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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2017

TALK TO THE BOTSTAND-IN KEEPSPOP FANS HAPPYPAGE 16 | TECH

MORE THAN WINEFINE DININGIN BORDEAUXBACK PAGE | TRAVEL

SCULPTURE IN SPACEASTRONAUT TEAMS UPWITH ARTIST ON EARTHPAGE 18 | CULTURE

Just before Thanksgiving 2012, ArielLevy, a staff writer at The New Yorker,flew to Mongolia to report on that coun-try’s mining boom. She was 38 years oldand five months pregnant, and on hersecond night there, she miscarried inher hotel room, delivering her son in atorrent of blood that nearly killed her.Her son would not survive, but Ms. Levydetailed in a heartbreaking essay a yearlater that would win her a National Mag-azine Award that after she yanked theplacenta from her body, crawled to thephone and called a local doctor, she tookthe boy’s photo.

“I worried that if I didn’t,” she wrote,“I would never believe he had existed.”

The essay, titled “Thanksgiving inMongolia,” was a brutal read. Ms. Levywrote of the feeling of her son’s skin,

“like a silky frog’s on my mouth,” and ofthe image of a white bath mat someonehad thrown over a bloodstain next to herbed that would slowly darken as herblood seeped through it during the fivedays that she spent holed up in her hotelroom. Back home, she wrote, shesobbed, bled and lactated in an awfulstorm of hormones and grief.

Before the miscarriage, she had con-sidered herself lucky: buoyed by thegains of third-wave feminism, success-ful at her chosen career, legally marriedto a woman and carrying a baby madeby a friend’s donated sperm. Afterward,as she wrote, she felt buffeted by a dif-ferent kind of fate, something moreShakespearean or biblical, “the 10 or 20minutes I was somebody’s mother wereblack magic; there is no adventure Iwould have traded them for.”

And yet. Not only did she lose herchild, but her marriage also fell apart.This felt like a karmic smackdown, andMs. Levy wanted to interrogate her ownresponsibility for such a sequence ofgrim events. That is the intellectualbackbone, anyway, of “The Rules Do

Not Apply”: her memoir that lays thegroundwork for what happened in Mon-golia and picks up where the essay leftoff, raising, once again, that hoary con-ceit, the one about women and “having itall.”

“I felt like this very fortunate benefi-ciary of the women’s movement,” shesaid during a recent interview in herbright, one-bedroom walk-up inChelsea. “I got to have all these choices,and the rules” — biological, historical —“did not apply. So it was a very shockingexperience to find myself, childless andalone at 38. I felt like a complete failure,on the deepest level.

“Some of it was like someone in a JaneAusten novel, getting her comeuppance,but some of it, most of it, was feeling likea mother, but where’s the baby? There isno child. Then you’ve got a little identitycrisis on your hands.”

Ms. Levy bought the apartment dur-ing her marriage, when she and her for-mer spouse, now a recovering alcoholic,separated for a time. She lives therealone, attended by two amiable, rotund

To have and have notAriel Levy’s new memoirreflects her loss after amiscarriage and divorce

BY PENELOPE GREEN

ARIEL, PAGE 2

Ariel Levy at home in Manhattan, a brightone-bedroom walk-up that she boughtwhen she was married.

NATHAN BAJAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

When the head of a small Italian mu-seum called Detective Inspector Alex-ander Horn of the Munich Police, sheasked him if he investigated cold cases.

“Yes I do,” Inspector Horn said, recall-ing their conversation.

“Well, I have the coldest case of all foryou,” said Angelika Fleckinger, directorof the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeol-ogy, in Bolzano, Italy.

The unknown victim, nicknamed Ötzi,has literally been in cold storage in hermuseum for a quarter-century. Oftencalled the Iceman, he is the world’s mostperfectly preserved mummy, a CopperAge fellow who had been frozen inside aglacier along the northern Italian bor-der with Austria, until warming globaltemperatures melted the ice and twohikers discovered him in 1991.

The cause of death remained uncer-tain until 10 years later, when an X-ray ofthe mummy pointed to foul play in the

form of a flint arrowhead embedded inhis back, just under his shoulder. Butnow, armed with a wealth of new scien-tific information that researchers havecompiled, Inspector Horn has managedto piece together a remarkably detailedpicture of what befell the Iceman on thatfateful day around 3300 B.C., near thecrest of the Ötztal Alps.

“When I was first contacted with theidea, I thought it was too difficult, toomuch time has passed,” said InspectorHorn, a noted profiler. “But actually he’sin better condition than recent homicidevictims I’ve worked on who have beenfound out in the open.”

There are a few mummies in theworld as old as Ötzi, but none so wellpreserved. Most were ritually prepared,which usually meant removal of internalorgans, preservation with chemicals orexposure to destructive desert condi-tions.

The glacier not only froze Ötzi wherehe had died, but the high humidity of theice also kept his organs and skin largelyintact. “Imagine, we know the stomachcontents of a person 5,000 years ago,”Inspector Horn said. “In a lot of cases weare not able to do that even now.”

Those contents, as it turned out, werecritical in determining with surprisingprecision what happened to Ötzi andeven helped shed light on the possible

motive of his killer.The more scientists learn, the more

recognizable the Iceman becomes. Hewas 5 feet 5 inches tall (about averageheight for his time), weighed 110 pounds,had brown eyes and shoulder-length,dark brown hair, and a size 7½ foot. Hewas about 45, give or take six years, re-

spectably old for the late Neolithic age— but still in his prime.

Ötzi had the physique of a man whodid a lot of strenuous walking but littleupper-body work; there was hardly anyfat on his body. He had all of his teeth,and between his two upper front teeth

A reconstruction of the Iceman in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. He died after he was shot with an arrow in the back, piercing his subclavian artery.PHOTOGRAPHS BY DMITRY KOSTYUKOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Who killed the Iceman?BOLZANO, ITALY

Seasoned detective piecestogether a murder mystery from 5,300 years ago

BY ROD NORDLAND

ICEMAN, PAGE 5

The Iceman mummy on display at the museum. He was found frozen in a glacier, and itshigh humidity kept him remarkably well preserved, with his organs intact.

A little-known start-up called Neuralahelped the United States Air Force makemilitary robots more perceptive andNASA make its rovers autonomous.

But when Neurala needed money, itgot little response from the Americanmilitary.

So Neurala turned to China, landingan undisclosed sum from an investmentfirm backed by a state-run Chinese com-pany.

Chinese firms have become signifi-cant investors in American start-upsworking on cutting-edge technologieswith potential military applications. Thestart-ups include companies that makerocket engines for spacecraft, sensorsfor autonomous navy ships and printersthat make flexible screens that could beused in fighter-plane cockpits. Many ofthe Chinese firms are owned by state-owned companies or have connectionsto Chinese leaders.

The deals are ringing alarm bells inWashington. According to a new whitepaper commissioned by the Depart-ment of Defense, Beijing is encouragingChinese companies with close govern-ment ties to invest in American start-ups specializing in critical technologieslike artificial intelligence and robots toadvance China’s military capacity, aswell as its economy.

The white paper, which was distribut-ed to the senior levels of the Trump ad-ministration last week, concludes thatUnited States government controls thatare supposed to protect potentially criti-cal technologies are falling short, ac-cording to three people knowledgeableabout its contents, who spoke on thecondition of anonymity.

“What drives a lot of the concern isthat China is a military competitor,” saidJames Lewis, a senior fellow at the Cen-ter for Strategic and International Stud-ies, who is familiar with the report.“How do you deal with a military com-petitor playing in your most innovativemarket?”

The Chinese deals can pose a numberof issues. Investors could push start-upsto strike partnerships or make licensingor hiring decisions that could expose in-tellectual property. They can also get aninside glimpse of how technology is be-ing developed and could have access toa start-up’s offices or computers.

Trump administration officials andlawmakers are raising broad questionsabout China’s economic relationshipwith the United States. While the reportwas commissioned before President

China betson sensitivestart-ups inU.S. techHONG KONG

Report to Pentagon raisesfear Beijing could advanceits military capabilities

BY PAUL MOZURAND JANE PERLEZ

CHINA, PAGE 12

One of President Trump’s rarestrengths has been his ability toproject competence. The Dow Jonesstock index is up an astonishing 2,200points since his election in part be-cause investors believed Trump coulddeliver tax reform and infrastructurespending.

Think again!The Trump administration is in-

creasingly showing itself to be breath-takingly incompetent, and that’s thereal lesson of the collapse of the G.O.P.health care bill. The administrationproved unable to organize its way out

of a paper bag:After sevenyears of Republi-cans’ publiclyloathing Oba-macare, theirrepeal-replacebill failed after 18days.

Politics some-times rewardsbraggarts, andTrump is a

world-class boaster. He promised ahealth care plan that would be “unbe-lievable,” “beautiful,” “terrific,” “lessexpensive and much better,” “insur-ance for everybody.” But he’s abysmalat delivering — because the basic truthis that he’s an effective politician who’sutterly incompetent at governing.

It’s sometimes said that politicianscampaign in poetry and govern inprose. Trump campaigns in braggado-cio and governs in bombast.

Whatever one thinks of Trump’smerits, this competence gap raisesprofound questions about our nationaldirection. If the administration can’trepeal Obamacare — or managefriendly relations with allies like Mex-ico or Australia — how will it possiblyaccomplish something complicated liketax reform?

Failure and weakness also build onthemselves, and the health care deba-cle will make it more difficult forTrump to get his way with Congress onother issues. As people recognize thatthe emperor is wearing no clothes, thatperception of weakness will spiral.

One of the underlying problems isTrump’s penchant for personnelchoices that are bafflingly bad or ethi-cally challenged or both. Mike Flynnwas perhaps the best-known example.

But consider Sebastian Gorka, acounterterrorism adviser to the presi-dent. Gorka, who is of Hungarian

A braggart tyrannizesin bombast

Nicholas Kristof

OPINION

Mr. Trump hascrafted anadministrationin his ownimage: vain,narcissistic anddangerous.

KRISTOF, PAGE 15

Issue NumberNo. 41,691

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