Marcia Wallace, ‘Simpsons’ Voice Actor, Dies at 70

(Reuters) - Actress Marcia Wallace, the voice of Edna Krabappel on the Fox show "The Simpsons" and earlier Carol Kester, the receptionist on the 1970s sitcom "The Bob Newhart Show," has died at 70.

"I was tremendously saddened to learn this morning of the passing of the brilliant and gracious Marcia Wallace," said executive producer, Al Jean. "She was beloved by all at The Simpsons and we intend to retire her irreplaceable character."

Wallace, who had survived breast cancer, died at home, according to a Fox publicist, Antonia Coffman.

A fellow cast member and voice of Lisa Simpson, Yeardley Smith, wrote a farewell to Wallace on Twitter Saturday morning.

"Cheers to the hilarious, kind, fab Marcia Wallace, who has taken her leave of us. Heaven is now a much funnier place b/c of you, Marcia," Smith tweeted.

Wallace won an Emmy for outstanding voice actress in 1992. Her long-running "Simpsons" character Edna Krabappel was Bart Simpson's jaded, crabby fourth-grade teacher.

Earlier, Wallace played the chatty receptionist on "The Bob Newhart Show." She also appeared on "The Merv Griffin Show" and game shows such as "Hollywood Squares" and "The $25,000 Pyramid."

Executive producer Jean had previously hinted about killing off one of the show's characters.

"Earlier we had discussed a potential storyline in which a character passed away," Jean said in a statement. "This was not Marcia's Edna Krabappel. Marcia's passing is unrelated and again, a terrible loss for all who had the pleasure of knowing her."

Wallace published an autobiography "Don't Look Back, We're Not Going that Way," in 2004. Her husband, hotelier Dennis Hawley, died in 1992. She had a son, Michael Hawley.

(Reporting By Noreen O'Donnell; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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The E-Cigarette Industry, Waiting to Exhale

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

An NJOY e-cigarette. A pioneer in its industry, NJOY now has 200 rivals, including major tobacco companies.

Geoff Vuleta was in the crowd at a Rolling Stones concert last year when Keith Richards lit up a cigarette on stage, the arena's no-smoking policy be damned. Feeling inspired, Mr. Vuleta, a longtime smoker, reached into his pocket and pulled one out himself. People seated nearby shot him scolding glances as he inhaled. So he withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and pressed the glowing end to his cheek.

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

"We have to narrow as much as possible the bridge to familiarity," Craig Weiss, NJOY's president, said of the selling of e-cigarettes. "We have to make it easy for smokers to cross it."

His was an electronic cigarette, a look-alike that delivers nicotine without combusting tobacco and produces a vapor, not smoke. Mr. Vuleta, 51, who has a sardonic humor, clearly relished recounting this story. He is the chief marketing officer for NJOY, an electronic cigarette company based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and it is his job to reframe how everyone, nonsmokers included, view the habit of inhaling from a thin stick and blowing out a visible cloud.

Mr. Vuleta, who told his tale in the office of Craig Weiss, the NJOY chief executive, calls this a process of "renormalizing," so that smokers can come back in from the cold. He means that literally — allowing people now exiled to the sidewalks back into buildings with e-cigarettes. But he also means it metaphorically. Early in the last century, smoking was an accepted alternative for men to chewing tobacco; for women, it was daring and transgressive. Then, in midcentury, it became the norm. As the dangers of tobacco — and the scandalous behavior of tobacco companies in concealing those dangers — became impossible to ignore, smoking took on a new identity: societal evil.

Mr. Vuleta and Mr. Weiss want to make "vaping," as e-cigarette smoking is known in the industry, acceptable. Keith Richards might still be smoking tobacco, but in Mr. Vuleta's vision, that grizzled guitarist's gesture could inspire the audience, en masse, to pull out e-cigarettes. "The moment Keith Richards does it," he said, "everyone else does, too."

Mr. Vuleta's words are more exuberant than the official company line, which is that NJOY doesn't want everyone to smoke e-cigarettes but only to convert the 40 million Americans who now smoke tobacco. The customers NJOY attracts, and how it attracts them, are at the center of a new public health debate, not to mention a rush to control the e-cigarette business.

At stake is a vaping market that has grown in a few short years to around $1.7 billion in sales in the United States. That is tiny when compared to the nation's $90 billion cigarette market. But one particularly bullish Wall Street analyst projects that consumption of e-cigarettes will outstrip regular ones in the next decade.

NJOY was one of the first companies to sell e-cigarettes; now there are 200 in the United States, most of them small. Just last year, however, Big Tobacco got into the game when Lorillard acquired Blu, an e-cigarette brand, and demonstrated its economic power. Within months, relying on Lorillard's decades-old distribution channels, Blu displaced NJOY as the market leader.

Mr. Weiss still sees NJOY as having an advantage — in building e-cigarettes that look, feel and perform like the real thing. It's a different strategy than that of competing products that look like long silver tubes or sleek, blinking fountain pens.

"We're trying to do something very challenging: change a habit that is not only entrenched but one people are willing to take to their grave," said Mr. Weiss, who is not a smoker but has tried both regular and e-cigarettes. "To accomplish that, we have to narrow as much as possible the bridge to familiarity. We have to make it easy for smokers to cross it."

To some, though not all, in public health, that vision sounds ill-conceived, if not threatening. Among their concerns is that making smoking-like behavior O.K. again will undo decades of work demonizing smoking itself. Far from leading to more smoking cessation, they argue, e-cigarettes will ultimately revive it, and abet new cases of emphysema, heart disease and lung cancer.

"The very thing that could make them effective is also their greatest danger," said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To achieve his ends, Mr. Weiss is building a company of strange bedfellows. He has hired former top tobacco industry executives, but also attracted a former surgeon general, Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who has joined the board. NJOY recently hired away a prominent professor of chemistry and genomics from Princeton to be the company's chief scientist. The company has attracted investment from Sean Parker, the former Facebook president, and Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder. There has also been a celebrity endorsement from the singer Bruno Mars.

Mr. Weiss sees his company as doing something epic. Not long after he was named its president in June 2010, he asked his psychologist if he might record his regular sessions. It was an unusual request, but he thinks that recording his thoughts might ultimately help him write a book or movie script about how he and the company made the cigarette obsolete.

"We're at this incredible inflection point in history," he said, adding that the company has a chance to "make the single most beneficial impact on society in this century."

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Man Checking Guns Is Arrested at J.F.K., Authorities Say

The man, identified as Keenan A. Draughon, 23, of Clarksville, Tenn., approached a United Airlines counter around 7:45 a.m. and told an attendant that he had two cases containing firearms that he wanted to check for his flight to Charlotte, N.C., the Queens County district attorney's office said in a statement.

The cases contained two 9-millimeter pistols, two magazines capable of holding 15 rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition, and two .22-caliber rifles, the statement said.

One of the rifles had a round in the chamber, and both were missing serial numbers, the statement added.

Joseph Pentangelo, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police, which conducted the investigation, said the two rifles had been painted, one purple and one silver. He also said that Mr. Draughon had a shotgun with him, though that weapon was not mentioned in the district attorney's statement.

Mr. Draughon's father, Kevin, said his son joined the Army when he was 19 and was an avid hunter in Tennessee. He said by telephone that his son had been visiting him and other relatives in the New York area.

"We haven't seen him since he had joined Army," he said.

Transportation Security Administration rules state that passengers can transport firearms if they are unloaded and locked in a hard container. All firearms, firearm parts and ammunition must be checked. But under most circumstances, New York City law prohibits visitors from bringing firearms into the city even if they are legally licensed in the visitors' home state.

This means that while weapons can sometimes be lawfully checked onto a flight destined for New York, gun owners can be arrested if they are caught with the weapons while visiting the city or at city airports when they try to check their weapons for outbound flights.

Mr. Draughon was charged with six counts of criminal possession of a weapon, and one count of violating a New York City administrative ordinance that requires rifles and shotguns to be carried in a proper case, the authorities said. He could face up to seven years in prison if convicted.

"Before leaving home, passengers should acquaint themselves with the weapon laws of the jurisdiction that they are visiting," Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said in the statement.

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Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast

WASHINGTON — Each Saturday morning in July and August, Susan E. Rice, President Obama's new national security adviser, gathered half a dozen aides in her corner office in the White House to plot America's future in the Middle East. The policy review, a kind of midcourse correction, has set the United States on a new heading in the world's most turbulent region.

At the United Nations last month, Mr. Obama laid out the priorities he has adopted as a result of the review. The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.

That includes Egypt, which was once a central pillar of American foreign policy. Mr. Obama, who hailed the crowds on the streets of Cairo in 2011 and pledged to heed the cries for change across the region, made clear that there were limits to what the United States would do to nurture democracy, whether there, or in Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia or Yemen.

The president's goal, said Ms. Rice, who discussed the review for the first time in an interview last week, is to avoid having events in the Middle East swallow his foreign policy agenda, as it had those of presidents before him.

"We can't just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is," she said, adding, "He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region."

Not only does the new approach have little in common with the "freedom agenda" of George W. Bush, but it is also a scaling back of the more expansive American role that Mr. Obama himself articulated two years ago, before the Arab Spring mutated into sectarian violence, extremism and brutal repression.

The blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist networks or weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, it does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest.

For Ms. Rice, whose day job since she started July 1 has been a cascade of crises from Syria to the furor over the National Security Agency's surveillance activities, the review was also a way to put her stamp on the administration's priorities.

The debate was often vigorous, officials said, and its conclusions will play out over the rest of Mr. Obama's presidency.

Scrawling ideas on a whiteboard and papering the walls of her office with notes, Ms. Rice's team asked the most basic questions: What are America's core interests in the Middle East? How has the upheaval in the Arab world changed America's position? What can Mr. Obama realistically hope to achieve? What lies outside his reach?

The answer was a more modest approach — one that prizes diplomacy, puts limits on engagement and raises doubts about whether Mr. Obama would ever again use military force in a region convulsed by conflict.

For Ms. Rice, 48, who previously served as ambassador to the United Nations, it is an uncharacteristic imprint. A self-confident foreign policy thinker and expert on Africa, she is known as a fierce defender of human rights, advocating military intervention, when necessary. She was among those who persuaded Mr. Obama to back a NATO air campaign in Libya to avert a slaughter of the rebels by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But Mr. Obama drove the process, officials said, asking for formal briefings in the Situation Room and shorter updates during his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office. He gave his advisers a tight deadline of the United Nations' speech last month and pushed them to develop certain themes, drawing from his own journey since the hopeful early days of the Arab Spring.

In May 2011, he said the United States would support democracy, human rights and free markets with all the "diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal." But at the United Nations last month, he said, "we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action — particularly with military action."

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In Response to Storm, New York Will Create a Gas Reserve

 The reserve is expected to hold three million gallons of fuel, Mr. Cuomo's office said, and it would be the first state gasoline reserve in the nation.

 The pilot program, which will cost $10 million, was started in response to gasoline disruptions during Hurricane Sandy last year. The gas shortage caused long lines at gas stations across the region and left emergency responders without enough fuel.

 The supply will be held at a Northville Industries complex on Long Island, but the gasoline could be delivered to other parts of the state where needed, the governor's office said. Northville, which was chosen through competitive bidding, must have a formal contract approved, the governor's office said.

 Having gasoline available could prevent days of lines at gas stations if another major storm hits the state, Mr. Cuomo said in the statement. The plans will "make our energy infrastructure stronger and better prepared than it ever was before," he said.

Experts appointed by Mr. Cuomo after the storm to study how to better prepare for disasters recommended creating such a reserve. The state also passed a law requiring many gas stations on Long Island and in New York City and Westchester and Rockland Counties to have backup power during an emergency. 

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Keeping Hope Alive for Autistic Boy’s Safe Return

There are signs with pictures of him posted on tollbooths at the mouth of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and in languages from Russian to Bengali all over New York City. There have been loudspeaker announcements throughout the subway system, scent-sniffing bloodhounds, volunteer foot patrols and daily scans of rooftops by police helicopters. Several of them have buzzed over Queens most days since Avonte went missing. And every day, dozens of police officers fan out across a wide region, checking buildings, lots and even trash bins.

The Police Department has received more than 450 leads related to Avonte's disappearance, and detectives have investigated and ruled out all but 48, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference on Friday. He added that detectives were still in the process of viewing 196 pieces of video.

Avonte, he said, had not appeared on any of the video clips that investigators had watched so far.

On Thursday, in remarks to a television station, Mr. Kelly expressed fears that Avonte was dead. "Unfortunately, we are not hopeful that we're going to find this young man alive, but we are continuing our search," he told WABC-TV.

The comment infuriated members of Avonte's family, who on Friday said they were afraid that the comments might make the public less vigilant.

"There is no evidence that Avonte is not alive," said David H. Perecman, a lawyer for the family.

The family is suing the city on grounds that the Riverview School, which opened this year at 1-50 51st Avenue in Long Island City, did not have safety features like alarmed doors or proper monitoring systems, and suffered a breakdown in the protocol for dealing with Avonte, who was known to run off periodically.

At a news conference beside the family's makeshift search command center, at the foot of 51st Avenue where it dead ends at the East River, Mr. Perecman said the commissioner's words were "reckless."

Asked in an interview on Friday whether he thought Avonte was still alive, Mr. Kelly said, "We certainly hope so."

Nowhere is Avonte's absence felt more acutely than in a tent at the command center , near the school he stepped out of on Oct. 4, where Avonte's mother, Vanessa Fontaine, has spent her days. She was there to shepherd volunteers who have come in droves — and because it is too painful to be home, in the silent shadow of her child's absence.

"It's very quiet," she said. "Nothing to say, no, 'Avonte, what are you doing?' It's not the same. I'd rather be here than be at home."

For weeks police boats have plied the waters and divers have searched the East River, while volunteers from organizations as varied as churches and motorcycle clubs have combed the streets. There are 80 detectives working the case. At times a recording of his mother's voice was blasted from roving search vehicles calling out to Avonte, who because of his condition is nonverbal. He cannot care for himself or even tie his own shoes.

But no Avonte.

"At this juncture we have nothing that we could say is a confirmed sighting of the young man," Mr. Kelly said on Friday.

As autumn weather has descended on the city, the volunteers have begun to fade away, and the police have indicated that the search efforts will be scaled back.

Ms. Fontaine and Avonte's father, Daniel Oquendo, have not given up hope. "He is not gone," Ms. Fontaine said. "I don't know what the commissioner was thinking of. He's alive, he's out there."

After the conference, Ms. Fontaine returned to her vigil. "It's like a nightmare," she said. "You ever had that dream and said, 'I'm so happy I woke up from this and it was a dream?' I wish this was a dream and I could go home and see Avonte in that room in that house.

"Pinch me and wake me up. Please."

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Drug Tests Falter as Way for States to Deny Public Aid

With safety-net spending under review around the country, proposals to make welfare and unemployment checks contingent on drug testing have become a routine rallying cry in dozens of states.

But the impact of drug-testing measures has been limited.

Supporters say the tests are needed to protect welfare and unemployment compensation funds as the nation emerges from the recession. But their enactment has often been hampered by legal challenges and the expense of running the programs, which generally uncover relatively few drug users.

Drug testing of welfare recipients in Florida was halted by a federal judge. The rollout of a similar program in Georgia was suspended indefinitely as a result of the Florida ruling. Measures in other states have been narrowed in scope, primarily to keep administrative costs low and avoid protracted court battles.

This week, legislators in Michigan, after failing to agree on more robust drug-testing bills in recent years, approved a measure that would withhold unemployment compensation from people who fail drug tests given as part of job interviews. The approach, a one-year pilot program, leaves it up to prospective employers to screen applicants and does not force businesses to test or report the results.

"We just didn't want to waste people's time," Ken Goike, a state representative in the Republican-majority Legislature and sponsor of the bill, said about legal considerations. "Why go through all this if it's just going to be busted down?"

If signed by Gov. Rick Snyder, the Michigan bill would join drug-testing laws enacted this year in Kansas, Texas and North Carolina that try to navigate a delicate legal landscape.

This year, at least 29 states considered drug testing for people who receive cash assistance from the primary federal welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, but only two measures passed, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ten states considered testing laws for unemployment compensation benefits, and two measures passed.

In all, despite a steady wave of bills introduced largely by Republican-led legislatures since 2011, only nine states have passed drug-testing bills related to welfare recipients; at least six have passed them for unemployment compensation, though Wisconsin repealed a law last year that required employers to report failed tests.

Opponents say that the laws amount to an unfair attack on America's most vulnerable, and that people receiving public assistance and unemployment benefits are no more likely to use drugs than anyone else. Yet, even critics admit the issue poses little political risk for lawmakers backing the measures, regardless of what form they take.

"A lot of it's just posturing to show I'm tough on drugs," said Rebecca Dixon, a policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project.

Legal obstacles are rooted in a 2003 federal court decision that struck down a law that required the testing of all welfare applicants in Michigan. In February, a federal appeals court upheld a move to halt enforcement of a similar Florida law that passed in 2011. Both rulings found that blanket testing was unconstitutional, amounting to unreasonable search and seizure.

But lawmakers have not abandoned the underlying principle; they are still trying a range of nuanced alternatives. If successful, a flood of states may follow.

Lawmakers in North Carolina pushed through a drug-testing policy this year that applied only to welfare applicants who show "reasonable suspicion" of substance abuse, which can be determined through background checks and questionnaires.

Gov. Pat McCrory vetoed the bill in August, citing similar laws in other states that he said have "proven to be costly for taxpayers and very ineffective at catching drug offenders." The legislature overrode his veto last month, but Mr. McCrory has fought back, saying his administration would stall implementation until sufficient funding was provided for the program.

Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas signed a similar suspicion-based drug-testing law for welfare recipients in April. The law also stipulates that people receiving unemployment compensation who test positive for illegal substances will be required to complete rehabilitation and job training programs, but benefits will be stripped only in cases in which the person fails to comply or tests positive a second time.

In Texas, an unemployment insurance law approved in June limits drug testing to those whose only "suitable work" would regularly require one. The program, expected to start in February, and a similar one in Mississippi that was passed last year await federal regulations to define which occupations can be tested. Jason Kuruvilla, a spokesman for the federal Department of Labor, said those rules were still being drafted.

"By definition, someone that is abusing illegal drugs is really not ready to return to work," said Tommy Williams, a Texas state senator who sponsored the testing measure this year. He added, "I wasn't out here trying to make political hay, I was trying to make good public policy."

David Holt, a state senator from Oklahoma, where welfare applicants must fill out questionnaires to determine their eligibility for drug testing, said suspicion-based laws save states money because they reduce the number of people who are required to submit urine samples.

"I think what we did was just smarter," he said, calling it a measured approach. "And we did it in a way that didn't get us on Fox News every night."

But even with prescreenings, testing programs have not exposed rampant drug use by those applying for public assistance or unemployment insurance.

In the seven months after the law took effect in November 2012, Oklahoma officials screened nearly 1,900 applicants, conducted 537 drug tests and denied benefits to 83 people, according to the state's Human Services Department. The testing process cost about $80,000. State officials were reluctant to estimate the savings from the denials.

In the four months that the testing was allowed in Florida, 108 out of 4,086 cash assistance applicants failed drug tests. The state's outlay: $118,140.

"These programs are expensive, and they don't work," said Jason Williamson, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has not ruled out legal action in cases of suspicion-based testing. "They'll look exceedingly reasonable and unassailable, I'm sure that's part of their calculation, but the arguments that we're making are the same."

By leaving it up to employers to test for drugs, the legislation in Michigan has tried to sidestep the fray altogether. Whether businesses will voluntarily report failed drug tests to the state remains to be seen, as some may not want to get dragged into the appeals process.

Mr. Goike, the state representative, said he proposed the bill, modeled after a law in Indiana, after his brother-in-law tried hiring employees at a local manufacturing facility. Half of the applicants tested positive for drugs, Mr. Goike said, making them "unavailable for work," which is a condition for receiving unemployment compensation.

Michigan has a 9 percent jobless rate and more than 233,000 people receiving unemployment benefits amounting to $935 million this year.

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DealBook: JPMorgan Reaches Deal With Agency Over Loans

JPMorgan Chase has secured important concessions in a $13 billion settlement over its mortgage practices, allowances that could ultimately reduce the bank's financial burden and leave the government itself on the hook for a small portion of the cost.

The concessions emerged on Friday in an agreement with one of the federal regulators suing JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank. The regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, ran ahead of a broader deal that the Justice Department and other authorities were negotiating with the bank.

The housing agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, extracted a $5.1 billion payout on Friday.

But unlike other regulators pursuing the bank, it did not require JPMorgan to admit wrongdoing. And in a provision buried in the settlement, the agency effectively allows JPMorgan to try later to recoup about $1 billion from another federal regulator: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The results show that, even as JPMorgan is facing an onslaught from the government, the bank is seeking to contain the fallout — and is succeeding on some fronts.

In a statement, JPMorgan called the deal "an important step towards a broader resolution" with the Justice Department and the other government authorities.

And for its part, the housing agency, while not responding to questions about the wording of the agreement, also heralded the settlement. "This is a significant step as the government and JPMorgan Chase move to address outstanding mortgage-related issues," Edward J. DeMarco, the acting director of the housing agency, said in a statement. Yet the housing agency's announcement also suggests that the government may be split over how to punish the bank for misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities it sold to investors before the 2008 financial crisis. The Justice Department, which has orchestrated the $13 billion settlement, is conversely demanding that JPMorgan not pass on its liabilities to the F.D.I.C.

JPMorgan has been locked in a legal battle with the F.D.I.C. over mortgage securities sold by Washington Mutual. In a deal that the F.D.I.C. orchestrated, JPMorgan bought the failed bank at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, just months after it acquired Bear Stearns. By JPMorgan's account, the F.D.I.C. agreed that it would shoulder some liabilities from Washington Mutual. The agency disputes that notion and is fighting the bank in court.

The bank's legal stance has now carried over into the negotiations over the $13 billion mortgage settlement.

Because the settlement deal with the housing regulator involves mortgage securities sold by Washington Mutual, JPMorgan could try to push some of the settlement cost onto the F.D.I.C. And the deal with the housing agency does not explicitly prevent the bank from doing so.

"Nothing in this agreement shall be used as an admission or concession that JPMorgan," the deal said, "contractually assumed or is otherwise liable for any alleged liabilities or wrongdoing of Washington Mutual Bank."

Armed with that wording, JPMorgan could file a claim against Washington Mutual's receivership fund, which is maintained by the F.D.I.C. Such a claim could be for more than $1 billion, given that Washington Mutual accounted for a third of the disputed mortgage securities. It is unclear whether the bank would receive the full amount. The receivership contains about $2.7 billion, according to the F.D.I.C.'s Web site. And it already faces other large claims.

The settlement with the housing agency does prevent JPMorgan from making any claim on the agency's deposit insurance fund. But some government officials worry that if JPMorgan consumes what's left of the receivership, a few other claimants could take the bold step of pursuing the insurance fund.

The Justice Department, which wants to include other Washington Mutual-related investigations into the $13 billion deal, continues to fight with the bank over the F.D.I.C.

Some bank lawyers questioned whether it is fair for the $13 billion settlement to include any payouts related to Washington Mutual. The company, the lawyers argued, sold the dubious securities before JPMorgan bought it.

As both sides continued to wrangle over a final deal, the housing agency decided to announce its own settlement. By settling now, people briefed on the talks said, the agency can move on to negotiating with other banks it has sued.

For JPMorgan, the housing regulator settlement resolves only one element of the bank's legal woes. The bank, which is also facing investigations into whether it turned a blind eye to Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme and hired the sons and daughters of China's elite to win business in that nation, said earlier this month that since 2010 it had set aside $28 billion for litigation expenses.

Still, the housing regulator's case was one of the costliest.

In a 2011 lawsuit, the regulator accused JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual of misrepresenting the quality of the mortgage securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled housing finance companies. The banks, the agency claimed, did not fully disclose the risks of the securities, which ultimately imploded.

To settle the mortgage securities case, the bank paid $4 billion. It paid another $1.1 billion to the regulator to settle demands that the bank repurchase soured loans it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2000 to 2008.

The $13 billion deal with JPMorgan also involves a number of other state and federal authorities. Under the current terms, the bank would pay a roughly $2 billion fine to prosecutors in California, commit $4 billion to help struggling homeowners reduce their mortgage balances and dole out billions more to state attorneys general and other officials who will then funnel the money to investors who sustained losses on mortgage securities.

The deal could embolden the Justice Department as it takes aim at other big banks suspected of similar mortgage breakdowns. Using the JPMorgan case as a template, the Justice Department is planning to take action against other big banks suspected of selling troubled mortgage securities, people briefed on the matter said.

The Justice Department's cases rely on a law that extends the legal deadline for filing certain financial fraud cases to 10 years from five. The law also led a federal jury this week to find Bank of America liable in a mortgage case.

A spokesman for Eric T. Schneiderman — the New York attorney general who is expected to collect more than $500 million from JPMorgan — praised the housing regulator's pact on Friday. "Five years after the financial crisis, it is critical that we continue to share resources to maximize the relief provided to struggling homeowners and ensure accountability for those who created the crisis in the first place," said the spokesman, Damien LaVera.

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The Saturday Profile: Mexican Writer Mines the Soccer Field for Metaphors

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

"Soccer has much less to do with sporting triumphs than with the desire to form an emotional community." JUAN VILLORO

MEXICO CITY — IN trying times like these, when the anguish and uncertainty can be almost too much to bear, Mexico turns to him, its philosopher-fanatic, to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical.

With the nation's hopes for the World Cup spiraling into doubt and chaos, Juan Villoro, one of Mexico's most decorated and esteemed writers — who also happens to be a leading soccer analyst — comes charging down the metaphorical field to scold, explain and extract the lessons within.

Mexico may miss the World Cup for the first time in 24 years, a crushing possibility in a country that treats the game like a religion. But this month, the Americans — of all people, the Americans! — saved Mexico's chances of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup by knocking out Panama, setting up a last-chance playoff next month.

After this sudden gift, from a superpower Mexico has long felt is its inferior on the soccer field, Mr. Villoro, 57, took to the front page of Reforma, one of the leading newspapers here, to wax apoplectic. "Crimes can be redeemed, but nothing saves you from mediocrity," he wrote.

Something about Mexico's struggle, and the prospect of doom, seems to fit the general sense of fatalism often manifested here.

"Every World Cup team reflects its country's social model," he said a few days after the column. "When Spain won last time, it was about middle-class aspiration, a nation making it. France's victorious team before that," in 1998, "reflected the multinational ideal it aspires to be."

"And Mexico now," he said, "it's a combination of the nation that has been promised a lot, but the promises have not been fully fulfilled and there is a feeling like maybe they never will be. It is a very Mexican team in that regard."

Many people watching a soccer game may see a bunch of players trying to kick a ball into a net. For 90 minutes.

"You could have a 0-0 tie, and everyone would be talking about what a wonderful game it was," said Mr. Villoro, speaking in a cantina with a closely watched match on the big-screen television that 90 minutes later, it so happened, ended up tied 1-1.

But this match, between Cruz Azul and América, two of the most popular clubs here, was not so wonderful. A cloudburst had soaked the field. The play was erratic.

Instead, Mr. Villoro saw something else, a metaphor for society, as he does in the regular columns, television appearances and writings that have made him such a pre-eminent figure in the church of soccer here, including a book called "God Is Round."

"Soccer has much less to do with sporting triumphs than with the desire to form an emotional community," he said after the game, reflecting on the coming-together around pivotal matches, in the way the Super Bowl in the United States borders on a holiday. "For that reason, I wrote in 'God Is Round' that if there were a World Cup of spectators, Mexico could get to the final. We celebrate the game, but above all we celebrate ourselves."

Celebration is not the national mood these days around Mexico's national team, which is stumbling through the World Cup qualifying matches like an exhausted player with little left but blind luck to pull it through.

A quirk in the tournament point system meant that the United States soccer team's defeat of Panama last week kept alive Mexico's hopes, even though it lost on that same night to Costa Rica. Unless it wins a playoff with New Zealand next month, Mexico will be ousted.

WITH the overwhelming demand for soccer commentary lately, it may be easy to overlook Mr. Villoro's prolific career of letters. It includes journalism, essays, short stories, children's literature, novels and even a few rock songs, dissecting and mulling contemporary and historical Mexico, often with a darkly reflective eye. In one of his better-known works, "The Witness," the protagonist returns to Mexico after its 2000 elections heralded a return to democracy to find a country slipping into social disintegration and disorder.

But he has also been a lifelong soccer fanatic, having even played briefly and unspectacularly for his college team.

None other than Carlos Fuentes, a god in Mexican letters whom Mr. Villoro admires and is sometimes compared to, once told an interviewer asking him about soccer, "If you want to talk about soccer, go talk to Juan Villoro."

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3 Children Killed in Bronx Fire

The fire, in a six-story building at 64 West 165th Street, at Anderson Avenue, began just before 8 p.m. and centered on Apt. 2C, a Fire Department spokesman said.

Three siblings, Elijah Artis, 5; Jeremiah Artis, 2; and Michael Turner, 4 months, were pronounced dead on arrival at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, the police said. All three had apparently been in Apt. 2C, the authorities said.

A 25-year-old woman and two small girls, aged 4 and 4 months, were treated for smoke inhalation and were in stable condition late Friday, the police said.

A large contingent of firefighters and nearly a dozen fire vehicles, working over a two-block stretch, had the fire under control by 10:30 p.m. The fire left few signs on the outside of the brick building, beyond a blacked out window, but neighbors reported a harrowing scene.

Yvonne Laracuente, 27, who was with friends nearby, heard a long scream from a woman. "It was a yell," she said. "She was screaming 'my babies.' " When Ms. Laracuente and her friends ran toward the sound, they saw a woman wearing only a T-shirt on the fire escape of the building. She was holding a toddler, Ms. Laracuente said.

Two men pulled down the fire-escape ladder, she said, and helped the woman and the child climb down.

Ms. Laracuente said she tried to enter the building, but was held back by thick smoke. One of her friends, she said, helped rescue another small child.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known, the spokesman said, and police and fire officials were investigating.

Valerie Frazier, 47, a resident of the building and a friend of the 25-year old woman, said that the electricity in Apt. 2C had been turned off and that the residents had resorted to using candles.

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