CMYK
Late Edition
VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,203
An Afghan Air Force helicopter piloted by U.S. trainers and an Afghan co-pilot. The force is seen as dangerously reliant on Americans.
Afghan Pilots Longer Happy Hour, Fewer Diners in ‘Ghost City’
Misfire as U.S.
Spends Billions most
WASHINGTON — It was al-
lunchtime at a food court Capital Feel Pinch of
By DAVID ZUCCHINO
MOGHKHAIL, Afghanistan —
The A-29 attack plane was a white
speck in the bright skies over
eastern Afghanistan as it
launched a dummy bomb that ex-
ploded just yards from the target,
a wrecked truck. “Spot on!” said
an American adviser watching
the exercise.
The plane’s Afghan pilot had
been guided by an Afghan coordi-
nator on the ground — but only af-
ter previous bombing runs had
struck well wide of the truck.
Eleven years after the United
States began building an air force
for Afghanistan at a cost now
nearing $8 billion, it remains a
frustrating work in progress, with
no end in sight. Some aviation ex-
perts say the Afghans will rely on
American maintenance and other
support for years.
Such dependence could compli-
cate President Trump’s moves to
extricate the United States from
the 17-year-old war against Tal-
iban insurgents — a war in which
they lately appear to be gaining
ground.
“It would be a home run if we
got to 60 to 65 percent” self-
sufficiency for the Afghan Air
Force, said John E. Michel, a re-
tired Air Force brigadier general,
who commanded the air training
mission in 2013 and 2014. “You
have to have a realistic view of
how hard this is.”
For years beginning with the
Obama administration, part of the
American exit strategy has been
to build and train the Afghan mili-
tary — including the air force — to
Continued on Page A8
Claims of Abuse in Religious Orders Fall Into Bureaucratic Abyss
By JACK HEALY
When Larry Antonsen decided
to report a priest who sexually
abused him during high school, he
believed the Archdiocese of Chi-
cago was the right place to go.
Mr. Antonsen and his wife were
lifelong churchgoers who sent
their children to Sunday school
and counted themselves as mem-
INTERNATIONAL A4-10
Victor Is Declared in Congo
Officials said on Thursday that the
winner of the presidential election was
not the top vote-getter. PAGE A6
U.S. Boy Said to Fight for ISIS
The 16-year-old would be the first Amer-
ican minor captured while fighting in
Syria for the terrorist group. PAGE A8
Nxxx,2019-01-10,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
© 2019 The New York Times Company
eral work force.
360,000 Workers in gions
By SABRINA TAVERNISE It is a place that lives on the le-
who knock on the doors of govern-
downtown and Yonas A. Seyoum,
the manager of the Esprinto Café,
marched over to the cash register
and printed out the morning’s
sales.
“It’s crazy,” he said, holding up a
drooping receipt.
He had done $52.71 of business
in five hours, miserable even for
January.
“Not even enough to pay her,”
Mr. Seyoum said, motioning to the
cashier, a young woman leaning
on the counter and playing gin
rummy on her phone.
He added: “It’s like a ghost city
— totally dead.”
As the country nears the end of
its third week of a government
A restaurant in the Federal Triangle section of Washington was nearly empty on Tuesday.
bers of a parish in the archdiocese.
The priest Mr. Antonsen was ac-
cusing had spent 14 years working
at Chicago-area Catholic high
schools.
But Mr. Antonsen, who is now
72, said reporting the allegations
dropped him into a maze of church
bureaucracy, in which his accusa-
tions were passed from one office
to another before being quietly set
aside.
NATIONAL A11-17
Rosenstein’s Exit Expected
Rod J. Rosenstein plans to step down as
the nation’s No. 2 law enforcement
official after a new attorney general is
confirmed, officials said.
Would Impeach, Won’t Run
Tom Steyer, a billionaire promoting the
president’s impeachment, said he would
not run for president in 2020. PAGE A16
NEW YORK A18-19, 21
A Proposal for Paid Time Off
The policy could cover 500,000 New
Yorkers at private employers and seems
aimed at a national stage.
NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2019
of lobbyists and lawyers
Not Getting Paid
shutdown, the consequences of
Washington’s political dysfunc-
tion are landing right on the city’s
doorstep. The Washington metro
area is home to the largest num-
ber of federal workers in the coun-
try, and as their paychecks begin
to stop, the negative effects
threaten to spread across the re-
gion.
This is an unusual problem for a
region that boasts one of the coun-
try’s richest, strongest econo-
mies, powered by government
spending and a large, stable fed-
The reason: The priest in ques-
tion happened to be an Augustin-
ian — one of dozens of religious or-
ders that are overseen not by bish-
ops, but by religious superiors in
regions around the country and in
Rome. Mr. Antonsen said arch-
diocesan officials told him to take
his complaint to the Augustinians.
“They said because it was a reli-
gious order, they didn’t handle it,”
Mr. Antonsen said.
PAGE A15
BUSINESS B1-6
A Peek at Tomorrow’s Tech
Nifty gadgets galore were unveiled at
the world’s most important technology
expo, Brian X. Chen writes.
Ousted, Then a Fresh Start
John Lasseter, who left Disney under a
cloud of abuse claims, has landed a new
PAGE A18 job, angering advocacy groups. PAGE B4
BRYAN DENTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ment. At the core is a federal work
force divided between those at the
upper echelons of the Civil Service
making six-figure salaries, and
those making less pay in lower-
ranking jobs. The Washington ar-
ea’s African-American population
has traditionally been one of the
chief beneficiaries of the govern-
ment’s large pool of middle-class
jobs.
And those who are the most af-
fected are people at the lower end
of the income ladder with no sav-
ings and no way to make up the
loss.
The metro area has about
360,000 federal workers, repre-
Continued on Page A14
TOM BRENNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Jesuits, Franciscans, Bene-
dictines, Augustinians: The
names are iconic, their founders
immortalized by sainthood, their
members often bound together by
vows of poverty and obedience.
But when a priest or brother in a
religious order is accused of
abuse, victims and advocacy
groups say their accusations are
often mishandled because they
Continued on Page A17
SPORTSTHURSDAY B7-10
N.B.A. Star Takes On Erdogan
Enes Kanter has caused a geopolitical
stir by hurling accusations at Turkey’s
president and openly fretting that the
country’s spies would try to kill him
during a game in London.
Jets Hire Dolphins’ Ex-Coach
The Jets concluded their 10-day coach-
ing search by hiring Adam Gase, a
former coach of the Dolphins, whose
PAGE B1 team beat the Jets in five of the six
games they played.
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
Farhad Manjoo
NEWS ANALYSIS
TRUMP WALKS OUT
An Emergency WHEN PELOSI SAYS
Offers an End,
At Some Peril
NO TO WALL FUNDS
Face-Saving Option Is
Departure From Norms
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — President
Trump’s repeated threat to de-
clare a national emergency so he
can build his border wall without
congressional approval has been
denounced by Democrats as
extreme and an overreach. But it
could be the only politically
realistic way out of the shutdown
crisis in the nation’s capital.
“I think we might work a deal,
and if we don’t, I may go that
route. I have the absolute right to
do national emergency if I want,”
Mr. Trump told reporters on
Wednesday. “My threshold will
be if I can’t make a deal with
people that are unreasonable.”
If the president does invoke
emergency powers to circumvent
Congress, it would be an extraor-
dinary violation of constitutional
norms — and establish a prece-
dent for presidents who fail to
win approval for funding a policy
goal.
But Mr. Trump’s threatened
move offers both sides a face-
saving solution in the budget
standoff between the president
and congressional Democrats
that has prompted a partial
government shutdown, which, if
it lasts to Saturday, will be at 22
days the longest in American
history.
Both sides have taken absolut-
ist positions that leave no room
for the kind of split-the-differ-
ence compromise that usually
ends budget impasses. Mr.
Trump refuses to accept any-
thing less than his demand for
about $5 billion in wall spending,
and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
has said his wall along the south-
ern border would be immoral.
But Mr. Trump’s claim that he
can and may attempt to build his
wall another way opens the door
for him to sign a spending bill
with no wall funding, reopening
the government without capitu-
lation by either side.
While any such move by Mr.
Trump is certain to prompt out-
rage from his critics and wild
Continued on Page A12
With Obesity Rising in China,
Coke Helps Set Nutrition Policy
By ANDREW JACOBS
Happy 10 Minutes, a Chinese
government campaign that en-
couraged schoolchildren to exer-
cise for 10 minutes a day, would
seem a laudable step toward im-
proving public health in a nation
struggling with alarming rates of
childhood obesity.
But the initiative and other offi-
cial Chinese efforts that empha-
sized exercise as the best way to
lose weight were notable for what
they didn’t mention: the impor-
tance of cutting back on the calo-
rie-laden junk foods and sugary
beverages that have become ubiq-
uitous in the world’s second-larg-
est economy.
China’s fitness-is-best message,
as it happens, has largely been the
handiwork of Coca-Cola and other
Western food and beverage gi-
ants, according to a pair of new
studies that document how those
companies have helped shape
decades of Chinese science and
public policy on obesity and diet-
related illnesses like Type 2 diabe-
tes and hypertension.
The findings, published
Wednesday in The BMJ and The
Journal of Public Health Policy,
show how Coca-Cola and other
multinational food companies, op-
erating through a group called the
International Life Sciences Insti-
PAGE B7
THURSDAY STYLES D1-6
Stylish Defiance in London
With Britain in flux, the question of
identity was woven into many of the
outfits at London Fashion Week. Above,
PAGE B7 designs by Craig Green.
U(D54G1D)y+"!$!&!=!}
PAGE A23
Today, partly sunny, windy, colder,
high 37. Tonight, partly cloudy skies,
colder, low 23. Tomorrow, plenty of
sunshine, breezy, a cold day, high 31.
Weather map appears on Page A20.
$3.00
AN ABRUPT ‘BYE-BYE’
Talks Left in Disarray —
President Says It Was
a ‘Waste of Time’
This article is by Nicholas Fandos,
Michael Tackett and Julie
Hirschfeld Davis.
WASHINGTON — President
Trump stormed out of a White
House meeting with congres-
sional leaders on Wednesday after
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she
would not fund a border wall even
if he agreed to reopen the govern-
ment, escalating a confrontation
that has shut large portions of the
government for 19 days and
counting.
Stunned Democrats emerged
from the meeting in the White
House Situation Room declaring
that the president had thrown a
“temper tantrum” and slammed
his hands on the table before leav-
ing with an abrupt “bye-bye.” Re-
publicans disputed the hand slam
and blamed Democratic intransi-
gence for prolonging the standoff.
When the meeting was over,
talks to reopen the government
appeared to be in disarray. The
contentious, brief and futile ses-
sion underscored an impasse that
is looking each day like an insur-
mountable gulf between the two
sides. Mr. Trump will visit the bor-
der on Thursday in McAllen, Tex.,
leaving little hope of a resolution
for a shutdown that will tie the
longest in the nation’s history on
Friday.
“It wasn’t even a high-stakes
negotiation; it was a petulant
president of the United States,”
Ms. Pelosi said as she returned to
the Capitol. “A person who would
say, ‘I’ll keep government shut
down for weeks, months or years
unless I get my way.’”
Mr. Trump called the exercise
“a total waste of time.”
“I asked what is going to hap-
pen in 30 days if I quickly open
things up, are you going to ap-
prove Border Security which in-
cludes a Wall or Steel Barrier?
Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye,”
Continued on Page A12
ZHANG PENG/LIGHTROCKET, VIA GETTY IMAGES
Weight-loss drives ignore the
hazards of sugary beverages.
tute, cultivated key Chinese offi-
cials in an effort to stave off the
growing movement for food regu-
lation and soda taxes that has
been sweeping the west.
The group, known as ILSI, is a
worldwide organization with a
Washington headquarters,
funded by many of the biggest
names in snack foods, including
Nestlé, McDonald’s, Pepsi Co. and
Yum! Brands as well as Coca-
Cola. It has 17 branches, most of
them in emerging economies like
Mexico, India, South Africa and
Brazil, and promotes itself as a
bridge between scientists, gov-
ernment officials and multination-
al food companies.
Continued on Page A10
PAGE D4