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A Kurdish family twice gave up every-thing to flee Iraq for Europe, desperatefor a better life. Now they are back inKurdistan. PAGE 4

INTERNATIONAL 4-13

Migrants’ Circular Struggle

The Bradford pear, hugely popularwhen suburbs were developed, kickedoff an unstoppable invasion. PAGE 14

From a Pretty Tree to a Plague

Members of the company’s intelligence-gathering team were accused of illegalactivity. The claims weren’t true, butthe allegations still follow them. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

The Price Paid by Uber’s Spies

One teenager shares what it was like tolive through six months of the mostdisrupted period in the modern historyof public education. PAGE 6

METROPOLITAN

An Anxious Path to Senior Year

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” isabout to become the longest-runninglive-action sitcom in U.S. history. Itscreator wonders what’s next. PAGE 12

ARTS & LEISURE

Brotherly Love Abounds

Farhad Manjoo PAGE 4

SUNDAY REVIEW

Carissa Schumacher claims to channelthe dead for high-profile clients. Shesays she doesn’t want fame. PAGE 12

A Medium Wants to Live Small

Propelled by the renewed popularity ofmaximalist home décor, ornamentalfake food is in demand again. PAGE 1

SUNDAY STYLES

Inedible but ‘Joyfully Wacky’

Two decades ago, Spain was the newFrance, leading gastronomic innova-tion. Now, iconic chefs from each coun-try have joined forces in Paris. PAGE 6

A Marriage of Tastes

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the formerpresident, has beaten back corruptioncases and climbed to the front of nextyear’s presidential race. PAGE 8

Comeback Attempt in Brazil

Lines of fans formed quickly at pianobars and theaters as word spread ofStephen Sondheim’s death. PAGE 26

NATIONAL 14-26

Mourning a Broadway GeniusThe vaccine is ready for kids ages 5 to12! And in other news, because of thepandemic, snow days could now be athing of the past.

THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR KIDS

It’s Our Turn

Brian Shelton’s life was ruled byType 1 diabetes.

When his blood sugar plum-meted, he would lose conscious-ness without warning. He crashedhis motorcycle into a wall. Hepassed out in a customer’s yardwhile delivering mail. Followingthat episode, his supervisor toldhim to retire, after a quarter cen-tury in the Postal Service. He was57.

His ex-wife, Cindy Shelton, tookhim into her home in Elyria, Ohio.“I was afraid to leave him alone allday,” she said.

Early this year, she spotted acall for people with Type 1 diabe-tes to participate in a clinical trialby Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Thecompany was testing a treatmentdeveloped over decades by a sci-entist who vowed to find a cure af-ter his baby son and then histeenage daughter got the devas-tating disease.

Mr. Shelton was the first pa-tient. On June 29, he got an infu-sion of cells, grown from stemcells but just like the insulin-pro-

ducing pancreas cells his bodylacked.

Now his body automaticallycontrols its insulin and blood sug-ar levels.

Mr. Shelton, now 64, may be thefirst person cured of the diseasewith a new treatment that has ex-perts daring to hope that help may

A Cure for Severe Diabetes? For an Ohio Patient, It Worked.

By GINA KOLATA

Brian Shelton may be the firstto be cured of Type 1 diabetes.

AMBER FORD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 18

HICKORY, N.C. — Six monthsinto the coronavirus pandemic, asmillions of workers lost their jobsand companies fretted about theireconomic future, something unex-pected happened at Hancock &Moore, a purveyor of custom-upholstered leather couches andchairs in this small North Carolinatown.

Orders began pouring in.

Families stuck at home had de-cided to upgrade their sectionals.Singles tired of looking at theirsad futons wanted new and nicerliving room furniture. And theywere willing to pay up — whichturned out to be good, because thecost of every part of producingfurniture, from fabric to wood toshipping, was beginning to swiftlyincrease.

More than a year later, the fur-niture companies that dot Hick-ory, N.C., in the foothills of the

Blue Ridge Mountains, have beenpresented with an unforeseen op-portunity: The pandemic and itsensuing supply chain disruptionshave dealt a setback to the fac-tories in China and Southeast Asiathat decimated American manu-facturing in the 1980s and 1990swith cheaper imports. At the sametime, demand for furniture is verystrong.

In theory, that means they havea shot at building back some of the

The production floor at a Century Furniture factory in Hickory, N.C., where demand is soaring.TRAVIS DOVE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Shipping Snarl Energizes a U.S. Furniture HubBy JEANNA SMIALEK

Continued on Page 16

Millions of ordinary people inIran and Israel recently foundthemselves caught in the crossfireof a cyberwar between their coun-tries. In Tehran, a dentist drovearound for hours in search of gaso-line, waiting in long lines at fourgas stations only to come awayempty.

In Tel Aviv, a well-known broad-caster panicked as the intimatedetails of his sex life, and those ofhundreds of thousands of othersstolen from an L.G.B.T.Q. datingsite, were uploaded on social me-dia.

For years, Israel and Iran haveengaged in a covert war, by land,sea, air and computer, but the tar-gets have usually been military orgovernment related. Now, the cy-berwar has widened to target ci-vilians on a large scale.

In recent weeks, a cyberattackon Iran’s nationwide fuel distribu-tion system paralyzed the coun-try’s 4,300 gas stations, whichtook 12 days to have service fullyrestored.

That attack was attributed to Is-rael by two U.S. defense officials,who spoke on the condition of ano-nymity to discuss confidential in-telligence assessments. It was fol-lowed days later by cyberattacksin Israel against a major medicalfacility and a popular L.G.B.T.Q.dating site, attacks Israeli officialshave attributed to Iran.

The escalation comes as Ameri-can authorities have warned ofIranian attempts to hack the com-puter networks of hospitals andother critical infrastructure in theUnited States. As hopes fade for adiplomatic resurrection of the Ira-nian nuclear agreement, such at-tacks are only likely to proliferate.

Hacks have been seeping intocivilian arenas for months. Iran’snational railroad was attacked inJuly, but that relatively unsophis-ticated hack may not have been Is-raeli. And Iran is accused of mak-ing a failed attack on Israel’s wa-ter system last year.

The latest attacks are thoughtto be the first to do widespreadharm to large numbers of civil-ians. Nondefense computer net-works are generally less securethan those tied to state securityassets.

No one died in these attacks, butif their goal was to create chaos,

Israel and Iran Widen Targets In a Cyberwar

Hackers Begin to Take a Toll on Civilians

By FARNAZ FASSIHIand RONEN BERGMAN

Continued on Page 13

Nations in southern Africa pro-tested bitterly on Saturday asmore of the world’s wealthiestcountries cut them off from travel,renewing a debate over borderclosures from the earliest days ofthe coronavirus pandemic andcompounding the problems facingpoorly vaccinated countries.

A new coronavirus variantcalled Omicron, first detected inBotswana, put governments onedge after South Africa an-nounced a surge of cases this pastweek, plunging countries into themost uncertain moment of thepandemic since the highly conta-gious Delta variant took hold thisspring.

As in the early days of Delta, po-litical alarm spread quickly acrossthe world, with officials tradingblame over how the failures of theglobal vaccination effort were al-lowing the virus to mutate, evenas researchers warned that thetrue threat of the new variant wasnot yet clear.

Bearing a worrying number ofmutations that researchers fearcould make it spread easily, Omi-cron was spotted on Saturday inpatients in Britain, Germany andItaly, leaving in its wake what sci-entists estimated to be thousandsof cases in southern Africa andtens or hundreds more globally.One country after another shut itsdoors to southern Africa even asthey spurned public health meas-ures that scientists said were farmore urgently needed to take onthe new variant.

Australia, Thailand and SriLanka were among the latestcountries on Saturday to join theUnited States, Britain and the Eu-ropean Union in banning travelersfrom South Africa and nearbycountries.

Israel announced the world’sstrictest ban to date, sealing itsborders to all foreigners for 14days after one case was confirmedin the country.

“The key here is caution andminimal risks until we knowmore,” Prime Minister Naftali

AFRICAN NATIONSBITTERLY REBUKENEW TRAVEL BANS

ISRAEL SEALS BORDERS

The West Is Criticized for Hoarding Vaccines in

the First Place

By BENJAMIN MUELLERand DECLAN WALSH

Continued on Page 10

LOS ANGELES — As the Ham-mer Museum emerges from lastyear’s pandemic shutdown, it hasassembled a lineup of big namesthat it hopes will draw crowdsback to its campus down the streetfrom the University of California,Los Angeles: Cézanne, Manet,Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec. AndWaters.

That would be Alice Waters, therestaurateur who founded ChezPanisse in Berkeley 50 years agoand went on to help define modernCalifornia cuisine. She is lendingher name and reputation to Lulu, anew restaurant she has helpedopen in the courtyard of the Ham-mer, the first time she has associ-ated herself so closely with arestaurant since opening Chez Pa-nisse.

“It will bring people who would-n’t be museumgoers to the mu-seum,” said Ann Philbin, the exec-utive director of the Hammer, whorecruited Ms. Waters for thisproject. “It is about cross-pollina-tion of audiences.”

The Hammer, which is affiliatedwith U.C.L.A., is the latest in a longline of arts institutions collaborat-ing with big-name chefs in thehopes of expanding their audi-ences. And Ms. Waters is the lat-est in a long line of celebrityrestaurateurs (for the record, she

‘Restauratrice’ Brings Her ArtTo the Museum

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Continued on Page 23

MINNEAPOLIS — When MauriFriestleben learned that Minneapolis wasrolling out a new school integration plan —and that the school she led, a predomi-nantly Black, low-income high school,would soon include white students fromsome of the wealthiest neighborhoods intown — she looked around and proudly con-sidered all that her school had to offer.

The hallways at North Community Highare a tapestry of blue and white, the schoolcolors, and the mascot, a polar bear, seemsto roar around every corner. The curricu-lum had been updated to expand access toadvanced placement courses: U.S. history,physics, art and design. The school had anew athletic field, and on the first floor, a ra-dio studio.

But in some phone conversations with

potential new families, Ms. Friestleben, theprincipal, sensed deep skepticism.

Parents peppered her with questions.Exactly how many A.P. courses did herschool offer? Was Spanish the only lan-guage option? Would their children be safewalking from the bus? Some even won-dered how she had gotten their number andasked her not to call again.

Ms. Friestleben, a mixed-race womanwho identifies as Black, knew that herschool had its challenges, including a his-tory of struggling enrollment and low testscores. But she was working hard to servethe needs of her students and had little in-terest in adjusting her focus to woo whitefamilies.

“At times,” she said, “it was demeaningand humiliating.”

Minneapolis, among the most segre-gated school districts in the country, withone of the widest racial academic gaps, is inthe midst of a sweeping plan to overhauland integrate its schools. And unlike previ-ous desegregation efforts, which typicallyrequired children of color to travel to whiteschools, Minneapolis officials are askingwhite families to help do the integrating — anewer approach being embraced by a smallgroup of urban districts across the country.

“Everyone wants equity as long as itdoesn’t inconvenience them,” said EricMoore, senior officer for accountability, re-search and equity for Minneapolis Public

North Community High in Minneapolis, predominantly Black, was rezoned to include whiter, wealthier neighborhoods.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREA ELLEN REED FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Minneapolis Integration Is a Two-Way StreetA Hard Sell in Black

and White AreasBy SARAH MERVOSH

Mauri Friestleben, the principal atNorth, greeting students at the doors.

Continued on Page 24

Late Edition

VOL. CLXXI . . . No. 59,256 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2021

Today, cloudy, rain or snow showers,high 43. Tonight, showers or possi-ble flurries early, cloudy, low 34. To-morrow, partly sunny skies, high 42.Weather map appears on Page 34.

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