Latest News

Koyuki Higashi and her partner of one and a half years tied the knot in front of 30 well-wishers on Friday, but much more of the country was in on the celebration, the first same-sex wedding at the theme park here.

Ms. Higashi, a stage actress turned gay rights activist, and her partner, Hiroko, who has not revealed her full name, posted frequent social media updates of their wedding plans and from their Christian-style ceremony, with a romantic gondola ride.

"My partner Hiroko and I just held a gay wedding at the Tokyo Disney Resort. Even Mickey and Minnie are here to celebrate with us!" Ms. Higashi, 28, wrote in a Twitter post that also had a picture of the newlyweds posing with the big-eared Disney characters and a flower-festooned cake. Her entry was reposted more than 6,000 times, drawing largely positive responses.

"Congratulations," replied Masaki Koh, a Japanese gay porn star. "Your wonderful wedding will bring inspiration and hope to many people who still hesitate to take the first step. I was also encouraged that Tokyo Disney Resort was so understanding."

But on the Naver Matome site, which collects and curates social media entries, a user who identified himself as Nizo Hakoda remarked: "I don't particularly mind homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but watching the news made me wonder why they had to hold their ceremony at a crowded place like Disney. It's fine for the people who accept it, but there are others who don't."

The Walt Disney Company had long allowed same-sex celebrations in a limited way on its grounds, like in banquet halls. But in 2007, it began allowing same-sex couples to buy high-end wedding packages, which can include elaborate ceremonies, Disney characters and public displays at its theme parks and on its cruises.

Despite that change in policy, Ms. Higashi found that no same-sex wedding had ever occurred at Tokyo Disney Resort. She reported on her blog and on Twitter that she had inquired about weddings at Tokyo Disney Sea, a part of the Disney Resort. But when it became apparent to the organizers that her partner was female, Ms. Higashi reported, she was asked if one of them could wear a tuxedo — so that other visitors to the park would not feel uncomfortable.

Her posts set off the first stir on Japanese social media sites.

A week later, the organizers at Milial Resort Hotels, a subsidiary of the company that runs Tokyo Disney, got back to Ms. Higashi with good news: both brides were welcome to wear wedding dresses (or both tuxedos, for that matter). "Mickey Mouse supports gay marriage!" Web headlines declared.

Milial Resort Hotels issued an apology. "Initially, there was an incomplete understanding on the part of our staff over the requirement for dresses," said Jun Abe, a Milial spokeswoman. "If we caused them sadness and discomfort, we are sorry."

Of course, their dream wedding did leave something to be desired for the couple: legal standing.

Japan does not recognize same-sex marriages, though there is little in the way of religious opposition from Buddhism, imported from China, or Japan's native Shinto religion. Japanese historical texts contain references to same-sex relationships.

Some local governments, including Tokyo, ban discrimination at work based on sexual identity, but even so, in this group-conscious, relatively conformist society, most gay residents remain in the closet. Gay public figures tend to be in TV entertainment, where gay men win laughs as flamboyant queens.

Ms. Higashi came out less than three years ago after a short-lived stage career, while Hiroko says she cannot use her full name widely because some family members are not fully comfortable with her sexuality.

Hiroko said, however, that she was emboldened by the response the couple had received from friends, family and social media, and that she hoped that her wedding helped create a public discussion.

"This could prompt Japan to question why it so often ignores or discriminates against minorities," Hiroko said. "Mostly we just want people to know that gay people exist for real, and we would like to throw weddings like everyone else."

But that reputation is set to change Tuesday night when the artist Leo Villareal will switch on what is being billed as the world's largest L.E.D. light sculpture. The public art installation, "The Bay Lights," will illuminate the bridge's 1.8-mile western span with 25,000 undulating white lights.

"My inspiration comes from the motion around the bridge, the kinetic activity of boats, water, clouds, traffic," Mr. Villareal said.

From a distance, it will appear as a shimmering illuminated mass, but Mr. Villareal controls each light individually with a software program he developed. He turns the whole thing on and off from his laptop.

Mr. Villareal's ability to fuse technology into his art is particularly apt here in a city awash in new tech wealth and buzzing with the frenetic energy of start-ups and highly caffeinated computer programmers.

The light sculpture, which will be on every night for two years, has become a darling of moneyed Silicon Valley types. The project is privately financed and is estimated to cost some $8 million.

Already restaurants with bridge views are booked and boat cruise operators are creating new tours for viewing the glowing infrastructure. Organizers estimate the lights will bring in $97 million to the local economy.

The unlikely star of all this fawning attention is the unassuming Bay Bridge.

When it opened to traffic Nov. 12, 1936, the city celebrated with five days of parades, a Navy air show and a regatta.

But just five months later, the Golden Gate Bridge followed with its flashier, red-painted steel spanning the more picturesque mouth of the bay. It quickly became an international tourist destination, while the Bay Bridge toiled along in utilitarian, gray obscurity. Last year some 40 million cars crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, while the Bay Bridge carried more than 100 million cars.

"These bridges really came up as twin sisters, one quite beautiful and one very hard working," said Ben Davis, who originally approached Mr. Villareal about adorning the bridge in lights. As founder of the agency responsible for branding on the newly constructed, $6.4 billion eastern span of the Bay Bridge, Mr. Davis has spent years thinking about the bridge's legacy.  "This project will elevate the Bay Bridge, at least for a while, above the Golden Gate Bridge," he said.

When both bridges recently celebrated their 75th anniversaries, San Francisco showered the Golden Gate Bridge in an elaborate fireworks show while the Bay Bridge's birthday went by seemingly unnoticed. The Bay Bridge has also suffered other, graver, setbacks along the way.

In the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a section of the bridge's eastern span collapsed, killing a driver and closing the bridge for a month. Since then the bridge has undergone a series of seismic retrofits, including the new eastern span scheduled to open later this year.

While the sheer size of "The Bay Lights" installation is a first for San Francisco, in recent years many cities across the world have hosted contemporary public art projects writ large, sometimes very large.

The artist Olafur Eliasson's "The Waterfalls," went up in New York in 2008 and featured four man-made waterfalls, some as tall as 120 feet (cost: $15 million). In 2005, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates," had Central Park draped in one million square feet of saffron-colored fabric (cost: $21 million).

Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund, a New York based nonprofit organization, said of "The Bay Lights," "What this project confirms for me is the wide recognition that when you invite artists to participate in creating works for all kinds of urban public places, it adds tremendous vitality to those cities."

Mr. Villareal, 46, is best known for large-scale light sculptures that are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Though he now lives in New York City, Mr. Villareal started his career in Silicon Valley. In the 1990s, he worked at the Interval Research Corporation, a technology company in Palo Alto, Calif., started by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Mr. Villareal designed his first light sculpture in 1997 for Burning Man, an arts festival in the Nevada desert.

The tech industry has given generously to the project despite a reputation for being closefisted when it comes to philanthropy.

Marissa Mayer, chief executive at Yahoo, is among the project's patrons. Ron Conway, one of Silicon Valley's most prolific investors, described the bridge in its natural state as "bland," so he donated some $50,000. Paul Buchheit, an early Google employee who created the first version of Gmail gave about $250,000.

For Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, maker of online games like Farmville, and his wife, Alison, donating money and organizing fund-raisers also offered a private perk; they can see the light sculpture from their San Francisco home.

Some arts groups are encouraged by Silicon Valley's support for the project. "I'm hopeful that this is a sign that all the wealth in the tech sector will mean a new wave of investment in public art," said Tom DeCaigny, director of cultural affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission.

And while patrons prepare for celebratory cocktail parties with prime bridge views, the lights will also be visible, for free.

"The great thing about public arts is it does not cost anything to see," Mr. Baume said. "There are no tickets for admission, it is there for everybody."

The U.N. Security Council announced late Monday evening that it will hold closed consultations on North Korea and non-proliferation at 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) Tuesday. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because no official announcement has been made, said the United States is expected to circulate a draft resolution to the full council at the meeting. Council members are then expected to send the draft to their capitals for review.

All 15 council members approved a press statement condemning Pyongyang's nuclear test and pledging further action hours after North Korea carried out its third atomic blast on Feb. 12.

The swift and unanimous response from the U.N.'s most powerful body set the stage for a fourth round of sanctions against Pyongyang.

For the last three weeks, the United States, a close ally of South Korea and Japan, has been negotiating the text of a new resolution with China, North Korea's closest ally.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, whose country holds the council presidency this month, told a news conference Monday that a resolution on North Korea might be approved in March though the text had not yet been circulated.

Last month's statement from the Security Council called the underground test in February a "grave violation" of three U.N. resolutions that ban North Korea from conducting nuclear or missile tests.

North Korea's three nuclear tests — in 2006, 2009 and 2013 — occurred after Pyongyang was condemned by the United Nations for rocket launches.

The Security Council imposed sanctions after the first two nuclear tests and after the North's rocket launch in December, which was viewed as part of the country's covert program to develop ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.

The sanctions are aimed at trying to derail the country's rogue nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. They bar North Korea from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology, and from importing or exporting material for these programs.

The latest sanctions resolution, adopted in January, again demanded that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program and cease missile launches. It slapped sanctions on North Korean companies and government agencies, including its space agency and several individuals.

The diplomats said they did not know what new sanctions would be included in the resolution to be circulated Tuesday.

There has been speculation that a new resolution will strengthen existing sanctions related to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, toughen financial restrictions and cargo inspections, and add additional companies and individuals to the sanctions list.

But two decades after shaking up the sports broadcasting world for the first time by acquiring N.F.L. rights, Murdoch has plans to challenge ESPN head on and claim some of the lucrative revenue that the sports media giant has had largely to itself for more than three decades.

On Tuesday, Fox will announce its intention to start Fox Sports 1, an all-sports network, in August.

The channel will carry Nascar races, Major League Baseball games, college basketball and football, soccer and U.F.C. fights. It will also broadcast studio shows, including one that is to be hosted by Regis Philbin, a celebrated Notre Dame fan.

Murdoch's effort is a long shot to topple ESPN, or at least take a huge bite out of it.

ESPN brings in more than $6 billion annually from its industry-high subscriber fees. It owns the rights to televise Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A., Nascar, tennis, myriad collegiate conferences, the Bowl Championship Series and its new playoffs, and a raft of other sports. Both ESPN and ESPN2 have 98.5 million subscribers.

It is a true empire, with eight domestic cable channels; the ESPN3 broadband network; the Web sites ESPN.com and Grantland.com; a radio network; digital properties like ESPNw, which focuses on women's sports; a magazine; the WatchESPN app, which enables viewing of ESPN on computers, smartphones and tablets; and ownership of the Global X Games, college basketball tournaments and seven bowl games.

Fox Sports 1 will join a market that is far more crowded than it was when Murdoch first contemplated squaring off against ESPN. Not only will Fox face the dominance of ESPN, but NBC and CBS have their own sports channels, which are struggling for viewers and identities. The Big Ten and Pacific-12 Conferences have created their own networks, and the Southeastern Conference is planning one. And in the past decade, Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. have started their own channels.

Still, Fox and its parent, News Corporation, have a companywide faith in sports as a DVR-proof way to attract viewers — especially young men — and a belief that their new sports channel will differentiate itself from the competition, as the Fox News channel has demonstrated in its successful challenge to CNN and then MSNBC. To ensure that Fox Sports 1 has some of the style and attitude that Fox Sports has had since it began in the mid-1990s, Murdoch and Chase Carey, News Corporation's president and chief operating officer, brought back one of their favorite executives, David Hill, for its creation and launch. Hill, the former head of the Fox Sports Media Group, left the division last year for another job within News Corporation.

"We think sports is a huge arena that has room in it to build a really attractive businesses," Carey told analysts on an earnings call last month. He said that the company recognizes the escalating costs of sports rights but "in a world of increasing fragmentation, we think sports continues to be a more and more important and unique part of that overall landscape."

The channel's success might not have to come as a result of beating ESPN at its game.

David Bank, managing director of global media and Internet research at RBC Capital Markets, said that Fox Sports 1 would be a success "from Day 1" and could, in future years, bid against ESPN for N.B.A. rights and any cable package of N.F.L. games that might come to market.

"Do I expect them to be ESPN? No," he said. "Mega-success will be hard to determine for five years."

But, he said, "Rupert and Chase have had a pretty decent run at building long-term value."

Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Nomura Securities, wrote in a recent report that Fox Sports 1 would be a "good start" for News Corporation but was "unlikely to make a material dent to ESPN's business for the investable time horizon."

One way to measure Fox Sports 1's future success will be how many subscribers it gets and the subscriber fees it can accumulate. Fox has spent months working to convert Speed, a motorsports-centric network with 81 million subscribers, to Fox Sports 1. A companion service, Fox Sports 2, will replace another niche channel, Fuel.

Fox is seeking substantially more for Fox Sports 1 than the 31-cent monthly subscriber fee that Speed gets, according to the media research firm SNL Kagan.

Bank estimated that Fox Sports 1 will probably charge cable, satellite and telephone companies 75 cents to $1 a subscriber. "At $1 a sub, it's a massive home run," he said.

By comparison, ESPN charges $5.15 a month and additional fees for its other channels.

"We view Fox as a formidable competitor," said John Skipper, ESPN's president. "They've got the resources of News Corp., and the willingness that Fox has shown in the past to take big bets and to create a difference."

He added: "We like our hand. We just have to play it well."

Fox is certainly asset-rich. It plans to use existing long-term deals to fill Fox Sports 1 with M.L.B. games, including some from the league division series, beginning in 2014; Nascar Sprint Cup and truck races; U.F.C. matches; future World Cup soccer matches; and Big 12 and Pac-12 football and basketball games, as well as those from a basketball conference that is being formed by the seven Catholic universities that are leaving the Big East. The new network is also expected to buy some Big East games from ESPN.

Fox also has 22 regional sports networks to plumb for talent and some of its baseball programming. Two of those regional channels, each in Los Angeles, recently lost the rights to carry the Lakers and the Dodgers — each to networks created by Time Warner Cable. But last November, News Corporation made a major foray into the New York sports market by paying about $2 billion for a 49 percent stake in the YES Network, the profitable channel of the Yankees, with an option to buy up to 80 percent in three years.

Still, the possibility of starting a national sports network constitutes unfinished business at Fox.

In the late 1990s, Fox tied a package of M.L.B. games and a news operation with Keith Olbermann as the star anchor on its regional sports channels. It failed. Recalling that time, a former Fox executive said, "It was Chase's vision that we'd use the regional sports networks to transition into a national sports network."

Then, in 2004, Murdoch tried to create a national channel in partnership with the N.F.L. and cable operators. At the time, Murdoch said, "We want to consider the capacity of pay television subscribers to pay for two ESPNs."

But that effort never got off the ground, and he has waited nine years to make his next move.

Sports will become even more integral by this summer, when News Corporation splits into two publicly traded companies. The company's newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, will join a publishing-based company that will retain the name News Corporation. The 20th Century Fox studio, Fox Broadcasting, Fox Sports, the cable channels FX and Fox News and the regional sports networks will form the Fox Group.

News Corporation has recently grown its sports business in the United States and abroad, making live sports programming central to the Fox Group, executives have said.

In the past year, News Corporation paid $335 million to complete its acquisition of Singapore-based ESPN Star Sports, previously a joint venture with the Walt Disney Company, and $757.6 million to broadcast Indian Premier League cricket through March 2018 on its Star TV channel.

"Across the whole sports portfolio, it's about making choices about where you want to invest and where to prioritize," James Murdoch, the deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation, said on the earnings call last month.

The lawyer, Vinicio Castillo Semán, said at a news conference on Monday that the woman, identified as Nexis de los Santos, 23, had said in a sworn statement not only that she had never gone "to bed with" Mr. Menendez, but also that she had never met him.

On Monday, Senator Menendez, a Democrat, said, "I've always said that these are all false, they're smears, and so I look forward to seeing whatever the Dominican courts have that prove what I've said all along."

Mr. Castillo has been accused of hosting outings on his yacht in which Mr. Menendez had sex with prostitutes. He has strongly denied the allegations and said he would seek a criminal probe into the source of the reports. On Monday, Mr. Castillo distributed copies of the woman's statement. The woman did not attend.

According to Mr. Castillo, the woman claims that she and a friend were approached by another Dominican lawyer who manufactured the accusations against Mr. Menendez.

That lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, could not be reached directly for comment. Last month, an assistant at the lawyer's office said it had dropped the women's case.

The video was recorded without their consent, Mr. Castillo said.

In the video, the two women also claimed they had had sex with Mr. Castillo and Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, a Florida eye doctor who is a prominent Democratic campaign contributor.

Mr. Castillo has said he has known Mr. Menendez for some 15 years and has never seen him with a prostitute. He said he had never hosted any parties involving prostitutes.

In November, the Web site The Daily Caller published an article that included a video interview with two women who claimed to be prostitutes.

Mr. Obama nominated Gina McCarthy, a tough-talking native of Boston and an experienced clean air regulator, to take charge at the Environmental Protection Agency, and Ernest J. Moniz, a physicist and strong advocate of natural gas and nuclear power as cleaner alternatives to coal, to run the Department of Energy.

The appointments, which require Senate confirmation, send an unmistakable signal that the president intends to mount a multifaceted campaign in his second term to tackle climate change by using all the executive branch tools at his disposal.

But even with Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Moniz in place, Mr. Obama would have to confront major hurdles in trying to refashion the American way of producing and consuming energy, the same hurdles that stymied climate and energy policy in his first term.

Among the first of those is a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which the administration appears inclined to approve over the vociferous objections of environmental advocates.

Mr. Obama, in introducing the nominees at the White House on Monday, recognized the political and economic delicacy of the task facing both of them.

"So these two over here," he said, gesturing toward Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Moniz, "they're going to be making sure that we're investing in American energy, that we're doing everything that we can to combat the threat of climate change, that we're going to be creating jobs and economic opportunity in the first place."

It is a difficult, even paradoxical task. Addressing climate change and ensuring domestic energy independence have sometimes proved to be contradictory goals, analysts said.

"The president himself has framed the challenge of going all in to cut the pollution that causes climate change while still having an 'all-of-the-above' energy policy," said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. "We need to make sure we lean heavily on the clean energy alternatives and all the measures that cut carbon pollution, and don't in essence take two steps forward and one step back. We will not solve the problem that way."

Mr. Obama has embraced the boom in unconventional natural gas production, which has brought lower energy prices and reduced emissions as utilities switch from coal to natural gas to produce electricity. But the production of natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, presents difficult environmental issues, including the possibility of groundwater contamination and the unregulated release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Natural gas is cleaner than coal, but it is still a fossil fuel that even its advocates see as a bridge fuel rather than a long-term answer to climate change.

Mr. Obama has also pursued increased offshore drilling for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean, an enterprise fraught with environmental peril, as the BP oil spill in the gulf in 2010 and Shell's mishaps in the Arctic last year dramatized.

In leaning toward construction of the pipeline, the administration would be embracing a project to carry heavy crude oil from tar sands formations in Alberta to refineries in Texas. That would result in the delivery of 800,000 barrels of oil a day from a friendly source and thousands of construction, refinery and spinoff jobs. But a State Department environmental impact report issued Friday notes that extracting, shipping and refining the Canadian oil would produce measurably more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of oil.

Michael A. Levi, a climate and energy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the appointments of Ms. McCarthy, 58, and Mr. Moniz, 68, represent a continuation of the president's first-term policies rather than a sharp break. The two are practical, practiced insiders who put a premium on finding workable solutions and have more experience navigating the federal bureaucracy and Congress than the officials they have been tapped to succeed, Lisa P. Jackson at the E.P.A. and Steven Chu at Energy.

"Putting it all together," Mr. Levi said, "it appears to reinforce the president's stated desire to push forward on a variety of different fronts. These are not people who want to use a club casually. They are not about to use rigid regulations to try to force deep changes in the U.S. economy, but they are also people who want to do big things."

The E.P.A., which the Supreme Court granted authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, is in the midst of writing regulations governing such emissions from new power plants. Those rules, expected to be completed this year, would essentially bar construction of any new coal-fired power plants unless they included the means to capture carbon gases, a technology that does not yet exist on a commercial scale.

But to make a real dent in the nation's emissions, the agency must then devise emissions limits for existing plants, a hugely controversial project that could force the shutdown of dozens of older coal-burning power plants, cause a steep drop in domestic demand for coal and trigger a sharp rise in energy prices.

No matter how carefully written — and Ms. McCarthy is an expert on federal air quality law — any such regulations would be subject to intense opposition in the courts, and in Congress, which could seek to overturn the regulations.

David Doniger, the director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the big issues before the Obama administration were the budget, immigration, gun control and climate. "Climate change is the only one of these where he has the authority to take significant action under laws the Congress has already passed, principally the Clean Air Act, and the energy efficiency laws that Moniz will be implementing," Mr. Doniger said.

"The two agencies can work together," he said. "We think these two appointees both very seriously get climate change."

In addition to the E.P.A., the Energy Department has a strong role in the government's climate change efforts, said Dan W. Reicher, who served in two assistant secretary positions at the department while Mr. Moniz was an under secretary during the Clinton administration.

Some actions would be fairly direct, like setting additional efficiency standards for appliances. The department also still has $17.5 billion in loan guarantee authority for new nuclear projects, Mr. Reicher pointed out, and has primary responsibility for handling civilian nuclear wastes — a problem that is vital to the future of the civilian nuclear power industry.

The Energy Department's failure to begin accepting waste by the contractual deadline, which was in 1998, costs billions of dollars in penalties to taxpayers. And, he said, the department would most likely play a role in another of Mr. Obama's priorities: reducing nuclear weapons.

Life was different. Way different.

On Sunday, Edney was a 17-year-old star quarterback who moonlighted with the New Rochelle High School basketball team. He ranked second in scoring, but as a reserve, and an injured one at that, who nearly missed this particular playoff game with a bum ankle.

By Monday, he had become a new-age celebrity, a (young) man of the moment, sought after, in demand, and all because of one play that lasted a couple of seconds: a two-handed heave that traveled 55 or so feet and won New Rochelle a playoff contest. It became known simply and unoriginally as The Shot.

"That's what the world's calling it," Khalil said.

The world? It certainly seemed that way. Edney went on three morning shows, including "Good Morning America," on which his story followed one about the pope. He appeared on ESPN's flagship program, "SportsCenter," twice. He had an interviewed scheduled with CNN for Tuesday morning and one YouTube video of The Shot had already accumulated more than 1.4 million views by late afternoon.

This said less about the basketball player and his moment than it did about this era of modern sports. In a world driven and captured and analyzed on social media, the feedback is instant, often overdramatized. A high school playoff game can conclude in dramatic fashion in Westchester County, and word can spread across the country in a matter of minutes — the best shot ever, the best buzzer-beater ever, Facebook post after Facebook post Sunday with the same question:

Did you see The Shot?

"It's amazing," said Don Conetta, the principal at New Rochelle. "For all the things we do in education, this one-tenth-of-a-second shot is getting unbelievable attention from the world."

The play itself almost defied description and belief: New Rochelle was losing, 60-58, to Mount Vernon, its counterpart in a rivalry that Mount Vernon usually dominated. All of 2.9 seconds remained in the Section 1 Class AA final. The outlook looked bleak.

Edney's youngest brother turned to their father, Lewis Edney, in the stands and said, "Daddy, we do this all the time in the park."

Coach Rasaun Young called for an inbounds play named Valpo, after the buzzer-beater that Bryce Drew made in the 1998 N.C.A.A. tournament to secure a first-round victory for Valparaiso. That buzzer-beater started with a long inbounds pass, followed by another, shorter pass to Drew on the right wing.

Young called for the same play. It did not unfold how he drew it up.

Edney took the ball along the baseline and heaved the ball down court, toward his teammate Joe Clarke, the same friend he connected with for a winning touchdown late in the state football semifinals. This pass, though, was intercepted by a Mount Vernon player, who could have held the ball or thrown it straight into the air, but who instead tossed it back toward Edney.

Edney had followed his initial throw upcourt. He says he is still not sure exactly why he did that, only that he did. He secured the ball thrown by the Mount Vernon player and in one motion pushed up the desperation heave.

The play-by-play announcer on MSG Varsity deftly switched gears, from "And Mount Vernon is going to hold on and win!" to "But hold on one second!" to a series of pure screams.

New Rochelle Athletic Director Steve Young sat behind the team bench. As he watched The Shot, he liked the trajectory, and he whispered, "This might go in."

It did, and bedlam ensued, first among Mount Vernon and its fans, who assumed the clock had run out before Edney got the shot off, then among New Rochelle and its supporters once the referees affirmed he had. Teammates piled on top of Edney. Fans streamed onto the court. A referee covered his head as the mob approached.

One teammate soon posted on Twitter, along with video of The Shot: "Prom date?"

On Monday afternoon, Young sat inside his office and considered this 24-hour period, as surreal as any he could remember. A newspaper rested on the desk, its headline "Long Shot Earns a Title." Young had received some 50 phone calls, twice that many text messages and more than 20 news media requests.

He made sure to mention all that happened at New Rochelle this school year: the state football title, the national cheerleading championship, even a Super Bowl ring for Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, an alum. Rice spoke at a rally Saturday, attended the game and posted a picture of the scoreboard on Twitter afterward. The last time New Rochelle won a Section 1 basketball title was 2005, back when Rice was the point guard.

The Shot, well, it shot across the Internet, noted by Duke guard Seth Curry on Twitter with a "Wow!" and by Knicks guard J. R. Smith.

It meant more, though, to Edney, whose mother died from cervical cancer in 2006. At the news conference Monday, Edney spread his arms wide to show the "momma's boy" tattoo, along with the date of her birth (right arm) and the day she died (left).

Edney's father had sat behind the team bench, and when his son launched the ball, Lewis Edney said, "I thought his mother took it out of his hands and scored."

He added, "At the end of the day, I think it was his mother watching over him."

The improbable win sent New Rochelle to the state regional semifinals, the next game scheduled for Tuesday. Edney repeatedly said his news tour and newfound celebrity would not affect his play, or his team's preparations for that contest, even if that seemed hard to fathom.

"It's a great story," Young said. "I hope, though, we can keep this in perspective. This is a great highlight. I just hope this isn't the highlight of their lives."

Edney is set to play quarterback next fall at Dean College in Massachusetts. The events of the past two days would not affect those plans, he said.

Reporters continued to ask Edney if this represented a dream fulfilled. No, he answered. He could not have dreamed this in the first place.

"It was a miracle," he said.

But as president, Mr. Obama is charged with minimizing the damage from the spending reductions and must steer clear of talking down the economy. A sustained campaign against the cuts by the president could become what one former aide called "a self-fulfilling kind of mess."

As a result, Mr. Obama is carefully navigating between maximizing heat on Republicans to undo the cuts while mobilizing efforts to make sure that the steep spending cuts do not hurt Americans. His advisers acknowledge the potential political perils ahead as the president struggles to find the right kind of balance.

At his first cabinet meeting of his second term on Monday, Mr. Obama called the cuts an "area of deep concern" that would slow the country's growth, but promised to "manage through it" while pursuing a robust agenda. It was an echo of his formulations from the White House podium on Friday, when he began to dial back the dire warnings about long lines at airports and furloughs of F.B.I. agents, to name a couple, that he had made over the past several weeks.

"I've instructed not just my White House but every agency to make sure that regardless of some of the challenges that they may face because of sequestration, we're not going to stop working on behalf of the American people," Mr. Obama said, using the formal name for the spending cuts.

The president's approach is unlikely to satisfy Mr. Obama's most partisan backers, who view blaming Republicans for the deep spending cuts — especially in the military — as a tantalizing opportunity for political gain. And stepping back from a battle over the cuts could allow the significantly lower spending to become the "new normal" for the federal budget.

But a high-profile focus on the cuts in the months ahead is risky, too.

If severe economic pain ultimately fails to materialize, Mr. Obama could be blamed for hyping the situation, much like his cabinet secretaries were in recent weeks. (Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for example, was criticized for declaring the nation would be "less safe" because of furloughs of border patrol agents.)

Seeking short-term political gain with the spending cuts could also make more difficult the president's hopes for a longer-term budget deal with Republicans on taxes and entitlement spending.

Mr. Obama's team is keenly aware that the more he focuses on the cuts, the more he threatens to divert attention from his second-term priorities on guns, immigration and preschool.

"You can't simply put them on hold and simply deal with this," David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Mr. Obama, said in an interview. The danger of sounding the alarm on the sequester, he said, is that "you can so magnify the impact of it so that it becomes an even bigger self-fulfilling kind of mess."

Mr. Obama was careful during his first term to seize on any bit of good economic news so that no one could accuse him of hurting the economy by his statements. That desire to be upbeat — as in 2010, when administration officials declared a "recovery summer" just before the economy dipped again — sometimes got him into trouble.

The question now for the president is how much to keep up the drumbeat of concern about the spending cuts in the weeks ahead.

In talking points distributed by the White House to Democratic pundits on Friday, advisers suggested focusing on how Republican refusal to accept tax increases will "threaten our national security and hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs and our entire economy while too many Americans are still looking for work."

But the document also urges them to make the point that it is time to turn to other issues. Former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader during the Clinton years and the first term of George W. Bush, said he expects the president will not spend much time talking about the cuts.

"What he has to do is say, 'I warned you about this, it's going to happen, it's gradual, but at the same time, we've got a country to run,' " Mr. Daschle said. "You're not going to hear him with much more hyperbolic rhetoric."

Senior White House aides said as much on Friday before Mr. Obama formally signed the order putting the cuts into effect. They told reporters that sequestration cuts would not be the only thing the president talks about — or even the majority of what he talks about — in the weeks ahead.

But they said he will try to score a political point when opportunities arise.

Aides continue to bet that they will. Even without Mr. Obama's intervention, White House officials said they expect the effect of the cuts will slowly become more visible.

Government workers will begin forced furloughs in April, air control towers in small towns will eventually close and a lack of overtime for airport security officers will make lines longer over time.

"This is a slow-roll disaster instead of a meteor hitting," said Matt Bennett, a Clinton-era adviser and the vice president for communications at Third Way, a liberal research group. "It's coming on slowly. You are going to see it popping up."

But it's also possible that the severe angst is limited to relatively small communities of interest: federal workers, defense contractors, service providers who depend on government grants. If that happens, Mr. Obama would have little leverage to use against Republicans.

"It's imperative not to lose sight of the rest of the agenda," said Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. "They are smart enough to realize it's a delicate balancing act."

For consumers, being able to take their iPhone or any other type of handset with them when they switch carriers could make it easier to take advantage of lower rates once an initial contract is fulfilled. That might mean more price competition and more choices for cellphone customers.

The administration and the F.C.C., under Julius Genachowski, announced that they will urge Congress to overturn a ruling made last year by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress that made it illegal for consumers to unlock their cellphones, opening the protective software that restricts most phones from working on another carrier's network.

Most consumers probably are not even aware that there is a process that would allow them to keep their current phone when they switch from one national carrier to another — but only after they have satisfied their initial service contract. The freedom to keep a phone regardless of the carrier has become a popular cause in technology circles, and an online petition to the White House gained more than 100,000 signatures in a month, prompting a response.

"If you have paid for a mobile device, and aren't bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network," R. David Edelman, a senior White House adviser for Internet, innovation and policy, wrote in a blog post on the White House Web site.

"It's common sense," he said, and it raises concerns about consumer choice, competition and innovation.

Without a change, the potential consequences for unauthorized unlocking, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are stiff: a $500,000 fine and five years in prison.

Wireless phone companies say they do not understand what the fuss is about. The big carriers each have policies that allow for phone unlocking on request once a user has fulfilled the initial contract terms. And, the carriers say, there are plenty of places to buy an unlocked phone to be used on a pay-as-you-go basis.

"We'll unlock your device if you've fulfilled the terms of your service agreement," AT&T, one of the largest wireless carriers, said in a statement Monday. "And, if you bring an unlocked device that will work on our network, we'll sell you a SIM card and service."

The key, therefore, is whether a cellphone designed to operate on one company's network will operate on another company's system. Unlike in Europe, cellphone systems in the United States do not all operate using the same technology, meaning a phone from one carrier might not easily transfer to another.

Michael Altschul, a senior vice president of CTIA — The Wireless Association, a trade group representing cellphone companies, said the national wireless carriers only insist on a phone remaining locked for the duration of the service contract so they can recover some of the cost of their subsidy that reduces the purchase price of the phone. Consumers have long been able to buy phones that already are unlocked, but that usually requires paying full price, which is often several times the subsidized price at which carriers offer phones along with a two-year contract.

For example, an unlocked iPhone 5 can be bought from the Apple store for $649; the same phone bought from AT&T costs $199 if the buyer accepts a two-year contract for wireless service.

The ban on unlocking a cellphone became an issue with the passage in 1988 of the copyright act, which among other provisions makes it illegal to circumvent digital protection technology. Unlocking a phone requires altering the software that restricts use of the phone to a certain carrier's network, and runs afoul of the act.

But until recently, the copyright office had granted an exemption for mobile phones, subject to review every few years. Last year, however, the copyright office did not renew the exemption, prompting protests from the tech community.

The Library of Congress issued a statement Monday saying it agreed with the Obama administration that the issue of whether consumers should be able to unlock their phones "has implications for telecommunications policy" and that it should be reviewed by Congress and the administration.

Because the Library of Congress, and therefore the copyright office, are part of the legislative branch, the White House cannot simply overturn the current ruling. But both the White House and the F.C.C. urged Congress to take up the issue.