Good morning. We’re covering the truce between Iran and Israel and a NATO summit in The Hague. Plus: Australia’s flying chaplains.
Iran and Israel both claimed victory as their truce took holdA cease-fire between Israel and Iran seemed to be holding as of this morning, as Israel’s military lifted wartime restrictions and Iran’s president hailed “the end of a 12-day war that was imposed on the Iranian people.” Earlier, President Trump had lashed out at both nations for attacking each other after he’d announced the truce. Here’s the latest. Iran and Israel, both of which claim to have prevailed in the conflict, gave competing explanations yesterday for their strikes after the cease-fire was announced. But their comments throughout the day suggested that both sides wanted the cease-fire to last. In a post on social media, Trump claimed that U.S. strikes on Sunday had destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But a preliminary Pentagon report suggested that the bombing had set back Iran’s nuclear program by just a few months, and Israeli defense officials said they had evidence that the underground facilities at one site were not destroyed. A White House spokeswoman called the Pentagon report “flat-out wrong.” Next steps: Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has expressed a willingness to return to nuclear talks with the U.S. Quotable: “Iran is the weakest it’s been in decades,” my colleague Christina Goldbaum said. “A large part of that is that, right now, Iran is incredibly isolated.” Hear more from Christina.
A NATO summit focused on keeping Trump happyNATO leaders will convene today in The Hague for a meeting focused on increases in military spending, which President Trump has demanded. Any doubts about the wisdom of the war in Iran or the American intervention in it are likely to be suppressed. The elephant in the room will be Russia, and Trump’s ambivalent relationship with it. Trump has shown intermittent frustration with the Kremlin for resisting a cease-fire in Ukraine, yet he declined to impose sanctions and even pushed for Russia to return to what was once the Group of 8. Go deeper: Trump wants NATO countries to spend 5 percent of G.D.P. on their militaries, up from the current pledge of 2 percent. Not all members of the alliance have committed to the higher figure. Related: Germany plans to raise its military spending to 3.5 percent of its economic output by 2026, and to spend more to improve its crumbling infrastructure.
A journey across the new SyriaA new Syria is rising from the disastrous legacy of the toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad. The people are free, but the toll is grim — more than half a million killed in long years of war, and millions more displaced. Times journalists traveled for weeks over hundreds of kilometers of pockmarked highways and dirt roads, speaking with masked gunmen, jubilant children and scores of other Syrians as they rebuilt their lives. Here’s what my colleagues saw, from Damascus, the capital, to a village where Assad’s plunderers “stole all the roofs.”
Climate
Niall and Michelle Gibson are the latest in a long line of “Flying Padres” — the chaplains who fly across Australia’s vast, sparsely populated Northern Territory. Making their stops in a rickety, 20-year-old Cessna-182, the married ministers handle the usual services, like baptisms, weddings and funerals, as well as lending an ear to people for whom isolation is a daily reality. Lives lived: Arnaldo Pomodoro, the Italian artist whose fractured, monumental spheres adorn public spaces around the world, died at 98. Mick Ralphs, the British guitarist, vocalist and songwriter who was a founding member of the bands Mott the Hoople and Bad Company, has died at 81.
Does art need artists?Generative A.I. can turn a few prompts into something that looks like it came from an artist’s studio. But can art made by machines be as meaningful as that made by humans? Christoph Niemann, an illustrator, considered many of the conundrums and opportunities that A.I. creates for artists in this lavishly drawn piece for The New York Times Magazine. “My survival as an artist,” he writes, “will depend on whether I’ll be able to offer something that A.I. can’t: drawings that are as powerful as a birthday doodle from a child.” We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
Cook: All the heroes of a vegetarian bean chili appear in this salad. Read: Bob Dylan’s latest release is a book of black-and-white drawings. Travel: Island-hopping by ferry in the Caribbean can be a lot mellower than taking a cruise. Test: We’ve taken the names of cities out of some book titles. Can you put them back? Brew: This all-in-one coffee maker lets you grind beans and make pour-over on the road. Play the Spelling Bee. And here are today’s Mini Crossword and |
