palestine groups are found liable at terror trial

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VOL. CLXIV . . . No. 56,787
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NEW YORK, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015
© 2015 The New York Times
PALESTINE GROUPS
ARE FOUND LIABLE
AT TERROR TRIAL
CONGRESSIONAL MEMO
Funding Fight
Poses Dangers
For the G.O.P.
NEW YORK JURY VERDICT
Battle on Immigration
Puts Security at Issue
$655 Million for Attacks
With U.S. Victims —
Appeal Is Planned
By CARL HULSE
and ASHLEY PARKER
WASHINGTON — After promising an era of responsible governing and an end to federal shutdowns, congressional Republicans find themselves mired in an
immigration fight that could
cause funding for the Department of Homeland Security to
run out on Friday.
It is a risky moment for the
new congressional majority. A
nasty partisan impasse over
funding for a vital agency would
probably damage the party’s
brand just months after Republicans took power, and the impact
could carry over into the next
election cycle.
“I don’t think shutdowns and
showdowns are the way to win
the presidency in 2016,” said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and a respected
party strategist.
He and many other lawmakers
believe a last-minute resolution is
possible, particularly given new
terrorism threats, including one
against the Mall of America in
Minnesota. And Senator Mitch
McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, took
the first steps toward trying to
break the impasse on Monday
night by proposing a measure
that would allow the Senate to
register its disapproval by blocking the president’s 2014 actions
on immigration in one bill, while
approving the security money in
another.
“It’s another way to get the
Senate unstuck,” Mr. McConnell
said. He acted after Senate Democrats for a fourth time blocked
Republicans in their efforts to
force debate on a $40 billion
Homeland Security measure that
would gut President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
The vote was 47 to 46, well short
of the 60 needed.
The prospect of an agency
shutdown was seen as almost
laughable until recently, most notably because Republicans are
typically predisposed to fund security matters. But now the
chances are increasingly serious.
If the agency is shut down,
roughly 30,000 of its 230,000 employees will be furloughed. The
rest, deemed essential, would be
Continued on Page A15
By BENJAMIN WEISER
KHALED DESOUKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
Paying Egypt’s Price for Protest, 5 Years in Prison
Alaa Abd El Fattah, a blogger and activist, was convicted of taking part in an illegal demonstration and related charges. Page A7.
Peanuts as Ally Kenya’s Catch-22: Terror Alerts May Fuel Terror
sand beaches along Kenya’s is granted. It also warns tourists
Against a Rise
perch on the Indian Ocean have of possible “suicide operations,
become ghost towns with palm bombings — to include car bombMOMBASA, Kenya — Every trees.
In Nut Allergy morning
ings — kidnappings, attacks on
at the Tides Inn, a waitBy JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
By ANDREW POLLACK
Turning what was once conventional wisdom on its head, a
new study suggests that many, if
not most, peanut allergies can be
prevented by feeding young children food containing peanuts beginning in infancy, rather than
avoiding such foods.
About 2 percent of American
children are allergic to peanuts, a
figure that has more than quadrupled since 1997 for reasons that
are not entirely clear. There have
also been big increases in other
Western countries. For some people, even traces of peanuts can be
life-threatening.
An editorial published Monday
in The New England Journal of
Medicine, along with the study,
called the results “so compelling”
and the rise of peanut allergies
“so alarming” that guidelines for
how to feed infants at risk of peanut allergies should be revised
soon.
The study “clearly indicates
that the early introduction of peanut dramatically decreases the
Continued on Page A10
er trudges down from the restaurant to the beach with a huge
blackboard advertising the daily
specials — deep-fried fish and
masala prawns, pepper steak and
pizza, all listed in chalk and illustrated with cute drawings.
But nobody ever comes by, not
even for a gander.
Up and down the Kenyan
coast, it is the same picture. Tables sit empty, dance floors are
deserted, crates of Tusker beer
collect dust. The fabled white
“It’s the worst time anyone can
remember,” said Dhiren Shah,
the Tides Inn’s owner.
Kenya’s coastal tourism is collapsing, and part of the reason —
a big part of the reason, Kenyan
officials say — is Western travel
warnings issued after a round of
violence last summer in a remote
coastal area. The American
warning is perhaps the strictest,
barring embassy personnel from
setting foot anywhere on the
coast, unless special permission
She Runs S.E.C. He’s a Lawyer.
Recusals and Headaches Ensue.
civil aviation, and attacks on
maritime vessels in or near Kenyan ports.”
Kenyan officials are incensed,
saying that the coast is hardly a
raging war zone and that the
Western travel warnings amount
to “economic sabotage,” scaring
away travelers who rely on government advisories to explain
which places are safe and which
are not. Worse, many Kenyans
contend, and even some diploContinued on Page A10
ANDREW QUILTY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Refugees Say Pakistan Forced Them Out
By PETER EAVIS and BEN PROTESS
Their legal careers, and by extension their marriage, are the
stuff of lore. Mary Jo White leads
the Securities and Exchange
Commission; her husband, John,
practices law at an old-guard
firm as elite as the corporations it
represents. Together, they are a
legal power couple that straddles
Wall Street and Washington like
few others.
Their careers, however, can at
times collide, generating headaches for the S.E.C. as it pursues
wrongdoing in the nation’s financial markets, according to inter-
views with lawyers and a review
of federal records. In the nearly
two years since Ms. White took
over the agency, she has had to
recuse herself from more than
four dozen enforcement investigations, the interviews and
records show, sometimes delaying settlements and opening the
door, in at least one case, to a
lighter punishment.
The interviews and records detail for the first time the extent of
Ms. White’s recusals and the implications of her absence. When
Continued on Page B2
NATIONAL A11-16
Split in Bikram Yoga Empire
A schism has
emerged in the
yoga empire of
Bikram Choudhury, left. Many followers have stayed
loyal while he
faces six lawsuits
in which he is accused of rape or assault. But others
are walking away.
A camp near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, is now home to many Afghan former refugees. Page A4.
States Are Blocking Local Regulations, Often at Industry’s Behest
By SHAILA DEWAN
Darren Hodges, a Tea Party
Republican and councilman in
the windy West Texas city of Fort
Stockton, is a fierce defender of
his town’s decision to ban plastic
bags. It was a local solution to a
local problem and one, he says,
city officials had a “God-given
ARTS C1-8
A Trans-Atlantic Rules Gap
Academy vs. Moviegoer
Scores of chemicals that are banned or
tightly restricted in the European Union
are allowed in the United States, a regulatory disparity that highlights the potential stumbling blocks in the trans-AtPAGE B1
lantic trade talks.
Little-seen best picture contenders and
soft television ratings are among signs
that the Academy Awards have become
detached from movie viewers. PAGE C1
SCIENCE TIMES D1-6
Fox’s O’Reilly Defends Himself
Drawing Faces, Based on DNA
The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly used
his Monday broadcast to fire back at
claims that he exaggerated his experiPAGE B1
ences in the field.
A growing ability
to learn physical
characteristics of
crime suspects
from DNA they
leave behind can
help the police,
but poses questions about
whether it could exacerbate racial profiling and infringe on privacy. PAGE D1
Corporal Guilty of Desertion
SPORTSTUESDAY B10-14
A Marine accused of faking his abduction in Iraq in 2004 and evading punishment for years by fleeing to Lebanon
PAGE A11
was convicted of desertion.
A Surprise Early Arrival
Judge Rules Against Christie
A New Jersey judge said Gov. Chris
Christie violated state law in declining
to make full payments into the public
pension system and ordered him to find
PAGE A17
a way to put in $1.57 billion.
right” to make.
But the power of Fort Stockton
and other cities to govern themselves is under attack in the state
capital, Austin. The new Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has
warned that several cities are undermining the business-friendly
“Texas model” with a patchwork
of ill-conceived regulations. Conservative legislators, already an-
BUSINESS DAY B1-9
PAGE A11
NEW YORK A17-21
The Palestinian Authority and
the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for
their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel
between 2002 and 2004 in which
Americans were killed and injured.
The damages are to be $655.5
million, under a special terrorism
law that provides for tripling the
$218.5 million awarded by the
jury in Federal District Court.
The verdict ended a decadelong legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible
for the terrorist acts, an effort
that encompassed fights over jurisdiction, merit and even practicality: History has shown that it
is difficult for victims of international terrorism to bring their
civil cases to trial, let alone to recover damages.
While the decision on Monday
was a huge victory for the dozens
of plaintiffs, it could also serve to
strengthen Israel’s claim that the
supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces were directly
linked to terrorism.
The Palestinian groups said in
a statement that they intended to
appeal the verdict, but did not address their willingness or capacity to pay. In at least two previous
cases, in which judges entered
default judgments against them
for more than $100 million, the
groups reached confidential settlements, court records show.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said
that if the Palestinian groups refused to pay, they were confident
that they would be able to seize
the groups’ assets, both in the
United States and abroad.
The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial during
which the jury heard emotional
testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks
in Jerusalem, in which a total of
33 people were killed and more
than 450 were injured.
“Money is oxygen for terrorism,” Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer
for the families, said in a closing
argument on Thursday, adding
that the antiterrorism law “hits
those who send terrorists where
it hurts them most: in the wallet.”
The case was brought under
the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are
victims of international terrorism
to sue in the United States courts.
The law was used in September
by a Brooklyn jury to find Arab
Continued on Page A21
Alex Rodriguez came to Yankees camp
two days early, after a yearlong suspension for using banned drugs. “I cringe
sometimes when
I look at some of
the things I did,”
he said. “But I
paid my penalty,
and I’m grateful
that I have another opportuniPAGE B10
ty.”
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
David Brooks
PAGE A23
U(D54G1D)y+z!;!?!#!,
gered by a ban on fracking that
was enacted by popular vote in
the town of Denton last fall,
quickly followed up with a host of
bills to curtail local power.
“The truth is, Texas is being
California-ized, and you may not
even be noticing it,” Mr. Abbott
said in a speech at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank,
just before he took office last
month. “Large cities that represent about 75 percent of the population in this state are doing this
to us. Unchecked overregulation
by cities will turn the Texas miracle into the California nightmare.”
His salvo caught Texas cities
Continued on Page A12