Obama sorry for Kamala Harris 'good looking' comment - Los Angeles Times

Kamala Harris and President Obama in 2012. (Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

From a Times staff writer

April 5, 2013, 5:50 p.m.

President Obama in no way mean to "diminish" California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris' credentials when he described her as "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country" during a talk, his spokesman said Friday.

The White House was responding to criticism over the remark, which some found to be sexist.

On Friday, the president apologized for the remark. "He called her to apologize for the distraction created by his comments," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

The president “did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general’s professional accomplishments and her capabilities. He fully recognizes the challenges women continue to face in the workplace and that they should not be judged based on appearance,” Carney added.

Harris has not commented. But according to PolitiCal, her communications director, Gil Duran, issued a statement saying "the attorney general and the president have been friends for many years. They had a great conversation yesterday and she strongly supports him."

Harris, it turns out, once commented on Obama's appearance. The San Jose Mercury News found a 2009 YouTube video in which she says:  "He looks and he sounds like a million bucks."

The controversy began Thursday when Obama was at a California fundraiser. Here are the remarks:

"You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake.

“She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country -- Kamala Harris is here.  (Applause.)  It's true.  Come on.  (Laughter.)  And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years.”

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Pressure Builds on Rutgers President - New York Times

Robert L. Barchi arrived at Rutgers University in September as a man with no time to waste.

Gov. Chris Christie had pushed through a plan to reorganize higher education in the state, and he wanted it done in less than a year. No one knew how much it would cost, but it was clear that Rutgers would have to find a way to pay for it.

As Barchi has pushed toward that goal in his first six months on the job, he has alienated faculty, state legislators and the student body. He has been accused of marginalizing needy students, shortchanging major departments and acting detached and even dismissive.

All this has left Barchi little good will as he finds himself at the center of a Rutgers basketball scandal, with faculty and students asking why he waited for news media outrage to fire Coach Mike Rice, instead of dismissing him when he learned of his abusive behavior last fall.

Some faculty members have seized on the crisis to call for Barchi’s resignation. Others suggest that he was so focused on the merger of Rutgers and the state medical schools that he did not have enough time last fall to consider that Rice’s berating of students and throwing basketballs at their heads violated basic university values — and that the fact it was on video was a disaster waiting to explode.

“What we’re struggling with is a president who has a mission that doesn’t apparently involve active involvement in university life,” said Thomas Prusa, a professor of economics. “Maybe if the president was more tuned in he would think that we have 58,000 students, 18 to 22 years old, and what exactly is happening? He is throwing balls at students’ heads? And he’s calling them what? He was not interested in that. He was interested in how do I make this merger work.”

On Thursday, the university continued to draw fire for its handling of the Rice situation. State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney called for the athletic director, Tim Pernetti, to resign. One of Rice’s assistants, Jimmy Martelli, resigned Thursday after ESPN reported that he too was on videos berating players and hurling basketballs at them.

As more faculty members signed a letter calling for his resignation, Barchi did not respond to requests for comment, and he canceled a long-scheduled town-hall-style meeting at the Newark campus.

The reorganization of the state’s higher education system, passed by the Legislature in June, reflected the sheer force of will of Christie, whose predecessors had tried and failed to pass similar plans.

The chief requirement was the merger of Rutgers and the three schools of the long-troubled University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, attaching two to the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick and one to Camden, by July 1, 2013. Officials argued that having a medical school would raise the prestige of Rutgers, allowing it to attract more grant money, which would make up for chronic funding problems in a state that spends less than most on public higher education.

But the plan was hard fought, with students and faculty protesting it had been done too hastily and legislators warning that no one knew how much it would cost. Trustees signed off on it only reluctantly in November.

Barchi, a physician who had been president of Thomas Jefferson University, a Philadelphia medical school, was considered an ideal person to oversee the merger.

He has put the cost of the merger at $75 million and has said that the university cannot expect help from the state in paying. In meetings with senior administrators, he has argued that the university can make up some of those costs by attracting more out of state students, who pay premium tuition.

To lure more enrollees, he wants to raise the average SAT scores of incoming students, which would also raise Rutgers’s rankings in the prestigious Association of American Universities. The university’s entry into the Big Ten athletic conference, engineered by Pernetti, was another part of that bid for prestige. That bid could have been complicated by the videos of Rice’s behavior, which Pernetti first saw last November, just as the university was finalizing terms with the Big Ten. At the time, Rice was suspended for three games and fined $50,000, a punishment that critics now view as far too soft.

On Thursday, as rumors of high-level resignations swirled on campus, some Rutgers donors stood behind the university’s leaders, reaching out to board members to voice their support.

Steven Plofker, a real estate developer and donor, said that while Rice “clearly stepped over a bunch of boundaries that are unacceptable,” Barchi and Pernetti deserved another chance.

In New Brunswick, faculty members complain that in trying to pay for the merger, Barchi froze hiring in the school of arts and sciences, the largest faculty on campus.

His first town hall meeting with students, in late February, got terrible reviews in the student newspaper, which reported that he spent most of the time discussing the merger and almost none taking questions from students, and that he dismissed concerns about student debt.

The bid for prestige has set off alarms particularly at the Newark campus, where average SAT scores are lower, but students routinely outperform predicted graduation rates. Newark has some of the programs that Rutgers needs to remain a research university — the business school and a law school among them. But faculty say Barchi wants to turn it into a satellite campus so Rutgers would not have to count its students SAT scores in the average.

Barchi has announced plans to merge the law schools in Camden and Newark under one banner. The university is also building a new business school attached to the New Brunswick campus. It is circulating plans to move many of Newark’s neuroscience programs to New Brunswick, and to eliminate the Graduate School in Newark, moving its strongest programs to a new, larger school in New Brunswick.

The reorganization law was supposed to give Newark and Camden a more equitable share of money, requiring that each get their own separate line item in the state budget. But Barchi’s administration submitted one number for Rutgers in the state budget, and inserted a provision that would void the requirement for separate funding for Newark and Camden. Officials in Camden and Newark say they were barely consulted, if at all.

“The number of things that have been done without even consulting senior leadership on campus is endlessly frustrating,” said Jack Lynch, the associate dean of Arts and Science in Newark.

Barchi’s initial strategic plan for the university designates the mission of Newark as “diversity,” the mission for New Brunswick, “research,” and Camden, “service.” That he is shortchanging Newark, faculty members say, suggests he does not care about diversity.

“To propose to defund and destabilize the most diverse campus in the country is unconscionable, especially one with the level of success of Rutgers-Newark,” said Maggie Shiffrar, dean of the Graduate School in Newark.

“I think he’s in a really tough financial bind,” she said. “He’s made it very very clear that he wants Rutgers to move up in the rankings. How do you do that when you not only have to do things that are expensive, but you’re not getting money to cover those expenses?”

The fear about diversity was fanned last month when Barchi met with a Latino faculty advisory group in New Brunswick. When a professor expressed her frustration as a “female of color” at Rutgers, he replied that he had experienced similar or worse difficulties as a white man early in his career, because departments wanted to hire minorities.

The meeting prompted about 100 faculty members to sign a letter of protest.

Nate Schweber and Steve Eder contributed reporting.

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Volunteer who heard missing hiker's shouts credits 'amazing' luck - Los Angeles Times

A volunteer hiker who heard the cries for help from missing hiker Nicolas Cendoya credited "an amazing amount of luck" for the rescue.

Ted Sindzinski said he spent Wednesday hiking in the area and decided to join the volunteers searching for Cendoya and Kyndall Jack, 18.

He joined up with a friend of the pair about 5 p.m. and decided to do a “simple, 10-minute hike, just to look around places that perhaps somebody didn’t have time to go to.”

PHOTOS: The search for missing hikers

They walked about 50 or 60 feet up the hill, away from the road, when they heard Cendoya's shouts.

“We heard a voice. We thought it was another searcher, maybe somebody in another group,” Sindzinski said.

After asking a few questions, they learned the man's name was Nick and that he was one of the two hikers missing since Easter Sunday.

Sindzinski said the group flagged down a rescue team, who began efforts to pull the man from the rugged terrain.

Sindzinski said he just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Cendoya was two canyons away, he said, but they were standing in the right spot to hear his voice echo off the canyon walls.

“An amazing amount of luck,” he said. “We got lucky that he was there and shouted. It was just luck.”

Cendoya spent days in the rugged hills of Orange County's Trabuco Canyon, praying each night for strength and covering himself with brush to keep warm, his doctor said Thursday.

"Nick said the thing that kept him going was praying," Dr. Michael Ritter told reporters gathered outside Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, where Cendoya is recovering. "He said he would pray every day and every night to give him the strength to get out of there."

Missing since Sunday, the 19-year-old was barefoot and wearing only a T-shirt and board shorts when he was found Wednesday night, authorities said. Ritter said he had tried to protect himself from the elements by covering up with bushes and brush at night.

Cendoya was dehydrated and disoriented when he was found, his arms and legs covered in scratches, officials said. He was rushed to the Mission Viejo hospital, where he arrived in "very serious" condition, Ritter said.

Cendoya, his doctor said, is "doing much better" Thursday, adding he was "recovering well" and having "regular" conversations. Ritter said he thought Cendoya might be able to leave the hospital in a few days.

Jack was rescued Thursday around noon after searchers heard her shouts. She was airlifted by helicopter to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where she is in stable condition.

"Today was the exact result of what we were all looking for," said Capt. John Muir of the Orange County Fire Authority.

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kate.mather@latimes.com

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Marijuana legalization wins majority support in poll - Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – A majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, a new poll shows, with the change driven largely by a huge shift in how the baby boom generation feels about the drug of their youth.

By 52%-45%, adult Americans back legalization, according to the survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. The finding marks the first time in more than four decades of Pew's polling that a majority has taken that position. As recently as a decade ago, only about one-third of American adults backed making marijuana legal.

Two big shifts in opinion go along with the support for legalization and likely contribute to it. Most Americans no longer see marijuana as a "gateway" to more dangerous drugs, and most no longer see its use as immoral. As recently as 2006, half of Americans said in a Pew survey that marijuana use was “morally wrong.” Now, only one-third do, while half say that marijuana usage is “not a moral issue.”

By an overwhelming margin, 72%-23%, Americans say the federal government’s efforts against marijuana “cost more than they are worth.”

Similarly, by nearly two-to-one, Americans say the federal government should not enforce its anti-marijuana laws in states that allow use of the drug. The Obama administration has been vague on what stand it will take on federal law enforcement in states such as Washington and Colorado, which have legalized marijuana for recreational use, or in states such as California that allow medical use. Federal prosecutors in California have brought charges against some sellers of medical marijuana.

Read the full survey from Pew Research

In December, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder acknowledged a “tension between federal law and these state laws” and said that a clarification of federal policy would come “relatively soon.” That has not yet happened. So far, 24 states and the District of Columbia either have decriminalized personal use of marijuana, legalized it or allowed it to be used for medical purposes. Federal law currently treats marijuana as a dangerous drug with no legitimate medical uses.

The poll suggests a shift in federal law may be slow. A notable political split exists on the issue, with conservative Republicans heavily against legalization, while majorities of Democrats, independents and liberal and moderate Republicans back it. Conservatives have strong sway among Republicans in the House.

But on two issues, opinion is more uniform: the belief that current enforcement efforts are not worth the cost and acceptance of the idea that marijuana has legitimate medical uses. By 77%-16%, Americans said they agree on that, with support for medical marijuana cutting across partisan and generation lines.

Support for legalization is strikingly uniform among states, with the percentage virtually the same in the states that have decriminalized, legalized or allowed medical use and in the 26 where marijuana remains fully illegal. There is little variation among various regions of the country either – a sharp contrast with other cultural issues where coastal states tend to be more liberal and the South more conservative.

That finding contradicts the strategy that supporters of marijuana legalization have followed over the past decade in which they have pushed first to allow medical marijuana in the belief that states that have taken that step would more likely back full legalization. The new data suggests either that such careful strategizing was unnecessary or that a broader cultural shift in favor of full legalization has made it obsolete.

The percentage of people who say they have used marijuana in the past year (about one in 10) or at any point in their lives (about half) is virtually identical in states that have legalized some marijuana use and those that have not, suggesting that more liberal laws have simply made usage more visible, not increased it, as some have feared.

The main divisions on marijuana legalization are those of age: Younger Americans back legalization more than their elders, although the poll shows legalization gaining support among all generations.

Among those aged 30-49, parents are less likely to support legalization than non-parents. Those with children 18 or younger at home are closely divided, 50%-47%, while those without children at home support legalization by 62%-35%.

The impact of parenthood may also be part of the most striking shift in opinion – the change among members of the baby boom generation. During the 1970s, when baby boomers were in their teens and 20s, a plurality supported legalizing pot, with support hitting 47% in a 1978 survey. But as they aged, boomers changed their minds, with support for legal marijuana dropping to fewer than one in five baby boomers by 1990, when members of the generation were in their 30s and 40s. Since then, they've shifted again, and the new poll shows 50% now support legalizing the drug.

Contrary to the image of boomers turning to pot to assuage the aches and pains of middle age, however, only 7% of those aged 50-64 said they had used marijuana in the past year.

Overall, 48% of adults said they had used marijuana at some point in their life. Those who admit using the drug are far more likely to support legalization than those who say they never have used it, although support for legalization has grown among both groups.

The percentage now saying they have used marijuana at some point is up considerably from the 38% who said so a decade ago. The poll does not make clear how much of that shift involves an increase in recent usage versus people being more willing to admit past marijuana use or, simply, the passing of an older generation that was much less likely to have used the drug.

Just over one in 10 people in the current survey said they had used marijuana in the past year. Among those younger than 30, more than one in four said they had done so. Among those who had used marijuana in the past year, just over half said they had done so at least in part for medical reasons, with 47% saying they had done so “just for fun.”

The Pew survey was conducted March 13-17 by telephone, including cell phones and land lines, among 1,501 American adults. The results have a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points.

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david.lauter@latimes.com

Twitter: @davidlauter

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Connecticut Senate Votes for Gun Limits; House Passage Is Expected - New York Times

HARTFORD — With the memories of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School as fresh as an open wound, the Connecticut Senate passed on Wednesday what members called the nation’s most comprehensive package of gun control legislation. The House was expected to approve it later in the night.

The vote came in a deeply divided Capitol packed with angry and frustrated gun owners who arrived in buses and vans carrying signs reading “Connecticut the Un-Constitution State,” “N.R.A. Stand and Fight” and “Shall Not Be Infringed.” And it came in a state that has historically been at the heart of the American gun manufacturing industry.

But 110 days after Adam Lanza blasted his way through a locked glass door at the school and fired 154 shots in about 4 minutes with a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, killing 26 children and educators, senators voted 26 to 10 for gun, school safety and mental health legislation drawn up over the past month by a bipartisan group of legislative leaders.

Legislators called it the most divisive issue in memory and said the legislation was an imperfect response to an impossibly complex issue. Several objected to the rushed pace in which the 138 pages became available only that morning.

Donald E. Williams Jr., a Democrat from Brooklyn, Conn., and the Senate president pro tempore, began discussion of the legislation by recalling the morning of the killings, on Dec. 14, when “for a few seconds, it was hard to breathe” as people took in the news. He concluded it by saying mass killings were not solely about mental health issues, as gun advocates say, but also about firearms.

“It’s access to the weapons of war, the access to the weapons that can kill mass amounts of children or adults in our schools and in our communities,” Senator Williams said. “That’s the essential issue when it comes to mass killings.”

The Senate minority leader, John McKinney, a Republican from Fairfield who represents Newtown, where the school is, called the legislation the most important of his 14 years in the Senate and concluded by reading the names of those who died at the school.

Senator Beth Bye, a Democrat from West Hartford, choked up as she held up a picture of one victim, Ana Marquez-Greene.

“Ana Grace would have turned 7 this week,” Ms. Bye said. “Anyone who has seen her picture or heard her sing knows that our whole world lost a Connecticut treasure that day.” She added: “We can’t turn back the clock, we can only go forward. And we’ve gone forward with collaborative, innovative, groundbreaking legislation.”

Many were far less pleased, including gun owners and gun manufacturers who said the bill was too broad and focused on the wrong issues. They also criticized its becoming effective immediately, saying that put an impossible burden on manufacturers and retailers.

“It’s a mental health issue, not a firearms issue,” said Jake McGuigan, director of government relations for the National Shooting Sports Foundation in Newtown. “Nothing in this legislation would have stopped what happened in this horrible tragedy in Sandy Hook.”

Asked if there were any limits he could support on the sale or possession of weapons or magazines, he said: “No. We believe in going after the individual and not the cosmetic features of firearms.”

Two gunmakers, Mark Malkowski of Stag Arms and Jonathan Scalise of Ammunition Storage Components, both in New Britain, declined to say whether they would continue to operate in the state.

The legislation includes a ban on the sale of magazines carrying 10 or more bullets and requires registration of existing ones. It also includes an expansion of the existing assault weapons ban, requires background checks on all firearms sales and sets up a registry of weapons offenders. Among the mental health measures are changes intended to require insurers to make faster decisions on coverage for mental health and substance abuse issues, a program to help educators recognize signs of mental illness and a doubling in the number of specialized treatment teams providing intensive support to people with serious mental illness.

Hundreds of opponents of the bill gathered throughout the day at Cabela’s sporting goods in East Hartford, where a line of buses supplied by the National Rifle Association waited to transport them to the Capitol. They were joined at the Capitol by supporters of the legislation, many wearing green to commemorate Sandy Hook. The two sides mingled, sometimes engaging in relatively respectful debate, often keeping their distance.

At Cabela’s, Jim and Elma Stoveken of Ridgefield brought along two of their elementary-school-age grandsons.

“We’re not crazed for guns or anything like that,” Mr. Stoveken, 73, a retired financial manager, said. “We just have guns for target shooting and home protection.”

Legislative debate was respectful and often emotional, with legislators citing constitutional, mental health and public safety issues and the proper role of government.

On the Senate floor, Senator Tony Guglielmo, a Republican from Stafford Springs, said the legislation would affect law-abiding citizens more than criminals.

“The premise is wrong,” he said. “How do you get Adam Lanza tied up with the Rockville Rod and Gun Club? That’s what I want to know.”

Two of 22 Democrats voted against the legislation, and 6 of 14 Republicans voted for it.

Senator Catherine Osten, a Democrat who represents a rural stretch of eastern Connecticut, said she supported elements of the bill but could not support adding new regulations on people who follow the law.

“I also cried when those children died that day, as everyone here did, and if I could assure those parents that this legislation would stop that from happening again, I would vote yes,” she said.

Senator Michael McLachlan, a Danbury Republican, said that much in the bill made him uncomfortable, but that the Newtown shooting “changed a lot of people’s viewpoints on a lot of things, on the preciousness of life, on the priority of our lives, and it certainly affected me in a very great way.”

“Under different circumstances, I would look at this bill very differently,” he said, “But today I’m supporting this bill in hopes that I am properly honoring Caroline Phoebe Previdi.”

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Report Sees Guns as Path to Safety in Schools - New York Times

By Marcus Mabry, Ben Werschkul, Channon Hodge, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Axel Gerdau, Erica Berenstein and Alyssa Kim

N.R.A. Unveils Plan to Arm School Guards: The Times's Sheryl Gay Stolberg discusses a new proposal commissioned by the National Rifle Association to place trained guards in American schools."

WASHINGTON — With the Senate set to debate gun control this month, a National Rifle Association task force released a 225-page report on Tuesday that called for armed police officers, security guards or staff members in every American school, and urged states to loosen gun restrictions to allow trained teachers and administrators to carry weapons.

Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas who led the task force, unveiled the report at a packed news conference with unusually heavy security, including a bomb-sniffing yellow Labrador retriever. A dozen officers in plain clothes and uniforms stood watch as he spoke; one warned photographers to “remain stationary” during the event.

Among the study’s central conclusions is that “the presence of armed security personnel adds a layer of security and diminishes response time” in a shooting, Mr. Hutchinson said. He cited a 1997 Mississippi case in which an assistant principal ran to his truck to retrieve a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and subdued a gunman who had already killed two students.

The recommendations — which also included expanding the police presence in schools — drew immediate criticism from gun control advocates and many Democrats, who have been fighting to tighten gun restrictions after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December.

“Arming the teacher is merely a response to the last tragedy,” said Representative Mike Thompson, a California Democrat who is chairman of a House task force on gun violence. “The one before that was in a shopping mall in Oregon, and the one before that was in a movie theater in Colorado. I don’t think the proper response is to arm all the projectionists in the movie theaters or all the vendors in the mall.”

After the Newtown shooting, Wayne LaPierre, the rifle association’s executive director, announced that the association would come up with a plan to put armed guards in every school. Technically, Mr. Hutchison’s task force is independent of the rifle association, even though it paid for the study, and Mr. LaPierre was not present on Tuesday. But critics see no distinction between the two.

Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, an advocacy group here, criticized the study as “nothing more than a continuation of the N.R.A.’s attempts to prey on America’s fears, saturate our schools with more guns and turn them into armed fortresses.”

But the report did get support from at least one Newtown parent: Mark Mattioli, whose 6-year-old son, James, was killed at Sandy Hook.

“I think politics needs to be set aside here, and I hope this doesn’t lead to name-calling,” said Mr. Mattioli, who joined Mr. Hutchinson at the news conference. “This is a recommendation for solutions, real solutions that will make our kids safer. That’s what we need.”

The panel called on the Departments of Homeland Security, Education and Justice to coordinate school safety efforts and provide grant money for schools to assess their ability to prevent and respond to attacks. It recommended that officers or employees who are armed take a 40- to 60-hour training course to be developed by the rifle association based on a model the task force has designed.

The group also called on states to require schools to develop security plans. Most schools do not have a formal written security policy, the task force found, and even when such plans exist they are often inadequate.

But how and whether the task force recommendations will be put into effect — and what it would cost to do so — was unclear.

The timing of Tuesday’s announcement was not a coincidence: Congress will wrap up its spring recess after this week and is expected to consider gun legislation after lawmakers return. President Obama has called for tough new controls on gun ownership, but the prospects for such legislation are murky — a testimony to the rifle association’s prowess as a lobbying force.

A plan to revive and revamp a ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004, is almost certain to be defeated. Mr. Obama is pushing for a measure that would impose mandatory background checks for gun buyers, and the Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader, has promised to present a bill that would expand background checks to the floor for a vote. But Senate passage is hardly assured.

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Jumping From Party to Party to Bribery - New York Times

You could drag Malcolm A. Smith out of bed at 6 in the morning, and he’d still look like a million dollars.

Or whatever the cost of a few hundred yards of road in New York State is these days.

Mr. Smith, a state senator from Queens, sat in the front of a federal courtroom in White Plains on Tuesday afternoon, there for ritual anointment in a fabulously convoluted corruption case in which he is the marquee name among six accused.

Slim, unmoving, clad in a blue blazer with gold buttons, dark corduroy pants and a striped dress shirt, he said little beyond, “Yes, Your Honor,” when asked a routine question about understanding his rights.

No surprise that Mr. Smith was the picture of calm: The man has been swinging like a shutter in a hurricane for much of the last decade, seated along the hinges of power in Albany. Once general elections are held and the voters have spoken, those results are heaved out the window as legislative majorities are bought and sold by each of the two parties.

At one stage, Mr. Smith was part of a Democratic power troika that lavished goodies on an openly crooked state senator, Pedro Espada Jr., in the process of getting Mr. Espada to vote with them. Mr. Smith himself recently jumped with a small group of Democratic senators to shift power to the Republican minority. Along the way, an inspector general’s report said he had finagled a casino land deal in Queens. The F.B.I. was also investigating nonprofit groups that he helped obtain government funds.

Undaunted, Mr. Smith set his ambitions on becoming the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City. Strictly speaking, as a Democrat, Mr. Smith had no business on a Republican ballot, but, understandably for a person practiced in the customs of Albany, that seemed like a small obstacle. In fact, he could get a spot on the primary ballot by special dispensation from three of the city’s five county Republican leaders.

These not-so-longish-shot hopes brought him into a series of negotiations that, a federal complaint charged, moved beyond the horse-trading of ordinary legal-graft politics into the realm of outright bribery.

What it seems to boil down to is that federal authorities claim that Mr. Smith swapped road improvements in Rockland County for a spot on the ballot in the Republican primary for mayor in New York City.

How? Life had brought Mr. Smith, officials say, into the acquaintanceship of a crooked real estate developer who wanted $500,000 in state money to improve a short stretch of road serving a development in Spring Valley, N.Y. The criminal complaint quotes a tape on which the senator explained how such money could be easily found:

“Multimodal money,” Mr. Smith said, “is outside the budget and it’s always around.”

He was not unschooled on budget or road business: he is the vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and a member of the Transportation Committee.

That same developer was given the task of persuading the Republican city leaders to grant Mr. Smith the permission he needed to appear on their primary ballot. He was wearing a wire for most of these conversations, according to the federal authorities, and quietly pleaded guilty last month.

Some of Mr. Smith’s fellow defendants, like City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran of Queens, did not present themselves in court with the same sense of sartorial ease that radiated from the senator. Mr. Halloran, a bulky man, had just about managed to throw on a long-sleeve T-shirt and bluejeans when he was taken into custody.

The tapes of Mr. Halloran, one of the few elected Republican officials in New York City, are described as blunt statements of venality: “Money is what greases the wheels — good, bad or indifferent,” the complaint quotes him saying during a restaurant meeting at which, it is charged, he was given $7,500 in cash.

In dribs and drabs, about $71,000 in bribes was paid to officials, along with a share of a fictional real estate company. On these investments were promised returns of $500,000 in state road money, about $80,000 in social service contracts and a spot on the ballot.

Those who have placed their hopes for better politics in bipartisanship may find them dashed if the charges hold up. Mr. Smith and Mr. Halloran, Democrat and Republican, respectively, were joined in the dock by two other Republicans and two Democrats.

Mr. Halloran, who once served as a police cadet, saw visions of grandeur in his ecumenical partnership, the complaint states: He believed he would be rewarded with the job of deputy police commissioner if Mr. Smith were elected mayor.

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

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Lawmakers in New York Tied to Bribery Plot in Mayor Race - New York Times

State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a contractor and real estate developer who rose to become the first black president of the State Senate, and City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III were arrested early Tuesday on charges of trying to fix this year’s mayoral race in New York City, according to federal prosecutors.

Mr. Smith, a 56-year-old Democrat, and Mr. Halloran, a Queens Republican, were among a half-dozen people arrested by F.B.I. agents in the federal corruption case. Others included Republican County leaders in Queens and the Bronx, the mayor of the Rockland County village of Spring Valley, Noramie F. Jasmin, and her deputy, Joseph A. Desmaret, according to a criminal complaint.

Mr. Smith was taken from his Queens home in handcuffs by F.B.I. agents before sunrise and Mr. Halloran, a lawyer, was arrested at about the same time, law enforcement authorities said.

Mr. Smith has said he was considering running for mayor of New York as a Republican, and the charges contend that he made payments to Mr. Halloran in exchange for the councilman’s assistance in setting up meetings with Republican leaders as part of an effort to get on the ballot, the complaint said.

The criminal complaint in the case was brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and was unsealed Tuesday morning. Mr. Smith, Mr. Halloran and the others were to appear on Tuesday before a United States magistrate judge in United States District Court in White Plains.

Mr. Smith, according to the complaint, agreed with a cooperating witness and an undercover F.B.I. agent, who was masquerading as a wealthy real estate developer, to pay off leaders of Republican Party county committees in New York’s five boroughs. The bribes were to be paid to obtain specific certificates authorizing him to run for New York City mayor as a Republican even though he was a registered Democrat.

The undercover agent and the cooperating witness served as intermediaries between the senator and Councilman Halloran, the complaint said.

“Public service is not supposed to be a shortcut to self-enrichment,'’ George Venizelos, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in a statement. “At the very least, public officials should obey the law. As alleged, these defendants did not obey the law; they broke the law and the public trust. There is a price to pay for that kind of betrayal.”

Mr. Smith’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said his client denied wrongdoing. “Malcolm Smith is a dedicated and highly respected public servant and he steadfastly denies these charges,” Mr. Shargel said, adding he would have more to say after he had an opportunity to study the charges.

The complaint details a brazen scheme hatched in a series of clandestine meetings in hotels, parked cars, restaurants and Mr. Smith’s office in Albany. The meetings, recorded by the undercover agent or the cooperating witness, were primarily between Mr. Smith, the undercover agent and the witness, and Mr. Halloran and the two government operatives.

Most of those involved, according to the complaint, were looking for something – cash bribes were sought by the party officials and Mr. Halloran and Mr. Smith were seeking authorization to get on the ballot in the mayor’s race. Ms. Jasmin was seeking an ownership interest in a company she believed was involved in a real estate project.

The senator at one point became impatient, asking the undercover and the cooperating witness during a meeting in his office whether the committee leaders were delaying getting his certificates because they wanted more money.

Mr. Smith, according to the complaint, instructed the two men not to pay the committee leaders any more money until they had “close[d] … the deal.” He also said that before the leaders received “even a nickel more, [he’d] have to stand on the Empire State Building and drop every person [he] endorsed and hold Malcolm up and say he’s the best thing since sliced bread. Matter of fact, he’s better than sliced bread.”

According to the complaint, Mr. Halloran set up a meeting at which the undercover agent and the witness met Joseph J. Savino, the Bronx GOP chairman, and Vincent Tabone, vice chairman of the Queens Republican Party, and negotiated the amounts of the bribes for the documents. In exchange, Mr. Halloran sought and received more than $20,000 in cash for himself, prosecutors said.

Mr. Tabone and Mr. Savino were paid cash bribes of more than $40,000 and were promised $40,000 more, and they in turn, agreed to use their official capacities with Republican Party county committees to obtain the documents Mr. Smith would need to run for mayor as a Republican.

Mr. Smith, in exchange for help from Mr. Savnio and Mr. Tabone, agreed to use his senate office to help win state funds for a road project in Spring Valley that would benefit a real estate project that Sen. Smith believed was being built by a company belonging to the undercover agent.

The complaint said that on Nov. 16, Mr. Smith met the undercover agent and the cooperating witness at a hotel in White Plains and asked the witness to contact a Republican Party county chairman identified in the charges only as “County Chairman #1” to try to “change him” by persuading the chairman to support Mr. Smith rather than another mayoral candidate whom the chairman had publicly supported.

Later that day, the person said, Mr. Halloran met the undercover agent at a Queens restaurant in order to receive a bribe in exchange for taking what the charges refer to as some unspecified “unrelated official action.” During that meeting, the agent asked Mr. Halloran if he knew “County Chairman #1” and Mr. Halloran said that he did, and that he knew Mr. Savino. Mr. Halloran agreed to ask the county chairman and Mr. Savino what they would want in exchange for their support for a mayoral candidate, the complaint said.

And on that same day, the undercover agent met Mr. Smith at a hotel in Manhattan, and told him that the agent could arrange a meeting with “County Chairman #1” and Mr. Savino during which the agent would attempt to negotiate their support for the senator, the complaint said. Mr. Smith, the complaint said, told the undercover agent: “You pull this off, you can have the house. I’ll be a tenant.”

Several months later, Mr. Smith met the cooperating witness in Rockland County, the complaint said. As they sat in a parked car, the witness told Mr. Smith that getting the certificates from the Republican county committee leaders would cost “a pretty penny,” the complaint said. In response to the question, “it’s worth any price?” the senator, according to the complaint, responded: “Look, talk to me before you close it. But it’s worth it. Because you know how big a deal it is.”

Two weeks later, Mr. Halloran met the undercover agent and the witness at a Manhattan hotel and told them that Mr. Savino wanted $25,000 “in an envelope” in exchange for signing the certificate, the complaint said. Mr. Tabone, the person said, wanted $50,000 — half of the money before he signed and the balance afterward.

The arrests immediately reverberated through the mayor’s race. Mr. Tabone is a paid consultant to the Republican mayoral campaign of John Catsimatidis, the grocery store magnate. Records show Mr. Catsimatidis has paid Mr. Tabone $3,000 so far this year. Another Republican mayoral candidate, Joseph J. Lhota, recently welcomed the endorsement of Mr. Halloran, who was also arrested on Tuesday morning.

Late last year, Mr. Smith, who was elected Senate President in 2008 and ousted in 2010, joined a group of insurgent Democrats – the Independent Democratic Conference — and said around the same time that he was considering running for mayor of New York City as a Republican.

He was seen as a key recruit for the conference, a five-member faction that formed a leadership coalition with Republicans in the Senate. Before Mr. Smith joined the caucus, there was criticism that a faction of white Democrats was joining with the all-white Republican conference; the presence of Mr. Smith, an African-American and a last minute recruit to the Independent Democratic Conference, helped blunt those concerns.

The move came with some incentives — beyond his increased influence, a report in The New York Post said that his staff budget has increased by about two-thirds since he joined the conference.

Mr. Smith has been a subject of several criminal inquiries in recent years. One, which had apparently begun by early 2010 and was conducted by federal prosecutors from the same office that sought the indictment that led to Tuesday’s arrests, was focused on a nonprofit linked to Sen. Smith and United States Representative Gregory J. Meeks. In that case, the prosecutors subpoenaed records from Mr. Smith’s Senate office that detailed moneys he had directed to community groups for a decade. Mr. Meeks has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The subpoena, written broadly, sought information on all of Mr. Smith’s so-called member items — grants to organizations in his Queens district — and any appropriations tied to him since at least 2000, a person with knowledge of the subpoena said at the time.

The person said that investigators made clear that they were seeking the records because of their interest in New Direction, a group set up in 2000 to encourage development in southeast Queens.

Mr. Smith, along with the then-Senate Democratic leader, John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, was also among those named in a scathing State Inspector General’s report in 2010 that said the Senate’s leaders had manipulated the choice of who would build New York City’s first casino.

The 308-page report, on the competition to install video slot machines at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, was referred to federal and state prosecutors and the Legislative Ethics Committee and said the senators had leaked information and shown favoritism to a troubled bidder that was donating to Democratic candidates and had ties to key political figures. No charges have been brought in relation to the casino contract.

Michael Barbaro contributed reporting.

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Holmes faces death penalty in theater shooting - Washington Times

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CENTENNIAL, Colo. | Prosecutors said Monday they will seek the death penalty for James Eagan Holmes in the deadly Aurora theater massacre, formally rejecting an offer last week to plead guilty if his execution could be taken off the table.

Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said he reached the decision after his staff spoke with more than 800 victims and relatives of those killed in the July 20 shooting, which left 12 dead and 58 injured.

“In this case, for James Eagan Holmes, justice is death,” said Mr. Brauchler, who was elected district attorney of the state’s 18th Judicial District in November.

Mr. Holmes, 25, showed no reaction to the announcement, while his parents clasped hands and embraced.

Defense attorneys had sought a sentencing deal in which Mr. Holmes would have pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for a life sentence. The offer came a day after the state legislature nixed a bill that would have outlawed capital punishment in Colorado.

Those attending Monday’s hearing had mixed reactions to the prosecution’s decision. Marcus Weaver, who was shot in the arm at the theater, said the death penalty was appropriate, even though he would have preferred to see prosecutors seek a sentence of life in prison.

Mr. Weaver also urged Mr. Holmes to plead guilty and spare the public the anguish and expense of a lengthy jury trial.

“If death is your penalty, then so be it. Does it fit the crime? Yes,” Mr. Weaver told reporters outside the Arapahoe County Courthouse. “Would I like to have him receive life? Yes, I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s death, but it’s not entirely up to me … and now it’s not up to him, either.”

Bryan Beard, a friend of shooting victim Alex Sullivan, said his first reaction was, “Thank goodness, I am so glad this is happening.”

“I’ve said this once and this is the last time I’ll say it. The only way [there will be] justice when somebody murders somebody else — is death,” Mr. Beard told reporters. “I guess you fight fire with fire. It sounds awful, but I’m tired of being so politically correct.”

A trial date was set for Feb. 4, 2014. Chief District Court Judge William Sylvester said he would be unable to preside over the case as a result of time constraints stemming from his duties as chief judge, and reassigned the case to District Court Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr.

“The reality [is] that a final resolution of this case is now likely years away,” said Judge Sylvester in his order.

Given that it is not seriously in question that Mr. Holmes was the gunman in the theater that night, the defense is expected to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. That could delay the trial by another year as attorneys line up expert witnesses to debate Mr. Holmes‘ mental state at the time of the shooting.

“It does become a lengthy process,” said Philip Anthony, CEO of DecisionQuest in Los Angeles, a trial-consulting firm not involved with the Holmes case. “And courts have to be particularly careful when the death penalty is sought because the entire transcript will be subject to such scrutiny during the appellate process.”

Three inmates now sit on Colorado’s Death Row, all of whom were prosecuted in the 18th Judicial District. One of those, Nathan Dunlap, is awaiting an execution date after exhausting his appeals stemming from his conviction in the 1993 murder of four employees at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora.

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Texas prosecutor shootings are investigated amid tight security - Los Angeles Times

KAUFMAN, Texas — The fatal shooting of a north Texas district attorney and his wife, just two months after an assistant district attorney was gunned down near the local courthouse, could have a chilling effect on recruiting future prosecutors, officials said.

"I've always reassured them you really don't have to fear retaliation," Heath Harris, first assistant district attorney in Dallas, said of new recruits. But now, he said, "I definitely think people will think twice about becoming a prosecutor."

In Dallas and across Texas, authorities were beefing up security for courthouses and prosecutors. The district attorney for Harris County, which includes Houston, was being trailed along with his family by a 24-hour security team at the sheriff's suggestion.

"Until we know exactly what happened in Kaufman County, we'll remain cautious," spokeswoman Sara Marie Kinney said.

Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Michael McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, were found dead at their home near Forney, about 20 miles east of Dallas, at 6:45 p.m. Saturday by friends who had been trying to reach them, according to a search warrant affidavit.

Kaufman County was still mourning Assistant Dist. Atty. Mark Hasse, 57, who was fatally shot Jan. 31 as he headed to work at the county courthouse.

Hasse was shot on the day he was publicly credited for assisting with the successful prosecution of members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist prison gang.

Federal law enforcement officials said Monday that while "it certainly looks like" the shootings are related, there was no ballistics match.

The first shooting appeared to have been well planned and more professionally executed, and the second was faster and possibly less organized, said the officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation.

"They were in a hurry to get out," one official said.

Authorities added that they were looking for links with the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, noting that Kaufman County prosecutors were part of a statewide effort to convict various gang members.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry took the possible connection to organized crime seriously.

"This is a clear concern to individuals who are in public life, particularly those who deal with some very mean and vicious individuals, whether they're white supremacy groups or whether they're the drug cartels that we have," Perry told reporters.

"This looks like an attack on the criminal justice system and the rule of law," said Scott Burns, director of the National District Attorneys Assn. "While each story and each murder is tragic, it is a very rare thing for a prosecutor to be murdered in the line of duty — very rare. And it is unprecedented for two in the same county to be murdered in a two-month period. It is simply unheard of."

Just 13 prosecutors have been killed while in office in the past century, Burns said.

Glenn McGovern, a senior investigator at the Santa Clara County district attorney's office in California, said multiple killings of officials in one jurisdiction is the kind of thing that would happen in Italy or Colombia in the 1980s, or in Mexico today — not in Texas. McGovern is working on a book about targeted attacks on law enforcement officials.

McGovern said there had been 15 targeted attacks in the United States on attorneys, judges and police in the first few years of the 2010s — a number that had risen compared with previous decades.

"Revenge is the predominant motive," McGovern said, "followed by efforts to derail a case."

The McLellands were killed less than two weeks after Colorado's prison chief was fatally shot at his front door. Police suspect an ex-convict who fled to north Texas, where he died in a gunfight with law enforcement officers. Colorado officials are investigating whether the cases could be connected.

When Kaufman County sheriff's investigators responded to the McLellands' suburban home Saturday, they found cartridge casings inside near the two bodies, which both had multiple gunshot wounds, according to the affidavit. The spent casings indicate the assailant used an assault-type weapon, federal law enforcement officials said.

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Arizona: Parachuting Navy SEALs Collide, Leaving One Dead - New York Times

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A member of the Navy SEALs was killed and another was injured when they collided during parachute training on Thursday afternoon in southern Arizona, the authorities said. The Department of Defense did not release the names of the victims. Kenneth McGraw, a spokesman for the United States Special Operations Command, said the two were practicing “routine military free-fall training” when the accident occurred.

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Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta Is Indicted in Testing Scandal - New York Times

A grand jury Friday indicted Beverly L. Hall, the superstar superintendent of the Atlanta School District, on racketeering and other charges, bringing a dramatic new chapter to one of the largest cheating scandals in the country.

The grand jury also indicted 34 teachers and administrators in addition to Dr. Hall, who resigned in 2011 just before results of an investigation into the scandal was released. It recommended $7.5 million bond for Dr. Hall, who could face up to 45 years in prison.

In a list of 65 charges that include influencing witnesses, theft by taking, conspiracy and making false statements, Fulton County prosecutors painted a picture of a decade-long conspiracy that involved awarding bonuses connected to improving scores on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, the state’s main test of core academic subjects for elementary and middle schools, and a culture where, in some schools, cheating was an acceptable way to get them.

“Prosecutors allege the 35 named defendants conspired to either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers in an effort to bolster C.R.C.T. scores for the benefit of financial rewards associated with high test scores,” according to the indictment.

Dr. Hall has consistently said she did not know about the cheating. She was not immediately available for comment.

Among the list were 6 principals, 2 assistant principals, 14 teachers, 6 testing coordinators, a school improvement specialist and executives in the human resources department and the school resource team. All defendants have been ordered to turn themselves in by Tuesday, the district attorney’s office announced at in a news conference.

Starting in the early 2000s, Atlanta school leaders reported impressive results: Some of the poorest elementary schools with chronically low scores were suddenly getting better grades than wealthier suburban schools.

A state investigation began in 2009 after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found steep, unexplainable rises in student test scores. The newspaper compared entire grades of students’ scores from one year to the next and found that many had improved so much that statisticians said it all but proved that cheating was responsible.

At Peyton Forest Elementary School, for example, students went from among the bottom performers statewide to among the best over the course of a year. The odds of such an improvement were less than one in a billion, statisticians told the paper.

In July 2011, the state’s special investigators issued a scathing 800-page report. It said cheating had occurred in 44 schools and involved 178 educators — about 3 percent of the school system’s employees — including 38 principals. Teachers operated under a “culture of fear” that pressured them to cheat to improve test scores or face punishment from supervisors, the report said. Altering scores on standardized tests became so common, the report said, that one school held pizza parties to correct wrong answers.

The cheating began as early as 2001 and lasted a decade, the report said. It involved the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, the state's main test of core academic subjects for elementary and middle schools.

Investigators laid blame for the biggest standardized-test cheating scandal in the country’s history on the superintendent, Dr. Hall, who led the 50,000-student school system from 1999 until her resignation in 2011. Dr. Hall, who was hailed as National Superintendent of the Year in 2009 for her role in making Atlanta’s once-failing urban school district a model of improvement, had “emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics,” the report said.

The report asserted that Dr. Hall, while not tied directly to cheating or the direct target of a subpoena, tried to contain damaging information and did not do enough to investigate allegations, especially after 2005 when “clear and significant” warnings were raised. As superintendent, she received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses tied to bogus improvements in test scores.

In a 2011 interview with The New York Times, Dr. Hall said that people under her had allowed cheating but that she never had.

“I can’t accept that there is a culture of cheating,” she said. “What these 178 are accused of is horrific, but we have over 3,000 teachers.”

Most of the accused teachers have appeared before a tribunal that decides whether or not to suspend their contract. Of the 178 educators implicated in the report, most have been dismissed or have resigned, a school system spokesman said. Twenty-one educators have been reinstated, and three are appealing their dismissals.

Atlanta is hardly the only school district to grapple with a widespread cheating scandal. In Memphis, a former assistant principal who was also a guidance counselor was charged with helping teachers in three states cheat on licensing tests. In El Paso, school administrators were charged last year with not only manipulating test scores but also preventing low-performing students from showing up for the tests. And in Great Neck, N.Y., in 2011, a group of students with low test scores were accused of paying classmates to take the SAT or ACT in their place.

The Atlanta scandal gained national attention because of the vast number of people implicated and the tenacity of Fulton County prosecutors, who pursued the case for years and waited to bring criminal charges until this week, right before the statute of limitations on crucial charges expired in April. In 2010, Paul L. Howard Jr., the district attorney, appointed two special prosecutors to investigate test tampering.

“The Atlanta situation was so widespread and so obviously troubled,” said John Fremer, the president of Caveon Test Security, a forensic data analysis firm hired by investigators to analyze Atlanta’s test results. “Every professional who looked at the data could see things were so wrong.”

After the cheating scandal, the Atlanta Public Schools system opened special remedial classes for students who might have been affected, at a potential cost of $6.4 million.

The school system has spent $2.5 million investigating teachers accused of cheating, including hiring private lawyers for the tribunals, said Stephen Alford, a spokesman. He said the city had also spent millions of dollars more on paying salaries to accused teachers while they waited for their hearings.

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Zumba Instructor Admits to Running a Prostitution Ring - New York Times

A Zumba instructor in Kennebunk, Me., pleaded guilty on Friday to using her dance studio as a front for a prostitution ring that involved scores of men in New England. The plea means that the instructor, Alexis Wright, will avoid a trial, as will the numerous clients who might have been called as witnesses.

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Ms. Wright, 30, appearing in Cumberland Superior Court, pleaded guilty to 20 charges related to prostitution. Prosecutors said they would ask that she be sent to prison for 10 months when she is sentenced May 31; she was fined $57,000.

The revelation that Ms. Wright was running a prostitution ring in the small coastal community not far from the summer home of the first President George Bush caused a sensation. Residents speculated about the identity of her clients; those charged so far have included a former mayor, a high school hockey coach and a minister.

Investigators said Ms. Wright had conspired with Mark Strong, 57, to run the ring. She used a hidden camera to record her encounters while Mr. Strong watched them live over Skype on his computer and recorded them. Hundreds of videotapes, e-mails and text messages between Ms. Wright and Mr. Strong provided a mountain of sexually explicit evidence for prosecutors.

Mr. Strong was found guilty this month of 13 counts related to the promotion of prostitution. He is serving 15 days in the York County Jail and is scheduled to be released early for good behavior.

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Syracuse Smothers No. 1 Seed Indiana - New York Times

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Indiana's Christian Watford fighting for the loose ball against Brandon Triche, from left, Baye Keita and Michael Carter-Williams.

WASHINGTON — Indiana could not have looked more lost. The Hoosiers missed layups, dribbled into defenders and threw passes that sailed into the Syracuse bench, as if a gust of wind had suddenly swept through the Verizon Center. And that was just the first few possessions.

Indiana had spent four days preparing for Syracuse’s celebrated 2-3 zone defense heading into Thursday’s East Region semifinal. The Hoosiers watched film, studied sets and moved the ball at practice with authority.

Up close and personal, they found the Orange to be longer, more athletic and more exasperating than they could have imagined. The result was clear, as Syracuse leaned on its usual brand of swarming defense to topple Indiana, 61-50.

Michael Carter-Williams, a sophomore guard, led fourth-seeded Syracuse with 24 points and 5 rebounds, and the senior guard Brandon Triche finished with 14 points.

Indiana, the top seed, shot 34 percent from the field and committed 18 turnovers. It was not the first time Syracuse’s length has given an opponent problems, but the bright stage of tournament has a way of magnifying each hurried shot and every errant pass.

Syracuse, which will face No. 3 seed Marquette on Saturday for a spot in the Final Four, has rebounded nicely from a late-season swoon. The Verizon Center itself was the site of one such debacle, a 61-39 loss to Georgetown on March 9 during which Syracuse scored its fewest points since 1962. When Coach Jim Boeheim was asked about that game on Wednesday, he pretended not to remember it.

His team has a different air about it now, even if Thursday’s game did not feature the most artistic basketball. Syracuse’s Baye Moussa Keita wore a wrap on his left hand after falling flat on his face in the first half. During one particularly comedic sequence of the second half, these two proud programs combined for five straight turnovers without attempting a shot.

Indiana Coach Tom Crean tried his best to unearth solutions, starting the junior forward Will Sheehey in place of his freshman point guard, Yogi Ferrell, to start the second half. Sheehey seemed to energize the Hoosiers, his pass to Victor Oladipo for a layup slicing Syracuse’s lead to 34-27.

But even with Oladipo (team-high 16 points), the Big Ten Conference’s defensive player of the year, shadowing him for much of the night, Carter-Williams still found his spots. He scored back-to-back baskets — the first on a layup, the second on a deep 3-pointer — to give Syracuse a 14-point cushion.

It was just the fifth meeting between these tradition-laden programs — and their first in the tournament since their most well-known clash, in 1987 for the national championship. The Hoosiers won that game on Keith Smart’s last-second jumper, a shot that he delivered over the outstretched left arm of Syracuse’s Howard Triche.

On Wednesday, Boeheim described Triche as “one of the steadiest players we’ve ever had. It’s always difficult. There is nothing you can say after those games.” Boeheim used the present tense. So many of these games, particularly the losses, linger for so long.

On Thursday, Triche’s nephew had an opportunity to help Syracuse (and his family) add some sort of postscript to that loss, even if it came 26 years later. Brandon Triche said people on campus still mistakenly refer to him as “Howard.” It does not bother him, he said, though it does strike him as odd. “I thought they would know my name after being here four years,” he said before Thursday’s game.

Triche had an immediate impact against Indiana, scoring his team’s first four points as Syracuse opened up an 11-3 lead. By the time Syracuse’s James Sutherland drilled a deep 3-pointer, Crean was motioning for a 30-second timeout. The Hoosiers were flummoxed. There were possessions when Cody Zeller, the team’s star forward, found himself trapped by a pair of defenders 18 feet from the basket.

In the first 10 minutes, Indiana shot 1 of 6 from the field and committed eight turnovers. Syracuse was on its way to leading by 18 points before the Hoosiers cut the advantage to 34-22 at halftime. Carter-Williams had 12 points and 3 steals in the first half.

The Hoosiers figured to have the type of offense that would give Syracuse problems. Most gaps in the zone typically come along the perimeter, and Indiana had been one of the country’s most proficient 3-point shooting teams, at 40.8 percent for the season. On Thursday, the Hoosiers were 3 of 15 from 3-point range.

Syracuse has come a long way since its woes in late February and early March. Amid a stretch in which the team lost four of six games, Boeheim grew so disenchanted with his players that he talked about how wonderful it would be if he could just drop everything and go golfing.

Yet the Orange were resilient, reaching the Big East Conference tournament final before defeating Montana and California in the tournament’s opening rounds. As always, Syracuse relied on defense in reaching the Round of 16 — one of Boeheim’s philosophical staples.

On Thursday, it worked once more, and it looked as terrifying as ever.

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T-Mobile Shakes Up Its Service - New York Times

T-Mobile USA, long trailing its rivals in the cellphone industry, is trying to catch up by changing the conversation: it is selling the iPhone cheaper than the competition, and most important, customers would not have to sign a contract.

But it may not be enough to persuade smartphone users to abandon the competition.

Analysts said the new marketing strategy, which spreads the cost of a new phone over two years as a separate line item on the monthly bill, will still feel like a commitment to many customers, even if they can choose to pay it off early and walk away. And T-Mobile, which has a slower network than its competitors, is only just beginning to introduce major upgrades.

The company on Tuesday said the Apple iPhone 5 would be available starting April 12 for $100 up front, with customers paying an additional $20 a month for two years. Other new smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and the BlackBerry Z10, will be available with similar payment plans.

Although T-Mobile’s new phone plans require no long-term contract, customers would have to pay off the balance owed in order to end service prematurely.

For several years, T-Mobile, the No. 4 American mobile carrier by market share, has been bleeding subscribers to Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint. In earnings calls, the company has said its main problems were consumers’ negative perception of its network and its inability to offer customers the iPhone.

Now that T-Mobile has landed a deal with Apple and turned on its new fourth-generation network, LTE, in seven cities, the company is hoping to mount a comeback. If T-Mobile does not find a way to bounce back, it risks losing even more market share to Verizon and AT&T and becoming a small niche player like Leap or U.S. Cellular.

The carrier, led by its eccentric new chief executive, John Legere, has been undergoing a rebranding into what it calls an “uncarrier.”

At a news conference in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Legere, wearing a blazer, T-shirt, jeans and sneakers with hot-pink shoelaces, casually dropped curse words while mocking his competitors, saying they were deliberately confusing customers with unclear two-year contracts and punishing them with fees for surpassing data limits or ending contracts early.

“Do you have any idea what you’re paying?” Mr. Legere said. “I’m going to explain how stupid we all are because once it becomes flat and transparent, there’s nowhere to hide. You pay so much for your phones, it’s incredible.”

He said that T-Mobile’s contract-free plans would be more straightforward and cheaper over all for consumers, and that by moving to contract-free plans, the company was doing away with overage and early-termination fees.

Mr. Legere said that over two years, an iPhone on T-Mobile would cost $1,000 less than it would on AT&T. That would apply to heavy data users. But when looking at the cheapest plans on both carriers, the difference is much narrower. For example, an iPhone 5 on T-Mobile’s plan with unlimited text messages, unlimited minutes and 500 megabytes of data a month is only $360 cheaper over two years than an AT&T plan with unlimited voice and text and one gigabyte of data a month.

At $580, buying an iPhone from T-Mobile would also be cheaper than buying a $650 unlocked phone directly from Apple.

On Tuesday, T-Mobile formally replaced all its old phone plans with new plans that do not require signing a contract. For $50 a month, customers can get unlimited minutes, text messages and 500 megabytes of data; they can pay an extra $20 for unlimited data.

At AT&T and Verizon, the most popular phone plans cost closer to $100 a month with a two-year contract for limited data. The iPhone 5 costs at least $200 on their networks with a two-year contract.

Despite T-Mobile’s promise to be more straightforward than other carriers, some consumers might still find it confusing that they have to pay an extra device fee after paying $100 up front for an iPhone.

In an interview, Mr. Legere said that the announcement of T-Mobile’s new contract-free plans was just the beginning of a conversation about greater transparency. He said T-Mobile would make every part of its plans visible to customers and break down their options for how they want to pay.

“The dialogue has just started,” he said. “This is an ages-old industry that’s very opaque that people just gave up understanding.”

Even though T-Mobile’s $50 plan costs less than its biggest competitors’ offerings, cheaper no-contract plans are already offered by smaller carriers, said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst at Alekstra, a mobile diagnostics firm.

Virgin Mobile, for example, sells an iPhone for $650 and offers a plan including 300 minutes, unlimited data and unlimited text messages for $30 a month.

Consumers still feel that T-Mobile’s network coverage is poor, Mr. Kuittinen added. And T-Mobile’s rivals are far ahead in deploying fourth-generation networks using LTE technology; Verizon is leading the race with LTE deployed in roughly 500 cities, while T-Mobile only recently started its LTE service in seven markets.

“They can’t relaunch the operations from a clean slate because people have negative conceptions of what T-Mobile’s quality is,” Mr. Kuittinen said.

The main difference between a traditional two-year contract and T-Mobile’s two-year device payment is what happens after that period of time. For T-Mobile customers who pay off their iPhone, their monthly bill would drop by $20. At other carriers, the monthly bill stays the same even after the two years of the contract are up.

However, after two years, most consumers will want to buy a new device anyway, said Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst at Ovum, a research firm.

The only people who will benefit from T-Mobile’s contract-free plans are those who pay the full price of the phone up front immediately instead of over the two years, he said, but hardly anyone does that.

“To most consumers, these plans are going to be indistinguishable from standard operating procedure in the industry,” Mr. Dawson said.

The big question is whether transparency will lure customers away from T-Mobile’s rivals. Mr. Legere said that in advertisements, the company would focus mostly on attacking on AT&T.

“I think they’re the most vulnerable because of their network problems and because of the capabilities that they demonstrated on the iPhone,” he said. AT&T also shares similar network technology with T-Mobile, making it easier for its subscribers to transfer their phones to T-Mobile.

AT&T showed no sign Tuesday that it would change its pricing plans in light of T-Mobile’s announcements. It said its network was superior.

“It’s not complicated — we’ve invested nearly $98 billion on our wireless and wireline networks over the past five years, and today our customers enjoy the nation’s fastest 4G LTE network experience,” said Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman.

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