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PALM SPRINGS’ OLD GUARD
PAGE TWO
PAGE 7 | BUSINESS
BACK PAGE | TRAVEL
..
INTERNATIONAL EDITION | MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2017
Immigrant
and citizen,
French-style
Pamela Druckerman
Contributing Writer
After weeks
of circling,
Merkel to
meet Trump
Zika’s harsh toll in Brazil
ESCADA, BRAZIL
Impoverished parents
struggle to take care of the
needs of their children
WASHINGTON
BY PAM BELLUCK
AND TANIA FRANCO
OPINION
PARIS Soon after Donald Trump was
inaugurated, I got a letter from
France’s interior ministry informing
me that I was now French. By the time
it arrived, I’d been French for nearly
two weeks, without even knowing it.
(“Had you felt yourself becoming more
and more rude?” a friend asked.)
I didn’t immediately see the letter in
geopolitical terms, because I was filled
with the flush of my new Frenchness.
“You’re now sleeping with a Frenchwoman!” I informed my husband in
bed that night. I picked up some litter
on the street — now my street — and
finally cracked open my copy of “The
Stranger” in French. After 13 years in
Paris, I suddenly relished being asked
where I was
from, so I could
In this
smile and say
nationalist
with my American accent, “Je
era, having
suis française.”
a second
I had applied
passport
to become
no longer
French — or
rather Francoseems like
American, as I’m
a party trick.
now a dual citizen — partly
because I could:
I’d lived and paid taxes here for long
enough. As the wife of a British citizen,
I could already live anywhere in Europe. And I had an American passport
— the ultimate guarantee of security.
This had been proved true in my family: My great-grandparents left Russia
for America, where they prospered.
The relatives who stayed behind were
killed.
But in the roughly year and a half
that it took the French to process my
paperwork, America and the world had
changed. In this new nationalist era,
having a second passport no longer
seems like a party trick. For a foreigner, it’s an attempt to ensure that
you won’t suddenly become unwelcome. Yet there’s less room for people
who belong to more than one place.
Becoming French was an achievement in itself. I lost whole days trying
to get the correct stamps on documents. I managed to pass a written
test, in which I had to select the vacation that best matched certain criteria.
(This is a useful skill in a country with
two-week school holidays about every
six weeks.)
But during my interview, I froze
when asked why I wanted to become
French. I remembered hearing that
when a rabbi asks someone why he
wants to convert, the best answer is
that he just feels a burning need to be
Jewish. Maybe acquiring Frenchness
is similar, and I should say it’s a
DRUCKERMAN, PAGE 11
Not a soul was in sight on the narrow
dusty street, except for a cat skittering
under a three-quarter moon.
It was 2:30 a.m., and in a small pink
house up 29 steps carved jaggedly into a
red clay embankment, Vera Lúcia da
Silva was readying her baby for a journey to the city of Recife, two and a half
hours away. Cradling Sophia Valentina,
she walked through the fog-shrouded
town, then climbed into a government
van for the jostling ride, arriving just after sunrise. They make the arduous trip
several times a week. It is the only way
to get the treatment and therapy Sophia
needs for an ominous array of problems
caused by the Zika virus.
Now more than a year old, Sophia is a
child of the Zika epidemic, one of nearly
2,500 babies in Brazil born to infected
mothers, with brain damage so profound the consequences are only beginning to be understood.
Thirteen months after the World
Health Organization declared Zika a
global health emergency, some of the
public alarm over the mosquito-borne
virus that swept through Latin America
is receding. In November, the W.H.O.
lifted its emergency designation, but
Zika has hardly disappeared. Thousands of new Zika infections continue to
be reported throughout Latin America,
and W.H.O. officials said that their action simply signals that, like malaria or
yellow fever, Zika is a continuing threat
in the region rather than an urgent pandemic.
For families of Zika babies, however,
the disastrous effects are only
deepening. That is especially true in the
impoverished cities and villages of
northeastern Brazil, where the connection between the mysterious virus and
infants born with tiny misshapen heads
was first detected and where hundreds
of families are struggling to give these
babies the best lives possible.
Family relationships have been upended, precarious livelihoods shattered.
Some parents have had to leave jobs to
devote themselves to their child’s care.
High rates of teenage pregnancy in
Brazil add another layer of hardship, as
adolescents with braces on their teeth
and homework to finish find themselves
the mothers of afflicted infants.
And doctors and researchers are just
starting to grasp the medical consequences of Zika. Besides the alarmingly
small heads characteristic of microcephaly, many babies have a long list of
varied symptoms, leading experts to rename their condition “congenital Zika
syndrome.” They can have seizures,
breathing problems, trouble swallowing, weakness and stiffness in muscles
and joints preventing them from even
lifting their heads, clubbed feet, vision
and hearing problems, and ferocious irritability.
Some have passed their first birth-
Threat posed by Russia
could give the leaders
some common ground
BY MARK LANDLER
When President Trump welcomes
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
to the Oval Office on Tuesday, their
meeting will take on a symbolism unlike
any he has held so far: The great disrupter confronts the last defender of the
liberal world order.
Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel are poles
apart on issues like immigration and
trade; they have circled each other warily since the American presidential election. But both sides, officials said, are determined not to let this first meeting devolve into a clash of competing worldviews.
Ms. Merkel has been studying Mr.
Trump’s speeches to get an insight into
the new president’s thinking. American
officials said Mr. Trump would ask the
chancellor for advice on how to deal
with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom, after dozens of meetings
over her 11 years in power, she knows
better than any other leader in the West.
The threat posed by Russia to Europe
could give Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trump
common ground. The Trump administration is demanding that Germany and
its other NATO allies increase their military budgets, a message the Germans
appear to be taking to heart, even if their
spending still falls well short of what the
United States would like.
“You might almost call it serendipity,”
said Josef Joffe, the publisher and editor
of the German newspaper Die Zeit.
“Just as Trump is pushing the Europeans to shape up and pay up, the Germans have quite independently realized
they are facing a strategic threat on
their eastern border.”
But if Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel find
common cause on NATO, they risk new
tensions over trade. Administration officials have railed against Germany’s
huge trade surplus with the United
States. One of Mr. Trump’s top economic
advisers, Peter Navarro, recently acMERKEL, PAGE 5
ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Íris Adriane do Nascimento Santos, with her daughter, Alícia. She goes to at least two therapy and doctors’ appointments for Alícia daily.
days, but have neurological development closer to that of 3-month-old infants, doctors say. Some microcephaly
cases appear so dire that experts liken
them to a previously rare variant called
“fetal brain disruption sequence.” And
new issues keep cropping up, including
hydrocephalus, excess fluid in the brain.
Now, new waves of impaired children,
who appeared normal at birth, are being
identified. For some, microcephaly and
other symptoms are emerging months
The symptoms include seizures,
breathing problems, vision issues
and ferocious irritability.
later, as their brains, with malformations or debilitated or destroyed cells,
fail to develop enough to match their
physical growth. Experts predict there
will be more children who still seem unaffected, but whose problems will sur-
Too much spring in runners’ steps?
ON RUNNING
New shoe designs bring
debate on whether they
provide unfair advantage
BY JERÉ LONGMAN
The shoes came in the colors of a tropical drink, lime and orange and pink, as if
the logo ought to be an umbrella instead
of a Nike swoosh. You half expected the
insoles to smell of rum and coconut.
If the color scheme suggested frivolity, race results did not. The shoes cushioned the feet of all three medalists in
the men’s marathon at the Rio Olympics
last summer. Later, in the fall, they were
worn by the winners of major
marathons in Berlin, Chicago and New
York.
The latest shoe designs have
produced fast times and impressive results in international races. But they
have also spurred yet another debate
Y(1J85IC*KKNMKS( +=!"!?!#!#
about the advance of technology and the
gray area where innovation meets extremely vague rules about what is considered unfair performance enhancement for the feet.
Where to draw the line of permissible
assistance?
Many sports have struggled with the
answer. Swimming allowed record-setting, full-body suits, then banned them
after the 2008 Beijing Olympics because
they gave an unfair advantage in buoyancy and speed. And track and field
wrestled with the issue of prosthetic
blades worn by the South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius.
The latest issue is shoes. Track’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, said in an
email that it had received a number of
inquiries about elite runners’ wearing
new designs made by various companies. Its technical committee will meet
within two weeks to “see if we need to
change or review approvals.”
Bret Schoolmeester, Nike’s senior director for global running footwear, said,
“We’re very confident we’re doing
NIKE
The Zoom Vaporfly Elite, a customized
shoe that will be used in an effort to crack
the two-hour mark in the marathon.
things within the rules and above
board.”
Last Tuesday, Nike unveiled a new
shoe, a customized version of the one
worn by the marathon winners in Rio de
Janeiro and other recent high-profile
races, as part of the company’s bold —
some say gimmicky — attempt to break
two hours in the marathon in early May.
Adidas, whose shoes have been worn
by the last four men to set the world
marathon record, also recently unveiled
a shoe for its own, less publicized attempt to lower the current record from 2
hours 2 minutes 57 seconds to 1:59:59 or
faster.
George Hirsch, the chairman of New
York Road Runners, which organizes
the New York City Marathon and more
than 50 other races, said elite races and
age-group competitions could be affected by the latest shoe technology. It
would be impossible to check the shoes
of hundreds or thousands of runners before each race, he said.
“This is a game changer, in the sense
that if the shoe companies get patents
and these shoes go onto the market, and
they’re in wide use, it does make you
wonder if it’ll be a level playing field if
people can use these advantages,”
Hirsch said.
All shoes are considered to enhance
performance. Otherwise, everyone
would run barefoot. But at what point is
the line of inequitable advantage
SHOE, PAGE 13
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Issue Number
No. 41,678
face in toddlerhood or their school
years.
Doctors don’t yet know the extent of
the disease, said Dr. Vanessa Van der
Linden, a neuropediatrician in Recife
who helped discover the link between
Zika and microcephaly. “We only know
what’s easy to see.”
Dr. Van der Linden is one of scores of
devoted doctors and therapists helping
families at public and nonprofit hospiZIKA, PAGE 6
FABRIZIO BENSCH/REUTERS
Chancellor Angela Merkel will talk about
trade and NATO with President Trump.