.. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021 IS A FILM A HIT? HOLLYWOOD SEEKS ANSWERS PAGE 5 | BUSINESS GNAWING ISSUE BEAVERS DRAW IRE IN SCOTLAND PAGE 3 | WORLD REVVED UP FOR THE STAGE IN ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’ MUSICAL, A STAR IS BORN PAGE 15 | CULTURE Rampant deforestation has disrupted this flow, weakening the streams that feed the larger rivers in the basin and transforming the landscape. “This is much more than a water problem,” said Lucas Micheloud, a Ro- sario-based member of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers. Frequent fires, he said, are turning re- source-rich rain forests into savannas. Although water level varies in differ- ent locations, on average the Paraná is now 10.5 feet below its normal flow, ac- cording to Juan Borus, an expert at Ar- gentina’s government-run National Wa- The fisherman woke up early on a re- cent morning, banged on the fuel con- tainers on his small boat to make sure he had enough for the day and set out on the Paraná River, fishing net in hand. The outing was a waste of time. The river, an economic lifeline in South America, has shrunk significantly in a severe drought, and the effects are dam- aging lives and livelihoods along its banks and well beyond. “I didn’t catch a single fish,” said the 68-year-old fisherman, Juan Carlos Garate, pointing to patches of grass sprouting where there used to be water. “Everything is dry.” The Paraná’s reduced flow, at its low- est level since the 1940s, has upended delicate ecosystems in the vast area that straddles Brazil, Argentina and Para- guay, and it has left scores of communi- ties scrambling for fresh water. In a region that depends heavily on rivers to generate power and to trans- port the agricultural commodities that are a pillar of national economies, the re- treat of the continent’s second-largest river has also hurt business, increasing the costs of energy production and ship- ping. Experts say deforestation in the Ama- zon and rain patterns altered by a warm- ing planet are helping fuel the drought. Much of the humidity that turns into the rain that feeds tributaries of the Paraná originates in the Amazon rainforest, where trees release water vapor in a process that scientists call “flying rivers.” ter Institute who has been studying the river for more than three decades. The situation is likely to worsen, at least through the beginning of Novem- ber, which is ordinarily the beginning of the rainy season in the region. But the drought could last longer. Ex- perts say climate change has made it harder to make accurate predictions. Extreme events like the drought af- fecting much of South America are be- coming “more frequent and more in- tense,” said Lincoln Alves, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of Space ARGENTINA, PAGE 6 Sandbars emerging in the Paraná River in front of Rosario, Argentina, late last month. The river’s flow, which is vital to a three-country region, is at its lowest since the 1940s. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIÁN LÓPEZ BRACH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES A vanishing lifeline ROSARIO, ARGENTINA The second-largest river in South America is drying up in a prolonged drought BY DANIEL POLITI From left: Fishermen who make their living on the Paraná are struggling; pallets have been laid on the riverbanks for pedestrians. Rosario Atlantic Ocean 100 MILES URUGUAY Buenos Aires BRAZIL ARGENTINA Paraná Paraná River ARGENTINA Detail area THE NEW YORK TIMES Jean-Paul Belmondo, the rugged actor whose disdainful eyes, boxer’s nose, sensual lips and cynical outlook made him the idolized personification of youthful alienation in the French New Wave, most notably in his classic per- formance in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 88. His death was confirmed by the office of his lawyer, Michel Godest. No cause was given. Like Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean — three Ameri- can actors to whom he was frequently compared — Mr. Belmondo established his reputation playing tough, unsenti- mental, even antisocial characters cut adrift from bourgeois society. Later, as one of France’s leading stars, he took more crowd-pleasing roles, but without surrendering his magnetic brashness. Like Bogart, Mr. Belmondo brought craggy features and sometimes seething anger to the screen, a realistic counterpoint to more conventionally handsome romantic stars. Like Dean, he became one of the most widely imitated pop culture figures of his era. And like Brando, he was often dismissive of pre- tentiousness and self-importance among filmmakers. “No actor since James Dean has in- spired quite such intense identification,” Eugene Archer wrote in The New York Times in 1965. “Dean evoked the rebel- lious adolescent impulse, as fierce as it was gratuitous, a violent outgrowth of the frustrations of the modern world. Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection — and more disturb- ing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total. He accepts corruption with a cynical smile, not even bothering to struggle. He is out entirely for himself, to get whatever he can, while he can. The Belmondo type is ca- pable of anything.” His leading role in “À bout de souffle” BELMONDO, PAGE 2 Rugged-faced star of French New Wave Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in “À bout de souffle,” released in America as “Breathless.” He was compared to Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean. RAYMOND CAUCHETIER/FILMS AROUND THE WORLD, VIA PHOTOFEST JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO 1933-2021 BY RICK LYMAN The New York Times publishes opinion from a wide range of perspectives in hopes of promoting constructive debate about consequential questions. Four decades ago, Deng Xiaoping de- clared that China would “let some peo- ple get rich first” in its race for growth. Now, Xi Jinping has put China’s tycoons on notice that it is time for them to share more wealth with the rest of the country. Mr. Xi says the Communist Party will pursue “common prosperity,” pressing businesses and entrepreneurs to help narrow a stubborn wealth gap that could hold back the country’s rise and erode public confidence in the leadership. Sup- porters say China’s next phase of growth demands the shift. “A powerful China should also be a fair and just China,” Yao Yang, a professor of economics at Peking University who en- dorses the shift in priorities, wrote in an email. “China is one of the worst coun- tries in terms of redistribution, despite being a socialist country. Public spend- ing is overly concentrated in cities, elite schools and so on.” Officials are pledging to make school- ing, housing and health care less costly and more evenly available outside big cities, and to lift incomes for workers, helping more people secure a place in the middle class. The “common prosper- ity” campaign has converged with a crackdown on the country’s tech giants to curb their dominance. Facing scru- tiny, some of China’s biggest billionaires, like Jack Ma, have lined up to pledge bil- lions of dollars to charity. The pledges hold out the prospect, en- dorsed by Mr. Xi in a meeting last month, that China is now affluent enough to shift closer to the Communist Party’s longstanding ideal of wealth sharing. For Mr. Xi, the Communist Par- ty’s long-term authority is at stake. Now that economic growth is moder- ating, many young Chinese feel that up- ward mobility is diminishing. Well-pay- ing white-collar jobs can be hard to find. Tech workers complain of punishingly long hours. Families feel they can’t af- ford to have more children, adding to a looming demographic crisis. For now, Mr. Xi faces little opposition, but in the longer term, that could change if such grievances pile up. “Achieving common prosperity is not just an economic issue: It’s a major po- litical matter bearing on the party’s foundation for rule,” Mr. Xi told officials in January. “We cannot let an unbridge- able gulf appear between the rich and the poor.” The party is eager to show it is listen- ing to the complaints as Mr. Xi lays the CHINA, PAGE 6 Beijing is pushing the wealthy to share ‘Common prosperity’ is the theme of an effort to close an economic gap BY CHRIS BUCKLEY, ALEXANDRA STEVENSON AND CAO LI On an unseasonably cold night in August 1942, Miriam Rabinowitz pushed her way past a wooden fence topped with barbed wire and broke out of the ghetto in Zdzieciol, Poland. She wasn’t alone. The 34-year-old woman led her two young daughters, her sister, a cousin, and a handful of others away from the underground bunker where they had hidden for three days while SS squads rounded up some 2,500 other Jewish men, women and children, marched them to the edge of town, forced them to strip naked and shot them into waiting pits. Having narrowly escaped, Miriam’s group set off for the only place that offered real hope to the Jews interned in ghettos in the former Soviet-occu- pied territories of Poland and Belorus- sia: the forest. It was in the Lipiczany Forest that Miriam was reunited with her husband, Morris. For two years, they eked out a meager exist- ence there with two dozen other Jews. Together, this collective found a sort of sanctuary, even as they endured deadly typhus outbreaks, winter tem- peratures as low as 30 degrees below zero, constant hunger, and the threat of raids by Nazis and local gangs who were hunting Jews and Soviet parti- sans. More than 75 years after the end of World War II, we are familiar with a number of well-established accounts of what happened to Europe’s Jews dur- ing the Holocaust. They mounted ghetto uprisings; they hid in the homes of their Christian neighbors; and, of course, they were sent to Nazi concen- tration camps and perished in the gas chambers. Only recently, we’ve begun to hear more about the roughly 25,000 Jews who survived the war in the woods of Eastern Europe. Even so, that narrative has focused on the 15,000 or so who took up arms and joined the partisan fighters, like the Bielski brothers, who were made fa- mous in the 2008 film “Defiance.” Overlooked even now are stories like those of the Rabinowitz family, who lived — and died — in those same woods in small family camps: the forgotten Jews of the forest. These camps were populated by splintered families, some held together by friendship, many more by necessity. Most people begged for food, some bartered, others foraged or stole. They moved frequently to avoid Nazi raids Stories we’re losing of the Holocaust Rebecca Frankel OPINION We’re still learning about diff- erent facets of the Jewish experience. FRANKEL, PAGE 12 DEMOCRATS’ CRADLE-TO-THE-GRAVE PLAN Congress is undertaking the most significant expansion of the U.S. social safety net since the 1960s. PAGE 5 Be the first to hear about tickets, speakers and programming. nytclimatehub.com The moment is now. The action starts here. Glasgow November 3–11 2021 Presented by Y(1J85IC*KKOKKR( +@!z!$!%!. Issue Number No. 43,071 Andorra € 5.00 Antilles € 4.50 Austria € 4.00 Belgium € 4.00 Bos. & Herz. 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