Weekend .. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | SATURDAY-SUNDAY, MARCH 27-28, 2021 ‘I HAD TO PROVE THAT I EXIST’: A NEWS ANCHOR MAKES HISTORY PAGE 3 | WORLD MEN ARE HELPING MAKE THE BROOCH COOL AGAIN PAGE 16 | STYLE ROMANIA HAS BIG PLANS FOR A NEW NATIONAL PARK PAGE 23 | TRAVEL SNOWFLAKES AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE PAGE 13 | SCIENCE LAB SHIP STUCK IN THE SUEZ CANAL SERVES AS A WARNING ABOUT GLOBALIZATION PAGE 8 | BUSINESS The sun was rising on the Mediterra- nean one recent morning when the crew of an Iranian cargo ship heard an explo- sion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, was about 50 miles off the coast of Israel, and from the bridge they saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the hundreds of containers stacked on deck. The state-run Iranian shipping com- pany said the vessel had been heading to Spain and called the explosion a “ter- rorist act.” The attack on the Shahr e Kord this month was just one of the latest salvos in a long-running covert conflict between Israel and Iran. An Israeli official said the attack was retaliation for an Iranian assault on an Israeli cargo ship last month. Since 2019, Israel has been attacking ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, opening a new maritime front in a regional shadow war that previously played out by land and in the air. Iran appears to have quietly re- sponded with its own clandestine at- tacks. The latest came on Thursday, when an Israeli-owned container ship, the Lori, was hit by an Iranian missile in the Arabian Sea, an Israeli official said. No casualties or significant damage were reported. The Israeli campaign, confirmed by American, Israeli and Iranian officials, has become a linchpin of Israel’s effort to curb Iran’s military influence in the Middle East and stymie Iranian efforts to circumvent American sanctions on its oil industry. But the conflict’s expansion risks the escalation of what has been a relatively limited tit-for-tat, and it further compli- cates efforts by the Biden administra- tion to persuade Iran to reintroduce lim- its on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. “This is a full-fledged cold war that risks turning hot with a single mistake,” said Ali Vaez, Iran program director at the International Crisis Group, a Brus- sels-based research organization. “We’re still in an escalatory spiral that risks getting out of control.” Since 2019, Israeli commandos have attacked at least 10 ships carrying Irani- an cargo, according to an American offi- cial and a former senior Israeli official. The real number of targeted ships may be higher than 20, according to an Irani- an Oil Ministry official, an adviser to the ministry and an oil trader. The Israeli attacks were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Most of the ships were carrying fuel from Iran to its ally Syria, and two car- ried military equipment, according to an American official and two senior Israeli officials. An American official and an Is- ISRAEL-IRAN, PAGE 4 A war fought in the shadows JERUSALEM Israel and Iran take their clandestine attacks on each other to the seas BY PATRICK KINGSLEY, RONEN BERGMAN, FARNAZ FASSIHI AND ERIC SCHMITT Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in an intensive care unit after the July 2018 drug overdose that nearly killed her. It took her about two months to re- cover enough sight to read a book, and she passed the time catching up on 10 years’ worth of sleep, playing board games or taking single laps around the hospital floor for exercise. Blind spots made it nearly impossible for her to see head-on, so she peered at her phone through peripheral vision and typed using voice notes. “It was interesting how fast I adapted,” she said in an interview. “I didn’t leave myself time to really feel sad about it. I just was like, how do I fix it?” Lovato, a 28-year-old singer, song- writer, actress and budding activist who has been in show business since she was 6 and a household name since her teens, is not just adaptable — she is one of the most resilient pop cultural figures of her time. She got her start on children’s TV and made the tricky leap to adult stardom, releasing six albums (two platinum, four gold), serving as a judge on “The X Factor,” acting on “Glee” and “Will & Grace” and amassing 100 million Insta- gram followers — all while managing an eating disorder since she was a child, drug addiction that started in her teens, coming out as queer and the constant pressure of being an exceptionally fa- mous person. She recounts her relapse and over- dose unblinkingly in the documentary “Dancing With the Devil,” which pre- miered at the South by Southwest Film Festival this month and is being re- LOVATO, PAGE 2 To reveal the truth, a pop star gets real Demi Lovato, a singer, songwriter and actress, opened up about her drug relapse and overdose in the documentary “Dancing With the Devil.” She is aiming for a comeback. RYAN PFLUGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Demi Lovato recounts her darkest moments, sharing details in new film BY CARYN GANZ The New York Times publishes opinion from a wide range of perspectives in hopes of promoting constructive debate about consequential questions. With its own battle against the coronavi- rus taking a sharp turn for the worse, In- dia has severely curtailed exports of Covid-19 vaccine, causing setbacks for vaccination drives in many other coun- tries. The government of India is holding back nearly all of the 2.4 million doses that the Serum Institute of India, the pri- vate company that is one of the world’s largest producers of the AstraZeneca vaccine, makes each day. India is desperate for all the doses it can get. Infections are soaring, topping 50,000 per day, more than double the number of less than two weeks ago. And the Indian vaccine drive has been slug- gish, with fewer than 4 percent of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people having received inoculations, far behind the rates of the United States, Britain and most Euro- pean countries. Just a few weeks ago, India was a ma- jor exporter of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and it was using that to exert influence in South Asia and around the world. More than 70 countries, including Dji- bouti and Britain, received vaccine made in India, a total of more than 60 million doses. From mid-January into March, not more than a few days passed between departures of major vaccine shipments from India. But the size of its shipments abroad has greatly diminished in the past two weeks, according to data from India’s foreign ministry. And Covax, the pro- gram set up by donor agencies to pur- chase vaccine for poorer nations, said on Thursday that it had told those coun- tries that nearly 100 million doses ex- pected in March and April would be de- layed because of “increased demand for Covid-19 vaccines in India.” The Indian government has not pub- licly commented on what’s happening and would not when reached by The New York Times for this article. But health experts say the explanation is ob- vious: India is drawing up its gates as a second wave of infections hits home, holding tight to a vaccine that it didn’t INDIA, PAGE 9 India cuts its vaccine exports as virus surges NEW DELHI Restriction is a setback in inoculation programs for AstraZeneca shots BY JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, EMILY SCHMALL AND MUJIB MASHAL Ribbons mean a lot in military culture. Earlier this month, the Department of Defense announced that National Guardsmen deployed to Washington after the Jan. 6 riot would be awarded a newly created pair of ribbons to wear on their uniforms, a type of decoration typically issued for participation in overseas military campaigns. Hearing the news, I recalled a de- bate among the Marines I served with about another ribbon, the much-cov- eted Combat Action Ribbon, awarded to those who have “actively partici- pated in ground or surface combat.” That debate oc- curred in the sum- mer of 2005, during an emergency de- ployment to Hurri- cane Katrina. Three days after the storm hit, the Bush admin- istration ordered our infantry battalion, which had only several months before returned from combat in Falluja, down to New Orleans as part of a patched- together federal response. On our arrival, conditions were chaotic. The situation in New Orleans was dire and, at times, violent. As we walked across the tarmac at the airstrip where we’d landed, a Coast Guard crew chief pointed out one of the search-and-rescue helicopters on the flight line; a scatter of pencil-width holes riddled its tail section. “Gun- shots,” he’d explained. Enraged resi- dents, stranded on their rooftops for days, had on occasion taken to shoot- ing at the helicopters that passed them by. The crew chief then asked if we’d brought our rifles; he said we might need them. We had brought our weapons, even though our commanders had ordered them crated. The Posse Comitatus Act, passed during Reconstruction, limits the powers of the government when deploying federal troops to enforce domestic laws and does not permit “direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Keep politics far from the U.S. military Elliot Ackerman Contributing Writer OPINION Yes, National Guardsmen defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. But should they be decorated? ACKERMAN, PAGE 12 A city ruptured New York City, the largest metropolis in the United States, is a canvas upon which nearly every element of the pandemic has played out. The New York Times spent months documenting the changing city as its economy frayed and split over the past year. 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