pay­ing $500,000 to have their two daugh­ters la­beled as re­cruits to the USC crew team, even though nei­ther par­tic­i­pated in the sport.

They have pleaded not guilty to charges of con­spir­acy to com­mit fraud and money laun­der­ing.

Law­yers for the Los An­ge­les-based Latham & Wat­kins law firm, which Ms. Lough­lin and Mr. Gian­nulli have re­tained for rep­re­sen­ta­tion, said Tues­day that it rep­re­sented USC in an un­re­lated real es­tate case that had been han­dled by dif­fer­ent law­yers.

Pros­e­cu­tors had ar­gued that re­tain­ing the firm could pose a se­ri­ous con­flict, es­pe­cially if the firm’s law­yers ques­tioned USC of­fi­cials at trial or gath­ered in­for­ma­tion from the uni­ver­sity dur­ing the case’s dis­cov­ery phase.

But in court Tues­day, As­sis­tant U.S. At­tor­ney Eric Rosen ac­knowl­edged that USC, as of this month, was no lon­ger a cli­ent.

In­stead, he ar­gued, there is a po­ten­tially greater con­flict with Mr. Gian­nulli’s ad­di­tional coun­sel from the firm Don­nelly, Con­roy & Gel­haar.

The firm rep­resents Da­vina Isack­son, who, along with her hus­band, Cal­i­for­nia real es­tate de­vel­oper Bruce Isack­son, has pleaded guilty to pay­ing $600,000 in shares of stock to get their daugh­ters into USC and the Univer­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Los An­ge­les.

They are among the few par­ents co­op­er­at­ing with pros­e­cu­tors.

“I don’t re­ally see how it could work,” Mr. Rosen said.

George Vien, an at­tor­ney for the firm, said it is pre­pared to take steps to pre­vent con­flicts of in­ter­est, such as not cross-ex­am­in­ing Ms. Isack­son in the un­likely event she is asked to tes­tify in Mr. Gian­nulli’s case.

Judge Kel­ley said she would de­cide later on that po­ten­tial con­flict, a type that is “typ­i­cally con­sid­ered to be the most se­ri­ous.”

“This is the sit­u­a­tion where judges most of­ten re­move law­yers from cases, if they are rep­re­sent­ing some­one who is co­op­er­at­ing against an­other per­son,” Judge Kel­ley told Mr. Gian­nulli.

At least four other par­ents have also hired law firms that

work for USC, and at least two have cho­sen law­yers that have done work for George­town Univer­sity, an­other al­leged vic­tim.

So far, such ar­range­ments have gen­er­ally been al­lowed as long as par­ents are aware of the po­ten­tial con­flicts.

Tues­day’s hear­ing was just the sec­ond court ap­pear­ance for Ms. Lough­lin and Mr. Gian­nulli fol­low­ing an ini­tial brief­ing April 3. They join 17 other par­ents fight­ing fed­eral charges in the brib­ery case.

Fif­teen oth­ers have al­ready agreed to plead guilty, in­clud­ing Des­per­ate House­wives star Felic­ity Huff­man.

A to­tal of 51 peo­ple have been charged in the case, which pros­e­cu­tors say is the big­gest ad­mis­sions scan­dal ever pros­e­cuted in the U.S.

Many of the par­ents are ac­cused of pay­ing an ad­mis­sions con­sul­tant to bribe coaches in ex­change for help­ing their chil­dren get into schools as fake ath­letic re­cruits.

Some oth­ers paid the con­sul­tant to bribe exam ad­min­is­tra­tors to al­low some­one else to take tests for their chil­dren, au­thor­i­ties say.

fo­cus on scor­ing achieve­ment. We have ac­knowl­edged that we have per­haps over­stepped.”

The score was part of a larger rat­ing sys­tem called the En­vi­ron­men­tal Con­text Dash­board that was pro­vided to ad­mis­sions of­fi­cers along with a stu­dent’s SAT scores.

In ad­di­tion to elim­i­nat­ing the sin­gle hard­ship score, the Col­lege Board changed the name of the dash­board tool to “Land­scape” and said that af­ter this ad­mis­sions cy­cle, the board would be­gin re­port­ing school and neigh­bor­hood dis­ad­van­tage scores to stu­dents and fam­i­lies.

That in­for­ma­tion is cur­rently shown only to ad­mis­sions of­fi­cers — an­other as­pect of the sys­tem that drew pub­lic crit­i­cism.

The Col­lege Board also re­duced the num­ber of fac­tors that are con­sid­ered as part of the school or neigh­bor­hood score and will list those fac­tors on the re­ports.

Mr. Cole­man de­fended the over­all goal of the proj­ect, which he said was to pro­vide col­leges with a con­sis­tent way of judg­ing the neigh­bor­hoods and schools that stu­dents came from.

Ad­mis­sions of­fi­cers lack high school in­for­ma­tion on about 25 per­cent of ap­pli­ca­tions, ac­cord­ing to the Col­lege Board, and the new tool is fill­ing that gap.

“It isn’t a re­treat from the no­tion that it isn’t about who knows you, or who knows you and your neigh­bor­hood, or where you grew up,” Mr. Cole­man said.

The ad­ver­sity score was an­nounced in May and im­me­di­ately be­came part of the de­bate over the fair­ness of col­lege ad­mis­sions. In the past year, fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors ex­posed a na­tional col­lege ad­mis­sions cheat­ing ring, in which wealthy par­ents were ac­cused of pay­ing bribes to have their chil­dren’s test and sports cre­den­tials fal­si­fied. Af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion is fac­ing court chal­lenges at Har­vard and other elite col­leges.

the nu­clear deal, Iran has lost bil­lions of dol­lars in busi­ness deals al­lowed by the ac­cord as the United States re­im­posed and es­ca­lated sanc­tions block­ing Te­hran from sell­ing crude abroad, a cru­cial source of hard cur­rency for the Islamic Re­pub­lic.

Mr. Rou­hani’s U-turn can be viewed as a re­sult of pres­sure from hard-lin­ers in the Ira­nian es­tab­lish­ment who op­pose tak­ing a softer tone to­ward the West.

But it could also re­flect that the par­a­digm of grand photo-op sum­mits in ex­otic lo­ca­tions — such as Mr. Trump’s meet­ings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — while strin­gent sanc­tions re­main in place, does not nec­es­sar­ily ap­peal to Mr. Rou­hani, whose sig­na­ture ac­com­plish­ment was the nu­clear deal, which started un­rav­el­ing with Mr. Trump’s pull­out.

The hard-line Ja­van daily, which is close to Iran’s pow­er­ful Revo­lu­tion­ary Guard, warned Mr. Rou­hani on its Tues­day front page: “Mr. Rou­hani, photo di­plo­macy will not de­velop the coun­try.”

likely loss in Cal-if­or­nia.

The count is also used to map dis­tricts for state leg­is­la­tures, city coun­cils, and school boards, and to de­ter­mine the flow of fed­eral money to state and lo­cal gov­ern­ments.

George Wash­ing­ton Univer­sity’s An­drew Reamer es­ti­mated that as much as $900 bil­lion a year in fed­eral fund­ing is tied to the cen­sus in some way. He cal­cu­lates that each per­son missed in the cen­sus would cost a state an av­er­age of nearly $1,100 a year un­der five Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices pro­grams, in­clud­ing Med­ic­aid.

For the first time, the Cen­sus Bureau is re­ly­ing in 2020 on most re­spon­dents an­swer­ing ques­tions via com­puter, tab­let, or smart phone. Re­spon­dents can call a phone num­ber to give their an­swers. Those who don’t re­spond will re­ceive pa­per ques­tion­naires in the mail.

If all else fails, the bu­reau will send out “enu­mer­a­tors” to knock on doors.

em­ployed is ours,” said Ota­vio Rego Bar­ros, the gov­ern­ment spokes­man, de­scrib­ing the Bol­sonaro ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ap­proach to ac­cept­ing or re­ject­ing for­eign help. “Our sov­er­eignty is non­nego­tia­ble.”

More than 26,000 fires have been recorded in the Am­a­zon rain for­est, the high­est num­ber in a de­cade, set­ting off calls for more pro­tec­tions.

The rain for­ests ab­sorb a sig­nifi­cant share of the planet’s cli­mate-warm­ing car­bon di­ox­ide, are home to in­dig­e­nous peoples, and are a vi­tal hab­i­tat for en­dan­gered spe­cies.

Mr. Bol­sonaro, who had sug­gested that Mr. Ma­cron’s real mo­tive was to shield France’s ag­ri­cul­ture from Bra­zil­ian

com­pe­ti­tion, wrote on Twit­ter Mon­day that the pres­i­dent “dis­guises his in­ten­tions be­hind the idea of an ‘al­li­ance’ of the G7 coun­tries to ‘save’ the Am­a­zon, as if we were a col­ony or a no-man’s land.”

Pres­i­dent Trump praised Mr. Bol­sonaro on Tues­day.

“He is work­ing very hard on the Am­a­zon fires and in all re­spects do­ing a great job for the peo­ple of Bra­zil — Not easy. He and his coun­try have the full and com­plete sup­port of the USA!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twit­ter.

But the ran­cor over the G7 do­na­tion spilled into the United Na­tions, which is plan­ning a cli­mate sum­mit next month dur­ing its an­nual

Gen­eral As­sem­bly.

Asked at a news brief­ing about Bra­zil’s ap­par­ent re­fusal to ac­cept the money, Luis Al­fonso de Alba, a Mex­i­can dip­lo­mat who is the sec­re­tary-gen­eral’s spe­cial en­voy for the cli­mate sum­mit, sought to avoid tak­ing sides.

“I wel­come the will­ing­ness to sup­port the ef­forts” to com­bat the Am­a­zon fires, Mr. de Alba said. At the same time, he said, “the key for us is to work with the gov­ern­ment of Bra­zil.”

Such con­tri­bu­tions, he said, “have al­ways been done in an apo­lit­i­cal way.”

Mr. Bol­sonaro has been crit­i­cized by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists for calls to open up pro­tected parts of the Am­a­zon rain for­est

to log­ging, farm­ing, min­ing, and other de­vel­op­ment, which many say has caused fur­ther ex­ploitation of the re­gion.

The il­le­gally set fires and re­sult­ing de­foresta­tion, crit­ics say, are be­ing driven by his pol­i­cies.

Mr. Bol­sonaro and mem­bers of his Cabi­net met Tues­day with gov­er­nors from all nine states that make up Bra­zil’s Am­a­zon re­gion to dis­cuss the fire and of­fers of aid.

Some gov­er­nors made clear they sup­port Mr. Bol­sonaro’s drive to de­velop the Am­a­zon and com­plained that too much of their states’ ter­ri­to­ries were blocked off as in­dig­e­nous and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­serves, ham­per­ing their growth.

Others were more con­cerned with se­cur­ing the help of­fered by the G7 coun­tries and with bol­ster­ing di­plo­macy.

“We need sup­port, in­ter­na­tional sup­port, in­sti­tu­tional sup­port from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment,” said Wil­son Lima, gov­er­nor of Am­a­zonas state. “All help is wel­come.”

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Mr. Bol­sonaro blamed the in­ter­na­tional cri­sis in which he finds him­self on me­dia out­lets that re­ported on the fire, on those who op­pose him for not want­ing to pro­tect more in­dig­e­nous land, and on France, whose pres­i­dent Mr. Bol­sonaro be­lieves has over­re­acted to the prob­lem to score points at home.