THOSE RUMORS

ABOUT DYLANS
ARCHIVE?
ALL TRUE

A QUEST FOR
SEA URCHIN
ON THE COSTA
BRAVA OF SPAIN

WEEKEND

PAGE 18 | WEEKEND ARTS

PAGE 22 | TRAVEL

PAUL KRUGMAN
ON REPUBLICAN
CON ARTISTS

FREEDOM FOR
WOMEN, FROM
MARRIAGE

2 AMERICANS
SET TO SAIL IN
RIOS DIRTY BAY

PAGE 6 | REVIEW

PAGE 21 | BOOKS

PAGE 9 | SPORTS

...

SATURDAY-SUNDAY, MARCH 5-6, 2016

Beijing expands military budget

GREG BAKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The increase of 7 percent to 8 percent for the Peoples Liberation Army is less than usual, an official said on Friday. nytimes.com/asia

China to set target for growth. But why?

BEIJING

BY EDWARD WONG

Every March, China releases a closely

watched growth target for the year, a
number that looms large for the worlds
economists, executives and policy
makers. But calls are growing for
Beijing to get out of the business of setting that goal, as the Chinese economic

engine slows and doubts rise about the

validity of the countrys data.
On Saturday, Chinas premier is expected to announce at the National
Peoples Congress a target for 2016 that
acknowledges a deepening slowdown.
The target is expected to be a range,
rather than a single number, suggesting
that leaders are rethinking their adherence to hard-and-fast goals. Still, the
new target is not likely to dampen skep-

ticism about official Chinese figures.

The range of the target economic
growth rate that Premier Li Keqiang
plans to declare is between 6.5 percent
and 7 percent, a top economic official
said this week. The governments reading on the growth rate last year was 6.9
percent. The new target range means
that leaders expect Chinas growth
could dip this year, which would further
depress the global economic outlook.

The target a product of Chinas mix

of central planning and quasi capitalism
gives a general sense of what leaders
think of the countrys economic health
but no indication of how the growth is
supposed to happen or what policies the
leaders are adopting. Economists and
investors want to know whether China
is really addressing deepening economic problems.
CHINA, PAGE 15

South Korean defamation laws used against state critics

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

BY CHOE SANG-HUN

In late 2014, months after 304 people

died in the sinking of a South Korean
ferry, a leaflet began circulating with a
scurrilous rumor about President Park
Geun-hye: It said that she had failed to
respond swiftly to the disaster that day
because she was having a romantic encounter with a former aide.
Was Ms. Park, the flier asked, now

cracking down on her critics in an attempt to keep that scandal from coming
to light?
For Park Sung-su, an antigovernment
campaigner who had distributed the
leaflet and who is not related to the
president (Park is a common surname
here) the consequences soon followed. He was arrested and later sentenced to a year in prison, on charges of
defaming the president and staging illegal protests against his prosecutors.
He was freed in December, when a court

suspended his sentence.

No one has produced any evidence to
support the rumor about the president,
and prosecutors said they investigated
and found it groundless. But however
dubious the leaflet may have been, opponents of the government say Mr. Park
became another victim of the very thing
he was decrying: the governments use
of defamation and other laws to silence
its critics, which rights advocates say is
on the rise.
SOUTH KOREA, PAGE 3

I N S I DE TODAY S PAP E R

Remarks by Donald Tusk, the president

of the European Council, signaled
Europes determined turn away from
Germanys approach to absorbing
migrants. nytimes.com/europe

The U.S. war against lead poisoning

Dalian Wandas U.S. consolidation

Decades ago, political leaders declared

war on lead, citing evidence of its effect
on young brains. But the crusade
remains unfinished. nytimes.com/us

AMC Entertainment agreed to buy

Carmike Cinemas as part of an effort by
the Dalian Wanda Group to consolidate
the industry. BUSINESS, 14

Brazil detains former president

VW undermines diesel plans

Automakers plans to use diesel to meet

Europes carbon dioxide limits have
been upended by Volkswagens
cheating scandal. BUSINESS, 17

Sex, spies and human rights

Shirin Ebadi writes about how Iranian
agents set a trap for her husband,
threatened him with death and then
forced him to denounce her. REVIEW, 6

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TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

COST OF TERROR Across Cameroon and Nigeria, farmers have fled, herds have been rerouted,
and markets have shut. Now even Boko Haram is having trouble getting food. WORLD NEWS, 3

A comedian who goes there

In Mexico, punishing with mockery

The fast-rising comic Jerrod Carmichael

pushes audiences to find humor in the
darkest of places. PAGE TWO

Meet the Supercvicos, comedians who

embarrass Mexican society scofflaws
with their humor. WORLD NEWS, 4

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As night sinks into taunts

and insults, his rivals urge
voters to rethink support

McCain echoes his views,

with both calling mogul
a danger in perilous times

BY PATRICK HEALY
AND JONATHAN MARTIN

BY ALEXANDER BURNS
AND MICHAEL BARBARO

Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz,

fighting for their political lives, relentlessly demeaned and baited Donald J.
Trump at a debate in Detroit, all but
pleading with Republicans to abandon a
candidate with a long history of business failures, deep ties to the Democratic Party and a taste for personal insults.
Warning that Mr. Trump would lead
the party to a historic defeat in November, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Cruz on Thursday delivered their attacks with urgency, as if trying to awaken voters who
had fallen under Mr. Trumps spell. Mr.
Rubio derided Mr. Trump as untrustworthy and uncivil, while Mr. Cruz
bashed him for donating money to Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential campaign and to other Democrats. Mr.
Trump looked on with disgust, but as in
their 10 previous debates, he seemed
impervious and, perhaps, unstoppable.
At times, the face-off in Detroit also
deteriorated into the kind of junior high
school taunts that have startled many
Republican elders but have done little to
dent Mr. Trumps broad appeal. As Mr.
Trump and Mr. Rubio traded insults
over their manhood, Mr. Trump recalled
Mr. Rubios innuendo that Mr. Trumps
small hands correlated with another
part of his anatomy.
Mr. Trump, who has boasted about his
sexual exploits, insisted that nothing
was small about him. I guarantee
you, he continued with little subtlety,
theres no problem. I guarantee you.
The two senators repeatedly urged
Republicans to align against Mr. Trump
in nominating contests over the next
two weeks, saying that Mr. Trump could
sew up the nomination even though a
majority of voters so far have cast ballots for other candidates.
Two-thirds of the people who cast a
vote in a Republican primary or caucus
have voted against you, Mr. Rubio told
Mr. Trump. The reason why is because
we are not going to turn over the conservative movement or the party of Lincoln
or Reagan, for example, to someone
whose positions are not conservative.
The pleas reflected not only Mr.
Trumps advantage in the race, but also
the partys growing disquiet about the
implications of nominating him. The
specter of Mr. Trump as the Republican
standard-bearer has long troubled both
establishment-aligned and conservative leaders. But his initial hesitation to
condemn the Ku Klux Klan in an interview on Sunday, and his success in sev-

A divided Republican Party has erupted

into open and bitter warfare as its two
previous presidential nominees delivered an extraordinary rebuke of its
current front-runner, Donald J. Trump,
warning that his election could put the
United States and its democratic system in peril.
In a detailed, thorough and lacerating
assault on Mr. Trump and the angry
movement he has inspired, Mitt Romney,
the partys nominee in 2012, attacked him
as a fraud and a phony who would
drive the country to the point of collapse.
Hes playing the American public for
suckers, Mr. Romney said on Thursday,
breaking from his customary restraint.
He has neither the temperament nor
the judgment to be president, he added.
As soon as he was finished, Senator
John McCain, the partys standard-

DEBATE, PAGE 4

JIM URQUHART/REUTERS

Hes playing the American public for suckers, Mitt Romney said of Donald J. Trump.

bearer in 2008, endorsed Mr. Romneys

jeremiad and denounced Mr. Trump as a
candidate who was ignorant of foreign
policy and has made dangerous pronouncements on national security.
For a party that prizes unity and loyalty, it was an unheard-of onslaught
against a figure marching toward the
nomination, highlighting the widening
and seemingly unbridgeable gaps between Republican leaders and their
voters.
There is a growing prospect that the
Republican Party leadership could
abandon its own nominee this fall, a
once unthinkable scenario. Urging Republicans to vote in a way that denies
Mr. Trump sufficient delegates to clinch
the nomination, Mr. Romney all but explicitly called for a messy convention
floor battle, the likes of which neither
party has witnessed in decades.
Former Senator Norm Coleman of
Minnesota, a supporter of Marco Ru-

REPUBLICANS, PAGE 4

E.U. warns off economic migrants

Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft

and a parade of other technology
companies have filed a barrage of court
briefs, aiming to puncture government
arguments . BUSINESS, 14

(852) 2922 1171

Republicans
go to war as
Romney hits
front-runner

O N L I NE AT I N Y T.COM

Deluge of legal briefs backing Apple

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IN THIS ISSUE

No. 41,359
Art 18
Books 21
Business 14
Crossword 10, 23
Review 6
Sports 9

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Fu l l c u r re n c y rat e s Pa g e 1 7

Luiz Incio Lula da Silva is under

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Disneys quirky annual meeting

An interactive feature shows how the
Walt Disney Companys annual
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companies, including questions from
children. nytimes.com/business
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