VOL. CLXII . . . No. 56,248 © 2013 The New York Times TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

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By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

MIAMI — This time, naturetipped its hat, and Diana Nyad fi-nally conquered the 110-mile pas-sage from Cuba to Florida thathad bedeviled her for 35 years.

Sharks steered clear, currentswere friendly, and storms tookmost of the Labor Day weekendoff.

The 64-year-old enduranceswimmer emerged dazed andsunburned from the surf onSmathers Beach in Key West,Fla., just before 2 p.m. on Mondayafter nearly 53 hours in theocean, a two-day, two-night swimfrom her starting point in Ha-vana. She had survived thetreacherous Florida Straits, a no-torious stretch of water brim-ming with sharks, jellyfish,

squalls and an unpredictable GulfStream. And she became the firstperson to do so unaided by theprotection of a shark cage.

It was her fifth attempt, com-ing after four years of gruelingtraining, precision planning andsingle-minded determination.Her face scorched and puffy fromso many hours in the salt water,she leaned on one of her friendsand said from the beach:

“I have three messages. One iswe should never, ever give up.Two is you never are too old tochase your dreams. Three is itlooks like a solitary sport, but ittakes a team.”

Coming at an age when few

Sharks Absent, Swimmer, 64,

Strokes From Cuba to Florida

ANDY NEWMAN/FLORIDA KEYS NEWS BUREAU, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Kayakers on Monday helped escort Diana Nyad about two miles off Key West, Fla., on her wayto becoming the first swimmer to cross the 110-mile Florida Straits without a shark cage.Continued on Page A13

The Congressional vote on whether to strike Syria will offer the best in-sight yet on which wing of the Republican Party — the traditionalhawks or a growing bloc of noninterventionists — has the advantage infierce internal debates over foreign policy. PAGE A7

Vote on Syria Sets Up Clash Within G.O.P.

This article is by JackieCalmes, Michael R. Gordon andEric Schmitt.

WASHINGTON — The WhiteHouse’s aggressive push for Con-gressional approval of an attackon Syria appeared to have wonthe tentative support of one ofPresident Obama’s most hawkishcritics, Senator John McCain,who said Monday that he wouldback a limited strike if the presi-dent did more to arm the Syrianrebels and the attack was punish-ing enough to weaken the Syrianmilitary.

In an hourlong meeting at theWhite House, said Mr. McCain,Republican of Arizona, Mr. Oba-ma gave general support to doingmore for the Syrian rebels, al-though no specifics were agreedupon. Officials said that in thesame conversation, which includ-ed Senator Lindsey Graham, theSouth Carolina Republican, Mr.Obama indicated that a covert ef-fort by the United States to armand train Syrian rebels was be-ginning to yield results: the first50-man cell of fighters, who havebeen trained by the C.I.A., wasbeginning to sneak into Syria.

There appeared to be broadagreement with the president,Mr. McCain and Mr. Grahamsaid, that any attack on Syriashould be to “degrade” the Syri-an government’s delivery sys-tems. Such a strike could includeaircraft, artillery and the kind ofrockets that the Obama adminis-tration says the forces of Presi-dent Bashar al-Assad used to car-ry out an Aug. 21 sarin attack inthe Damascus suburbs that killedmore than 1,400 people.

The senators said they plannedto meet with Susan E. Rice, Mr.Obama’s national security advis-er, to discuss the strategy ingreater depth.

“It is all in the details, but I leftthe meeting feeling better than Ifelt before about what happensthe day after and that the pur-pose of the attack is going to be alittle more robust than I thought,”Mr. Graham said in an interview.

But Mr. McCain said in an in-

PRESIDENT GAINSMCCAIN’S BACKINGON SYRIA ATTACK

A TENTATIVE AGREEMENT

Hawkish G.O.P. Critic

Says Meeting Was

‘Encouraging’

Continued on Page A7

By ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON — As the Oba-ma administration makes a casefor punitive airstrikes on the Syr-ian government, its strongestcard in the view of some support-ers of a military response may bethe need to send a message to an-other country: Iran. If the UnitedStates does not enforce its self-imposed “red line” on Syria’s useof chemical weapons, this think-ing goes, Iran will smell weak-ness and press ahead more bold-ly in its quest for nuclear weap-ons.

But that message may beclashing with a simultaneous ef-fort by American officials to ex-plore dialogue with Iran’s moder-ate new president, Hassan Rou-hani, in the latest expression ofWashington’s long struggle tobalance toughness with diploma-cy in its relations with a longtimeadversary.

Two recent diplomatic ven-tures have raised speculationabout a possible back channel be-tween Washington and Tehran.Last week, Jeffrey Feltman, ahigh State Department official inPresident Obama’s first termwho is now a senior envoy at theUnited Nations, visited Iran tomeet with the new foreign min-ister, Mohammad Javad Zarif,and discussed possible reactionsto an American airstrike in Syria.

At the same time, the sultan ofOman, who has often served asan intermediary between theUnited States and Iran, was inTehran meeting with Iran’s su-preme leader, Ayatollah Ali Kha-menei.

Neither Mr. Feltman nor Sul-tan Qaboos bin Said al Said ofOman has said anything aboutcarrying messages between thetwo governments. Still, thoseovertures, along with some sur-prisingly mild noises from Irani-an leaders, have raised hopesthat Washington may be able tothread the needle — to strike Syr-ia without compromising effortstoward an Iranian-Americandétente before meetings at theUnited Nations General Assem-bly this month.

Those hopes may well be pre-mature: even if Mr. Rouhani andhis foreign minister are eager fora deal ending the dispute over thefuture of Iran’s nuclear program,it is far from clear that they

In Syria Crisis,U.S. Keeps EyeOn Iran Policy

Still Seeks Progress on

Nuclear Diplomacy

Continued on Page A6

ABOVE, TINA FINEBERG/ASSOCIATED PRESS; BELOW, BRIAN HARKIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

NO DAY FOR REST Labor Day festivities attracted New York’s mayoral candidates, like Bill de Blasio,above, and John Catsimatidis, below. Mr. Catsimatidis’s bid for office is idiosyncratic. Page A16.

By MONICA DAVEY

DETROIT — There are 78,000abandoned buildings in this citystanding in various levels of de-cay. Services have fallen into dys-function, and debts are pilingever higher. Yet for all the mis-ery, Detroit’s bankruptcy givesan American city a rare chance toreshape itself from top to bottom.

But reinventing a city so dev-astated is hardly a sure thing,and the questions about how toproceed loom as large as the an-swers:

Should its areas of nearly va-cant blocks be transformed intourban farms, parks and evenponds made from storm water?

Could its old automobile manu-facturing economy be shifted into

one centering on technology, bio-science and international trade?

Should Detroit, which lost amillion residents over the last 60years, pin its sharpest hopes onluring more young people here,playing on an influx in recentyears of artists and entrepre-neurs?

Should the city take down itsenormous ruins, like MichiganCentral Station, that have de-volved into bleak tourist attrac-tions or restore some of thesebuildings and market them, per-haps as museums or tributes to aproud industrial past?

“Every once in a while you en-counter a situation that gets sobad everybody has to put theirweapons aside and say: ‘Youknow what? It doesn’t get anyworse than this,’” said Henry Cis-

neros, a former Housing and Ur-ban Development secretary whorecently worked on a housingproject in Detroit that nevercame to fruition. “It lets peoplestart talking about things that wecouldn’t talk about before be-cause we can’t lose a great city.”

The chances of a true make-over have grown significantlysince July, when an emergencymanager assigned by the state tooversee the city’s financessought bankruptcy protection.The city is expected to emergefrom the courts a year from nowno longer juggling the $18 billionin debt that had sidetracked itand, according to the emergencymanager, more capably provid-ing essential services that make

Dreams, but Little Consensus, for a New Detroit

Continued on Page A14

By BILL CARTER

CBS and Time Warner Cableended their protracted contractdispute Monday evening withCBS winning not only a signif-icant financial increase for itsprogramming, but also its stakein the digital future.

The agreement between thetwo sides restored the CBS net-work and its related channels, in-cluding Showtime, to millions ofcable subscribers largely in threemajor cities: New York, Los An-geles and Dallas. The outcomeunderscored the leverage thatthe owners of important televi-sion content, especially sportslike N.F.L. football, retain overdistributors like cable systems.The looming National FootballLeague season, which starts thisweek, includes key games everyweek on CBS.

“It was hugely important,” anexecutive involved in the negotia-tion said Monday night. (The ex-ecutive asked not to be identifiedbecause the participants agreednot to offer details on the agree-ment beyond the official an-nouncement.) Indeed, Time War-ner Cable executives had said

CBS Returns,

Triumphant,

To Cable Box

Continued on Page A3

By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — Just daysbefore Vladimir V. Putin reas-sumed the presidency of Russialast year, President Obama dis-patched his national security ad-viser to Moscow. Mr. Obama hadmade considerable progress withDmitri A. Medvedev, the caretak-er president, and wanted to pre-serve the momentum.

Any hopes of that, however,were quickly dashed when Mr.Putin sat down with the visitingAmerican adviser, Tom Donilon,at the lavish presidential resi-dence outside Moscow. Ratherthan talk of cooperation, Mr.Putin opened the meeting with asharp challenge underscoring hisdeep suspicion of American am-bitions:

“When,” he asked pointedly,“are you going to start bombingSyria?”

At the time, Mr. Obama had noplans for military involvement inthe civil war raging in the heartof the Middle East, but Mr. Putindid not believe that. In Mr.Putin’s view, the United Stateswanted only to meddle in placeswhere it had no business, foment-ing revolutions to install govern-ments friendly to Washington.

The meeting 16 months ago setthe stage for a tense new chapterin Russian-American relations,one that will play out publicly thisweek when Mr. Obama travels toSt. Petersburg for a Group of 20summit meeting hosted by Mr.Putin. Although Mr. Obama hadno intention of bombing Syrialast year, on Saturday he said henow favored military actionagainst Syrian forces, not to de-pose the government of Basharal-Assad, a Russian ally, but in re-taliation for gassing its own citi-zens — an assertion Mr. Putin de-nounced as “utter nonsense” tojustify American intervention.

While it was the Kremlin’s de-

U.S.-RUSSIAN TIESSTILL FALL SHORT

OF ‘RESET’ GOAL

GLOBAL MEETING NEARS

Putin’s Suspicion About

American Actions Is

at Heart of Rift

Continued on Page A8

A special issue on education looks athelping children achieve success in sci-ence and math. With their usual silli-ness, the cast of “Sesame Street” is in-troducing scientific ideas. PAGE D1

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8

Learning What WorksBrazilian officials were indignant at areport that the National Security Agen-cy had spied on President Dilma Rous-seff. Mexico’s reaction to the revelationof United States surveillance of its presi-dent was more muted. PAGE A4

INTERNATIONAL A4-11

Brazil Angry Over U.S. Spying

The company is spending $130 billion togain full control of Verizon Wirelessfrom Vodafone. PAGE B1

Verizon Reaches Wireless Deal

Films and actors at the Telluride FilmFestival in Colorado, which is celebrat-ing its 40th year, inspire thoughts thatstray to Oscar time. For three years in arow, the festival provided the first NorthAmerican screens for the eventual bestpicture winners. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Movies in the Mountain Air

A recall election targeting two Demo-cratic state senators who provided thecrucial support for a package of strictergun control laws in Colorado has drawnmoney and interest from far beyond thestate’s borders. PAGE A12

NATIONAL A12-14

A Proxy Battle Over Guns

Seeking normalcy months after theschool massacre, Newtown, Conn., cameout for its Labor Day parade. PAGE A15

NEW YORK A15-17

Newtown Lets Itself Celebrate

Joe Nocera PAGE A19

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19

Roger Federer, the 17-time Grand Slamsingles champion, was knocked out ofthe United States Open in the Round of16 by Tommy Robredo of Spain instraight sets. PAGE B8

SPORTSTUESDAY B8-12

Federer Ousted at U.S. OpenThe company will acquire the faded cell-phone business’s handset and serviceunits, and bring back one of its formerexecutives, in a $7.1 billion deal. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-7

Microsoft Buys Nokia Units

C M Y K Yxxx,2013-09-03,A,001,Bs-BK,E2