Does Rising Tide Lift All Boats? At Suez, They ll Soon Find Out.

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VOL. CLXX . . . No. 59,011

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NEW YORK, SUNDAY, MARCH 28, 2021

? 2021 The New York Times Company

20 Lives Weigh DEMOCRATS SEEK

On Plan to Shut TO RAISE TAXES

Guant¨¢namo

ON THE RICHEST

First Detainees¡¯ Paths

Reveal Challenges

NEGOTIATING ON DETAILS

By CAROL ROSENBERG

THE NEW YORK TIMES

¡®A Day of Shame¡¯ in Myanmar

Dozens of people, including several children, were killed as security forces cracked down on protests across the country. Page 11.

Mistrust, Lies American Dream Undone by the Unimaginable

mass murder after Ahmad Alissa,

And a Variant

was charged with gunning

Boulder Suspect Tears 21,

down 10 people at a supermarket

Ravage Brazil

Families¡¯ Lives Apart, in Boulder, Colo.

This article is by Jack Healy,

Stephanie Saul, Ali Watkins, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Sara

Aridi.

By ERNESTO LONDO?O

and LET?CIA CASADO

P?RTO ALEGRE, Brazil ¡ª The

patients began arriving at hospitals in P?rto Alegre far sicker and

younger than before. Funeral

homes were experiencing a

steady uptick in business, while

exhausted doctors and nurses

pleaded in February for a lockdown to save lives.

But Sebasti?o Melo, P?rto Alegre¡¯s mayor, argued there was a

greater imperative.

¡°Put your life on the line so that

we can save the economy,¡± Mr.

Melo appealed to his constituents

in late February.

Now P?rto Alegre, a prosperous

city in southern Brazil, is at the

heart of a stunning breakdown of

the country¡¯s health care system

¡ª a crisis foretold.

More than a year into the pandemic, deaths in Brazil are at their

peak and highly contagious variants of the coronavirus are sweeping the nation, enabled by political

dysfunction, widespread complacency and conspiracy theories.

The country, whose leader, President Jair Bolsonaro, has played

down the threat of the virus, is

now reporting more new cases

and deaths per day than any other

country in the world.

¡°We have never seen a failure of

the health system of this magnitude,¡± said Ana de Lemos, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders in Brazil. ¡°And we

don¡¯t see a light at the end of the

tunnel.¡±

On Wednesday, the country surpassed 300,000 Covid-19 deaths,

with roughly 125 Brazilians succumbing to the disease every

hour. Health officials in public and

private hospitals were scrambling

to expand critical care units, stock

up on dwindling supplies of oxygen and procure scarce intubation

sedatives that are being sold at an

exponential markup.

Intensive care units in Bras¨ªlia,

the capital, and 16 of Brazil¡¯s 26

states report dire shortages of

available beds, with capacity below 10 percent, and many are experiencing

rising

contagion

(when 90 percent of such beds are

full the situation is considered

dire).

In Rio Grande do Sul, the state

that includes P?rto Alegre, the

waiting list for intensive care unit

beds doubled over the past two

Continued on Page 6

ARVADA, Colo. ¡ª Two decades

after they left Syria for a new

home in the Rocky Mountains, it

looked from the outside as if the

Alissa family had made it in America.

After years of moving from

rental to rental, they bought a seven-bedroom gabled home in the

Denver suburbs near golf courses

and walking trails. Their children

attended high-rated schools. The

family ran a handful of Middle

Eastern restaurants across the

Denver area where customers

raved about the lamb kebabs and

the pillowy pitas. Friends recalled

the big, multigenerational family

as hard-working and generous.

But there were also signs of tur-

Including His Own

bulence. Court records showed

that some members of the family

had faced evictions, had been

cited for reckless endangerment

and had run-ins with the police

over the years. A real-estate dispute within the family had spilled

into court. There were tensions

with neighbors about noise, toddlers from the Alissas¡¯ home wandering into the street with no

adults in sight and cars screeching in and out of their driveway.

Whatever its complications, the

Alissa family¡¯s story of immigrant

striving has now become yoked to

a distinctly American tragedy of

The young man who was a daily

presence in the family¡¯s lives ¡ª

living in an upstairs bedroom of

the family home, working at the

family¡¯s Sultan Grill restaurant ¡ª

has now become the urgent focus

of a wide-ranging criminal investigation.

Nearly a week after the shooting, investigators say they are still

searching to understand Mr. Alissa¡¯s motives and do not know why

he chose a supermarket 15 miles

from his home.

Detectives have not yet fully

combed through his electronic devices and other evidence ¡ª a

process that could take days or

more ¡ª and Mr. Alissa is not talking to law enforcement personnel,

according to a person briefed on

Continued on Page 21

WASHINGTON ¡ª On Jan. 11,

2002, at the desolate air strip at

Guant¨¢namo Bay, United States

Marines escorted 20 prisoners

clad in orange uniforms from an

Air Force cargo plane ¡ª ¡°the

worst of the worst,¡± the Pentagon

called them ¡ª making them the

first inmates of the wartime detention center that remains open

to this day.

In the years that followed, 760

more would come and all but the

40 detainees still there today

would go. But the fates and misfortunes of those first 20 ¡ª who

were introduced to the world in a

Navy photograph, penned and on

their knees ¡ª illustrates both the

complex two-decade history of

Guant¨¢namo Bay starting in the

harrowing period after the Sept. 11

attacks and the challenge that

confronts the Biden administration as it develops a plan to try to

close the prison.

Just two of those first 20 men

are still at Guant¨¢namo. One is Ali

Hamza al Bahlul, the only prisoner there currently convicted of

a war crime, and he is serving a

life sentence. The other is a

Tunisian man, Ridah bin Saleh al

Yazidi, 56, who was cleared to go

years ago but who has refused to

cooperate with efforts to repatriate or resettle him.

The rest ¡ª a mix of hardened

fighters, low-level combatants

and men who found themselves in

the wrong place at the wrong time

¡ª are long gone, repatriated or

dispersed across the globe to 11

nations, including Australia and

some in the Persian Gulf. Aside

from Mr. Bahlul, who is in his 50s,

only one other of the original 20

ever faced charges.

Some of the first 20 have managed to make good on Guant¨¢namo dreams of marrying and

having children. Some have

sought obscurity. Many have not

put the past behind them.

They include four men who

have emerged as Taliban political

and military leaders. Two others

are languishing in a prison in the

Continued on Page 16

Biden¡¯s Plan for Economy

Will Require Trillions

in New Revenue

By JIM TANKERSLEY

and EMILY COCHRANE

WASHINGTON ¡ª Democrats

have spent the last several years

clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as

a necessary antidote to widening

economic inequality and a rebuke

of President Donald J. Trump¡¯s

signature tax cuts.

Now, under President Biden,

they have a shot at ushering in the

largest federal tax increase since

1942. It could help pay for a host of

spending programs that liberal

economists predict would bolster

the economy¡¯s performance and

repair a tax code that Democrats

say encourages wealthy people to

hoard assets and big companies to

ship jobs and book profits overseas.

The question is whether congressional Democrats and the

White House can agree on how

sharply taxes should rise and

who, exactly, should pay the bill.

They widely share the goal of reversing many of Mr. Trump¡¯s tax

cuts from 2017, and of making the

wealthy and big businesses pay

more. But they do not yet agree on

the details ¡ª and because Republicans are unlikely to support their

efforts, they have no room for error in a closely divided Senate.

For Mr. Biden, the need to find

consensus is urgent. The president is set to travel to Pittsburgh

on Wednesday to unveil the next

phase of his economic agenda ¡ª a

sprawling collection of programs

that would invest in infrastructure, education, carbon-reduction

and working mothers and cost $3

trillion to $4 trillion.

The package, which follows on

the heels of Mr. Biden¡¯s $1.9 trillion

economic aid bill, is central to the

president¡¯s long-term plan to revitalize American workers and industry by funding bridges and

Continued on Page 20

Manchin¡¯s Votes

Make or Break

Policy in Senate

By JONATHAN MARTIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KHOLOOD EID FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

¡®Waiting to Be Alive Again¡¯

Burlesque has a rich history in New York City, and after a year of its venues being shut down, performers are craving

the intimacy of a live audience. There is also some hesitancy about returning to touchy fans. Metropolitan, Page 1.

Does Rising Tide Lift All Boats? At Suez, They¡¯ll Soon Find Out.

By VIVIAN YEE

MANSHIYET RUGOLA, Egypt

¡ª The gargantuan container ship

that has blocked world trade by

getting stuck aslant the Suez Canal has towered over Umm Gaafar¡¯s dusty brick house for five

days now, humming its deep mechanical hum.

She looked up from where she

sat in the bumpy dirt lane and considered what the vessel, the Ever

Given, might be carrying in all

those containers. Flat-screen

TVs? Full-size refrigerators,

washing machines or ceiling

fans? Neither she nor her neighbors in Manshiyet Rugola, population 5,000-ish, had any of those at

home.

¡°Why don¡¯t they pull out one of

those containers?¡± joked Umm

Gaafar, 65. ¡°There could be something good in there. Maybe it could

feed the town.¡±

The Japanese-owned Ever Given and the nearly 300 cargo ships

now waiting to traverse the Suez

Canal, one of the world¡¯s most critical shipping arteries, could sup-

ply Manshiyet Rugola many,

many times over.

Hauling cars, oil, livestock, laptops, jet fuel, scrap metal, grain,

sweaters, sneakers, appliances,

toilet paper, toys, medical equipment and much more, the vessels

were supposed to supply much of

the world, and the canal was to

have been their quickest path

from Asia and the Middle East to

Europe and the East Coast of the

United States.

A shipping agent at the canal

said on Saturday morning that

dredgers had managed to dig out

the rear of the ship, and a representative of the Suez Canal Economic Zone posted on Facebook

that the ship¡¯s rudder had been

freed. But as a salvage team and

canal authorities continued struggling to dislodge the four-footballfield-long leviathan from the sand

bank where it ran aground on

Tuesday, blocking all shipping

traffic through the canal, global

supply chains churned closer to a

full-blown crisis.

Already, shipping analysts estimated, the colossal traffic jam was

Continued on Page 13

WASHINGTON ¡ª If Democrats eliminate the filibuster,

there is one senator who would

have an outsize impact in the 5050 chamber on issues that could

reshape the nation¡¯s future: infrastructure, immigration, gun laws

and voting rights. That senator is

Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

There is also a senator whose

opposition to eliminating the filibuster is a significant reason it

may never happen. That senator,

too, is Mr. Manchin.

¡°He should want to get rid of the

filibuster because he suddenly becomes the most powerful person

in this place ¡ª he¡¯s the 50th vote

on everything,¡± said Senator Chris

Coons, Democrat of Delaware,

sketching out, though not embracing, the argument.

Mr. Manchin, however, does not

see it that way. To the exasperation of Democrats, delight of Republicans and bewilderment of

politicians who can¡¯t understand

why he wouldn¡¯t want to wield

more power, Mr. Manchin isn¡¯t

budging.

¡°Sixty votes,¡± he said in an interview this month in his office, referring to the threshold required

to advance most legislation, adding that he would not consider

Continued on Page 20

INTERNATIONAL 9-14

SPORTS 27-29

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Deadly Attack in Mozambique

Favorite and Upstart Diverge

A Big Winner in the Pandemic

Several people were killed when suspected Islamist militants took control of

a town near a major gas project. Hundreds are unaccounted for.

PAGE 13

In the N.C.A.A. men¡¯s tournament,

top-seeded Baylor defeated Villanova,

while No. 15 Oral Roberts fell just short

against No. 3 Arkansas.

PAGE 29

In soccer-crazed Britain, lockdowns

helped the online betting company

bet365 hit the jackpot. Much of its profits came from gambling addicts. PAGE 1

A Shadow War at Sea

Israel and Iran have clashed covertly

for years, mainly by land and air. Now

ships have become targets.

PAGE 12

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK 4-8

NATIONAL 15-23

From the Backyard, Not a Box

Baking matzo outside their Brooklyn

home brings family members together

for an ancient tradition.

PAGE 18

A Top Seed Toppled

In the women¡¯s tournament, Indiana

ousted top-seeded North Carolina State.

UConn, of course, won.

PAGE 29

ARTS & LEISURE

Their City Won¡¯t Be the Same

Beverly Cleary¡¯s Reality

Forgery or Foundation?

New York City may be only months

from seeming like its old self. But many

lives have been changed forever. PAGE 4

The author constructed a world that

children recognized ¡ª one that changed

with the times.

PAGE 21

A manuscript found in 1883 was called a

fake. But what if it was actually the

oldest known biblical text?

PAGE 8

SPECIAL SECTION

SUNDAY STYLES

A Year Without Travel

Even as vaccines bring hope, international travel remains on hold. A look at

what the disruption has meant for

people and places tied to the industry.

SUNDAY REVIEW

Farah Stockman

PAGE 4

Do We Still Want Our Friends?

The pandemic shrank many social

circles to a skeleton crew. Maybe that¡¯s

not such a bad thing.

PAGE 1

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