Author: NY TIMES

A snowballing scandal in Hungary over the pardoning of a man convicted of covering up pedophilia in a children’s home forced the third resignation in a week on Friday of an important political ally of the country’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban.The departure of Zoltan Balog, a former government minister, from the leadership of the Hungarian Reformed Church followed the resignations last weekend of Hungary’s president, Katalin Novak, and Judit Varga, a former Justice minister and a leading figure in Fidesz, Mr. Orban’s conservative governing party.All three have been at the forefront of Mr. Orban’s efforts to present Hungary as…

PRINCETON, NJ—His name is Fnu Nidunjianzan. but it is not the truth. Because technically, Fnu isn’t a name; This is an acronym. Fnu stands for First Name Unknown, which is how Tibetans who don’t follow the traditional first/last name structure prove their identity in order to fill out pesky paperwork like a U.S. visa.Nitun Gyaltsen grew up in Tibet playing tennis. Or not quite. Because there are no tennis courts in Tibet. This is partly due to the altitude. Tennis balls often shrink/explode on impact, which makes playing tennis a bit tricky.Fnu is called Top. Not because of the topspin,…

For nearly 40 years, the novelist Bret Easton Ellis has been chronicling noirish debauchery in best-selling books such as “American Psycho” and “Less Than Zero.” This week, his partner, Todd Michael Schultz, was arrested at the fancy Los Angeles condominium building where the couple lives, and was charged with burglary, according to Abraham Bedoyan, a sergeant at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station.On Tuesday, Sergeant Bedoyan said, management at 818 North Doheny Drive received a phone call from a female resident in distress. The resident said that a man had entered her apartment and was ransacking her things, according to a…

Robert Shiver’s bill for his homeowner insurance jumped from $3,800 in 2022 to $8,000 in July. “I remember opening the bill and, honestly, laughing, like, ‘This is not feasible,’” he said.Mr. Shiver, 40, who lives about 20 miles east of Tampa, Fla., did not pay the bill. Instead, he worked with his insurance agent to shave off parts of his coverage, lowering the estimate for how much the insurer would have to pay to potentially rebuild his house from around $710,000 to about $560,000.Shrinking the coverage lowered his bill to just under $5,000, a huge relief, he said, since he…

As the film editor overseeing movies coverage for The New York Times, I follow Oscar races for a living, so I knew that Greta Gerwig wasn’t a shoo-in for a best director nomination for “Barbie.” Still, when she was snubbed, I was surprised, then somewhat miffed, then truly annoyed as I thought more about it. She brought vision, artistry and both humor and gravitas to what could have been a forgettable summer confection. How could the academy not see this?Of course, as it turned out, I wasn’t alone in my outrage; thank you, Hillary Clinton. If the reaction seemed especially…

The Israeli military operation at Nasser Medical Complex on Thursday followed weeks of warnings from health officials about increasingly dire conditions inside the hospital. Doctors struggling with scarce supplies. Displaced people sleeping in corridors. Hunger gnawing as food grew scarce. Bombings and gunfire reverberating in the surrounding streets.In a series of social media posts in late January, Ahmed Moghrabi, a surgeon at the hospital, described “two days of horror” as Israeli forces edged closer. Over two days, he said, the hospital, with just a dozen surgeons left, received more than 320 patients. Source link

President Biden blamed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia personally on Friday for the reported death of the imprisoned Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny, and cited the case in pressing House Republicans to approve military aid to Ukraine in its war with Moscow.But while he once threatened to impose “devastating” consequences on Mr. Putin if Mr. Navalny died in prison, the president conceded that there was not much more he could do after the sanctions and other actions taken in the last two years in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Mr.…

Graduating from medical school takes a lot of hard work. Falling in love while you’re doing it takes a whole lot of luck (and some work as well).Dr. Liu was in her third year of medical school at U.C.L.A., and Dr. Park was just starting his first year of ophthalmology residency training there. Dr. Liu had done an ophthalmology rotation there just four months prior. And yet, it was Hinge that brought them together.“She looked very cute in her photos, and she said something in her profile about wanting someone who vibes with her friends,” Dr. Park, 32, said. “I…

Tucker Carlson left Moscow more than a week ago, riding high from an interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that returned him to the spotlight after his abrupt cancellation by Fox News last spring.But the interview with the wartime autocrat, mocked in various corners of the political-media world for its soft touch, continues to have a long and tortured afterlife — becoming a trending topic all over again on Friday after Mr. Putin’s most vocal domestic opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny, turned up dead in a Russian prison.“This is what Putin’s Russia is, @TuckerCarlson,” Liz Cheney, the former Republican…

In a flex of genre-spanning musicianship that’s also a workaholic’s lament, Beyoncé announces her next realm to conquer — country, one of her birthrights as a Texan — while she recalls her past and doubles down on her ambition, singing, “Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make.” The music is an arena-country crescendo, from acoustic-guitar strum to full-band impact topped by pedal-steel guitar, along with gospel-organ underpinnings and country quavers in Beyoncé’s vocal lines. At a moment when country music is being pushed to acknowledge Black roots and current Black musicians, Beyoncé is not only claiming an…