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For months he stood alone in blocking a $52 billion European aid package for Ukraine, but then he meekly bowed. He refused to accept Sweden as a new member of NATO for more than a year, before bowing to pressure from larger countries and giving his unconditional assent.The same pattern was repeated on Tuesday, when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made a surprise visit to Kiev to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following a path taken more than two years ago by other European leaders but previously eschewed by Orbán.Hungarian officials have described the previously unannounced trip as an effort to promote “peace,” a Hungarian euphemism for a deal based on Ukrainian capitulation to Russian demands. Many observers have instead seen it more as a move by Mr. Orban to try to en...

Few auto executives are as closely identified with the companies they run as Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla. And perhaps no one is more prolific at spreading their political views on social media.But as Mr. Musk’s public persona has become increasingly right-wing, Tesla appears to be paying a price in sales, especially among liberal and left-leaning customers who are much more likely to buy battery-powered cars than conservatives, according to analysts and many car owners who responded to a survey on the New York Times website about whether his behavior has influenced their opinion of Tesla.His image as an impulsive and unpredictable manager seems to have rubbed off on the cars, raising doubts in some people’s minds about their quality and helping explain why Tesla sales are down. On Tuesday,...

Israeli generals want to initiate a ceasefire in Gaza, even though that would keep Hamas in power for the time being, widening the rift between the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has opposed a truce that would allow Hamas to survive the war.According to interviews with six current and former security officials, the generals believe a truce would be the best way to free the approximately 120 Israelis still held, dead and alive, in Gaza.Ill-equipped to fight further after Israel’s longest war in decades, the generals also believe their forces need time to recover should a ground war break out against Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has been engaged in a low-level clash with Israel since October, several officials said.A truce with Hamas could also make it easier to ...

A patient walks into a hospital room, sits down, and starts talking to a doctor. Only in this case, the doctor is a hologram.It may sound like science fiction, but it’s reality for some patients at Crescent Regional Hospital in Lancaster, Texas.In May, the hospital group began offering patients the ability to see their doctor remotely via a hologram through a partnership with Holoconnects, a digital technology company based in the Netherlands.Each Holobox, the company’s name for its 440-pound, 7-foot-tall device that displays a highly realistic live 3D video of a person on a screen, costs $42,000, with an additional $1,900 annual service fee.The high quality of the images gives the patient the feeling that there is a doctor inside the box, when in reality the doctor is miles away and looki...

Keir Starmer, leader of the British Labour Party, nodded sympathetically as a young mother recalled, in heartbreaking terms, watching CCTV footage of the fatal stabbing of her 21-year-old son, whose heart had been pierced by a single bullet.“Thank you for this,” a grim Mr Starmer told the woman and other relatives of knife victims as they stood around a wooden table last week discussing how to tackle violent crime. “It’s really, really powerful.”It wasn’t the most edifying campaign event for a candidate, the week before an election his opposition party is widely expected to win. But it was entirely in keeping with the character of Mr Starmer, a 61-year-old former human rights lawyer who still acts more like a prosecutor than a politician pursuing a case.Sincere, intense, practical and not ...

The Supreme Court eluded a final resolution Monday in a pair of cases challenging state laws designed to limit social media companies’ power to moderate content. The ruling dashed an effort by Republicans who had pushed the legislation as a remedy for what they say is a bias against conservatives.It was the latest case in which the Supreme Court considered, and then sidestepped, a major decision on the parameters of expression on social media platforms.State laws differ on the specifics. Florida’s bars platforms from permanently banning candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’s bars platforms from removing any content based on a user’s views.The justices unanimously agreed to remand the cases to the lower courts for review. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, n...

The alleys are in permanent semi-darkness, covered with black nylon tarps to hide Palestinian fighters from Israeli drones flying overhead. Green Hamas flags and “martyrs” memorial banners hang from buildings, many of them badly damaged in Israeli raids and airstrikes in an effort to quell growing militancy in the territory, fueled by the war in Gaza.This is not Gaza or a traditional Hamas stronghold. It is a refugee camp in Tulkarem, a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where the relatively moderate Palestinian faction Fatah has long held sway.I recently met a local commander of these young militants, Muhammad Jaber, 25, in one of those dusty, broken-down alleys. One of Israel’s most wanted men, he and other fighters like him say they switched allegiances from the relatively moderate ...

Dr. Mildred Thornton Stahlman, a Vanderbilt University pediatrician whose research into fatal lung diseases in newborns led to life-saving treatments and the creation of one of the first neonatal intensive care units in 1961, died Saturday at her home in Brentwood , Tennessee. She was 101 years old.His death was confirmed by Eva Hill, the wife of Dr. Stahlman's nephew, George Hill.On October 31, 1961, Dr. Stahlman placed a panting premature baby into a miniature iron lung machine, also known as a negative-pressure ventilator, of the type used for children with polio. The machine worked by opening the baby's fragile chest muscles to help suck in air. The child survived.That initial success, along with the results of Dr. Stahlman's studies on newborn lambs, helped launch a new...

For many, France seems like a completely different place on Monday.The results of the first round of Sunday's legislative elections showed a deeply fragmented country, with a rising far right winning a record number of votes and the near collapse of President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party.“The far right at the gates of power,” read the cover of Le Parisien newspaper, the morning after the end of the first half of the early elections called by Mr. Macron.“Twelve million of our fellow citizens voted for a far-right party that is clearly racist and anti-republican,” the left-wing newspaper Libération said in an editorial, referring to Marine Le Pen's National Rally party. “The head of state threw France under the bus, the bus continued without slowing down, and is now parked i...

The Olympics have ancient origins. Now they will also have a dose of the latest technologies.This year, the highlights of the Summer Olympics will be narrated by artificial intelligence, and more specifically, by Al Michaels’ AI-generated storytelling.Executives at NBCUniversal and the Peacock streaming service said Wednesday that a customized daily highlight reel for the Olympics would be available to streaming subscribers. The reel will feature the voice of Mr Michaels, the 79-year-old American television host, who first covered the Olympics decades ago.Mr. Michaels, however, will not hole up in a TV booth every night to succinctly recap the dozens of Olympic events that have taken place. Instead, Peacock's program was trained by NBC clips of Michaels — he joined the network in 200...