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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, JULY 15, 2021

ROAD RULESGERMANY’S DRIVETO BE DRIVERLESSPAGE 8 | BUSINESS

A PRICE TO PAYHOPING TO KEEPMESSI AROUNDPAGE 16 | SPORTS

NO SOIL NEEDEDADD WATER, HIGH TECH,AND WATCH FARMS GROWPAGE 19 | LIVING

tially the same place it’s been for thepast 300 years.

The lake may have other plans.Climate change has started pushing

Lake Michigan’s water levels towarduncharted territory as patterns of rain,snowfall and evaporation are trans-formed by the warming world. Thelake’s high-water cycles are threateningto get higher; the lows lower. Already,the swings between the two show signsof happening faster than at any time inrecorded history.

their muddy town into a metropolis ofcommerce by making the riches of theAmerican Midwest accessible to theworld.

The mule-drawn barges that workedits canals long ago gave way to trains,planes and eighteen-wheelers.

But the same waters that gave life tothe city threaten it today, because Chi-cago is built on a shaky prospect — theidea that the swamp that was drainedwill stay tamed and that Lake Michi-gan’s shoreline will remain in essen-

In the search for a big-city refuge fromclimate change, Chicago looks like anexcellent option. At least, it does on amap.

It stands a half-continent away fromthe threat of surging ocean levels. Itsnorthern locale has protected it, to someextent, from southern heat waves. Anddroughts that threaten crops, forestsand water supplies in so many places?Chicago hugs the shore of one of thegrandest expanses of freshwater in theworld.

Water is, in fact, why Chicago exists.The third-largest city in the UnitedStates grew from a remarkable geo-graphical quirk, a small, swampy dip ina continental divide that separates twovast watersheds: the Great Lakes andthe Mississippi River Basin. In the 19thcentury, Chicagoans dug a canal linkingthose two watersheds, transforming

A series of ferocious storms in recentyears has made it clear that the threatthis poses to a metro area of 9.5 millionpeople is not abstract.

“There are buildings just teetering onthe edge of the lake. A few years ago,they had a beach. Now the water is lap-ping at their foundations,” Josh Ellis, aformer vice president of Chicago’s 87-year-old, nonprofit Metropolitan Plan-ning Council, said this year. “This is anexistential problem for those neighbor-CHICAGO, PAGE 6

“A few years ago, they had a beach. Now the water is lapping at their foundations.”

JOSH ELLIS, a former vice president of Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council

In recent years, ferocious storms and record-breaking rain have made it clear that the threat of climate change to the Chicago area is not abstract.LYNDON FRENCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A great city vs. a Great LakeA climate crisis haunts Chicago as Lake Michiganis pushed to new extremes

BY DAN EGAN

Lake Michigan swells, a city beach disappearsLake Michigan swells, a city beach disappears

2013 2020

Source: Google Earth THE NEW YORK TIMES

For centuries, the massive marble quar-ries above the Tuscan town of Carrarahave yielded the raw material for thepolished masterpieces of Italian sculp-tors like Michelangelo, Canova, Berniniand, most recently, ABB2.

Carving with pinpoint precision, andat least some of the artistic flair of itsmore celebrated (and human) prede-cessors, ABB2, a 13-foot, zinc-alloy ro-botic arm, extended its spinning wristand diamond-coated finger toward agleaming piece of white marble.

Slowly and steadily, ABB2 milled theslab of stone, leaving the contours of softcabbage leaves for a sculpture designedand commissioned by a renowned

American artist. ABB2 is hardly a lonerobotic genius, toiling away in anthropo-morphic solitude.

Just a few meters away, in a facilityhumming with robots, Quantek2 wasrubbing away on another marble block,executing a statue envisioned by aBritish artist who had contracted out themanual labor to a robotic hand.

Since at least the Renaissance, thecreative output of Italy’s artistic work-shops has been among the country’sbest-known and most valued exports.The founders and employees of this ro-botics lab believe that embracing ad-vanced technology is the only way to en-sure that the country stays at the artisticforefront.

“We don’t need another Michelan-gelo,” said Michele Basaldella, 38, atechnician who calls himself the robots’brain. “We already had one.”

One thing that hasn’t changed in hun-dreds of years is artists’ sensitivityabout who gets credit for their work. InFlorentine workshops, many artisansworked in obscurity, with a sculpture or ITALY, PAGE 2

ITALY DISPATCHCARRARA, ITALY

BY EMMA BUBOLA

Precision and speed elevate a new kind ofmarble artist in Italy

Michelangelo who? Robots break into sculpting.

A technician directing a robot in Carrara, Italy. The robots often toil away anonymously,because many of the artists who commission them want full credit for the work.

ALESSANDRO GRASSANI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

“Gentlemen,” the text message from therecruiter began, “there is an Americancompany that needs special forces, com-mandos with experience, for a job inCentral America.”

The pay, the recruiter went on to ex-plain, would be life-changing: between$2,500 and $3,500 a month, many timeswhat the veterans earned as retiredmembers of Colombia’s armed forces.And the mission was noble, the recruiterclaimed.

“We are going to help in the recoveryof the country, in terms of its securityand democracy,” the recruiter went on,urging the men to get fit now. “We aregoing to be pioneers.”

Instead, 18 of the recruits are now inHaitian custody, suspected by Haitianofficials of being linked to a plot to assas-sinate President Jovenel Moïse, whowas killed last week in a nighttime as-sault on his residence.

Three of the recruits are dead.Most appear to have been ap-

proached in the months before Mr.Moïse’s death by a group of business-men, some based in the United States,who exaggerated their credentials andthe scope of their companies. They mis-led some of the recruits about theproject they were embarking on andbroke promises to pay them thousandsof dollars.

The New York Times reviewed time-stamped recruitment text messagesand interviewed a dozen men who wereapproached to take part in the Haiti op-eration this year but did not end up go-ing in June — in some cases becausethey were supposed to be part of a sec-ond wave of recruits scheduled to landin Haiti at a later point, they said.

In interviews, the Colombian veter-ans said they had been told by recruiters— in person and through WhatsAppmessages later shared with The Times— that they were going to fight gangs,improve security, protect dignitariesand democracy and help rebuild a longsuffering country.

Behind the effort, the recruitersclaimed, was an important American se-curity company with U.S. governmentfunds to back them.

But CTU, the company that enlistedthe Colombians and whose logo andname was emblazoned on the black Poloshirts the recruits wore as a uniform,was run from a small warehouse in Mi-ami by Antonio Intriago, a Venezuelan-American with a history of debt, evic-tions and bankruptcies.

Colombian officials have said that HAITI, PAGE 4

False claimof a nobletask luredHaiti teamBOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

A look at how Colombians were enlisted for a mission ending in death and arrest

BY JULIE TURKEWITZAND ANATOLY KURMANAEV

Cubans unexpectedly took to thestreets on Sunday. Tens of thousandswere chanting for freedom and food. Itis hard to imagine a more succinctdiagnosis of the problem with LatinAmerica’s oldest dictatorship.

For more than six decades, theCuban regime has denied its people thebasic building blocks of the humanspirit and body. Of course, the U.S.embargo that’s been in place nearly aslong doesn’t help. Government restric-tions on the tiny private sector hurtCubans even more. Businesses, includ-ing grocery stores and restaurants, arebarred from taking out bank loans orengaging in trade. Food has alwaysbeen rationed, and now with the pan-

demic, restrictionsare even stricter.

While the com-plaints are not new,there was some-thing new aboutSunday’s demon-strations: theirspread.

The protestsbroke out en masse,spontaneously,

across the country, including in ruraltowns.

In the past, protests were limited tosmall groups, mostly in the capital,Havana. Ordinary Cubans, even thosewho were angry, knew better than toget too close to protesters — physicallyor politically. Any expression of soli-darity with any form of dissent is justtoo risky. Losing your job is common.Getting arrested is typical.

On Sunday, however, it seemed thatthis collective “fear of joining” van-ished. Solidarity trumped Cuba’s fend-for-yourself mentality.

The government responded as it haswith previous protests, with a call for“battle.” The president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, sent out security forces to quashthe protests. He also called on Commu-nist citizens to “defend” the revolution.

The closest thing to Sunday’s pro-tests Cuba had experienced in therecent past was the “Maleconazo” of1994, when hundreds of Cubans gath-ered in Havana’s famous seaside espla-nade, the Malecón, to protest the eco-nomic depression known as the “spe-cial period.”

The triggers behind the two protestsare similar. Today, as in 1994, Cuba issuffering because of upheaval in itsmain financial supporter and supplierof oil — the former Soviet Union backthen; Venezuela since 2016. Powerfailures are as common today as theywere in the early 1990s. Today, as in

The dayCubans losttheir fearJavier Corrales

OPINION

They broketheir silenceen masse,spontaneously,to demandfreedom andfood.

CORRALES, PAGE 14

Read, watch and listen to the stories. nytimes.com/modernlove

Modern Love

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