic interest in Iraq’s stability, making increased coun-terterrorism cooperation and intelligence-sharing essential. But even the most lethal weapons will not have much positive effect if Maliki and other Iraqi leaders bicker rather than unite the country around shared goals through credible democratic processes.

American officials say Maliki and other Iraqi officials finally understand the dangers of the growing extremism and the fact that a securi-ty-only approach will not bring stability. They say that Iraqi security forces have lately been more successful against the militants and that Maliki and his government have shown more willingness to work cooperatively with Sunnis, resolve oil disputes with the Kurds and put in place a new agreement aimed at promoting civil and social peace. Given his authoritarian duplicity, it is hard to be optimistic. On Tuesday, more than 40 Sunni lawmakers submitted their resignations from Parliament and Sunni min-isters threatened to withdraw from the Cabi-net after Maliki’s security forces dismantled a camp used by Sunnis protesting second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government.

As it doles out weapons, intelligence and advice, the Obama administration needs to press Maliki and other Iraqi leaders to do those things, to ensure that the election in April is free and fair, and to commit to adopting laws that will address Sunni grievances. It also needs to be prepared to halt or withhold deliveries of weapons if they are misused or if Maliki contin-ues to put his own interests over his country’s.

The corporation that controls Sprint, the third-biggest cellphone company in the coun-try after Verizon and AT&T, is reportedly planning to make an offer to buy the smaller rival T-Mobile in a move that would reduce competition in an important industry that al-ready has too little of it.

Most Americans have a choice of just four national cellphone companies — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile — compared with six in 2003. The Federal Communications Commission recently described the industry as “highly concentrated” based on an index used by regulators to measure how competi-tive a market is. In 2011, the Department of Justice used a similar analysis to effectively block AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile.

Sprint, recently bought by the Japanese company SoftBank, appears to believe that regulators might look favorably on a proposal to purchase T-Mobile because the combined company would still be smaller than AT&T and Verizon in revenue and customers. Sprint would probably argue that the combined com-

pany would become a more effective competi-tor to the two larger companies.

As an independent company, T-Mobile has recently cut prices aggressively and simplified its cellphone plans. Its phone plans are often much cheaper than comparable packages of-fered by other cellphone companies. It no lon-ger forces customers into two-year contracts; its subscribers can switch to another wireless provider whenever they like. And it slashed the high international roaming charges it levies on calls customers make when they are traveling abroad and eliminated roaming charges for text messages and Internet service.

Other companies like AT&T have been forced to respond to T-Mobile’s price cuts and policy changes with similar moves. It is hard to imagine that any cellphone company would have been as aggressive as T-Mobile if the administration had allowed AT&T to buy the company. The logic that the government used to step in still holds today, and antitrust regu-lators should look closely at any proposal that would reduce competition.

London

A year ends, another begins, time for remi-niscences and resolutions, regret and hope, best-of and worst-of lists, confessions and crystal-ball gazing — most of it pretty excru-ciating. So it goes.

I am going to make one prediction for 2014. It is that, for all John Kerry’s efforts, this will be another year in which peace is not reached in the Middle East.

Plenty of bad things have happened between Israelis and Palestinians of late. There has been a steady uptick in violence. Israel’s free-ing of 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners was naturally greeted with joy in Ramallah. Along with the release came word that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will likely announce plans for 1,400 new hous-ing units in the West Bank, just as Kerry ar-rives for his 10th peace-seeking visit. This has infuriated Palestinians. So, too, has an Israeli ministerial committee vote advancing legisla-tion to annex settlements in the Jordan Valley. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the vote “finishes all that is called the peace process.”

Then there is the rebounding Israel-is-a-Jewish-state bugbear: Netanyahu wants Pal-estinians to recognize his nation as such. He has recently called it “the real key to peace.” His argument is that this is the touchstone by which to judge whether Palestinians will ac-cept “the Jewish state in any border.”

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, says no. This issue is a waste of time, a compli-cating diversion when none is needed.

Of course, any two-state peace agreement will have to be final and irreversible; it must ensure there are no further Palestinian claims on a secure Israel.

If Israel looks like a Jewish state and acts like a Jewish state, that is good enough for me — as long as it gets out of the corrosive business of occupation.

When I spoke to him in Tel Aviv a few months ago, Yair Lapid, a top government minister, said: “The fact that we demand from Palestin-ians a declaration that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, I just think this is rubbish. I don’t need that. The whole point of Israel was we came here saying we don’t need anyone else to recognize us anymore because we can recognize ourselves. We are liberated.”

That’s right. It’s also true that Palestinian leaders, with no democratic accountability, are not preparing their people for territorial com-promise at or close to the 1967 lines. Then again, nothing in Israel’s actions facilitates that.

A last word: This column is dedicated to Mike O’Connor, a fearless journalist. Mike was an acute observer of the kind of human folly, fatuousness and self-interest that perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It brought him to tears. Yet he always found a way to laugh. Mike died suddenly last week, age 67, in Mex-ico City. If nothing else, I hope Kerry and the rest prove me wrong for him.

E D i t o r i A l s o f t h E t i m E s

More Guns Will Not Save Iraq

Preserving Wireless Competition

roGer CoHen

My Jewish State

oPInIon Wednesday, January 1, 2014 8

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — The fact that Michael Schumacher was wearing a helmet when he sustained a life-threatening head injury while skiing in France on Sunday probably did not come as a surprise to experts who have charted the increasing presence of helmets on slopes and halfpipes in recent years. The fact that the helmet did not prevent Schu-macher’s injury probably did not surprise them, either.

Schumacher, the most success-ful Formula One driver in his-tory, sustained a traumatic brain injury when he fell and hit his head on a rock while navigating an un-groomed area at a resort in Méribel, France. Although he was wearing a helmet, he sustained injuries that have left him fighting for his life in a hospital in Greno-ble, France.

Schumacher’s injury also fo-

cused attention on an unsettling trend. Although skiers and snow-boarders in the United States are wearing helmets more than ever — 70 percent of all participants, nearly triple the number from 2003 — there has been no reduc-tion in the number of snow-sports-related fatalities or brain injuries in the country, according to the National Ski Areas Association.

Experts ascribe that seem-ingly implausible correlation to the inability of helmets to prevent serious head injuries like Schu-macher’s and to the fact that more skiers and snowboarders are en-gaging in risky behaviors: skiing faster, jumping higher and going out of bounds. “The equipment we have now allows us to do things we really couldn’t do before, and people’s pushing limits has sort of surpassed people’s ability to control themselves,” said Chris

Davenport, a professional big-mountain skier.

Dave Byrd, the ski association’s director of risk management, at-tributed the surge in helmet use to grass-roots efforts by resorts, hel-met manufacturers and medical professionals to encourage their use. He also cited growing public awareness about brain injuries, a result of persistent news media at-tention on the issue in sports, par-ticularly in the N.F.L., and several high-profile skiing deaths, like those of Sonny Bono and Natasha Richardson.

The increase in helmet use has had positive results. Experts say helmets have reduced the num-bers of less serious head injuries, like scalp lacerations, by 30 per-cent to 50 percent, and Schumach-er’s doctors say he would not have survived his fall had he not worn a helmet. KELLEY McMILLAN

Johnny Manziel threw four touchdown passes, and Toney Hurd Jr. returned an interception 55 yards for the go-ahead touch-down in Texas A&M’s 52-48 vic-tory over Duke on Tuesday night in the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta.

Manziel, playing in what might be his final college game, complet-ed 30 of 38 passes for 382 yards and ran for 73 yards and a touchdown. Hurd’s interception return gave the No. 20 Aggies (9-4) their first lead with 3:33 remaining.

No. 22 Duke (10-4) led 38-17 at halftime and 41-31 entering the fourth quarter. The Blue Devils are still looking for their first bowl win since the 1961 Cotton Bowl.

U.C.L.A. 42, VirginiA TeCh 12 Brett Hundley threw two touch-down passes and ran for two more scores to help No. 17 U.C.L.A. rout Virginia Tech 42-12 on Tuesday in the Sun Bowl in El Paso.

Hundley was selected the co-M.V.P. along with linebacker Jor-dan Zumwalt, who had 10 tackles and an interception. The Bruins (10-3) outscored the Hokies (8-5) 28-5 in the second half.ArizonA 42, BosTon CoLLege 19 Ka’Deem Carey rushed for 169 yards and 2 touchdowns, B.J. Den-ker threw for 275 yards and 2 touch-downs and Arizona had an easy time in a 42-19 victory over Boston College in the Advocare V100 Bowl,

formerly the Independence Bowl, in Shreveport, La.

Boston College’s Andre Wil-liams, who won the Doak Walker Award over Carey, was held to 75 yards rushing and a touchdown. Mississippi sTATe 44, riCe 7 Dak Prescott threw three touch-down passes and ran for two more scores and Mississippi State trounced Rice, 44-7, in Mem-phis in the most one-sided Lib-erty Bowl victory in the game’s 55-year history.

Mississippi State (7-6) wrapped up its fourth straight winning sea-son and prevented Rice (10-4) from winning bowl games in back-to-back years for the first time. (AP)

Ski Helmet Use Is Not Reducing Brain InjuriesManning Mark Stands

The N.F.L. said Tuesday that Peyton Manning’s single-sea-son record of 5,477 yards pass-ing will stand. Elias Sports Bu-reau reviewed a 7-yard pass from Manning to wide receiver Eric Decker and determined it will remain a forward pass and not a lateral, which would have made it a 7-yard run. That would have subtracted 7 yards from Manning’s total, leaving him with 5,470 yards, six shy of Drew Brees’ 2011 record. (AP)

Star Couple engagedRory McIlroy is engaged to

the tennis star Caroline Wozni-acki. They announced their en-gagement on Twitter. (AP)

Manziel Leads Texas A&M Past Duke in Thrilling Rally

WeatHerHigh/low temperatures for the 21 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 18 hours ended at 1 p.m. yesterday. expected conditions for today and tomorrow.

Weather conditions: C-clouds, F-fog, H-haze, I-ice, PC-partly cloudy, r-rain, s-sun, sh-showers, sn-snow, ss-snow showers, T-thunderstorms, Tr-trace, W-windy.

U.S. CItIeS Yesterday Today Tomorrowalbuquerque 48/ 22 0 53/ 28 s 49/ 30 satlanta 44/ 37 0 54/ 42 PC 51/ 24 shBoise 36/ 24 0 40/ 26 PC 40/ 29 PCBoston 26/ 14 0 28/ 19 PC 25/ 8 snBuffalo 22/ 17 0.12 20/ 8 ss 13/ -3 snCharlotte 50/ 37 0 56/ 38 s 52/ 28 shChicago 14/ 2 0.07 24/ 18 sn 20/ -2 ssCleveland 21/ 18 Tr 26/ 18 sn 23/ 9 sndallas-Ft. Worth 54/ 25 0 62/ 30 s 49/ 27 sdenver 56/ 26 0 40/ 23 sn 52/ 29 sdetroit 19/ 16 0.01 20/ 12 sn 18/ 4 ss

Houston 49/ 38 0 61/ 42 C 58/ 34 PCKansas City 51/ 17 0 22/ 5 sn 18/ 2 sLos angeles 72/ 44 0 74/ 52 s 78/ 54 sMiami 77/ 67 Tr 81/ 73 sh 83/ 66 PCMpls.-st. Paul -1/ -8 0 1/ -11 C 2/ -9 PCnew york City 32/ 21 0.01 32/ 29 PC 33/ 14 snOrlando 71/ 57 0 72/ 63 C 77/ 48 rPhiladelphia 38/ 26 Tr 37/ 31 PC 38/ 18 snPhoenix 71/ 43 0 70/ 48 s 72/ 49 ssalt Lake City 36/ 19 Tr 34/ 22 C 35/ 23 PCsan Francisco 57/ 41 0 62/ 43 s 64/ 45 sseattle 48/ 45 0.01 50/ 42 F 49/ 41 rst. Louis 44/ 25 0 40/ 16 PC 21/ 6 PCWashington 47/ 33 0 46/ 33 PC 43/ 18 sh

ForeIGn CItIeS Yesterday Today Tomorrowacapulco 93/ 72 0 91/ 73 PC 91/ 73 PCathens 54/ 49 0 52/ 46 sh 57/ 41 PCBeijing 52/ 26 0 51/ 27 s 49/ 28 PCBerlin 39/ 30 0 39/ 32 C 41/ 36 CBuenos aires 86/ 66 0 93/ 72 T 84/ 57 TCairo 64/ 50 0.02 64/ 48 PC 64/ 48 s

Cape Town 84/ 66 0 84/ 65 s 90/ 68 sdublin 45/ 37 0.03 51/ 39 r 48/ 40 PCGeneva 39/ 27 0 46/ 36 PC 43/ 33 rHong Kong 65/ 53 0 68/ 60 s 69/ 62 rKingston 90/ 77 0 88/ 74 s 87/ 74 sLima 77/ 66 0 80/ 65 PC 79/ 65 PCLondon 52/ 41 0.19 50/ 45 r 50/ 43 PCMadrid 46/ 36 Tr 48/ 45 sh 51/ 48 rMexico City 69/ 46 0 69/ 43 PC 67/ 44 TMontreal 5/ -2 0.09 1/ -17 s -4/ -17 CMoscow 36/ 34 0 31/ 23 PC 28/ 21 Cnassau 81/ 73 0.03 83/ 71 sh 82/ 71 sParis 48/ 41 0.04 48/ 45 r 50/ 41 shPrague 30/ 21 0 37/ 28 C 37/ 32 rrio de Janeiro 97/ 77 0.03 89/ 79 T 92/ 79 PCrome 59/ 48 0 55/ 39 PC 57/ 50 shsantiago 86/ 59 0 86/ 54 s 82/ 55 sstockholm 41/ 34 0.12 37/ 34 C 39/ 34 Csydney 79/ 66 0.02 88/ 72 PC 91/ 68 shTokyo 52/ 36 0 57/ 41 s 52/ 36 sToronto 19/ 14 Tr 16/ -2 sn 8/ -6 snVancouver 45/ 43 0.02 47/ 42 F 47/ 39 rWarsaw 36/ 23 0 39/ 31 C 37/ 30 PC

In Brief

n.B.a. SCoreSMONDAY’S LATE GAMEPhoenix 107, L.a. Clippers 88TUESDAYatlanta 92, Boston 91Indiana 91, Cleveland 76Golden state 94, Orlando 81sacramento 110, Houston 106san antonio 113, nets 92Toronto 85, Chicago 79Portland 98, Oklahoma City 94

n.H.l. SCoreSMONDAY’S LATE GAMEPhiladelphia 4, Vancouver 3, sOTUESDAYrangers 2, Florida 1, sOdevils 2, Pittsburgh 1st. Louis 2, Minnesota 1Islanders 5, Boston 3Carolina 5, Montreal 4, OTWinnipeg 3, Buffalo 0anaheim 6, san Jose 3dallas 3, Los angeles 2Colorado 5, Columbus 3Philadelphia 4, Calgary 1Phoenix 4, edmonton 3, OT

SPortS Wednesday, January 1, 2014 9

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Bobby Bowden still lives in the brick house he and his wife, Ann, fell in love with in 1976. There was a pool out back, a golf course beyond that and a sprawling oak tree that canopied the driveway.

The Bowdens loved that tree. Then, about 10 years ago, it start-ed dying and had to be cut down. Looking out his front window on a recent afternoon, Bowden gri-maced and shook his head.

He is 84 dadgum years old. And to think, four years ago, he was coaching at Florida State. He was aging and the program was foun-dering, but he wanted to stay one more year. He was told he could stay, but his title would be some-thing like ambassador coach and he would not be allowed on the field. He rejected the idea and was essentially forced into retirement.

Life after Bowden turned out just fine for Florida State. Jimbo Fisher, in his fourth year, coached the Seminoles to an undefeated regular season and a spot in the national championship game. Quarterback, Jameis Winston, won the Heisman Trophy.

Asked how he was enjoying life after Florida State, Bowden, at first, he had feared becoming ir-relevant. Now he is a public speak-er in high demand. He travels the country speaking to corporations, churches and athletes about two or three times a week.

Each Saturday after golf, he makes sure to watch Florida State. Fisher is like a son to him. Bowden has known him since he was in col-lege. You see, Bowden said, his son Terry convinced Fisher to leave Clemson, where he had gone to play baseball, to play quarterback for Terry at Salem College in West Virginia.

Terry hired Fisher as an as-sistant at Samford College, in Birmingham, Ala., and Fisher coached under him for about 11 years, first at Samford, then at Auburn. Fisher was teaching Bobby Bowden’s offense to Terry Bowden’s quarterbacks. “All those years,” Terry said, “he was always kind of part of the family.”

Midway through the 1998 sea-son, Terry Bowden resigned at Auburn and went into broadcast-ing. Fisher continued his rise. He

worked at Cincinnati for a season, then went to Louisiana State and saw Nick Saban’s process first-hand. A few years later, after the 2006 season, Bobby Bowden was in need of an offensive coordina-tor, preferably one who knew quarterbacks. His son recom-mended hiring Fisher.

Bowden picked Fisher and turned the offense over to him, which perhaps marked the end of his era at Florida State. After the 2009 season, during which Bowden turned 80, he wanted to stay for one more year. He wanted to reach 400 wins. Instead, the ad-ministration forced him out and promoted Fisher.

At the time, Bowden was upset. For the next few years, he stayed away from Florida State, not out of spite, but to stay out of Fisher’s way. He wanted to give Fisher room to establish himself, his own program, free of distractions.

It so happened that, as Fisher and Winston and Florida State made their spectacular run this season, Bowden returned for the first time since he retired. On Oct. 26, Florida State celebrated Bobby

Bowden Day. The marching band spelled out “Dadgum,” his favorite expression, and he planted Chief Osceola’s spear at midfield.

“I’ve had all that I need,” Bowden said as he smiled and played with the big F.S.U. ring that Burt Reynolds gave him years ago. He said he was fine now that he did not get that extra year. He does not miss coaching. In a few years, he and Ann might move to Panama City, Fla., to be closer to their children. TIM ROHAN

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — In the summer of 2011, 19 undergradu-ates at the University of North Carolina signed up for a lecture course called AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina. The professor was Julius Nyang’oro, longtime chairman of the African and Afro-American studies department.

It is doubtful the students learned much about blacks, North Carolina or anything else that summer, though they received grades for papers they supposedly turned in and Nyang’oro was paid $12,000. University and law-en-forcement officials say AFAM 280 never met. AFAM 280 is the focus of a criminal indictment against Nyang’oro that was handed down last month.

Eighteen of the 19 students en-rolled in the class were members of the North Carolina football team, reportedly steered there by academic advisers who saw their roles as helping athletes maintain grades high enough to remain eli-gible to play.

The indictment, critics say, cov-ers just a small piece of one of the biggest cases of academic fraud in North Carolina history. That

it has taken place at Chapel Hill, known for its rigorous academic standards, has only made it more shocking.

Two reports on the activities of the African and Afro-American studies department, one inter-nal and one conducted by a for-mer governor of North Carolina, James G. Martin, found problems with dozens of courses and said as many as 560 unauthorized grade changes were suspected of hav-ing been made dating back to 1997.

The investigations began after a 2012 report by The News & Ob-server of Raleigh, N.C.

Nyang’oro remains the mys-tery at the center of the case. Nyang’oro, who retired from the university in July 2012, is accused of teaching dozens of barely exis-tent or questionably led classes and presiding over a department in which grades were illicitly changed, professors’ signatures were forged and athletes routinely enrolled in laughably lax classes.

But with each new disclosure, even as his reputation has been savaged, Nyang’oro has not ex-plained himself.

“He’s been in a cone of silence for the last three years,” said Jay M. Smith, a history professor.

Athletes, including many from the popular and revenue-produc-ing football and basketball teams, made up nearly half of the stu-dents enrolled in the courses.

The university says the blame rests firmly and exclusively with two people: Nyang’oro and Deb-orah Crowder, the department manager, who retired in 2009 after 30 years there.

Crowder had close ties to the

athletic program and has long been in a relationship with a for-mer North Carolina basketball player, Warren Martin. The two reports on the department’s ac-tivities each named Crowder as being involved in the infrac-tions. Crowder, who has not been charged, did not return messages left on her home voice mail.

Some on campus and elsewhere are skeptical that just two people could carry out the questionable activities on their own. “How in the world could a scam like this go on for so long, and no one knew about it?” Smith asked.

Michael O. West, a friend and onetime North Carolina col-league of Nyang’oro, believes the university has made him a scapegoat. “My view is that the university is portraying these two people, Nyang’oro and Crowder, as a couple of rogue employees,” West said. “But I am sure there were many people in the athletic department and elsewhere who were aware of it,” he added.

“These two people are being made to take the blame and put out to dry, when the problem was institutional.” SARAH LYALL

A’s for Athletes, but Charges of Fraud at North Carolina

Bowden Adjusts to His Life as a Dadgum Retiree

hArrY LYnCh/the news & oBserver

the former professor Julius nyang’oro has been indicted.

MArK wALLheiser for the new YorK tiMes

Bobby Bowden has come to terms with being forced out after leading the florida state football program for 33 years.

SPortS joUrnal Wednesday, January 1, 2014 10