Euro’s Strength on Agenda for Finance Ministers

BRUSSELS — Concern over the euro came to the fore on Monday ahead of a meeting of finance ministers of the countries using the currency. But this time, with the union’s recession continuing, the topic was the strength of the euro rather than its many weaknesses.

As confidence has grown that the European Union will be able to manage its sovereign debt crisis, the euro has made significant gains against the dollar and other foreign currencies. That is making it more expensive for Europe’s trading partners to buy its exports and could hamper growth.

On Monday, France, which traditionally favors market intervention, renewed its calls for remedial steps, like establishing a target level for the euro’s value.

Exchange rates need “to reflect the economic fundamentals of our economies of the euro zone,” Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, said ahead of the regular monthly meeting of so-called Eurogroup ministers. “Exchange rates should not become subjected to moods or speculation.”

Mr. Moscovici said he would make the case for coordinated action to keep a lid on the value of the euro in order to present the plan, possibly at a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 20 nations to be held in Moscow at the end of the week.

The euro was trading at $1.339 on Monday after falling to the low $1.20s in 2012.

But some ministers suggested intervention would be wrongheaded.

“This is mainly decided by the market,” Maria Fekter, the Austrian finance minister, said in response to a question on the euro strength as she arrived at the meeting. “I find an artificial weakening unnecessary.”

The French position is also likely to irritate Germany, where officials suggested last week that intervention on exchange rate markets was a poor way to improve competitiveness.

The strong euro means some European exports, like cars and wine, become more expensive abroad, putting European producers at a disadvantage against foreign competitors. But there are also positive effects. Imports, particularly oil, become less expensive for Europeans, which helps stimulate the economy.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, warned last week that the strength of the euro could weigh on the ability of Europe to pull out of its economic doldrums. Those comments sent the euro down sharply against the dollar and yen.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the Eurogroup who oversees the agenda for the monthly meetings, said that the strength of the euro could be one of the main subjects discussed on Monday evening. But he also said the meeting was likely to be a short one in order to allow ministers to attend a farewell dinner for Jean Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg who stepped down last month as president of the Eurogroup.

How to handle a bailout for Cyprus was also likely to be discussed by ministers on Monday evening.

Among the potentially explosive issues is whether to force depositors in Cyprus, including wealthy Russians, to take losses on their holdings to help reduce the burden of recapitalizing and restructuring Cypriot banks.

But Vassos Shiarly, the Cypriot finance minister, bluntly rejected that scenario on Monday.

“I would say that the bail-in of depositors is a grossly exaggerated possibility,” Mr. Shiarly said. “We will not accept it under any circumstances.”

No agreement with the Cypriot government in Nicosia is expected until after the departure of President Demetris Christofias, a Communist, who will not be running in elections scheduled for later this month.

International creditors want to wait to negotiate a rescue program with the winner, who is likely to be Nicos Anastasiades of the Democratic Rally, a center-right party.

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Paterno Family Challenges Accusation of Cover-Up

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — A new report commissioned by the family of Joe Paterno, the former Penn State coach, challenges the conclusion by the former F.B.I. director Louis Freeh that Mr. Paterno had conspired to conceal child sex abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator.

An executive summary of the critique, released Sunday, said Mr. Freeh’s “observations” about Mr. Paterno in a report for Penn State issued in July were unfounded. Richard Thornburgh, a former United States attorney general and one of the experts who reviewed Mr. Freeh’s report on behalf of the Paterno family, called the document fundamentally flawed and incomplete.

The “inaccurate and unfounded findings related to Mr. Paterno and its numerous process-oriented deficiencies was a rush to injustice and calls into question” the report’s credibility, Mr. Thornburgh said in the report.

The family released the report, which it billed as an exhaustive response to Mr. Freeh’s work, on the Web site paterno.com.

“We conclude that the observations as to Joe Paterno in the Freeh report are unfounded, and have done a disservice not only to Joe Paterno and the university community,” the family’s report said, “but also to the victims of Jerry Sandusky and the critical mission of educating the public on the dangers of child sexual victimization.”

In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Freeh said he stood by his conclusion that Mr. Paterno and three top administrators concealed child sex abuse allegations against Mr. Sandusky.

Mr. Freeh said he respected the right of the Paterno family to conduct a media campaign “to shape the legacy of Joe Paterno,” but the coach should have done more to stop Sandusky. Mr. Paterno died in January 2012.

Mr. Freeh’s report also implicated former administrators, including the university president, Graham Spanier, the athletic director, Tim Curley, and a retired vice president, Gary Schultz. Less than two weeks after the report was released in July, the NCAA acted with uncharacteristic speed in levying significant sanctions against the Penn State football program.

“Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University — Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley — repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse” from authorities, trustees and the university community, Mr. Freeh wrote in releasing the report.

The former administrators have vehemently denied the allegations. So, too, has Mr. Paterno’s family, though it reserved more extensive comment until its own report was complete.

The family’s findings say that Mr. Paterno never asked or told anyone not to investigate an accusation against Mr. Sandusky in 2001, not to report the allegation, or not to discuss or hide information reported by a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, about the allegation.

“Paterno reported the information to his superior(s) pursuant to his understanding of university protocol and relied upon them to investigate and report as appropriate,” the family’s analysis said.

Mr. Paterno’s widow, Sue, broke her silence Friday in a letter to hundreds of former players informing them of the report’s impending release. “The Freeh report failed and if it is not challenged and corrected, nothing worthwhile will have come from these tragic events,” she wrote.

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All eyes on Frank Ocean as Grammy Awards approach

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Everybody's thinkin' about Frank Ocean.

Ocean is a cause celebre and the man with the momentum as Sunday's Grammy Awards approach. One of six top nominees with six nominations apiece, the 25-year-old R&B singer turned cultural talking point will have the music world's attention.

It remains to be seen if it will be the "Thinkin Bout You" singer's night, but there's no question he's dominated the discussion so far. Already a budding star with a gift for building buzz as well as crafting songs, Ocean was swept up by something more profound when he told fans his first love was a man last fall as he prepared to release his major-label debut, "channel ORANGE."

It was a bold move and one that could have submarined his career before it really even got started. Instead, everyone from Beyonce to the often-homophobic R&B and rap communities showed public support. It was a remarkable moment.

"It speaks to the advancements of our culture," renowned producer Rick Rubin said. "It feels like the culture's moving forward and he's a representative of the new acceptance in the world for different ideas, which just broadens (our experience), makes the world a better place."

A recent altercation in a parking lot with Chris Brown only focused more attention on Ocean. Ocean says Brown was the aggressor; both are competing against each other in one of the Grammy categories.

Ocean is up for the major awards best new artist, album of the year and record of the year when the show airs live on CBS at 8 p.m. EST from the Staples Center, sharing top-nominee billing with fun., Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z and Kanye West.

Don't hand Ocean those trophies just yet, though. R&B and hip-hop performers (Ocean is part of the Odd Future collective) have had a spotty history at the Grammys recently when it comes to major awards.

Only one R&B act has won album of the year this century, and it's hard to even call him just an R&B act given his legend, artistic scope and material: Ray Charles for his "Genius & Friends," an all-star collaboration that was honored posthumously.

Also limiting Ocean's chances for a clean sweep are his fellow top nominees. Most are riding waves of their own.

Fun. became just the second act to sweep nominations in all four major categories with a debut album, equaling Christopher Cross' 1981 feat. Like Cross' "Sailing," the New York-based pop-rock band has ridden along on the crest of an inescapable song: "We Are Young," featuring Janelle Monae.

Cross won five Grammys, sweeping the major awards. Fun. likely will have a much harder time piling up that number of victories because of the buzz surrounding the group's competitors. It's not just Ocean who has people talking.

London-based folk-rockers Mumford & Sons had one of the top-selling albums of the year with "Babel" and already has a history with The Recording Academy's thousands of voters, having been nominated for major awards the year prior. Also, The Black Keys have a winning track record at the Grammys.

And don't count out West and Jay-Z, who were shut out of the major categories but remain very much in voters' minds.

Jack White's "Blunderbuss" competes with fun.'s "Some Nights," Ocean's "channel ORANGE," Mumford's "Babel" and The Keys' "El Camino" for the night's top award, album of the year.

Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know," featuring Kimbra, Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" join the fun., Ocean and Black Keys entries in record of the year.

Fun. and Clarkson also are nominated for song of the year along with Ed Sheeran's "The A Team," Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" and Miguel's "Adorn."

And rounding out the major categories, fun., Ocean, Alabama Shakes, Hunter Hayes and The Lumineers are up for best new artist.

Those major nominees figure prominently on the 3 1/2-hour telecast, broadcast live on CBS at 8 p.m. EST.

Swift will kick things off with a show-opening performance. Fun. and Ocean will take the stage. Others scheduled to perform include Justin Timberlake, Carrie Underwood, Clarkson, White and Juanes.

There will be no shortage of mashups the Grammys have become famous for, either. Elton John, Mavis Staples, Mumford, Brittany Howard, T Bone Burnett and Zac Brown are saluting the late Levon Helm, who won the Americana Grammy last year a few months before his death. The Keys will join Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on stage. Sting, Rihanna and Bruno Mars will perform together. Other team-ups include Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley, and Alicia Keys and Maroon 5.

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

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Heavy Snow and Winds Batter Northeast

A powerful storm swept fast and furiously across the Northeast on Saturday, dumping mountains of snow, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their cars at the height of the blizzard and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people.

Even with the storm still raging on Saturday morning, officials in Massachusetts ordered the evacuation of some communities along the coast as waves lashed the shoreline and high tide brought a surge of water inland.

Through the night, winds gusted with hurricane force in some places, downing power lines and creating white-out conditions. More than three feet of snow fell in parts of Connecticut, and more than two feet were reported on Long Island and in Massachusetts, with the storm still doing damage as day broke.

States of emergency were declared in four states on Friday. The governor of Massachusetts banned travel on all roads as night fell, an order that remained in effect on Saturday. In Connecticut, where the governor had ordered no cars on state highways on Friday night, residents were told early Saturday morning to stay off all roads.

Still, whether by choice or necessity, hundreds of drivers tried to travel home on Friday night and beat the nor’easter as the winds whipped. On Long Island, the storm descended so quickly that hundreds were forced to abandon their cars on the highways and streets as roads became impassable.

Snowplow drivers worked furiously to clear roads, but the snow limited what they could do.

“It’s really hard right now, it’s wet, it’s heavy and it’s freezing, so everything is going slow,” said Jack Mandaneza, 31, as he took a break from plowing on the Long Island Expressway at the height of the storm.

Barbara Barkiano, 43, a housecleaner, tried to make her way along the highway behind the plows, but the snow snapped both windshield wipers on her Honda Civic hybrid.

“My knees are shaking,” she said stopping at a gas station to hand-scrape snow from her windshield. She added, “I’m going to stay right here for a while.”

The storm’s impact was felt by more than 40 million people, from northern New Jersey to Maine.

The most immediate problem is moving people out of homes where they have lost power, Massachusetts state officials said at a briefing Saturday morning. National Guard soldiers have been deployed, mainly in the southeastern part of the state, to retrieve people and take them to warming centers and shelters, but even members of the Guard have been trapped at home; only about 2,000 soldiers of a force of more than 5,000 have been able to respond.

High tide started at 10:15 a.m., and the waves off the south shore of Boston and parts of Cape Cod have measured as high as 15 and 20 feet. Officials expect major coastal flooding and are trying to evacuate residents as soon as possible.

Despite the best efforts to clear roads Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, said they are “struggling to keep up with the snow.”

For many, the memory of Hurricane Sandy — and its terrible toll — was still fresh as they crowded supermarkets and supply stores to stock up as the storm bore down on the region.

Long lines at gas stations, and scattered reports that places were running out of fuel led Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York to warn people not to “panic buy” gasoline.

The storm played out the way many forecasters said it would — with New York City spared from the worst of the storm, and points to the north and east hit harder.

Overnight, temperatures across the region dropped precipitously in Boston, and created dangerous conditions for the hundreds of thousands of people without power.

Instead of dissipating overnight, the storm seemed to gain strength in the Boston area, and on Saturday morning winds topping 70 miles per hour still whipped through some towns and cities, creating massive snowdrifts and forcing people to simply sit inside and ride it out.

Nate Schweber, Katharine Q. Seelye and Jess Bidgood contributed reporting.

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Stars salute MusiCares honoree Bruce Springsteen

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Be it concert or charity auction, Bruce Springsteen can bring any event to a crescendo.

Springsteen briefly took over auctioneering duties before being honored as MusiCares person of the year Friday night, exhorting the crowd to bid on a signed Fender electric guitar by amping up the deal. The 63-year-old rock 'n' roll star moved the bid north from $60,000 by offering a series of sweeteners.

"That's right, a one-hour guitar lesson with me," Springsteen shouted. "And a ride in my Harley Davidson sidecar. So dig in, one-percenters."

That moved the needle past $150,000. He added eight concert tickets and backstage passes with a bonus tour conducted by Springsteen himself. That pushed it to $200,000, but he wasn't done.

"And a lasagna made by my mother!" he shouted as an in-house camera at the Los Angeles Convention Center cut to his 87-year-old mother Adele Ann Springsteen.

And with an extra $250,000 in the musicians charity's coffers, Springsteen sat down and spent most of the evening in the unusual role of spectator as a string of stars that included Elton John, Neil Young, Sting, Kenny Chesney, John Legend, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne took the stage two nights before the Grammy Awards.

"Here's a little secret about Bruce Springsteen: He loves this," host Jon Stewart joked. "There's nothing he'd rather do than come to Los Angeles, put on a suit ... and then have people talking about him like he's dead."

Alabama Shakes kicked things off with "Adam Raised A Cain" and over the course of the evening there were several interesting takes on Springsteen's voluminous 40-year catalog of hits. Natalie Manes, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite played a stripped down "Atlantic City." Mavis Staples and Zac Brown put a gospel spin on "My City of Ruins." John added a funky backbeat to "Streets of Philadelphia." Kenny Chesney offered an acoustic version of "One Step Up."

Jim James and Tom Morello burned through a scorching version of "The Ghost of Tom Joad" that brought the crowd out of their seats as Morello finished the song with a fiery guitar solo. And Mumford & Sons took it the opposite way, playing a quiet, acoustic version of "I'm On Fire" in the round that had the crowd leaning in.

Legend offered a somber piano version of "Dancing in the Dark" and Young shut down the pre-Springsteen portion of the evening with a "Born in the USA" that included two sign-language interpreters dressed as cheerleaders signing along to the lyrics.

"John Legend made me sound like Gershwin," Springsteen said. "I love that. Neil Young made me sound like the Sex Pistols. I love that. What an evening."

Springsteen spoke of the "miracle of music," the importance of musicians in human culture and making sure everyone is cared for. And he joked that he somehow ended up being honored by MusiCares, a charity that offers financial assistance to musicians in need run by The Recording Academy, after his manager called up Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich to seek a performance slot on the show in a "mercenary publicity move."

In the end, though, he was moved by the evening.

"It's kind of a freaky experience, the whole thing," Springsteen said. "This is the huge Italian wedding Patti (Scialfa) and I never had. It's a huge Bar Mitzvah. I owe each and every one of you. You made me feel like the person of the year. Now give me that damn guitar."

He asked the several thousand attendees to move toward the stage — "Come on, it's only rock 'n' roll" — and kicked off his five-song set with his Grammy nominated song "We Take Care Of Our Own." At the end of the night he brought everyone on stage for "Glory Days."

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted

United States companies are sending spent lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards, according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk.

In a blistering report submitted this week, the agency, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, notes that the United States does not fully follow procedures common among developed nations that treat international battery shipments as hazardous waste. It faults environmental agencies on both sides of the border for lapses in regulation and enforcement. Cross-border trade in lead batteries increased by up to 525 percent from 2004 to 2011, the report said.

The report, which has been circulating in draft form, has been forwarded to the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico, which have 60 days to object to its publication. An estimated 20 percent of lead acid batteries from the United States now go to Mexico for recycling, according to trade statistics.

“There needs to be better coordination between government agencies and better cross-border tracking,” said Evan Lloyd, who was the agency’s executive director until late last year and oversaw the yearlong study.

The report highlighted a number of shortcomings: Customs data on the number of batteries crossing the border did not mesh with counts by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Though the E.P.A. requires notice of batteries leaving the United States, there was no effort to make sure that they had arrived at qualified recyclers in Mexico. The data that battery companies sent to the E.P.A. about exports consisted of “piles of paper,” Mr. Lloyd said, and it was never amassed into an electronic database that would be “useful to regulators.”

Almost all lead acid batteries used in the United States are recycled to extract the lead for reuse because lead is a dangerous pollutant and because it is a valuable commodity. Lead batteries are used in vehicles, cellphone towers and wind turbines.

Since 2008, new United States limits on lead pollution have made domestic recycling complicated and costly. That has helped propel the recycling trade to Mexico, both legally and illegally, environmental groups say, because that country has less stringent limits for lead pollution, and far less vigorous enforcement.

“There’s a pretty consistent pattern suggesting that exports are the direct result of U.S. emissions standards,” said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, which has led the campaign against lead poisoning internationally. Mr. Gottesfeld noted that a Mexican plant owned by a major American recycler, Johnson Controls Inc., puts out more than 30 times as much lead emissions as its newest plant in the United States.

“What Mexico needs to do is to get its recycling up to U.S. standards, and the U.S. needs to do a much better job of tracking batteries overseas,” he said. In an e-mail, Johnson Controls, based in Milwaukee, said it was “modernizing and reinvesting” in the Mexican facility, acquired in 2005, “to reduce its environmental footprint.”

The report was initiated in response to a report by Occupational Knowledge International and Fronteras Comunes, a Mexican environmental group, as well as to an investigative article in The New York Times, Mr. Lloyd said. Soil collected by The Times in a school playground near a recycling plant outside Mexico City was found to have lead levels five times those allowed in the United States.

Lead poisoning causes high blood pressure, kidney damage and abdominal pain in adults, and serious developmental delays and behavioral problems in young children. When batteries are broken for recycling, the lead is released as dust and, during melting, as lead-laced emissions.

In the United States, recyclers operate in highly mechanized, tightly sealed plants, with smokestack scrubbers and extensive monitors to detect lead release. Plants in Mexico vary greatly in safety standards, and in some, the recycling process is little more than men with hammers smashing batteries and melting down their contents in furnaces.

In recent months, there have been new efforts to curb the flow of batteries south of the border, though many battery makers have fought that. In response to a draft of the report released late last year, Battery Council International, an industry group, said it opposed “the creation of additional burdensome certification programs.”

Last year, the United States General Services Administration, which is responsible for federal vehicles, asked ASTM International, an independent standards agency, to explore a voluntary standard for battery recycling.

But that effort came to naught after the proposal was voted down at an open meeting attended by representatives from industry, government and environmental groups in December. Of the 103 people at the meeting, 49 worked for Johnson Controls.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of an American recycler cited by Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, as the owner of a Mexican plant that puts out more than 30 times as much lead emissions as the company’s newest plant in the United States. The American recycling company is Johnson Controls Inc., not Johnson Controls International.

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Big Storm and Its Disruptions Descend on the Northeast

Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

Pedestrians made their way to work in New York on Friday morning.

As heavy, wet snow started to blanket much of the Northeast on Friday morning, people rushed to stores to stock up on supplies, drivers lined up at gas stations to fill their tanks and local authorities from New York City to Maine started working to battle what forecasters said could be the biggest blizzard for some cities in a century.

Throughout the night and into the morning airlines announced the suspension of thousands of flights out of New York and Boston airports, as workers in towns and cities across the region readied their plows, checked their stocks of salt and braced for what will most likely be a cold and busy weekend. Amtrak announced that beginning early Friday afternoon it would suspend northbound service out of Pennsylvania Station in New York and southbound service out of Boston.

Schools across New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced that they would close, or dismiss students early on Friday.

On Long Island, the power company, which has received heavy criticism for its response to Hurricane Sandy, promised customers that it was prepared.

The city of Boston, where snow started to fall around 9:30 a.m. and forecasts called for more than two feet of snow to fall by Saturday, announced that it would close all schools on Friday and that mass transit in the city would be suspended starting at 3:30 p.m., joining other localities in trying to get ahead of the storm and keep people off the roads.

While officials warned people to stay home from work if possible on Friday, many kept to their usual morning commute, anticipating that they could get home before the worst of the storm was expected to hit. The latest forecasts said that blizzardlike conditions would start in New York City after dark. To help commuters beat the snow, transit officials announced increased bus and train service in the afternoon.

At 11 a.m. on Friday, forecasters expressed increasing confidence in the strength of the storm.

In New York City, where there is a mix of rain, snow and sleet, a rush of cold air is expected to filter back into the region by 4 p.m., at which point the rain will transition back to snow, said Tim Morrin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service based in Long Island.

“From then things go downhill pretty quickly,” he said. The winds will pick up, and snow will start coming down heavily.

In New England, the storm will intensify at about the same time, but because the area has not had rain, the total snowfalls will be greater.

“The worst conditions will be after dark and overnight,” Mr. Morrin said. “We don’t want to have folks get complacent seeing the rain and the just wet streets.”

By Saturday, the total expected snowfall in New York City is expected to be between 10 and 14 inches. In Long Island, the snow totals will range from 14 to 18 inches, with the highest amounts at the east end.

In New London, Conn., there will most likely be more than 24 inches of snow and even more in Boston, which could break modern records by topping 28 inches.

The severe weather is the result of two weather systems colliding, producing a powerful force. One system is coming from the north, carried along by the arctic jet stream, which will drop down from Canada and intersect with another system propelled by the polar jet stream, which usually travels through the lower 48 states.

“The storm should reach its peak intensity early Saturday morning just east of Cape Cod,” the National Weather Service said in a statement. With hurricane-force winds, the Weather Service predicted "dangerous blizzard conditions" for many parts of Northeast. Officials also expect flooding along the Atlantic coast affecting up to 8 million people.

The storm could rival the blizzard of 1978 in New England, when more than 27 inches of snow fell in Boston and surrounding cities. That storm, which occurred on a weekday 35 years ago, resulted in dozens of deaths and crippled the region for days.

Officials expect to be better prepared this time.

In the predawn hours, 300 road crews in Massachusetts started spreading salt and brine.

Jess Bidgood and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

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Uggs? Ugh. NY Fashion Week battles the elements

NEW YORK (AP) — Mother Nature is clearly not a fashionista.

An impending blizzard forced Michael Kors to arrive at New York Fashion Week's Project Runway show on Friday in — gasp — Uggs.

"I came in looking like Pam Anderson," he joked backstage, where the offending boots had been traded for tasteful black leather.

Marc Jacobs postponed his Monday night show until Thursday, citing delivery problems, but for the most part Fashion Week went on with the show. IMG Fashion said organizers remained in contact with city officials including the Mayor's office about potential weather problems, but that they had planned for an extra layer of tenting for the venue and more heat at Lincoln Center along with crews to help with snow and ice.

Zac Posen said he would present his collection as usual on Sunday but he worried that out-of-town editors and retailers might not be able to make it. Other designers were considering plan B — perhaps an internet stream — in case crowds are snowed out.

Still, plenty of fashion fans wouldn't let a little snow get in the way. Baltimore college student Carmen Green arrived in a red cocktail dress and black high-heel booties.

"In this outfit, the blizzard did not deter me," she said. She did allow that she had only had to cross the street from her hotel and would change into combat boots for the train ride home.

The celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch even offered a blizzard pro tip.

"You either come in warm and comfortable clothes and boots or you come in neon — or sequins would be a good one — so they see you in the drift," he said.

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