Efforts to Restore Bison on the Montana Range Meet Resistance

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Workers with the Interagency Bison Management Plan in 2010 herded bison that had wandered astray back within the confines of Yellowstone National Park.

HELENA, Mont. — Free-roaming wild bison, once vital to the history, culture and ecology of the high plains and then hunted nearly to oblivion, are back at the center of a new debate as they compete with cattle for space on Montana's vast grasslands.

For the last 15 years, environmentalists and Indian tribes have worked to restore herds of American bison to portions of their former home here. But that effort has not gone over well with some in this state, which is now dominated by cattle that eat the rich grasses that the bison once consumed. This time around, the undeclared competition for rangeland is playing out in courts, the State Capitol and the news media.

New legislation to limit the bison's numbers is under consideration in the State Legislature, stirring deep and old feelings. It is clear that wild bison, which once grazed freely by the millions before they were reduced to a handful in the 1800s, remain an emotional symbol.

"It was 'wipe out the buffalo, starve the Indians and put them on reservations' " during the slaughter, said Mark Azure, director of the Fish and Wildlife Department at Fort Belknap, where members of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes reside. Both tribes once hunted bison on the high plains of Montana.

As the animals return, Mr. Azure said, some people here have renewed a traditional way of life, bringing back old ceremonies and stories. "It's hard to describe, but seeing the animal outside, you feel things inside — a connection to our ancestors," Mr. Azure said.

For now the only wild, free-ranging herds of bison in the region are in Yellowstone National Park. While there are many more bison in the state, they are owned, fenced in and considered livestock, not wildlife.

The goal of tribes, conservation groups and others is to restore wild herds using bison culled from the 4,000 or so animals in the Yellowstone herd, which are descendants of the handful who survived the 19th-century slaughter, and are considered genetically pure. Wild bison are a keystone species and graze in ways that create patches of habitat for other wild prairie species, like birds.

The debate over this restoration plan is heating up here as legislators who represent livestock-growing regions have tried to block the introduction of new herds with several bitterly contested bills.

One bill, introduced by State Senator John Brenden, a Republican and a leading opponent of wild herds, would allow landowners to shoot bison that wander onto their property, prevent the transfer of the animals anywhere in the state and create a new bison hunting season.

Another would require the permission of commissioners before bison could be brought to their county, a third would redefine the term "wild buffalo" to make it much harder to create new herds, and a fourth would make the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks liable for damages caused by bison. Critics say the bills would end their plans for new wild herds.

Which is exactly the point, Senator Brenden said. "Why do you want to spread this creeping cancer, these woolly tanks, around the state of Montana?" he asked. "Trying to bring back the buffalo in big herds across Montana is like bringing back dinosaurs. And who wants dinosaurs in Montana? I certainly don't."

Montana tribes have made known their opposition to the bills. In mid-March, Indians from around the state held a pipe ceremony on a bison-hide robe in support of the restoration projects, filling the Capitol rotunda with drumming and singing.

Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who fought for the transfer of bison to Indian reservation land, believes the battle comes down to a competition for grass. "These cattlemen make a great part of their living off subsidized grazing," he said. While the federal government charges $1.38 to graze a cow and calf for a month, private landowners charge $22. "Buffalo are a large animal that could become active competition" for cheap grazing on federal land, Mr. Schweitzer said.

What to do with Yellowstone bison that wander away from the park has long been a quandary. For many years hundreds of the massive animals have been killed by state officials and hunters, or hazed back into the park. Many people here, including Mr. Schweitzer, consider such treatment an outrage and have sought alternatives.

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White House Sees North Korea Blustering, Not Acting

Lee Hae-ryong/Yonhap, via Reuters

South Korean soldiers participated in military drills on Monday near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

WASHINGTON — Despite a drumbeat of increasingly bellicose threats from North Korea, the White House said Monday that there was no evidence that the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, was mobilizing troops or other military forces for any imminent attack.

Though American officials said they remained concerned about the invective flowing from North Korea — and South Korea's president ordered military commanders to carry out a swift and strong response to any provocations — the Obama administration took pains to emphasize the "disconnect" between Mr. Kim's "rhetoric and action."

The White House's strategy, officials said, was calculated to ease tensions after a fraught few days in which Mr. Kim threatened to rain missiles on the American mainland and the United States responded by flying nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula.

"We are not seeing changes to the North Korean military posture such as large-scale mobilizations or positioning of forces," said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. "What that disconnect between rhetoric and action means, I'll leave to the analysts to judge."

Even as the White House tried to tamp down the tensions, the Pentagon said it had moved a Navy missile-defense ship from its home port in Japan to waters closer to the Korean Peninsula, in what was described as a carefully calibrated response, given the North's warnings about putting its rockets on a higher stage of alert.

The deployment came after the United States publicized a rare training flight by two B-2 bombers over South Korea, where they carried out a mock bombing run, and pledged to spend $1 billion to expand ballistic missile-defense systems along the Pacific Coast.

Having taken these unusually public steps to demonstrate its commitment to defend itself and protect South Korea and Japan, the Obama administration appeared to be trying to defuse a situation that many analysts say has gone beyond previous cycles of provocation by North Korea, and raised genuine fears of war.

"It is a calculated response to say, 'We don't want anyone to think the situation is getting out of control, that the ladder of escalation is going to end in a full-scale conflict,' " said Jeffrey A. Bader, who worked on North Korea policy for the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011.

For all the uncertainty surrounding the young ruler of North Korea, Mr. Bader said, the latest round of warlike statements from the North recalled the theatrical belligerence shown by Mr. Kim 's father, Kim Jong-il. Those episodes often led to hostile acts, but never a wholesale military attack on South Korea.

Still, on Monday, South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, ordered her country's military to deliver a strong and immediate response to any North Korean provocation.

"I consider the current North Korean threats very serious," Ms. Park told the South's generals. "If the North attempts any provocation against our people and country, you must respond strongly at the first contact with them without any political consideration."

Ms. Park's blunt comments contrasted with the usually dismissive tone that South Korean leaders take toward the North's threats, and reflected the criticism directed at her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, when the South was seen as not retaliating after North Korea aimed an artillery barrage at a South Korean island in 2010, killing four people. Ms. Park's election campaign last year focused on a promise not to be blackmailed by the North.

Since Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011, the North has launched a three-stage rocket, tested a nuclear device and threatened to hit major American cities with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The Korean Peninsula, Mr. Kim declared, has reverted to a "state of war."

His actions, analysts say, reflect the North's growing frustration that its strategy of using threats and provocations against the United States and South Korea seemed less effective in recent years. Instead, the allies spearheaded another round of United Nations sanctions.

The imposition of the sanctions coincided with the allies' joint military drills, during which Washington publicized the training missions of B-52 and B-2 bombers, as well as F-22 stealth fighter jets. Washington also concluded three years of negotiations with Seoul and signed an agreement last week to respond jointly to North Korean provocations. The move was intended to bolster deterrence against the North and to prevent unnecessary escalation.

The American vessel recently deployed to waters off the Korean Peninsula, an Aegis cruiser, will remain there "for the foreseeable future," said a Defense Department official. Two ballistic-missile ships, which carry powerful tracking radars and interceptor missiles, had been in the area for a recent joint exercise with the South Korean military, but they had returned to Japan after that exercise ended.

While analysts generally praise the administration's handling of the latest tensions, Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official who worked on North Korea, said, "It's starting to feel like we send a new airplane to South Korea every day to prove our resolve."

Mr. Wit said that Washington needed to explore diplomatic channels to North Korea as well, not least because President Park had signaled her intent to pursue diplomacy with the North — perhaps even without insisting that Pyongyang renounce its nuclear weapons as a precondition for talks. There is a risk that the United States could find itself out of sync with its ally, Mr. Wit said.

But Michael J. Green, a North Korea policy adviser in President George W. Bush's administration, said that given the lack of success in curbing North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, the White House had little choice but to pursue a strategy that resembled containment, even if no official would ever use that phrase.

"The focus for the near future has to be on deterring North Korea," Mr. Green said, "punishing them for violations, and constraining their ability to move their nuclear program forward or proliferate."

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea. Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the American military's designation for the stealth fighter jets that are taking part in joint training missions with South Korea. It is F-22, not B-22.

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Baseball Fans Choose Yankees or Mets on Opening Day

There were perhaps a few hundred feet of unity in Grand Central Terminal on Monday, stretching from the subway entrance on East 42nd Street and Park Avenue to the trains bound for competing boroughs.

The fans arrived to greet the same baseball season, gabbing with the same unblemished optimism. Some even shared a fashion strategy — pulling a team T-shirt over a work-approved button-down, once the boss was out of view.

But in a two-team baseball town, on an Opening Day without precedent in the last half-century, the split took place. On the No. 4 train platform, Yankees fans boarded their ride due north, for a date with the Boston Red Sox. And one level below, beneath the pinstriped faithful — in a cruel bit of transit symbolism not lost on the city's Mets fans — the No. 7 train to Queens awaited.

Play ball! About 10 miles apart.

Because of a scheduling oddity, the Yankees and Mets both began their seasons at home, on the same day, at the same hour, for the first in their history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Though the quirk had little effect on the most loyal fans, it introduced a unique logistical wrinkle for many others — ticket scalpers, transit officials, bartenders holding television remote controls, even Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

And so, on a day typically governed by the teams' off-season choices — Who plays shortstop? Where does he hit in the order? What's the going rate for a pretzel? — the most critical question was turned on the city itself before the games' first pitches were thrown shortly after 1 p.m.

Yankees or Mets?

Mr. Bloomberg took care to appear evenhanded. His chief spokesman, Marc La Vorgna, wrote on Twitter before the games that "heavy calculations" were made to ensure that the mayor split his time equitably. These included research on the average game length for each team, specifically for the Yankees and Red Sox, whose marathon meetings are without peer. (The mayor took the subway to the Yankees game first, stayed until the fourth inning, then arrived by car at Citi Field for the sixth inning, Mr. La Vorgna said. He stayed until the end.)

At a Modell's on East 42nd Street, employees likewise arranged team apparel with an eye toward fairness, placing Mets and Yankees gear side by side near the entrance, though some of the Mets racks were banished to a well-obscured corner.

Bar operators turned to the democratic process in determining which game to display most prominently. At Shorty's, a bar in Midtown known as a haven for Philadelphia sports fans, the bartender, Catherine Tejada, said that all but two tables requested audio and big-screen treatment for the Yankees. (One wanted the Mets; the last asked for the Colorado Rockies.)

Yankees fans also had their way in other corners of the city. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority provided a special nostalgia train to the Bronx, with cars from 1917 and nonstop service to the Stadium. The Mets received no such accommodations.

"We don't have the personnel to be able to run two nostalgia trains at once," said Kevin Ortiz, an authority spokesman.

He added that an old train would likely to run to Citi Field for this year's All-Star Game and "hopefully to both stadiums come October."

Stephen Rozenfeld, 79, from New Rochelle, N.Y., is used to such slights. Wearing a shirt with the name and number of the Mets third baseman, David Wright, atop his collared button-down, Mr. Rozenfeld said he had cheered the team since its inception in 1962.

"I call being a Mets fan the logical masochistic extension of being a Dodgers fan," he said, signaling the start of a lengthy soliloquy on the Brooklyn Dodgers' 1941 loss to the Yankees in the World Series. "Suffering is part of the game."

Outside the ballparks, it was clear which game the city's hucksters preferred. In the Bronx, ticket scalpers held court beside a McDonald's, lamenting that they could not work both games this year. Customer loyalty, some said, had tethered them to the Yankees. "I've worked here longer," one scalper reasoned, "so I've got be here."

Nearby, a dog named Shaggy sat atop a security pillar in a Yankees hat, sunglasses and Converse sneakers. Tip money stuck out of the back left pocket of the dog's denim jeans, though it would be scooped up soon enough by Ryan Legrier, 27, who had turned his Maltese-poodle mix into a small business.

By afternoon's end, though, Citi Field would prove the place to be. Hours earlier, as the scent of lighter fluid wafted over the parking lot's tailgaters before the first pitch, Jason Kish, 37, had blessed Opening Day's promise of a "fresh start."

He had attended about 20 season openers, he said, as a co-worker, John Keskin, a Turkish native, awaited his first. "Mets, baby!" Mr. Keskin shouted, tilting his head to the sky.

Soon, their faith was rewarded. The Mets routed the San Diego Padres, 11-2. And all the ancient trains and bespectacled pooches in the five boroughs could not have saved the Yankees from an 8-2 loss.

Randy Leonard contributed reporting.

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City Room: Pattycake, the Bronx Zoo’s Hirsute Star, Was Always Ready for a Closeup

Correction Appended

There were problems with her heart that weren't getting better. She weighed 320 pounds. One can only imagine the toll taken by so many years of cloying attention, all the beguiled admirers staring and cooing and craning to get close to her. The press was always sniffing around for new angles. Of course, there was her age.

Forty sounds painfully young — but, then, she was a gorilla. Once you're past 37, you need to consider putting your affairs in order.

And so it was sad but not entirely surprising when word came on Sunday of the passing of Pattycake, the Bronx Zoo gorilla who had long reigned as one of the city's more acclaimed tourist attractions. Jim Breheny, the zoo's director, said she had been discovered around 8 a.m. by a worker in the zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest. Apparently, she went peacefully, in her sleep. Even at 40, her looks were still pretty much intact.

For a gorilla, she had had quite a life. "She was a story that captivated people," Mr. Breheny said.

She earned a superstar's distinction and heaps of publicity right at birth, on Sept. 3, 1972, being that she was the first gorilla born in New York City, as opposed to, say, Cameroon or Gabon or Equatorial Guinea. It was an excellent Manhattan address — the Central Park Zoo. Her furry face served as a bit of a respite at a time when the city found itself grappling with high crime rates and an intensifying financial crisis.

Another gorilla, Hodari, was born just a month later at the Bronx Zoo, and he never got the press she did.

In every sense, Pattycake's arrival was a surprise. Zoo workers had been unaware that Lulu, her mother, was even pregnant until one day she matter-of-factly produced a bundle of dark fur. Back then, it was still relatively rare for gorillas to give birth in captivity.

Gorilla babies were typically raised by humans. But Pattycake, a western lowland gorilla, a species classified as "critically endangered," lived with Lulu and her father, Kongo. The housing wasn't ideal; the gorillas shared the Lion House.

Stardom enveloped her at once. The Daily News conducted a contest to name her, attracting an estimated 33,000 entries. Zoo attendance soared.

One devotee remembered that "seeing her was like seeing a movie star."

Adrian Savonije, 45, who was touring the zoo on Monday with his children, said he had visited Pattycake since he was a child. "I grew up with her," he said. "She was a big attraction here, a little mini New York landmark."

There were initial concerns about her mother's ability to raise her, Lulu being just 8, and caged, but things seemed to work out. When Pattycake was 6 months old, though, there was a frightening accident. She was squatting with her right arm slung through the bars separating the cage she occupied with Lulu and the neighboring cage of Kongo, who sometimes got a bit rough. Kongo playfully grabbed her arm. Either out of parental rivalry or mere playfulness, her mother scooped her up, inadvertently fracturing Pattycake's right humerus.

It became one of the best-known broken arms in history. The public hung on every ensuing development.

There was an hourlong operation at New York Medical College. The arm was put in a cast, and later in a sling. She was moved to the far larger Bronx Zoo to recuperate. She slept on a cot, was fed infant formula in a bottle and wore a vest, and cloth nappies.

While Pattycake was convalescing, a full-fledged, two-borough custody battle erupted between the two zoos. The Bronx Zoo found her to be undernourished and said she had intestinal parasites. Her mother, the zoo believed, just wasn't doing her job.

To resolve the custody fight, a referee was brought in: Dr. Ronald D. Nadler, a specialist well-versed in gorilla reproduction from the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta. While Lulu might not have qualified as gorilla mother of the year, he concluded, she was more than up to the task of providing Pattycake with the best chance of developing "the normal repertoire of a gorilla."

Three months after the accident, Pattycake returned to the Central Park Zoo. There was a well-chronicled reunion with her parents, with conspicuous emotion on display all around. On Pattycake's first birthday, her parents celebrated with her, and a banana layer birthday cake. Birthday cards funneled in from as far away as California. During the party, more cake found its way into Pattycake's fur than into her mouth. It was reported that her father behaved like a "caged beast."

Her parents saw her through adolescence, but then in 1983, when the Central Park Zoo was undergoing renovation, she was moved permanently to the Bronx Zoo.

Such was her fame that two books were written about her: "Gorilla Baby: The Story of Pattycake" and "Gentle Gorilla: The Story of Pattycake."

Innumerable children became smitten with the gorilla, and later transferred that allegiance to their own children. John Bulger, 49, first saw her as a child. As a parent, he takes his son, John Jr., to the zoo twice a month, and they had always checked in on Pattycake. "There's no better day to spend as a child," he said.

She was a robust, big-boned female, so much so that those unacquainted with her often mistook her for a male — suspicions they no doubt realized were best kept to themselves. Pattycake lived with 18 other gorillas, and volunteers said that she gave the younger ones piggyback rides and assumed a clear matriarchal role.

"She was the boss," said Christine Ortman, who has spent countless hours visiting the gorillas. "We always called it Pattycake's troop."

Her afflictions — the heart issues and worsening arthritis — had slowed her. Zookeepers were advised to say goodbye to her last month, said Kate Brown, a longtime zoo volunteer, but Pattycake held on.

Zoo workers said that one gorilla, named Bweroni (workers called her Fran), had been crying and howling since Pattycake's death.

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo, Pattycake was the 31st oldest of the 338 gorillas kept in North American zoos. It said that the median age for gorillas in zoos is 37.

Pattycake (her name had also been spelled Patty Cake, but it lost the space over the years) managed to give birth to 10 babies with four mates, including a pair of twins born in 1995. She raised only 1 of the 10 on her own; one died four days after birth. The others now reside in zoos around the country, including in Omaha, Buffalo, Detroit and Louisville. She had 10 half-siblings, their whereabouts unknown. She is also survived by at least one grandchild.

A necropsy attributed her death to heart disease. The zoo said she will probably be cremated later this week. No funeral service is planned.

Vivian Yee contributed reporting.

If you have remembrances or stories about Pattycake, please share them in the comments box below.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 1, 2013

An earlier version of this post rendered incorrectly the name of the gorilla who died at the Bronx Zoo. Her name was Pattycake, not Patty Cake. Although her name was previously written many times as two words, the Wildlife Conservation Society says one word is correct.

Correction: April 2, 2013

An earlier version of a photo caption misstated the sex of Pattycake. The gorilla was a female.

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Obama to Unveil Initiative to Map the Human Brain

President Obama on Tuesday will announce a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 million in 2014, to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain, senior administration officials said Monday.

A senior administration scientist compared the new initiative to the Human Genome Project, in that it is directed at a problem that has seemed insoluble up to now: the recording and mapping of brain circuits in action in an effort to "show how millions of brain cells interact."

It is different, however, in that it has, as yet, no clearly defined goals or endpoint. Coming up with those goals will be up to the scientists involved and may take more than year.

The effort will require the development of new tools not yet available to neuroscientists and, eventually, perhaps lead to progress in treating diseases like Alzheimer's and epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. It will involve both government agencies and private institutions.

The initiative, which scientists involved in promoting the idea have been calling the Brain Activity Map project, will officially be known as Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or Brain for short; it has been designated a grand challenge of the 21st century by the Obama administration.

Three government agencies will be involved: the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. A working group at the N.I.H., described by the officials as a "dream team," and led by Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, will be charged with coming up with a plan, a time frame, specific goals and cost estimates for future budgets.

The initiative exists as part of a vast landscape of neuroscience research supported by billions of dollars in federal money. But Dr. Newsome said that he thought a small amount of money applied in the right way could nudge neuroscience in a new direction.

"The goal here is a whole new playing field, whole new ways of thinking," he said. "We are really out to catalyze a paradigm shift."

Brain researchers can now insert wires in the brain of animals, or sometimes human beings, to record the electrical activity of brain cells called neurons, as they communicate with each other. But, Dr. Newsome said, they can record at most hundreds at a time.

New technology would need to be developed to record thousands or hundreds of thousands of neurons at once. And, Dr. Newsome said, new theoretical approaches, new mathematics and new computer science are all needed to deal with the amount of data that will be garnered.

As part of the initiative, the president will require a study of the ethical implications of these sorts of advances in neuroscience.

While news of the announcement has been greeted with enthusiasm by many researchers in fields as diverse as neuroscience, nanotechnology and computer science, there are skeptics.

"The underlying assumptions about 'mapping the entire brain' are very controversial," said Donald Stein, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta. He said changes in brain chemistry were "not likely to be able to be imaged by the current technologies that these people are proposing."

Emphasizing the development of technologies first, he said, is not a good approach. "I think the monies could be better spent by first figuring out what needs to be measured and then figuring out the most appropriate means to measure them." he said. "In my mind, the technology ought to follow the concepts rather than the other way around."

However, supporters of the initiative argued that it could have a similar impact as the Sputnik satellite had in the 1950s, when the United States started a significant nationwide effort to invest in science and technology.

"This is a different time," said Michael Roukes, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. "It makes sense to have a brain activity map now because the maturation of an array of nanotechnologies can be brought to bear on the problem."

While the dollar amount committed by the Obama administration does not match the level of spending on the Human Genome Project, scientists said that whatever was spent on the brain initiative would have a significant multiplier effect. The Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., is contributing money, said Terrence J. Sejnowski, head of the institute's computational biology laboratory, adding that the project would have an impact across the entire University of California, San Diego, campus, where the institute is based.

"One concrete example is that the chancellor has gotten excited about this and has decided that it is a great thing to invest in," Dr. Sejnowski said. "That means hiring new faculty and creating new space."

The project grew out of an interdisciplinary meeting of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in London in September 2011. Miyoung Chun, a molecular biologist who is vice president of scientific programs at the Kavli Foundation, had organized the conference. Her foundation, she said, supports the idea that the next big scientific discoveries will come from interdisciplinary research.

"Federal funding is scarce these days, and I realized we need inspiring projects that can awake everyone's imagination," she said. "It occurred to me that this is a very inspiring idea."

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Harry Reid Draws on Political Calculus as He Leads Senate

Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, holding a news conference last month after meeting with President Obama.

WASHINGTON — It was, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada ebulliently proclaimed, a "happy day for me" as he stood with Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, in 2010 at a new shooting range in Las Vegas made possible by federal money secured by Mr. Reid. "People who criticize this probably would criticize baseball," Mr. Reid said before firing off a few rounds.

These days, Mr. Reid, the Senate majority leader, is far more likely to meet with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, an outspoken advocate of stricter gun control, than with Mr. LaPierre as he prepares to bring the most expansive package of gun safety legislation in a decade to the Senate floor over the next few weeks.

Mr. Reid's evolution from a proponent of gun rights to the shepherd of legislation that would expand background checks, among other gun control measures, emerges from a complex web of political calculations that have come to define his leadership style over the last decade.

How tenacious Mr. Reid is willing to be — and whether he will extract votes one by one as he has for other big pieces of legislation — may well determine the fate of the measures.

Mr. Reid declined to be interviewed but answered questions by e-mail. "The families of Newtown and Aurora and the victims of gun violence everywhere deserve a vote on these issues," Mr. Reid wrote. "We owe them a vote, and I will make sure they get a vote." He added, "Only those who are afraid of a free and open debate would try to block it or shut it down."

With guns, as with gay rights and immigration, Washington has observed in Mr. Reid an evolution — less flip-flops than slow dances to the left — that reflects shifting attitudes not only in his Democratic conference but also in Nevada, where Democrats have gained an edge in the last decade. Voter registration in the state has become increasingly Democratic as its population has swelled, and Barack Obama won the state twice, the only Democrat besides Bill Clinton to win the state in the last 40 years.

"Harry Reid is the most calculating individual I have ever covered in politics," said Jon Ralston, editor of Ralston Reports, who has covered Nevada politics for three decades. "If he is making the right move for his members, he is making the right move for himself."

Mr. Reid voted proudly against an assault weapons ban in both 1993 and 2004, even as most Senate Democrats voted for it, and voted for a successful 2005 measure that limited lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers for negligence. He has also long supported the N.R.A.

But now, in a demonstration of his loyalty to President Obama, Mr. Reid is helping him pursue his agenda for stemming gun violence. Many of the more senior members of his caucus, notably Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, also want these votes.

"He is doing what a leader needs to do," said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, one of Mr. Reid's protégées in the Senate, "to move the caucus forward so it stays in tune with where the American people are."

Mr. Reid, aides said, is also motivated by both the personal angst he felt over the killing of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., last year, as well as the anger he feels toward the N.R.A., which was widely expected to endorse him in his 2010 re-election campaign but then declined to do so.

After the Senate returns from its recess next week, it will consider a bill that would expand background checks and increase penalties for so-called straw purchases, in which someone buys a gun for another person who is unable to buy one. Mr. Reid opted not to include in the bill a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines but plans to hold a separate vote on both measures. His hope was to not let the less popular measures jeopardize passage of the expanded background checks.

Mr. Reid is almost certain to vote in favor of at least some of the new gun safety measures, if not all of them.

It would not be the first time Mr. Reid had shifted his position on a significant public policy issue. For example, in 1993, Mr. Reid co-sponsored legislation that would have stripped the citizen rights from babies born to illegal immigrant mothers, and vigorously denounced immigrants from the floor. The bill did not make it out of the Judiciary Committee.

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Direct to DVD: House Parties for Homesick Jamaicans

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica — Glenville Brown has never left the island of Jamaica, where he was born and where he poles bamboo rafts full of tourists down a river for a living. But by his own reckoning, he has made hundreds if not thousands of appearances in New York City and throughout the Jamaican diaspora, simply because he loves to party.

Raucous parties erupt nightly across the Caribbean island, in homes and in clubs, on roped off streets and in rural backyards. They are filled with the usual characters, gyrating women and amorous men tossing back booze to music spun by a D.J. — and one uniquely Jamaican fixture, the video man, hired by the host to capture the revelry.

But unlike a wedding video that stays tucked away unwatched, footage of Jamaican parties gets a second life. Burned onto DVDs and exported to America and elsewhere, the films are snapped up and watched, at home, by Jamaicans abroad who are nostalgic for the sights and sounds and thumping bass lines of home.

"It's just people dancing, you know, crazy, and people just love them," said Keeling Beckford, an owner of Keeling Reggae, a music shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. "People over here in the States like to know what's going on in the island — fashion, dance, the latest slang."

There is no narrative or plotline in the films. They are simply start-to-finish recordings of parties, from the sluggish arrival of guests, to awkward milling, to rum-punch sipping, to a crescendo of feverish dancing to a popular form of music known as dancehall. The camera keeps rolling until the last sweaty guests wobble home on their heels. The films are typically watched beginning to end, an activity that can take as long as six hours.

It may seem melancholy to watch alone as a bunch of strangers cavort at a party you weren't invited to 1,600 miles away, but many expatriates find it dulls the pangs of homesickness. They often look for films of parties from their hometown, to keep an eye out for friends and family members on the dance floor.

In this way the party videos have become just another coping mechanism for immigrants, a role more traditionally occupied by food or faith. And they reflect a common sentiment, that the United States has a lot to offer, including better job and educational opportunities, but Americans just do not know how to party.

Rodney Ivey, 31, a fixture at a reggae store in Queens packed with Bob Marley memorabilia, watches parties most nights. Like many fans, he takes special note of new fashions or hairstyles back home. Dances evolve from week to week in Jamaica. Sometimes, Mr. Ivey will leap off his sofa to practice a new move he sees on the screen, to later use at a party. "I watch them and I live them," he said.

The hallmark of a good DVD is outlandish dancing. Egged on by the evening's M.C., called a "selector," who shouts a running commentary over furious reggae-inflected beats, women pinwheel their legs while standing on their heads. Some moves are acrobatic — a real showstopper involves a woman dangling from the ceiling and leaping onto a male dance partner, landing in a full split — while others, like "daggering," are overtly sexual. The dancing often borders on pornographic and by night's end can sail past that line as bodies jiggle free of minuscule clothes.

Tucked into sleeves with grainy photos of party scenes, the party DVDs cost about $5 apiece and sell briskly in bodegas, reggae shops and street-side folding tables across Caribbean enclaves like Jamaica, Queens, and others in Brooklyn and the Bronx. They are often sold person to person by amateur dealers who go back to the homeland for a visit and return with a suitcase of fresh parties.

Both men and women buy films, and stress that they are for the most part wholesome entertainment. Sashauna Stewart, 27, who lives in Canarsie, Brooklyn, has been watching them since she was 15 years old, sometimes five in a weekend. She has come to know the party regulars as if they were the cast of a soap opera. Eventually she started flying back to Jamaica to attend parties and vie for a chance to be on camera. "They know that they're going to be seen in America," she said. "They try to outdo everyone so they can make the cut and be in the video."

The video man often has the rights to distribute whatever is filmed, though sometimes the party hosts will receive a cut of DVD sales, says Merton McKenzie, a pioneer of the industry who is known as Scrapy D. For partygoers there is no compensation except for the publicity, including exposure on one of Jamaica's 24-hour party channels. (The fact makes romantic indiscretions on the dance floor hazardous.)

"I understand why it's appealing," said Kim-Marie Spence, the film commissioner of Jamaica Promotions Corporation, a government agency, who added that the success of party videos had influenced more traditional moviemaking in the country. "Especially in the States now, for the diaspora, it might be familiar in much a way like a movie from home — you are seeing reflections of yourself on the screen."

Norman Stolzoff, the author of "Wake the Town and Tell the People," a book about dancehall culture, said such events were a crucial part of Jamaican identity. He said their roots date to slavery in Jamaica when plantation owners permitted slaves to carve a social space for themselves. The tradition persisted, particularly among poorer Jamaicans who viewed it as a celebration of their culture.

"It is a way that these Jamaicans can maintain their identity in New York, in the face of being a part of a large urban mass of black people who are from all over the world," he said.

In recent years, Jamaicans have begun to import videos filmed in the United States. Jermaine Johnson, 27, who lives in Queens and runs a Web site for party videos, says that Western influence and the rise of Internet video sharing sites have changed party film culture and taken a toll on the industry. Now there is a growing demand for short clips and highlight reels.

But Mr. Johnson said the desire to watch parties would persist as long as there were Jamaicans feeling homesick for their country's tropical shores.

"If somebody is coming up from Jamaica to New York, they call you and ask if you want them to bring you Jamaican food, or some Jamaican rum," Mr. Beckford, the reggae store owner in Brooklyn, said. "You say, 'Bring me some parties.' "

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Kevin Ware’s Gruesome Injury From an Innocuous Play

John Sommers Ii/Reuters

Louisville's Kevin Ware being tended to. He broke his right leg after landing awkwardly while trying to defend a shot.

INDIANAPOLIS — It happens in every game, thousands of times in the course of a season. A player breaks free for an open jumper. An off-the-ball defender jumps at him. Whether the shot falls or not, both players run back downcourt and play on.

For Louisville's Kevin Ware, a 6-foot-2 sophomore reserve guard originally from the Bronx, that innocuous play in the N.C.A.A. Midwest Region final ended with a gruesome injury. Ware broke his lower right leg in two places as he landed near the Louisville bench with 6 minutes 33 seconds left in the first half of the Cardinals' 85-63 victory.

Louisville Coach Rick Pitino said that Ware was expected to have surgery Sunday, and that it would take a year to recover. "It was very difficult to look at and watch," Pitino said. "But he's a brave young man, because all he kept saying was, 'Win the game.' "

In a first half loaded with physical play, Louisville rattled Duke with a full-court press, making the Blue Devils work for every shot. Ware, who averages 4.6 points, converted a 3-point play in a brief appearance. He returned with 8:09 to play in the half.

The Cardinals led by 21-17 when Duke's Tyler Thornton broke free for a 3-point jump shot from the right wing. Ware dashed from the edge of the foul circle and jumped at Thornton to try to block the shot. Spinning in the air, Ware landed with all his weight on his right leg. The lower part of his leg buckled unnaturally, and he slid into the Louisville bench. He lay on his back with the lower leg dangling grotesquely, broken at the middle of the shin.

"When he landed, I heard it," Smith said. "Then I saw what happened come out. And I just fell."

Pitino said a broken bone punctured the skin. "I went over and was going to help him up, and then all of a sudden I saw what it was," he said. "And I literally almost threw up. And then I just wanted to get a towel to get it over that."

Thornton yelled and grimaced. "I was freaked out," he said. "He lifted his leg in the air and I saw where his leg was broken. It was bent in a weird way it shouldn't have been."

As Cardinals trainers surrounded Ware and covered his leg with towels, Louisville's Smith, Wayne Blackshear and Chane Behanan fell to the court, crying. Behanan, Ware's close friend, dropped to all fours. Pitino wiped away tears. Blackshear helped Behanan to his feet, and Gorgui Dieng, himself visibly shaken, put an arm around Behanan to console him.

"When he went down, oh my God, it scared me," Behanan said. "I never cried for nobody like that. Kevin is like a brother to me. We're always together outside of basketball, just doing things."

After about nine minutes, medical personnel slid a board underneath Ware. Louisville players were huddling near midcourt when Pitino called them over — Ware wanted to tell them something before he left.

"He was laying down, crying and saying: 'Win it for me, y'all. I'm good. I'm going to get surgery and be back at it like I never left,' " Behanan said.

Moments later, while the crowd chanted his first name, Ware was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled away. He was taken to Methodist Hospital. When play resumed, Smith pulled the top of his jersey across his face to wipe his eyes one more time.

"It was really hard for me to pull myself together, because I didn't ever think in a million years I would see something like that, and it happened especially to a guy like Kevin Ware," Smith said. "I was completely devastated."

The former Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann, who sustained a grisly leg fracture in a 1985 "Monday Night Football" game against the Giants, wrote on Twitter: "Watching Duke/Louisville my heart goes out to Kevin Ware."

The halftime locker room was solemn, Behanan said. The second half was no contest. Louisville shot 59.3 percent and scored 50 points to win easily.

"I think 9/11 and the loss of a child were probably the two most difficult things in my life," said Pitino, who lost an infant son to congenital heart failure in 1987 and his brother-in-law, Billy Minardi, in the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. "This was very traumatic for us to overcome, because we all witnessed it right up close."

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Ads to Urge Change in N.Y. State Campaign Financing

ALBANY — In an effort to build public support for reining in the flood of money in politics, advocates of overhauling New York State's political fund-raising laws will spend over $800,000 on a new advertising campaign to begin on Monday.

The campaign marks the beginning of what is expected to be an ambitious push to persuade Albany lawmakers to confront the issue of campaign fund-raising during this year's legislative session. Organizing for Action, the political operation that grew out of President Obama's re-election campaign, has signed on to help with the effort.

"The basic message is that everyday New Yorkers aren't getting their voices heard in Albany, and we need to change the campaign finance laws so that people are heard and state government represents everyone in New York," said David Donnelly, the executive director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a national advocacy group.

Supporters of overhauling the state's campaign finance laws are also planning to hold rallies this week in Albany, New York City, Syracuse and the Mohawk Valley; more than 100 house parties are scheduled for the week of April 7, and meetings are being organized on college campuses around the state.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, is proposing a system of public financing that is modeled after the one used in New York City, where, in exchange for abiding by strict spending limits, candidates can receive $6 in public funds to match every dollar they collect in donations up to $175. Mr. Cuomo would also lower contribution limits and expand disclosure rules.

Senate Republicans have objected to public financing, arguing that it is not a prudent use of taxpayer money. Many lawmakers are also not eager to change a campaign finance system that favors the re-election of incumbents, who tend to have a large advantage in raising money.

The advertising campaign comes as lawmakers have returned to their districts for a two-week recess after the passage of the state budget last week. Mr. Cuomo said in a radio interview last week that one of his top priorities when lawmakers return to Albany would be to revamp the state's campaign fund-raising laws.

The mobilization effort by advocacy groups will try to tap into what their leaders believe is widespread disillusionment among voters over the role of money in electoral campaigns, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.

The attempt to change New York's rules is backed groups including Citizen Action of New York, the Working Families Party and the Public Campaign Action Fund, as well as Friends of Democracy, a group whose founders include Mr. Donnelly and Jonathan Soros, a son of the billionaire financier George Soros.

A 30-second television ad is scheduled to begin broadcasts statewide on Monday and to run for two weeks. It warns that "political campaigns are dominated by big money," and adds, "As hard as we try, it doesn't feel like anyone in Albany is listening." The advertisement was produced by SKDKnickerbocker, a political consulting firm with close ties to Mr. Cuomo that also worked on the successful push to build public support for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Web advertising and direct mail will also be part of the campaign, which is budgeted at $815,000. Sean Eldridge, an investor and political activist who is exploring a run for Congress next year in the Hudson Valley, contributed $250,000 toward the effort.

Organizing for Action, which has more than 700,000 members in New York, is also getting involved, and has hired a New York State coordinator to work in large part on the campaign finance effort. "We have a chance for New York State to be a leader in this," Jon Carson, the executive director of the group, said on a conference call with volunteers last week. He said that action in Albany could "lead to similar efforts in other states and help us change this overall system."

"It's the right thing to do," Mr. Carson added. "President Obama has spoken on these issues, and believes in this kind of approach."

Mr. Cuomo has been outspoken about campaign finance in recent weeks — he gave a speech on the subject to an audience of business leaders at a Manhattan law firm last month, and also spoke on a conference call, with reporters listening in, to encourage grass-roots activists, an unusually public step for him.

But it remains unclear whether Mr. Cuomo will be able to persuade lawmakers to embrace public financing — and how such a system could be paid for. Some advocates of campaign finance changes, including the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, have warned that lawmakers might try to jettison the public financing portion of the governor's proposal.

"Victory is within our grasp," Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said on the conference call hosted by Organizing for Action. But he also struck a cautionary note. "In Albany," he said, "they're really, really good at coming up with something that looks like reform, and that they tout as reform, but really falls short."

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Second Prosecutor Shot to Death in Texas County

Mike Fuentes/Associated Press

The home of Mike McLelland, the district attorney for Kaufman County. He and his wife were found dead on Saturday.

KAUFMAN, Tex. — After the daylight assassination of his deputy two months ago, Mike McLelland, the district attorney in largely rural Kaufman County, responded with a flash of angry bravado, denigrating the perpetrators as "scum" and vowing to hunt them down.

A former Army officer who served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, Mr. McLelland carried a gun and refused to be intimidated, according to a friend and the local news media, even as his wife expressed unease, worrying that her husband, too, could be in danger.

"I hope that the people that did this are watching, because we're very confident that we're going to find you," he said at a news conference hours after his deputy was killed. "We're going to pull you out of whatever hole you're in. We're going to bring you back and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."

On Saturday evening, the authorities found Mr. McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, shot to death inside their home in Forney, Tex., in Kaufman County. The killings galvanized law enforcement officials and frightened and bewildered local residents, many of them still shaken by the shooting of the deputy, Mark E. Hasse, 57, on Jan. 31. That case remains unsolved.

The police said Sunday that they had increased security for local elected officials and would tighten security at the county courthouse. The courthouse was scheduled to be open Monday, but Mr. McLelland's office will be closed.

"It's unnerving to the law enforcement community, to the community at large," Sheriff David A. Byrnes said at a news conference on Sunday. "That's why we're striving to assure the community that we are protecting public safety and will continue to do that."

The authorities said it was too early to say if the deaths of Mr. McLelland and his wife were connected to the shooting of Mr. Hasse, the county's lead felony prosecutor. But the killings of two prosecutors in a county of 106,000 people in less than eight weeks appeared to many officials to be more than a coincidence.

"I'm really trying to stress for people to remain calm," said Mayor Darren Rozell of Forney, about 15 miles northwest of Kaufman, the county seat. "This appeared to be a targeted attack and not a random attack."

A law enforcement official said investigators believed that the shootings of the two prosecutors were related, but appeared to have been carried out by different people, perhaps from the same group or with the same affiliation. Shell casings were recovered in the shootings of the McLellands, but not in the shooting of Mr. Hasse, indicating that his killer or killers had more experience, the official said.

Officials from several local, state and federal agencies — including the F.B.I., the Texas Rangers and the Kaufman County sheriff's office — were working on the case. Sheriff Byrnes told reporters that deputies had been called to Mr. McLelland's residence shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday, and that the bodies were discovered inside. He would not say if there were any signs of forced entry.

In the shooting of Mr. Hasse, the authorities said, one or two gunmen got out of a gray or silver sedan, opened fire and fled. Witnesses told investigators that the killer or killers appeared to have had their faces covered and wore black clothing and tactical-style vests. No arrests have been made, and investigators from nine agencies had been searching for leads.

Mr. McLelland told The Associated Press less than two weeks ago that he carried a gun at all times since Mr. Hasse's killing, even when he walked his dog. He said he had urged his employees to remain alert. "The people in my line of work are going to have to get better at it, because they're going to need it more in the future," he said in the interview with The A.P.

"I'm ahead of everybody else because, basically, I'm a soldier," he said, referring to his 23-year career in the Army.

Tonya J. Ratcliff, the Kaufman County tax assessor and a friend of the McLellands, said the couple was vigilant, but did not obsess over their security.

"I didn't have a sense that they were looking over their shoulders at any moment," she said.

The McLellands had five children, one of whom is a Dallas police officer.

Manny Fernandez reported from Kaufman, and Michael Schwirtz and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jack Begg from New York, Michael S. Schmidt from Washington, Jack Healy from Denver, and Lauren D'Avolio from Kaufman.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 31, 2013

An earlier version of this article, in a quote taken from The Associated Press, misspelled the surname of the Forney mayor. He is Darren Rozell, not Rovell.

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