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Protracted talks between military lead-ers and Robert Mugabe have frustratedZimbabweans who had hoped for aquick resolution. PAGE A6

INTERNATIONAL A4-12

Standoff Over PresidencyThe overhaul hinges on a few fence-sitting senators with disparate con-cerns, which must be navigated withoutrankling other members. PAGE A17

NATIONAL A13-18

Undecided Votes on Tax PlanThe president and a senator are amongmen who use the just-a-joke defense forbad behavior. Too often, women are theprops, James Poniewozik says. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

Show Business, or Harassment?Six years after the Fukushima accident,a little robot was able to reach the ruinedplant’s melted uranium fuel. Japanhopes it’s a turning point. PAGE D1

SCIENCE D1-8

Reaching a Radioactive Heart David Brooks PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

Charles Manson, one of themost notorious murderers of the20th century, who was very likelythe most culturally persistent andperhaps also the most inscrutable,died on Sunday in a hospital inKern County, Calif., north of LosAngeles. He was 83 and had beenbehind bars for most of his life.

The California Department ofCorrections and Rehabilitationannounced his death in a news re-lease. In accordance with federaland state privacy regulations, nocause was given; he had been hos-pitalized in January for intestinalbleeding but was ruled too frail toundergo surgery.

Mr. Manson was a semiliteratehabitual criminal and failed musi-cian before he came to irrevocableattention in the late 1960s as thewild-eyed leader of the Mansonfamily, a murderous band ofyoung drifters in California. Con-

victed of nine murders in all, hewas known in particular for theseven brutal killings collectivelycalled the Tate-LaBianca mur-ders, committed by his followerson two consecutive August nightsin 1969.

The most famous of the victimswas Sharon Tate, an actress whowas married to the film directorRoman Polanski. Eight and a halfmonths pregnant, she was killedwith four other people at her homein the Benedict Canyon area of

Los Angeles, near Beverly Hills.The Tate-LaBianca killings and

the seven-month trial that fol-lowed were the subjects of feverednews coverage. To a frightened,mesmerized public, the murders,with their undercurrents of sex,drugs, rock ’n’ roll and Satanism,seemed the depraved logical ex-tension of the anti-establishment,do-your-own-thing ethos thathelped define the ’60s.

Since then, the Manson familyhas occupied a dark, persistentplace in American culture — andAmerican commerce. It has in-spired, among other things, popsongs, an opera, films, a host of in-ternet fan sites, T-shirts, chil-dren’s wear and half the stagename of the rock musician Mari-lyn Manson.

It has also been the subject ofmany nonfiction books, most fa-mously “Helter Skelter” (1974), byVincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry.

Mass Killer With a Dark, Indelible Place in the American Psyche

By MARGALIT FOX

Charles Manson in 1969, after he ordered several murders.ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A20

CHARLES MANSON, 1934-2017

WASHINGTON — Maybe itwas the memory of a long-agochildhood visit to the zoo. Maybe itwas a sense of loyalty to the sym-bol of his political party.

But President Trump’s surpriseintervention to try to save the ele-phants of Zimbabwe has drawnpraise from across the politicalspectrum — and the question ofwhy he did it has now become the,well, pachyderm in the room.

In what may be one of the mostcurious moments of his first yearin office, Mr. Trump put a suddenhalt to a new federal government

ruling that would have allowedhunters to bring “trophy” ele-phants killed in Zimbabwe into theUnited States, calling big-gamehunting a “horror show” that hedid not believe helped conserva-tion.

“There’s a lot of shock that thispresident and this administrationwould roll back a decision on tro-phy hunting like this,” said TanyaSanerib, a senior attorney withthe Center for Biological Diversi-ty, which fights to protect speciesthreatened with extinction. “Butthere’s something about ele-phants that just crosses partylines. They get to people.”

Aides said it was no more com-plicated than that. The president

likes elephants, they said. He didnot know about his administra-tion’s decision to lift the trophyban until learning it from the newsmedia and was annoyed to be crit-icized for a move he had no part in.So he made his displeasure knownin the way he has so many othertimes this year, through his Twit-ter feed.

As it happened, his decisionalso coincided with the senti-ments of conservative media per-sonalities like Michael Savage,Laura Ingraham and Mike Cer-novich, who have defended Mr.Trump through a cascade of con-troversies this year but protestedthe administration’s initial an-

After Late Help for Elephants, a Question: Why?

By PETER BAKERand EMILY COCHRANE

Continued on Page A15

WASHINGTON — The JusticeDepartment sued to block AT&T’s$85.4 billion bid for Time Warneron Monday, setting up a show-down over the first blockbuster

acquisition tobe consideredby the Trumpadministrationand drawinglimits on corpo-rate power inthe fast-evolv-ing media land-scape.

By challeng-ing the deal, theJustice Depart-ment is takingan approach to

antitrust issues that is starkly dif-ferent from the Obama adminis-tration’s. In 2011, for instance, thedepartment approved a similardeal — Comcast’s acquisition ofNBCUniversal — after imposingnumerous conditions on the trans-action.

If AT&T’s bid for Time Warnerwere to go through, the mergerwould create a media and tele-communications behemoth. By it-self, AT&T is one of the nation’slargest internet and telephoneproviders. With its 2015 acquisi-tion of DirecTV, the country’s larg-est satellite company, it also be-came the largest television dis-tributor in the United States.

The combined company wouldhave an unrivaled ability to reachconsumers through news and en-tertainment programming.Among Time Warner’s propertiesare HBO, the home to “Game ofThrones”; Warner Bros., the stu-dio behind blockbusters like“Wonder Woman” and the HarryPotter film series; and TurnerBroadcasting, which includes thenews channel CNN and thesports-heavy TNT network.

Makan Delrahim, the JusticeDepartment’s top antitrust regu-lator, said a union of the two com-

U.S. SUES TO STOPAT&T’S TAKEOVEROF TIME WARNER

NEW TACK ON ANTITRUST

Regulators Seek Sale ofAssets — AT&T Says

Suit ‘Defies Logic’

By CECILIA KANGand MICHAEL J. de la MERCED

Continued on Page A15

Randall Stephenson,AT&T’s chief

WASHINGTON — PresidentTrump on Monday officially desig-nated North Korea as a state spon-sor of terrorism, a provocativediplomatic move that he said wasaimed at drastically increasingpressure on the rogue nation toabandon its pursuit of nuclearweapons.

North Korea will join Sudan,Syria and Iran as countries thatthe State Department identifies asthose that have “repeatedly pro-vided support for acts of interna-tional terrorism.”

“Should have happened a longtime ago,” Mr. Trump told report-ers at the start of a cabinet meet-ing at the White House. The presi-dent said the designation wouldbe followed on Tuesday by the“highest level of sanctions”against Pyongyang to force theend of the development of its nu-clear and ballistic missiles.

Mr. Trump has vowed to seek“complete denuclearization” inNorth Korea and has threatened“fire and fury” aimed at the coun-try if it endangers the UnitedStates. This year, the president or-dered an end to the policy of “stra-tegic patience” that was pursuedby President Barack Obama, inthe hopes that North Korea’sleader, Kim Jong-un, would even-tually agree to negotiate.

“This just continues to tightenthe pressure on the Kim regime,”Secretary of State Rex W. Tiller-son said after Mr. Trump’s an-nouncement, “all with an inten-tion to have him understand thatthis is only going to get worse untilyou are ready to come and talk.”

Still, it is unclear whether theterrorism designation will givethe president and the secretary ofstate new and powerful leverageto force nuclear negotiations — orsimply deepen the war of wordsbetween Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.

Long a pariah in the interna-tional community, North Koreawas put on Washington’s list ofstate sponsors of terrorism in 1988after Pyongyang’s agents planteda bomb on a South Korean pas-senger jet, killing all 115 peopleaboard, in 1987.

That attack was instructed byKim Jong-il, the father of KimJong-un, according to one of the

Trump RevivesTerrorist LabelFor Pyongyang

Goal Is to Force Endof Nuclear Program

By MICHAEL D. SHEARand DAVID E. SANGER

Continued on Page A10

BERLIN — Chancellor AngelaMerkel of Germany faced thegreatest crisis of her career onMonday after negotiations to forma new government collapsed,shaking a country that is Europe’spolitical and economic anchor.

The breakdown abruptly raisedthe prospect of new elections inGermany. It came less than twomonths after the last electionsseemed to assure that Ms. Merkel,an icon of Western democracy andvalues, would remain Germany’sleader for a fourth term.

The chancellor said she re-mained hopeful about forming amajority government. But ifforced to choose, Ms. Merkel said,she would prefer to go throughnew elections rather than try tolead a minority government.

“I don’t want to say never, but Iam very skeptical, and believethat new elections would be thebetter way forward,” the chancel-lor told the public broadcasterARD.

At a time when the EuropeanUnion is facing a host of pressingproblems, from Brexit negotia-tions with Britain, to the rise ofright-wing populism, to separat-ism in Spain’s Catalonia region,the possibility of political instabil-ity in a normally reliable Ger-many sent tremors through theContinent.

The collapse of talks reflectedthe deep reluctance of Ms.Merkel’s conservative bloc andprospective coalition partners —the ecologist-minded Greens andpro-business Free Democrats —to compromise over key positions.The Free Democrats quit the talkslate Sunday, citing what theycalled an atmosphere of insincer-ity and mistrust.

“There is no coalition of the will-ing to form a government,” saidThomas Kleine-Brockhoff, direc-tor of the Berlin office of the Ger-man Marshall Fund. “This is un-charted territory since 1949. We’refacing a protracted period of poli-

MERKEL IN CRISIS,UNABLE TO FORMNEW GOVERNMENT

TALKS FAIL IN GERMANY

Chancellor Leans TowardNew Elections Over

Leading Minority

By MELISSA EDDYand KATRIN BENNHOLD

Chancellor Angela Merkel with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday in Berlin.MARKUS SCHREIBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A12

The Trump administration isending a humanitarian programthat has allowed some 59,000Haitians to live and work in theUnited States since an earthquakeravaged their country in 2010,Homeland Security officials saidon Monday.

Haitians with what is known asTemporary Protected Status willbe expected to leave the UnitedStates by July 2019 or face depor-tation.

The decision set off immediatedismay among Haitian communi-ties in South Florida, New Yorkand beyond, and was a signal toother foreigners with temporaryprotections that they, too, couldsoon be asked to leave. About320,000 people now benefit fromthe Temporary Protected Statusprogram, which was signed intolaw by President George Bush in1990, and the decision on Monday

followed another one last monththat ended protections for 2,500Nicaraguans.

Haiti, the poorest country in theWestern Hemisphere, is stillstruggling to recover from theearthquake and relies heavily onmoney its expatriates send to rel-atives back home. The Haitiangovernment had asked the Trumpadministration to extend the pro-tected status.

“I received a shock right now,”Gerald Michaud, 45, a Haitianwho lives in Brooklyn, said whenhe heard the news. He has beenworking at La Guardia Airport asa wheelchair attendant, sendingmoney to family and friends backhome. He said he feared for hiswelfare and safety back in Haitinow that his permission to remainin the United States was ending.

59,000 Haitians Must Leave U.S.As White House Ends Protections

By MIRIAM JORDAN

Continued on Page A15

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVII . . . No. 57,788 © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2017

Today, mostly sunny, breezy,warmer, high 57. Tonight, increasingclouds, some rain late, low 48. To-morrow, early rain, then sunshine,high 53. Weather map, Page B12.

$2.50