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Mike O'Connor, a longtime foreign correspondent who had worked in recent years to protect journalists in Mexico, died on Sunday in Mexico City. He was 67.

His death was confirmed by the Committee to Protect Journalists, where he worked as the representative for Mexico. He died from a fatal heart attack while sleeping in his apartment, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Mr. O'Connor had been an outspoken advocate for journalists in Mexico, one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a reporter in the last five years. He challenged government officials to do more to protect journalists and to prosecute their deaths in a country where the crimes often go unpunished.

He understood the rigors of foreign reporting after working in Central America, the former Yugoslavia and Israel for various news organizations, including National Public Radio and The New York Times.

His death will leave a void in the campaign for safety for Mexican journalists, said Javier Garza Ramos, the former editor of the Mexican newspaper El Siglo de Torreon, which was attacked in 2011 by gunfire and a car set on fire. "Mike's presence was essential during a crisis," Mr. Garza Ramos said in a blog post by the Committee to Protect Journalists. "In the rush to take protective measures, Mike's phone calls, several times a day, were not only a reminder that we were not alone, but a guide amid confusion."

Mike O'Connor was born in Germany on Feb. 8, 1946. His father was the director of a large refugee camp there after World War II.

In a 2009 memoir called, "Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run," Mr. O'Connor investigated his unusual upbringing in Texas and Mexico, in which his parents sometimes made the family flee their home on short notice without explanation.

Mr. O'Connor started his career in 1983 as a CBS News correspondent covering the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. He then covered Central America for National Public Radio and reported from the former Yugoslavia for The New York Times in the 1990s.

He later returned to NPR where he reported from Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 1994, he was part of a team of NPR reporters that won an Overseas Press Award for best radio spot news for a piece on Haiti.

The oath of office was administered by Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, in a brief ceremony inside the front yard of the mayor's rowhouse in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where Mr. de Blasio stood with his family behind a chain-link fence and beside a bare-limbed tree.

"I want to say to all of you how grateful we are," Mr. de Blasio, who wore a black topcoat and cobalt blue tie, told a crowd of journalists and well-wishers, including the actor Steve Buscemi and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.

"From the beginning," the mayor continued, "this has been our family together, reaching out to the people of this city to make a change that we all needed." He added: "This is a beginning of a road we will travel together."

The ceremony, which precedes a formal inauguration to take place at noon on the City Hall steps, was the culmination of a campaign in which Mr. de Blasio carefully calibrated his image as a fiery populist, intent on easing the disparities of a gilded city, and a proud husband and father, whose biracial family seemed a paragon of multi-cultural New York.

The mayor chose the symbolic location of his own middle-class home, about four miles outside of Manhattan, to recite his oath; it was the same location where he announced his campaign nearly a year ago.

Mr. de Blasio emerged from his house at 12:01 a.m., followed closely by his wife, Chirlane McCray, who wore a flecked black-and-grey jacket, his 16-year-old son, Dante, in a sweater and zip-up jacket, and his 19-year-old daughter, Chiara, who donned a pointy party hat.

Mr. Schneiderman, in a casual coat, stood nearby. He recited a quote from Paul Wellstone, the former Minnesota senator: "It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics."

Mr. de Blasio then placed his hand on a Bible and recited the oath of office, before hugging his family members, one at a time.

Asked for a $9 filing fee, required by the city to register his new office, Mr. de Blasio opted to pay in cash, holding out the bills for the crowd to see. There was much applause.

The city clerk, Michael McSweeney, approached with several papers for the newly minted mayor to sign.

"Here's the pen, Mr. Mayor," Mr. McSweeney said.

It was the very first time that Mr. de Blasio had been addressed by his new formal title. The mayor, unable to suppress a grin, let out a happy laugh.

Mr. de Blasio concluded the late-night appearance by wishing the onlookers a happy new year. With that, he threw a kiss to the crowd, and walked back into his house.

HOUSTON — Barbara Bush, the former first lady, has been admitted to a hospital here for treatment of pneumonia. She is recuperating at the same hospital where her husband, former President George Bush, spent weeks overcoming bronchitis-related illnesses in 2012.

Mrs. Bush, 88, was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital on Monday and remained there Tuesday evening. "She is in great spirits, has already received visits from her husband and family, and is receiving fantastic care," said Jim McGrath, a spokesman for the Bushes.

The mood was reported to be anything but tense. Late Tuesday evening, the former president and first lady enjoyed New Year's Eve together at the hospital, watching college football on television and, naturally, cheering for Texas as the Texas A&M Aggies played the Duke University Blue Devils.

Mr. Bush, 89, spent much of November 2012 at Methodist, undergoing treatment for bronchitis and a lingering cough. In November 2008, Mrs. Bush underwent surgery at Methodist for a perforated ulcer. Months later in March 2009, she had heart surgery at the age of 83.

Mr. Bush, the 41st president, has a form of Parkinson's disease and often uses a wheelchair or scooter to get around. Despite their bouts of illnesses, he and his wife have remained in the public eye in their hometown. Mrs. Bush has been a frequent visitor at schools, Houston Astros baseball games and events benefiting the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

By Christian Roman

Pool photo by Brian Snyder

Kerry's Peace Ambitions: Secretary of State John Kerry's remarks on Middle East peace talks have changed over time.

WASHINGTON — In an intensifying diplomatic effort, Secretary of State John Kerry is making a major push to secure what Obama administration officials are calling a "framework" accord that would be a critical first step to a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement. But critics are already branding it as an effort to play for time.

Mr. Kerry leaves on Wednesday for Jerusalem, on the first of what are expected to be repeated trips to the region in January and February. His goal is to secure the framework agreement quickly, before his target of the end of April for completing a comprehensive peace treaty.

The framework document is aimed at achieving enough of a convergence on core issues that the two sides can make headway toward a formal peace agreement leading to an independent Palestinian state. It is expected to be short, perhaps fewer than a dozen pages and without detailed annexes. It would not be signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders and would most likely take note of reservations the two sides have about some elements, American officials said.

American officials are nonetheless hopeful that it will provide some impetus to the fraught talks.

"Once they have a shared vision of what that will look like, then it will become easier to finalize the details," said a senior State Department official, who asked not to be identified under the agency's ground rules.

The core issues to be resolved include the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem as a possible capital for the new state as well as Israel, Israel's insistence that its identity as a Jewish state be recognized and the Palestinians' demand that refugees should have the right to return to their former homes. Another issue will be determining security arrangements in the West Bank, including what role Israeli forces might have in the Jordan Valley.

The agreement might be made public to prepare Israelis and Palestinians for what a potential peace treaty might look like, although no final decision has been made. So far there have been about 20 rounds of closed talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The United States has asked both sides to keep the details confidential.

Critics said the move was mainly a maneuver to buy time and a way to institutionalize the negotiating process so that it could continue beyond the nine-month timeline that Mr. Kerry set over the summer for completing a peace treaty.

"It is clear that Kerry cannot get a comprehensive 'final status agreement' in his nine-month timetable, so now he appears to be looking at a 'framework agreement' instead," said Elliott Abrams, who was a senior official in President George W. Bush's National Security Council.

"I don't think it will work," added Mr. Abrams, who asserted that the two sides would not make wrenching and unpopular compromises for the sake of a "piece of paper" that fell short of an actual peace treaty.

Mr. Kerry did not mention the need for a framework accord when the peace talks resumed in July after a long hiatus.

But in the fall the United States broached the notion of a framework accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and President Obama later mentioned the idea during a conference hosted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "It is possible over the next several months to arrive at a framework that does not address every single detail but gets us to a point where everybody recognizes, better to move forward than move backwards," Mr. Obama said.

In Israel, where the American goal of a framework agreement has been debated for weeks, there are conflicting views.

Gilead Sher, a former Israeli peace negotiator and chief of staff to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, said the framework agreement was the most the United States could possibly accomplish at this point, but still an important step forward after years of little progress.

"The question is how substantive such an agreement will be," said Mr. Sher, who is also a co-chairman of Blue White Future, a group that advocates the evacuation of some Jewish settlers from the West Bank. "That's my big question mark on the whole concept. But having a framework agreement is better than nothing."

Daniel Levy, the Britain-based director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the framework idea amounted to "going backwards."

"We're well past the time for constructive ambiguity," said Mr. Levy, a left-leaning British-Israeli who has long worked on the peace process for various research organizations. "Any framework agreement would have to have a significant degree of clarity in order to reverse that trend."

The Palestinians are poised to seek recognition in the International Criminal Court and United Nations bodies if the talks fail. But Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator in the talks, told reporters last month that the Palestinians would "absolutely" be willing to continue negotiations beyond April if there was a framework agreement by then.

"If we reach a framework agreement that specifies the borders, the percentage of swaps, the security arrangements, the Jerusalem status, refugees — then that is the skeleton," Mr. Erekat said.

Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, was more skeptical.

"The framework idea is like reinventing the wheel," he said. "It is buying time, without a solution, extending the negotiations for another year."

Mr. Kerry, who will be making his 10th trip to the Middle East as secretary of state, will arrive after a tense period in which Israel released a third batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners; Israel twice bombed the Gaza Strip after rockets from there penetrated its territory; a bus bombing was thwarted in a Tel Aviv suburb; and conservative Israeli ministers moved a bill forward to annex parts of the West Bank, prompting Palestinian outrage.

Mr. Kerry has repeatedly said time is not an ally, and the instability in the region now appears to be adding to his sense of urgency. Even tackling a framework will prove very challenging, some experts said.

"What they are trying to do now is one of the hardest parts: getting both sides to reveal their bottom line on the core issues," said Robert M. Danin, a former State Department official who worked on Middle East issues. "It is both ambitious but necessary if you are going to have a real conflict-ending peace agreement."

WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court justice has blocked the carrying out of portions of President Obama's health care law that would have forced some religion-affiliated organizations to provide health insurance for employees that includes birth control coverage.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's decision came Tuesday night after a different effort by Catholic-affiliated groups that rushed to the federal courts to stop Wednesday's start of portions of the Affordable Care Act.

Justice Sotomayor acted on a request from an order of Catholic nuns in Colorado, whose request for a stay had been denied by the lower courts.

Justice Sotomayor is giving the government until Friday morning to respond to her decision.

Two people were injured in slashings at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York on Tuesday night, fire officials said.

The attack took place around 8:50 p.m. near the south side of the building, near Eighth Avenue and 40th Street, officials said. The victims were being treated at local hospitals. At least one had major injuries.

The bus terminal is near Times Square, where New Year's Eve festivities had already started. The streets near the bus terminal were filled with revelers on Tuesday night.

HOUSTON — Former first lady Barbara Bush has been hospitalized in Houston with a respiratory-related issue, her husband's office said Tuesday night.

The statement from the office of former President George H.W. Bush said Mrs. Bush was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital on Monday.

"She is in great spirits, has already received visits from her husband and family, and is receiving fantastic care," the brief statement said.

Just last week, Mrs. Bush, 88, and her husband, the 41st president, honored a Houston businessman and philanthropist with a Points of Light Award, a volunteer service award started by the former president.

The Bushes' home is in Houston.

Mrs. Bush had a reputation for bluntness when her husband was president. Her son, George W. Bush, was the 43rd president.

The Bush family matriarch had heart surgery in March 2009 for a severe narrowing of the main heart valve. She also was hospitalized in November 2008, when she underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. In 2010, she was admitted to the hospital after having a mild relapse of Graves disease, a thyroid condition for which she was treated in 1989.

Mr. de Blasio, then the city's public advocate, knew whom to blame: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. City residents and officials were all but bombarding him with rotten tomatoes as they complained of stranded ambulances and barricaded streets that paralyzed parts of the city for days. "I don't think New Yorkers got a clear enough message," Mr. de Blasio said at the time, criticizing the mayor for not declaring a snow emergency ahead of the storm.

Now, as Mr. de Blasio succeeds Mr. Bloomberg in office, he is acutely aware of the political threat of six to eight inches of snow forecast for Thursday night, the first test of his promises that the city would continue to function with brisk efficiency under his watch.

"Something like a snowstorm, I take very personally. I can see it, I can feel it, I can touch it, it's not an abstraction," he said on Tuesday, hours before he was to be sworn in as mayor. "We are 100 percent ready."

Snow has been dealing gut punches to mayors since the city was incorporated in 1898. In fact, soon after Robert A. Van Wyck, the modern city's first mayor, took office, The New York Times reported that after a November blizzard, "the Street Cleaning Department claimed to have had many men and carts at work," but they "made hardly any impression on the streets."

Mr. de Blasio is hoping to avoid a reprise of the 2010 debacle, during which complaints grew so loud that a top aide to Mr. Bloomberg had to apologize before a City Council hearing. On Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio said the current commissioners of the Sanitation and Fire Departments and the Office of Emergency Management had agreed to stay in their jobs during the mayoral transition.

Many top members of the new administration, if not the topmost officials themselves, are experienced in city operations and are well aware of how snowstorms have torpedoed past mayors, said George Arzt, a Democratic political consultant who still remembers the February 1969 blizzard that almost brought down Mayor John V. Lindsay's government.

"He has all these experienced hands around who know exactly what to do, and know exactly what snow means in political terms to the mayor," Mr. Arzt said. "It means: Do a good job, or you're in deep trouble. Especially for your first test."

The 15 inches of snow that fell in the 1969 storm killed 42 people and crippled the city for three days, with residents of Queens all but imprisoned in their homes. ("Get away, you bum," an angry woman in Fresh Meadows told Mr. Lindsay when he tried to tour the borough, foreshadowing later hostile comments, ranging from impolite to unprintable, that Queens residents would make about Mr. Bloomberg in 2010.)

At least Mr. Lindsay kept his job, even winning re-election. Ten years later, Michael A. Bilandic, then the mayor of Chicago, bungled his handling of a blizzard so badly that his re-election bid failed two months later. A Denver snowstorm dealt William H. McNichols Jr., the city's longtime mayor, a politically fatal blow on Christmas Eve 1982: The city's 45 plows were no match for the snow, and Mr. McNichols lost re-election the following spring.

But perhaps no mayor became more experienced riding out snow-inflicted bad news than Edward I. Koch, who dealt with several snowstorms in his first year as mayor in 1978, recalled Mr. Arzt, who served as his spokesman for years. After one storm, Mr. Arzt said, Mr. Koch performed the verbal equivalent of throwing up his hands in disgust, exclaiming: "What's next — locusts?"

The storm predicted for Thursday, while not expected to come close to the 2010 blizzard, which unloaded 20 inches of snow on Central Park, will likely top the five-inch snowfall of two weeks ago, said David Stark, a National Weather Service meteorologist. Flakes will begin falling in earnest on Thursday evening, lasting into early Friday morning.

Mr. de Blasio was not the Bloomberg administration's most vocal critic during the snowstorm debacle of 2010; that honor belonged to several members of the City Council from Brooklyn and Queens, who raged at Mr. Bloomberg for prioritizing Manhattan's cleanup over snow removal in the other boroughs. (Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn memorably charged that the city had "cleaned the bike lanes in Manhattan before they got to Brooklyn.")

Given that Mr. de Blasio campaigned partly as a champion of the boroughs beyond Manhattan, it seems clear the same people will be watching Mr. de Blasio's performance for signs of Manhattan favoritism.

"Let's just see if he takes care of Brooklyn, where he came from, or does he prioritize Gracie Mansion, where he's moving to," Mr. Barron said on Tuesday.

In other preparations, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was salting subway platforms, fueling snow and ice-breaking equipment and readying an array of de-icing machinery. The Education Department, which will be under the leadership of a new chancellor, has not yet determined whether to close the schools. "We'll make a decision when we need to," said Devon Puglia, a spokesman.

As for the popular Citi Bike program, bike share officials plan to dig out the bike docks promptly, a Transportation Department spokesman said. If the snow is too heavy, they may close the system.

The Sanitation Department is sending 5,000 workers out on Thursday to salt roads and plow streets. Up to 1,600 plows are available, said Keith Mellis, a department spokesman.

But with the snow estimates to be relatively mild, some suggested Mr. de Blasio may be getting off easy.

"We won't be able to judge him on this go-round," Mr. Barron said, "but inevitably, he's going to have to face it."

A man, briefly questioned by the police, tried to run and was quickly grabbed by two officers who threw him to the ground and slapped on handcuffs, as fans in dreadlocks, fishnet stockings and tie-dyed shirts looked on.

It was the start of another night of revelry and arrests that has become something of a ritual within the traveling circus that accompanies the jam band Phish. At least 228 people were arrested or received summonses at shows on the first three nights of a four-night stand that was to end Tuesday with a New Year's Eve performance and undoubtedly more arrests.

Illegal drugs have been woven into the fabric of the rock concert experience since before Woodstock. But fans of Phish, a Vermont band with an obsessed following reminiscent of the Grateful Dead, seem to have developed an outsize reputation among law enforcement agencies for heavy drug use.

In New York, the police have reason to be vigilant. Exactly four months ago, the authorities were forced to cancel the last day of Electric Zoo, a Labor Day electronic music festival on Randalls Island, after two concertgoers died and four became seriously ill after taking ecstasy.

Given the enormous police presence in Midtown Manhattan on a typical day, selling drugs outside a packed, heavily policed public event like a concert at Madison Square Garden would seem to require a heavy dose of pluck, if not something more potent. At least some of those arrested seemed to be aware of the danger.

In one episode before the Phish concert on Saturday, a man named John Picrqlisi, 34, offered to keep watch as his partners, Steven Powers, 47, and Jeffrey Powers, 52, sold some mushrooms on the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street.

"Make sure you don't get caught, cops are everywhere," Mr. Picrqlisi yelled to his two partners, according to a criminal complaint.

The buyer, who paid $40 for the drugs, was an undercover officer. The three men were arrested and charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance. According to the complaint, Jeffrey Powers had 424 capsules of MDMA, 71 strips of LSD and 14 bags of mushrooms in his pants.

While ticket scalping and public urination accounted for some of the arrests over the first two days, most were linked to narcotics possession and sales. Undercover officers have confiscated marijuana, hash, psychedelic mushrooms, LSD, MDMA or ecstasy, amphetamine and prescription drugs like Oxycodone, OxyContin and Xanax, among other drugs, the authorities said.

Most of the offenders were charged with misdemeanors or given summonses, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office. So far, 10 people have been charged with felonies, most of them for attempting to sell drugs to undercover police officers.

A website called PholkTales.com that publishes stories written by fans about Phish-related antics has a subsection about encounters with law enforcement with titles like "Caught with a Bong," "What Pipes? What Paper?," and "I smell herb!! No you don't."

Over 40 people were arrested on charges of drugs and prostitution at three Phish shows in Atlantic City from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, according to news reports. Over 30 people were arrested at two Phish concerts on Long Island last year.

In October, the police department in Hampton, Va., produced a YouTube video welcoming fans to the city, with an officer saying that the police department was "eagerly awaiting Phish," while cautioning that there would be additional police in the area.

"Yes, we will be enforcing the violations of law," Sgt. Jason Price said in the video.

Outside the Garden on Monday, fans of the band, known as Phish Heads, complained that they were being singled out for scrutiny because of the band's reputation, though few denied that drug use at concerts was common.

"I hate to feel like just because of a certain look that Phish fans have, or a certain idea that goes with Phish, they're targeted in a very certain way that maybe other fans are not," said Julia Johnson, 21, a senior at George Washington University. "We're all here to see music that people love and the drugs and all that are just a part of the experience that everyone is trying to have together."

Phish fans handed out a 39-page pamphlet, which included a guide to hotels and restaurants in New York City, as well as addresses for local Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

A paragraph titled "Puff Puff," reminded concertgoers that "25 grams or less of weed" is only a violation with no jail time as long as it is not a user's third offense.

The pamphlet also included an editorial plea to stage next year's New Year's Eve concert somewhere other than Madison Square Garden, where the band has played each year since 2010.

"How about visiting some other great Northeast venues?" the pamphlet said. "You know the ones that have affordable accommodations, easy transportation, and where Our Community is thoroughly welcomed by the Local Community?"

SEATAC, Wash. — Supporters of a $15 minimum wage, approved by voters here in November but partly struck down last week by a county judge, asked the state's highest court to hear an appeal.

The SeaTac wage statute, which has been challenged repeatedly by business groups that say it will cripple businesses and lead to job cuts, takes partial effect on Wednesday, covering about 1,600 hospitality and travel workers in the city. Coverage for an additional 4,700 low-wage workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which is within city limits, was struck down on Friday by Judge Andrea Darvas of King County Superior Court, who agreed with the arguments by lawyers for the business groups — led by Alaska Airlines — that the legal reach of voters did not extend into airport property administered by the Port of Seattle.

The appeal request filed with the Washington Supreme Court hinges on that same issue, the limits of authority. Can a local government with one of the nation's busiest airports within its borders administer wage rates at airport-based companies?

"The legal question is whether the airport is a legal island," Sergio Salinas, the president of a Service Employees International Union local unit that has pushed for the SeaTac wage, said at a news conference here.

Washington already has the highest state minimum wage in the nation, at $9.32 an hour, but stands to be surpassed by California, which recently approved a $10 minimum, phased in over two years. The federal minimum is $7.25.

The SeaTac statute, which passed by 77 votes with about 6,000 cast, exempts airlines and small businesses, including restaurants with fewer than 10 employees. But Alaska Airlines, in its court arguments, has said higher costs paid by contractors would be passed along to consumers.

Tuesday's legal filing does not guarantee that the state's Supreme Court will take the case. The court may decide that a lower appeals panel should take up the matter first. But both sides have said they think the legal issues in the case will ultimately be brought to the high court.

The debate over minimum wages has recently taken on broader political dimensions, with plans by Democrats to push ballot initiatives in 2014, increasing wages — and creating opportunities to discuss economic inequality — in hotly contested congressional races. And Seattle's new mayor, Ed Murray, who pledged support during his campaign for a $15 minimum wage in Washington's largest city, last month created a committee of business and labor leaders and elected officials that will report back to him early in the year on legislative plans.

CAIRO — Egyptian prosecutors on Tuesday ordered three detained journalists from the news channel Al Jazeera English to be held in custody for 15 more days, on charges that include belonging to a terrorist group and harming the country's reputation abroad.

Human rights organizations have denounced the charges, accusing the authorities of deliberately confusing the act of reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood with belonging to the group, which has been officially classified as a terrorist organization. Rights advocates said the accusations had sent a worrying signal about the military-backed government's approach to press freedoms.

Four journalists from Al Jazeera were arrested on Sunday, and one, an Egyptian cameraman, was later released. Prosecutors began interrogating the three remaining in custody, including the bureau chief, Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian-Egyptian citizen; Peter Greste, an Australian correspondent; and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian producer.

The arrests were part of a widening government crackdown on the Brotherhood, the Islamist group that fell from power after the military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, in July.

Last Wednesday, the government designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group, and in recent days, Egyptian courts have convicted hundreds of Mr. Morsi's supporters who participated in protests, sentencing them to prison.

The charges against the journalists also appeared intended as retaliation against Al Jazeera, the Qatari channel whose Arabic-language service has strongly backed Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood. The English language news service takes a far more independent editorial position.

Several journalists from both the English- and Arabic-language services have been detained since Mr. Morsi's ouster, and two Al Jazeera Arabic journalists have remained in prison for months.

Prosecutors released a lengthy list of accusations on Tuesday, saying the journalists worked for a network affiliated with the Brotherhood, joined a terrorist group and possessed the kind of equipment typically found in Egyptian news bureaus, including cameras, gas masks and microphones, without a permit.

Mr. Fahmy, a veteran journalist who has worked for CNN and contributed to The New York Times, was singled out in the statement, accused both of terrorism and of turning suites in the Marriott into a news media center where he "manipulated" footage to harm Egypt's reputation, prosecutors said.

A brother, Sherif Fahmy, said that Canadian diplomats had not attended the beginning of his brother's interrogation. Mr. Fahmy, who suffered a dislocated shoulder unrelated to his arrest, had not been allowed to see doctors at Tora Prison, where he was being held, the brother said.

Ragia Omran, a human rights advocate, called the terrorism-related accusations "ridiculous" and said they could be applied to "anyone who works in journalism."

The charges, she said, were part of a pattern of aggressive prosecutions under the military-backed rulers, including convictions of protesters, that were seldom pursued even under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's authoritarian president who was deposed in 2011.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Pascal Abidor sued the government after American border agents handcuffed him, placed him in a cell and questioned him for several hours, then seized and kept his laptop for 11 days.

The government's right to search travelers' electronic devices at the border was upheld in a ruling released by a federal judge on Tuesday, which dismissed a lawsuit challenging this policy.

In his opinion, Judge Edward R. Korman of the Eastern District of New York found that the plaintiffs did not have standing for their lawsuit because such searches occur so rarely that "there is not a substantial risk that their electronic devices will be subject to a search or seizure without reasonable suspicion."

Even if the plaintiffs did have standing, Judge Korman found that they would lose on the merits of the case, ruling that the government does not need reasonable suspicion to examine or confiscate a traveler's laptop, cellphone or other device at the border.

"There's no silver lining to this decision," said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the plaintiffs. "It's not just that we lost the case. It's that the judge decided against us on multiple alternative grounds."

The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by Pascal Abidor, a graduate student in Islamic studies, who sued the government after American border agents removed him from an Amtrak train crossing from Canada to New York. He was handcuffed, placed in a cell and questioned for several hours, then his laptop was seized and kept for 11 days.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Press Photographers Association were also plaintiffs in the case, arguing that their members travel with confidential information that should be protected from government scrutiny.

In rejecting this argument, Judge Korman cited the rarity of electronic device searches and questioned whether travelers need to carry computers containing sensitive data when they travel abroad.

"While it is true that laptops may make overseas work more convenient," he wrote, "the precautions plaintiffs may choose to take to 'mitigate' the alleged harm associated with the remote possibility of a border search are simply among the many inconveniences associated with international travel."

Mr. Abidor said he was disappointed but not entirely surprised by the ruling.

"I can't say it wasn't foreseeable based on the line of questioning by the judge during the initial hearing," Mr. Abidor said. "He just seemed so skeptical of the basic premise that people need to travel with devices."

Officials for the United States Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.

In his opinion, Judge Korman emphasized how infrequently border agents search or detain electronic devices, but it is unclear how accurately the government tracks these statistics.

According to Customs and Border Protection, the agency conducts about 15 device searches a day at American entry points. But a 2011 assessment of this practice by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the border agency, cited problems with how these incidents are counted.

The report noted: "C.B.P.'s system for entering the results of electronic device searches did not allow analysts to accurately identify incidents and seizures related to electronic device search activity, thus hindering C.B.P.'s ability to monitor and evaluate performance and making it difficult to provide accurate operational data concerning searches of electronic devices."

While the courts have generally supported the government's authority to search travelers at the border, based on the government's interest in combating crime and terrorism, a decision last year placed some limits on more intrusive device searches.

Last March, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California ruled in United States v. Cotterman that reasonable suspicion of criminal activity was required for a forensic search of a device confiscated at the border — a more extensive exam, as opposed to a cursory look at photos or other files.

That decision applies to states covered by the Ninth Circuit, including California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii. Judge Korman's ruling will not have as much of a legal impact, since it comes from a district court rather than a circuit court.

"It maintains the status quo, which is that the government is free everywhere except in the Ninth Circuit to conduct all types of electronic device searches without reasonable suspicion," Ms. Crump from the A.C.L.U. said. "We are considering an appeal, but we haven't made a decision one way or the other yet."

A personal escort — flying first class to be well rested and alert — will accompany the painting "The Head of Christ" from the moment it leaves the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, until it is safely locked in the vault at Springfield Museums in Massachusetts this month, when it will be exhibited in the United States for the first time.

A 24-hour escort is not an unusual requirement for valuable international museum loans. What makes the security arrangements — estimated to cost more than $31,000 — notable in this case is that the painting is a fake.

And it is not just any fake, but an imitation Vermeer by the most notorious forger of all: Han van Meegeren, the World War II-era painter whose counterfeits were so convincing that, after the war, he had to create one for witnesses to avoid harsh punishment for selling a national treasure to the Nazi leader Hermann Göring.

Clearly, some forgeries are more equal than others. In New York, buyers of some of the dozens of multimillion-dollar fakes sold through the Knoedler & Company gallery, now shuttered, have filed lawsuits, complaining that their vaunted Modern masterpieces are now "worthless."

But the Boijmans loan, "The Head of Christ," and other famous fakes with which it is being exhibited in a traveling show retain a valuable mystique. "They're not original artworks, but they're so prestigious that they require the same security measures as an authentic work," said Julia Courtney, Springfield Museums' curator of art.

Citing security concerns, the lending and borrowing museums all declined to reveal the works' estimated worth or insurance information. But the paintings are being treated like the real thing. "The requirements for security are not different than other works we give on loan," said Friso Lammertse, the curator of old master paintings at the Boijmans. Never mind that the accustomed home of "The Head of Christ" is a Boijmans storage room.

So, in addition to a personal escort, van Meegeren's "Christ," for example, will have an outside conservator scrutinize every inch of the canvas and frame when it leaves a museum and after it arrives, to report on its condition.

"The Head of Christ" is part of the exhibition "Intent to Deceive: Fakes and Forgeries in the Art World," which includes two other van Meegerens, "The Girl With the Blue Bow," once credited to Vermeer, from the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., and "The Procuress," from the Courtauld Gallery in London.

The show will travel to the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla.; the Canton Museum of Art in Ohio; and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Other forgeries in the show are by celebrated con men like Elmyr de Hory, a Hungarian who said he sold a thousand fakes; John Myatt, whose collaborator infiltrated archives at the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, to plant fake provenance documents; and Mark A. Landis, a former gallery owner who dressed as a Jesuit priest during the quarter-century he spent trying to donate his forgeries to more than 40 American museums.

What links these men, said Colette Loll, the exhibition's curator and an art investigator, are "frustrated artistic ambitions, chaotic personal lives and a contempt for the art market and its experts."

Ms. Loll, who organized the exhibition with the nonprofit group International Arts & Artists, said she was shocked when she heard the $31,000 estimate for the security arrangements demanded by just the Boijmans.

That sum is close to the $39,500 that "Christ and the Scribes in the Temple" — the painting van Meegeren created in 1945 to prove he was a forger rather than a collaborator — fetched at Christie's auction house in 1996.

Forgeries invariably raise knotty questions about the value of art and faith in the market, and fuel cynicism about art experts.

In November, a spirited debate about the value of forgeries played out on the website and pages of The New York Times after the art critic Blake Gopnik declared that forgers could be "an art lover's friend."

And last year, Jonathon Keats, who wrote "Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age," argued that "forgeries are more real than the real artworks they fake" because "they genuinely manipulate society rather than merely illustrating alternate points of view."

Interest in counterfeits may have less lofty roots, however. Everybody loves a juicy scandal. The van Meegerens can also draw on the continuing fascination with World War II and the Nazis' looting of Europe. Hailed as a kind of folk hero during his 1947 trial for having duped Göring, van Meegeren was later shown to be a Nazi sympathizer and inveterate rogue who swindled buyers out of the equivalent of $106 million.

One of his facsimiles, "The Supper at Emmaus," cited by the dean of Vermeer scholars as a, perhaps the, "masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer" was bought in 1938 by the Rembrandt Society of Rotterdam for the Boijmans for 520,000 guilders, the equivalent of about $6.4 million today. "The Head of Christ," sold for 475,000 guilders in 1941 ($4.4 million today), was thought to be a study for "The Supper at Emmaus."

Part of the enduring lure of the van Meegerens, undoubtedly, is the satisfaction of knowing that the most rarefied connoisseurs were duped by what now look to be ham-handed fakes.

As Jonathan Lopez wrote in his 2008 book about van Meegeren, "The Man Who Made Vermeers," "Although the best forgeries may mimic the style of a long-dead artist, they tend to reflect the taste and attitudes of their own period." Biblical scenes tapped into a sentimental and pastoral Germanic tradition, he notes, while the portraits of girls resembled 1920s flappers.

The works in "Intent to Deceive" are less art than artifacts; they have genuine historical significance. In that sense, these fakes underscore the persistent appeal of the real thing. Copies of a van Meegeren fake would not command such costly security precautions or draw visitors.

"The Head of Christ" and its traveling companions are being exhibited precisely because they are authentic — authentic forgeries.

I can't remember what we were eating at Toro, the new tapas restaurant in far western Chelsea, when one of the people at my table looked up in wonder.

It could have been when we were swaying like drunken sailors over the suquet de mariscos, a chowder by way of Catalonia with cool sea urchin and warm lobster bobbing in parsnip-infused milk. Or when we had finished the last shrimp in the gambas al ajillo and were scraping up the last bits of a sauce for which a tank full of lobsters must have given their shells.

Or when we were crunching through croquetas of ham mixed with unmistakably earthy meat from a pig's head. Or when we were cutting into another croqueta, this one filled with unusually fluffy and moist salt cod sitting under two golden hoops of fried lemon peel. Or when we had emptied a sardine tin of its raw mackerel marinated in a Thai-derived green curry, rich with coconut milk and sharpened with lime juice.

But I remember his smile and his question: "How can a place this big have food this good?"

Toro, opened in September by the chefs Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette and based on their enduringly popular Boston original, has factory-height ceilings, an industrial-chic design and 120 seats at long communal tables and smaller, unshared ones. It isn't all that large compared with Morimoto across 10th Avenue, or Buddakan on the east side of the same building, or the teeming mess halls of the meatpacking district a few blocks south. By local standards, it is a bungalow in a neighborhood of McMansions.

But by the cozy standards of the Barcelona tapas joints that inspired Mr. Oringer and Mr. Bissonnette, Toro might as well be a Home Depot. It sells almost as many items. The beverage list alone is a major treatise on Spanish drinking.

There are spins on Spain's beloved gin and tonic, dressed up with lemon grass syrup or yellow Chartreuse, although my Vauvert Elixir was a bit flat and cloying, as if the tonic came from a bartender's hose. More inviting at the start of a meal are the feisty and autumn-crisp hard ciders or the cavas, a few of which settle any doubts that Spain is making world-class sparkling wine. Moving beyond bubbles, Toro stocks the garnachas and tempranillos you'd expect, but it has discoveries in store, too, from underappreciated grapes like xarel-lo and mencia.

You may need a drink before ordering dinner, because the menu gives you something like 60 choices. Some are fully traditional Spanish classics like toast spread with raw tomatoes that shimmer with olive oil; others are non-Iberian interpretations like yellowfin tuna in white soy sauce with tissue-thin vinegared cucumbers.

This presents a corollary to my dinner companion's question: How can a menu this big have so many excellent dishes, and so few disappointments?

I've certainly tasted things at Toro I wouldn't be in a hurry to order again. One November night, I stayed cool to several dishes that could have used more warmth themselves. Chilly deviled eggs were somewhat generic despite being topped with a slip of preserved tuna belly. A $36 plate of streaky jamón Ibérico should have been warmer, too, to help soften the flavorful fat. This was an oversight I didn't expect from a restaurant that goes to the trouble of hand-slicing the tagged Spanish hams that it proudly hangs from the ceiling. And while I loved the way mint yogurt brightened the wintry sweetness of rutabagas, sunchokes and carrots in a vegetable paella, I had no luck finding the soccarat, the crunchy bottom layer of browned rice that our server had promised would be the best part. The pan had been hustled off the flame before the crust had set.

But there were fewer misfires each time I went, suggesting that the kitchen is settling down to business. I was happy to sink into the profoundly Spanish flavors of a vegetable stew called escalivada, with smoked eggplant in olive oil that carried the sweetness of simmered red peppers and onions. I immediately wanted more of the hot blowfish tails seared in a crust of North African spices. And I wondered how the simple combination of potatoes, octopus, harissa and charred onions could result in a contender for the best octopus dish in a city that's gone cephalopod-mad.

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah took its fight against same-sex marriage to the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking the court to suspend same-sex unions that became legal when a judge struck down the state's voter-approved ban.

The state wants the marriages to stop while it appeals a decision Dec. 20 by Judge Robert J. Shelby of United States District Court that banning gay couples from marrying violated their right to equal treatment under the Constitution.

In papers filed Tuesday, the state asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor to overturn court decisions to let the marriages go forward. Justice Sotomayor handles emergency requests from Utah and other Rocky Mountain states, and she is expected to refer it to the entire court. The justices could rule within days.

Nearly two-thirds of Utah's 2.8 million residents are Mormons and they dominate the state's legal and political circles. Judge Shelby's decision came as a shock to many in the state, which approved the ban on same-sex marriage in 2004.

Since the judge's decision, more than 900 gay couples in Utah have gotten marriage licenses. Judge Shelby and the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit have already refused to halt weddings while the state appeals.

MIAMI — A federal judge in Orlando struck down a Florida law on Tuesday that required welfare recipients to undergo mandatory drug testing.

Judge Mary S. Scriven of United States District Court wrote in her decision that the state's testing requirement was unconstitutional. "The court finds there is no set of circumstances under which the warrantless, suspicionless drug testing at issue in this case could be constitutionally applied," she wrote. The ruling made permanent an earlier, temporary ban by the judge.

The requirement had been a signature legislation of Gov. Rick Scott, who argued that the drug testing was necessary to help protect taxpayers and families. Mr. Scott said Tuesday that the state would appeal the ruling.

"Any illegal drug use in a family is harmful and even abusive to a child," he said in a statement. "We should have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal drug use in families — especially those families who struggle to make ends meet and need welfare assistance to provide for their children."

The case was also being closely watched by several other states, including Georgia, which passed similar legislation this year but found it dogged by legal challenges and statistics showing the requirement was ineffective. In Florida, less than 3 percent of those tested were found to have been using narcotics.

The decision stems from a 2011 suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Florida Justice Institute on behalf of a Central Florida resident, Luis W. Lebron, a Navy veteran who had filed for public assistance. Mr. Lebron, the single father of a 5-year-old who also provided care for his disabled mother, argued that it was unfair to require drug testing when no suspicion of drug abuse existed.

Judge Scriven agreed.

Howard Simon, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Florida, said that "the courts are now signaling to politicians that they are not going to treat poor people as if they were exempt from constitutional rights."