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Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. decided to press forward with the case, fighting the appeal of a guilty verdict against the prisoner, a Yemeni man named Ali al-Bahlul. In an unusual move, Mr. Holder overruled the recommendation of the solicitor general, Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who had wanted to drop the case because the appeals court had rejected the same legal arguments in another case several months ago, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The chief prosecutor of the military commissions system, Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, had also urged the Justice Department to drop the case and pointedly did not sign the 22-page brief to the court on Wednesday. It concedes that the judges must side with Mr. Bahlul at this stage because of the earlier ruling in the other case, but argues that the earlier ruling was wrong.

General Martins also announced on Wednesday that he was abandoning the conspiracy charge in the death penalty case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others accused of being accomplices in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"There is a clear path forward for legally sustainable charges," he said. "The remaining charges are well-established violations of the law of war and among the gravest forms of crime recognized by all civilized peoples."

The current dispute traces back to two tribunal trials from 2008. In October, the appeals court vacated the conviction of the defendant in the first case, a former Al Qaeda driver who is now free in Yemen, because his charge, material support, was not an international war crime. It rejected the government's argument that such a charge was valid under an "American common law of war."

It was after that ruling that General Martins urged dropping the case against Mr. Bahlul, a producer of Al Qaeda propaganda videos who is serving a life sentence. General Martins held that fighting a protracted legal battle with arguments that had already lost would damage the tribunals' legitimacy.

He was backed by the top lawyers at the Pentagon and the State Department, Robert Taylor and Harold Koh. But Lisa Monaco, the assistant attorney general for national security, argued that the "American common law of war" theory might win at the Supreme Court, officials said.

The administration's latest move leaves it to the judiciary to decide whether to remove conspiracy and material support from the offenses available for trial before tribunals. Without such charges, which make it easier to prosecute people who participated in Al Qaeda but are not linked to a specific attack, fewer Guantánamo detainees can receive tribunal trials. Congress approved the inclusion of both charges in laws enacted in 2006 and 2009.

Mr. Holder had once sought to prosecute the Sept. 11 case in a civilian court instead of a tribunal, but the White House overruled his plan in 2010 amid an uproar over security.

The rules, being laid out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and taking effect next January, will also set some limits on interest-only packages or negative-amortization loans, where the balance due grows over time. Banks can make such loans, but the new rules would not protect them from potential borrower lawsuits if they do so.

And mortgage originators will in most cases be restricted from charging excessive upfront points and fees, from making loans with balloon payments and from making loans that load a borrower with total debt exceeding 43 percent of income.

With the sweeping rules, financial regulators are trying to substantially overhaul the market for home mortgages by creating a legal distinction between "qualified" loans that follow the new rules and are immune from legal action, and "unqualified" mortgages that continue practices that regulators have frowned on. The new rules are also aimed at getting banks to lend again, something they have been slow to do since the financial crisis and since the Dodd-Frank Act required new limits on bank activities.

Gone, the regulators hope, will be the unbridled frenzy that encouraged lenders to ignore whether borrowers could repay as long as the lenders could sell the mortgages to third parties, usually investment firms that sliced them up and resold them as part of complex financial derivatives.

By following the new rules, banks will be given a "safe harbor," which ensures that they cannot be successfully sued for reckless or abusive lending practices, federal officials said Wednesday. Lenders must document a borrower's ability to repay a loan; one way of doing that is to follow several guidelines issued Thursday that make a loan a "qualified" mortgage.

"When consumers sit down at the closing table, they shouldn't be set up to fail with mortgages they can't afford," said Richard Cordray, the director of the consumer bureau. "Our ability-to-repay rule protects borrowers from the kinds of risky lending practices that resulted in so many families losing their homes."

Mortgage bankers generally applauded the new regulations, saying that they clear up uncertainty that has hung over the home lending business since the financial crisis. In fact, most of the types of loans now being restricted, which were rampant during the inflation of the housing bubble, have been relatively rare in the last couple of years because many banks have tightened lending since the financial crisis.

"These rules offer protection for consumers and a clear, safe environment for banks to do business," David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in an interview. "Now everybody knows if you stay inside these lines, you are safe."

He added that he believed the consumer bureau "did a great job listening to stakeholders" in shaping the rule.

The new rules will not necessarily lead to an immediate expansion of credit, Mr. Stevens said, because nearly all mortgage loans being made currently are being sold to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their underwriting standards are not affected by the new rules.

In certain circumstances, the new lending rules can be bypassed for up to seven years, regulators said. New loans can be considered to be a "qualified loan" even if the borrower has a debt-to-income ratio of more than 43 percent as long as the loan is eligible for purchase or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, for example, or by one of several executive branch agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The consumer bureau said that the exception was created "in light of the fragile state of the mortgage market as a result of the recent mortgage crisis." Without the exception, the bureau said, "creditors might be reluctant to make loans that are not qualified mortgages, even if they are responsibly underwritten."

Similarly, the new rules allow balloon payments in mortgages that are originated by and retained in the portfolio of small lenders that operate primarily in rural or underserved areas.

The legal protections offered to lenders by the qualified mortgage rule are not absolute. Lenders do not receive complete immunity from lawsuits in all circumstances. Some higher-priced loans, given to consumers with weak credit, can be challenged if the borrower can prove that he did not have sufficient income to pay the mortgage and other living expenses. And the rules do not affect the rights of consumers to challenge a lender for violating other federal consumer protection laws.

"We believe this rule does exactly what it is supposed to do," Mr. Cordray said in a statement prepared for delivery Thursday morning in Baltimore, where the rules are being announced. "It protects consumers and helps strengthen the housing market by rooting out reckless and unsustainable lending, while enabling safer lending," he said.

Black-clad women waited at a small bakery as the rattling noise of a motorcycle in the distance echoed through the alleys. Finally, Mrs. Nader, an interior designer in Tehran, reached her destination: a large, two-panel wood door that opened up to her fully renovated weekend home, a majestic old Iranian house with four bedrooms, colored-glass windows, a separate office, two garden areas and a large rectangular marble fountain.

After boiling tea, Mrs. Nader, 68, sighed and sat down under an arched passageway. The sun reflected in the fountain, as the wind blew in faint sounds of the midday call to prayer.

"Whenever I dreamed of Iran while being in some faraway place, I dreamed of owning such a house," she said.

For thousands of years, houses with secluded gardens and courtyards have been a cornerstone of Iranian architecture, which strongly influenced structures like the Alhambra and the Taj Mahal. Similar dwellings are described in literature from Achaemenid times, around 700 B.C., and their old Persian name is the root for the word "paradise."

But in past decades the houses fell out of favor and were widely demolished to make way for glassed apartment blocks, especially in Tehran. The sprawling family gardens on the flanks of the Alborz Mountains in the capital have long since been demolished to make way for high rises, turning landowners into millionaires but wiping out Iran's architectural heritage.

But Mrs. Nader and some others are beginning to reverse that trend. In recent years, dozens of houses and palaces in Kashan, a city known for its carpets and traditional Iranian architecture, have been painstakingly renovated into holiday homes and hotels.

She was drawn to Kashan in 2008 when the owner of one of the palaces, Manoucheri House, built 200 years ago by a local merchant family, asked for her help in transforming it into a boutique hotel. Well known in Tehran for her basic but tasteful furniture and printed textiles that strike a delicate balance between the old and the new, Mrs. Nader was an obvious choice for the job, and she jumped at the opportunity.

Now, all across the old neighborhoods of Kashan, laborers are renovating houses that until recently were neglected by their owners.

At first the newcomers stirred opposition from local people, apparently upset that some of the renovations were being done with government money, which they wanted for building modern housing. "Hundreds of people signed a petition asking for the old houses to be flattened instead," said Akbar Arezugar, 54, a renovation supervisor from Kashan. "But when the renovation was done, the cleric who was leading the opposition personally called everybody involved, apologized and applauded the work we had done."

While many Iranian cities face unemployment and an economic downturn because of sanctions and mismanagement of the economy, the burst of renovations — most of them by individuals — is keeping Kashan bustling.

Mohsen Shahi, a 26-year-old architect, said he much preferred working on the renovations to designing apartment buildings, something that many of his university friends are doing. "If I had an unlimited budget I would buy old houses and rebuild them the way they were," he said.

Mr. Shahi was working on the Ameri House, a huge property with seven courtyards with fountains and dozens of rooms that is scheduled to open as a hotel in April. "For a long time it seemed as though our love for culture had diminished in our country," he said. "Those old families that once built these beautiful houses were not thinking of profits, but of their legacies. Thankfully, now we are starting to learn from them."

When her work on the boutique hotel was finished, Mrs. Nader looked for a place of her own. The first time she saw her house it was run-down and filled with dirt. Parts were even slated for demolition. "I bought it for $20,000 and people said I was crazy," she said, while giving a tour of the house. The restoration cost another $300,000, she said, and has been worth every penny.

She is planning to write a book on traditional Iranian architecture, and has also built an office where she wants to work with local architects.

For most people, it is a labor of love. For the hotels, renovation costs are high, without much prospect of making profits. There are almost no foreign tourists anymore making their way to Kashan, which lies 30 miles north of Iran's main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. Many people fear the nuclear site could one day come under attack, with possibly deadly consequences for those living in its vicinity.

"Sometimes I worry about the future," she said, standing on one of the roofs of her house. In the distance, snow-capped mountain peaks basked in the sun. "But history shows that Iran always lands on its feet. I'm not abandoning ship."

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had two emotional fulcrums in his sprawling 78-minute address: gun violence and Hurricane Sandy. But most of the speech was devoted to an onslaught of proposals favored by the left wing of his party.

He proposed increasing the minimum wage to $8.75 an hour from $7.25 an hour, public financing of elections, tougher greenhouse gas standards, solar jobs programs, a $1 billion affordable housing initiative, grants for schools that extend school days and a 10-point women's rights program that garnered loud applause for its provisions strengthening abortion rights laws and enacting equal pay legislation.

"We are a community based on progressive principles," the governor said, in a speech to several hundred lawmakers and guests at an auditorium in the Capitol complex. "We must remain that progressive capital of the nation."

How the state would pay for any new programs was not clear. The governor is to introduce his budget this month, but until Congress decides how much aid to send to New York to defray the costs of rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy, the state's financial picture will be clouded.

The governor promised not to raise taxes. He has made similar promises in the past, but then agreed to support a new higher tax bracket for the state's highest earners. And he said he would continue to push for a referendum in November allowing an expansion of casino gambling, describing casinos as vehicles for improving the upstate economy. He said that, at first, he would allow as many as three full-scale casinos upstate, and none in New York City, in an effort to lure tourists to travel to economically struggling areas.

Overall, the speech served to reposition the governor, who has faced criticism from the left wing of his party for paying too little attention to their concerns. Liberals praised the governor in 2011 for persuading lawmakers to pass same-sex marriage legislation. But his first two years in office focused on a centrist fiscal policy that included a cap on property tax increases, steep spending cuts and contentious negotiations with unions that resulted in a cut to the pension benefits of future state employees.

Now Mr. Cuomo, who is considered, at least in New York, a presidential contender for 2016, is emphasizing proposals — some new and some he has suggested in the past — that cheer his Democratic base. Some contentious issues, like hydraulic fracturing, which is opposed by the left, were notably absent from his speech. Those attending the speech passed protesters of fracking in the largest demonstration before a State of the State address in several years.

Few advocacy groups on the left found issues they could not applaud. Environmental Advocates of New York said Mr. Cuomo "showed true leadership" in his comments on climate change. Andrea Miller, president of Naral Pro-Choice New York, said of his proposed women's initiatives, "He heard the call and is a true leader."

Bob Master, director of legislative action at the Communications Workers of America, said, "To the extent he's using this speech to appeal to the liberal primary electorate, doing something meaningful on public financing would be a big achievement."

Republicans also saw the trend, but bemoaned it. Assemblyman Steve Katz, a Hudson Valley Republican, called the speech "a sharp veer to the left offering big government solutions for all problems."

Even the cover of a 300-page book that accompanied the speech was something of a kitchen sink — an odd tableau that superimposed a stark image of Breezy Point, the Queens neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Sandy, on the front lawn of the Capitol building, with a new model of the Tappan Zee Bridge soaring overhead.

The governor gave some of his most impassioned remarks to date on guns, a cause he has voiced support for in the past but has not made a legislative priority. Mr. Cuomo's legislative agenda was clearly upended by the recent mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., and the killings of two firefighters in Webster, N.Y. "End the madness now," he said Wednesday.

"Forget the extremists — it's simple," the governor added, to a burst of applause. "No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer."

The governor also continued to use Hurricane Sandy as a reason to talk about global warming.

"Climate change is real," he said. "It is denial to say each of these situations is a once-in-a-lifetime. There is a 100-year flood every two years now. It is inarguable that the sea is warmer and there is a changing weather pattern, and the time to act is now."

Among his proposals were a bailout fund for homeowners who want to move out of flood-prone regions, and aid for building homes that can better withstand floods — ideas that are contingent on how much federal aid comes through. He also called for measures to better protect subways, public utilities, the fuel delivery system and New York Harbor.

And he excoriated Washington for waiting so long to provide New York and New Jersey with federal storm aid.

"That is just too little and it is too late, and it has nothing to do with the way Congress has acted in the past," he said. "This has long been established, that in the face of a disaster, the national government comes in to help."

"Remember New York," he added, "because New York will not forget, I promise you."

Lawmakers in Albany, seeking to send a message to the nation that the recent mass shootings demand swift action, say they hope to vote on the package of legislation as soon as next week.

The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday that Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders were "95 percent" of the way toward an agreement. Senate Republicans, considered the only possible obstacle to the governor's proposal, indicated they did not intend to block a deal.

"When you hear about these issues all across the nation, whether it's in the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., or Columbine, something needs to happen — something transformative," said Senator Timothy M. Kennedy, a Democrat from Buffalo.

The dash to enact new gun controls made New York the first flash point in the battles over firearm restrictions that are expected to consume several state capitals this year.

But the debate also raged elsewhere on Wednesday, from Denver, where supporters of gun rights rallied to oppose weapon restrictions in the new legislative session, to Connecticut, whose governor, Dannel P. Malloy, in an emotional speech to lawmakers — he lost his composure talking about the mass killings at a Newtown elementary school last month — said, "More guns are not the answer."

At the White House, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with gun-control advocates and said the Obama administration planned both to pass legislation and to use executive orders to try to reduce gun violence. "The president and I are determined to take action," Mr. Biden said. "This is not an exercise in photo opportunities."

Mr. Cuomo's aides said the proposed legislation in New York would expand the definition of what is considered an assault weapon to match California's law, currently the most restrictive in the nation. But the overall package would go further, they said, by limiting detachable ammunition magazines to 7 rounds from the current 10, and requiring background checks for purchases of ammunition, not just weapons.

Limiting magazines to seven rounds would give New York the toughest restrictions in the nation. Only around half a dozen states currently limit the size of magazines, and most of them allow magazines that contain up to 10 rounds, according to a survey by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates gun control. The New York law would also close a loophole that has thwarted enforcement of limits on the size of magazines.

Even as Mr. Cuomo detailed his plans, gun-rights groups mobilized to oppose the new restrictions.

"We fully expect that New York state's gun owners will be completely engaged in this debate and N.R.A. will be there to lead them," said Chris W. Cox, the chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, which has donated more money to state politicians in New York than anywhere else, much of it to Senate Republicans.

And immediately afterward, Budd Schroeder, the chairman of the Shooters Committee on Political Education, a New York gun-rights group, said he planned to meet with every state senator he knew to ask them to stand up to the governor.

"The legislators are going to be getting a lot of phone calls in their district offices," Mr. Schroeder said. "How is taking away my rights to own any type of firearm I choose going to change the attitude of a criminal?"

Yet Mr. Schroeder's group, on its Web site, acknowledged the challenging terrain. "We can say with certainty," it warned, "that anything short of overwhelming our legislators with calls, e-mails and letters, we have virtually no chance."

Mr. Cuomo's initiative drew praise from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has made gun control his signature cause. "I was particularly struck by his passionate leadership on gun violence," Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. "New York State has led the nation with strong, common-sense gun laws, and the governor's new proposals will build on that tradition."

Mr. Cuomo is a possible 2016 presidential contender who is seeking to elevate his stature among Democrats base nationally, after a much-praised victory on same-sex marriage in his first year in office. His push for enhanced gun control even drew praise from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, in a letter that otherwise criticized Mr. Cuomo's support for abortion rights.

Mr. Cuomo had already stirred up anxiety among gun rights groups by saying in a radio interview in December that "confiscation could be an option" for existing assault weapons.

In a country that Mr. Chávez, 58, has so long dominated, his health crisis and the decision to proceed on Thursday with a quasi-presidential inauguration that he is unable to attend is producing a stream of bizarre developments and national angst about who is in charge.

"Who's governing Venezuela?" Julio Borges, an opposition member of the National Assembly, said during a noisy legislative debate this week on the biggest issues facing the country, overshadowing other urgent matters like pressures for a painful currency devaluation, stagnant oil production and chronic shortages of food and other staples on store shelves.

Mr. Chávez has long said, "I am the people," a mantra that his supporters are invoking as they plan to don the sash the president would have worn had he been able to attend his inauguration, symbolically becoming presidents themselves.

"Anyone who has a sash, bring it along, because tomorrow the people will be invested as president of the republic, because the people are Chávez," Diosdado Cabello, the president of the National Assembly, said Wednesday. "All of us here are Chávez, the people in the street are Chávez, the lady who cooks is Chávez, the comrade who works as a watchman is Chávez, the soldier is Chávez, the woman is Chávez, the farmer is Chávez, the worker is Chávez; we're all Chávez."

To no one's surprise, the Supreme Court, stacked with Chávez loyalists, ruled on the eve of the ceremony that Mr. Chávez's inauguration could be postponed and that his team of advisers could smoothly move, in his absence, from one term to the next.

The court declined to set a time limit for the swearing in, raising the possibility that the country's deepening uncertainty could go on for weeks or months. And it did nothing to clear up the stubborn mystery of the president's condition.

Luisa Estella Morales, the president of the Supreme Court, said Wednesday at a news conference that there was no need at this time for a delegation to go to Cuba and report back on Mr. Chávez's health. Asked if the swearing in could occur in Havana, she said the time and place of the ceremony had not been determined.

 Ms. Morales said the heart of the Supreme Court's ruling preserved the results of October's presidential election.

"It's one of the most important values that we should preserve as a constitutional court," Ms. Morales said. "The sovereign Venezuelan people have expressed through their vote their desire to continue being governed by President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías."

The government has been opaque for months, acknowledging that he suffered from a relapse of cancer but not specifying the type of cancer or detailing his prognosis.

The lack of information has left Venezuela tied in knots. Mr. Chávez has loomed so large for so long — with speeches that have lasted for hours, frequent Twitter posts and his outsized singing, ranting, poetry-reciting and foe-bashing personality — that his sudden silence has created a sizable vacuum.

"We don't have a president," lamented Estela Martínez, 63, a nurse who has supported Mr. Chávez throughout his 14 years in office. She said she was afraid that the public was not getting the full truth about the president's condition and that there was far more shouting than clarity from political leaders. "Someone has to take the reins of the country."

Henrique Capriles, who lost to Mr. Chávez in October, criticized the Supreme Court's decision endorsing a delay in the inauguration. "Institutions should not respond to the interests of a government," he said.

The State Department in Washington, which has been cautious about getting involved in the contentious political back-and-forth, said Wednesday that it would be eager to improve relations with Venezuela, which have long been strained, but that it will "take two to tango."

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, confirmed that Roberta S. Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, had spoken in November to Vice President Nicolás Maduro about more engagement.

"Regardless of what happens politically in Venezuela, if the Venezuelan government and if the Venezuelan people want to move forward with us, we think there is a path that's possible," she said, according to Reuters. "It's just going to take two to tango."

Before he left for Cuba in December, Mr. Chávez indicated that he wanted Mr. Maduro to succeed him should he be too ill to govern. But that proclamation, designed to quell a succession battle, has done little to calm the frayed country.

Neither did Mr. Maduro's letter on Tuesday announcing that Mr. Chávez's doctors had recommended that he not attend the inauguration and instead continue recuperating in bed. That led some of the president's critics to wonder why the voluble Mr. Chávez was not telling them himself.

"If the president is in full command of his faculties, why didn't he sign the letter?" said José Gregorio Graterol, an opposition lawmaker.

And for those Venezuelans who bitterly resent the influence that the Cuban leaders Fidel and Raúl Castro have over Mr. Chávez — especially given Cuba's dependence on Venezuelan oil shipments on preferential terms — the president's long stay in Cuba and the constant traveling back and forth to the island of top Venezuelan officials, the disembodied word emanating from Havana was simply too much.

"How do we know that letter isn't from the hand of Raúl Castro and the Cuban advisers?" Mr. Graterol said.

In the constitutional fight that has ensued over whether Mr. Chávez can legally start a new term without showing up for the scheduled swearing in, both sides in Venezuela have at times seemed to stake out shifting constitutional ground as they have angled for political advantage. The opposition is arguing that the Constitution calls for the head of the National Assembly, Mr. Cabello, to become the caretaker president in Mr. Chávez's absence.

Mr. Cabello, a staunch ally of Mr. Chávez, is normally reviled by the opposition, and its position seems designed to foment dissension among Chávistas, as Mr. Chávez's backers are known.

The government's most recent reports on Mr. Chávez's health had him fighting a severe lung infection and having difficulty breathing, and it was not known if he would be able to watch television to see the thousands of supporters who will attend the rally in his name. But the show must go on, as Mr. Chávez said in a moment of adversity last year, only this time without him, although with a roster of foreign leaders on hand.

"Crisis?" asked Jorge Rodríguez, a Chávez stalwart who is the mayor of a section of Caracas, according to El Universal newspaper, dismissing the notion that anything was amiss. "Where is the crisis?"

Anthony, who was angry about Garnett's choice of words during a fourth-quarter altercation, went toward the Celtics' locker room after the game and later waited for Garnett outside Boston's team bus.

Anthony said he did not believe he would be suspended because he was just looking to talk to Garnett, not fight. But Stu Jackson, the N.B.A.'s executive vice president of operations, ruled otherwise.

"There are no circumstances in which it is acceptable for a player to confront an opponent after a game," Jackson said in a statement. "Carmelo Anthony attempted to engage with Kevin Garnett multiple times after Monday's game, and therefore a suspension was warranted."

Anthony will miss the Knicks' nationally televised game at Indiana on Thursday and lose about $176,700 of his $19.4 million salary.

Garnett was not penalized.

Jackson said Anthony confronted Garnett "in the arena tunnel, near the players' locker rooms and in the parking garage." The incident by the bus, with New York police officers and Knicks Coach Mike Woodson nearby, was captured on video.

Anthony and Garnett received technical fouls with 9 minutes 3 seconds remaining in the Celtics' 102-96 victory, arguing with each other from the baseline to midcourt after a physical exchange on Boston's previous possession. After the game, Anthony went the wrong direction toward the Celtics' locker room in hopes of finding Garnett.

On Tuesday, Anthony said he was upset because of what Garnett said, though he would not elaborate on what it was.

"There's certain things that you just don't say to men, another man," Anthony said.

"It's over with for me," Anthony added. "Whatever happened last night happened. The words that was being said between me and Garnett, it happened, can't take that away. I lost my cool yesterday, I accept that, but there's just certain things that push certain people's buttons."

Anthony, who averaged 36 points per game last week while winning Eastern Conference player of the week honors, was clearly affected by Garnett, shooting just 6 of 26 from the field. He said he and Garnett eventually spoke and sorted out the matter.

Anthony will be eligible to return Friday at home against Chicago. He was ejected from the Knicks' last meeting with the Bulls after receiving two of his eight technical fouls this season.

Dale Andrew Hayden, the driver of the truck pulling the float, will not face charges stemming from the Nov. 15 accident that killed four veterans who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sixteen other people were injured.

The 12-person grand jury "has not concluded its review of the incident," according to a news release issued by Midland County District Attorney Teresa Clingman. It wasn't clear what that could mean, but the grand jury did not indict Hayden and Midland police already have said they don't plant to pursue criminal charges against him. Clingman declined to comment further.

The veterans were riding on a flatbed truck that was hit by a Union Pacific train traveling at 62 mph. The truck was the second float in a parade organized to honor wounded veterans and their wives.

The accident remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Hayden was placed under a physician's care and got counseling in the days after the crash, his attorney, Hal Brockett has said.

Hayden, who has a military career spanning more than three decades, works as a truck driver for Smith Industries, an oilfield services company. The company placed Hayden on medical leave after the accident. Brockett said Hayden is back at work.

"I'm almost embarrassed to say I'm relieved," Brockett said Wednesday after the grand jury's decision. "I didn't think it was a grand jury matter, but I don't want to minimize the effect on Dale and the people who died and were injured out there."

According to the NTSB, the railroad crossing warning system was activated 20 seconds before the accident, and the guardrail began to come down seven seconds after that. Investigators say the float began crossing the train tracks even though warning bells were sounding and the crossing lights were flashing.

Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific Corp. announced in December that it was adjusting the timing of the crossing signal where the collision occurred.

Two injured vets and their wives have sued Union Pacific, alleging the train company didn't provide enough warning signals or do enough to fix what their lawsuit called hazardous conditions. Relatives of some of the victims declined to comment Wednesday or did not return messages.

The veterans had been invited to Midland, a transportation and commerce hub in the West Texas oilfields, for a three-day weekend of hunting and shopping in appreciation of their service. A local charity, Show of Support, organized the trip, parade and other festivities.

Show of Support officials did not get a parade permit from the city.

Killed were Marine Chief Warrant Officer 3 Gary Stouffer, 37; Army Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Boivin, 47; Army Sgt. Joshua Michael, 34; and Army Sgt. Maj. William Lubbers, 43.