Friday, May 31, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning,

We’re covering search operations in Hungary after a tourist boat capsized, Israel’s political crisis and a language of whistles.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

The search operation on the River Danube in Budapest, Hungary, on Thursday. Balazs Mohai/EPA, via Shutterstock

Hungary opens criminal inquiry into deadly boat crash

At least seven people died after a sightseeing boat carrying South Korean tourists capsized on the Danube River in Budapest on Wednesday night. Hope is nearly gone for the 21 still missing.

It was the deadliest boating accident in Hungary in 75 years, and a particular blow to South Korea, which lost 304 people, including 250 high school students, in the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014.

Details: The boat, on a tour of the Danube, was clipped from behind by a larger sightseeing ship and began sinking within seconds. Passengers were thrown into the fast-moving current, and many of those rescued weren’t wearing life jackets.

What’s next? A criminal investigation is underway. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary said some 200 divers and medical professionals had been sent to the site. South Korea is sending an 18-member rescue team.

Israel enters uncharted territory with new elections

The country sprang back into election mode on Thursday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s staggering failure to form a government by midnight Wednesday.

Mr. Netanyahu is Israel’s first prime minister-elect to be unable to form a coalition after an election, seriously denting the aura of invincibility he has cultivated over a decade in office.

Recriminations and finger-pointing over the political crisis foreshadow a contentious campaign. Here’s a guide to the issues surrounding the new elections, set for Sept. 17.

At issue: A military draft law that would have conscripted some ultra-Orthodox Jews divided two parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance — the secular ultranationalist faction and the ultra-Orthodox parties.

What’s next? Mr. Netanyahu will remain in power until the next vote. Uncertainty over the country’s leadership could hinder the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeting the crowd during a swearing-in ceremony on Thursday. Adnan Abidi/Reuters

India’s prime minister begins second term

Narendra Modi, one of the most dominant Indian leaders in recent history, was sworn in for his second term at a grand ceremony in New Delhi.

As many as 8,000 guests attended the ceremony, which officials said was the largest event ever held at the presidential palace — a clear sign of the magnitude and historic significance of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s landslide victory. It is the first party in more than three decades to win a clear majority in consecutive elections.

Another angle: The B.J.P.’s victory indicated that voters support Mr. Modi’s economic policies, but few in the country can actually agree on how much the economy expanded or how high unemployment is amid growing suspicion of the government’s statistics.

Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press

As Everest melts, bodies emerge

In the past few seasons, climbers scaling Mount Everest have found the frozen bodies of the people who never made it home poking out of the ground — a haunting reminder of climate change.

The warming climate has reshaped the entire Himalayan landscape. The snow line is higher than it was just a few years ago, areas where ice once coated the ground are now exposed, and rapid glacial melting has threatened to cause floods downstream.

By the numbers: Over the past six decades about 300 people have died during Everest expeditions, and this season has been the deadliest so far, with 11 fatalities. More than 100 bodies may be lying on the icy slopes, prompting a debate about whether to remove them or leave them be.

If you have time this weekend, this is worth it

How a star is made

Brenda Ann Kenneally

The Times Magazine’s annual New York issue this year is devoted to live performance. We picked 12 artists — including, from above left, the opera singer Ying Fang, the rapper Princess Nokia, and the subway dancer Ikeem Jones — to demonstrate what it takes to light up the stage.

(This feature is best experienced with the sound on.)

Here’s what else is happening

Uber: In its first earnings report listing its shares, the ride-hailing giant posted slowing growth and a steep loss of more than $1 billion for the first three months of the year, compounding its bumpy start as a public company.

Opioid crisis: A 1-year-old boy died after ingesting a potent cocktail of heroin and fentanyl — the sort of mixture that has led to a surge in overdose deaths in the U.S. — while at home in New York, where his parents were packaging the drugs for sale. His father fled the country, and his mother was charged with murder.

JPMorgan Chase: The bank announced a tentative settlement in a class-action case initiated by a male employee that would require the company to ensure that its parental leave policy is gender-neutral.

Pakistan: A Hindu man in the southern Sindh province was charged with blasphemy against Islam after a cleric said the man had delivered medicine wrapped in verses from the Quran. It’s the latest case under a controversial law that critics say has been used to marginalize members of religious minority groups. Riots broke out in the area and protesters burned down Hindu shops.

Afghanistan: An American-funded university in Kabul, one of the biggest development projects in the country from the U.S. government, risks losing its funding after investigators weren’t able to determine what happened to $63 million.

Britain: The High Court is beginning to issue unexplained wealth orders, which require individuals to account for their finances above a certain level, in an effort to clean up the country’s reputation as a haven for “dirty money” often belonging to foreign nationals.

U.S.: The White House asked the Navy to hide a destroyer named after Senator John McCain during President Trump’s visit to Japan this week, White House and military officials said Wednesday. Navy officials said they didn’t abide by the request, and Mr. Trump said he hadn’t known about it.

Reuters

Snapshot: Above, doctors and relatives in protective gear burying the body of a patient killed by the Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala this week. The lethal virus, normally carried by bats, has killed dozens of people in Asia and has no cure, but an experimental drug helped protect monkeys against the virus and is also being tested against Ebola.

“Bird language”: Long before cellphones existed, Turkish farmers communicated with one another using whistles of varied-pitch frequencies and melodic lines.

What we’re reading: This article in Curbed, recommended by Jennifer Jett, our Hong Kong-based digital editor. “The bicycle was liberating for women when it was introduced in the late 19th century,” she tells us. “But they are underrepresented in cycling. So in some places, city planners are trying to accommodate riding with children or groceries — presumably, better for everybody.”

Now, a break from the news

Craig Lee for The New York Times

Cook: For those who love fried chicken, this Persian-inspired recipe will quickly become a favorite.

Listen: In “Actually Virtual,” Flying Lotus pulls us down a dark path with cryptic prophesies and the allure of danger, our critic writes.

Read: Tony Horwitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who died on Monday, returns to our hardcover nonfiction best-seller list with “Spying on the South,” a biography of the journalist and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Go: The new “Star Wars” expansion at Disneyland in California is the biggest in the park’s history, and a bet that Wookiees and Stormtroopers will draw visitors as well as princesses.

Smarter Living: You can boost the efficiency of your household energy use by boiling water efficiently. A physicist at the University of California San Diego found kettles on gas stovetops least inefficient, microwaves middling and electric kettles best at converting energy to heat. But only boil as much water as you need and monitor the boiling point, so you can manually shut it off.

And if you have a neighborhood-watch app, here’s how to put the crime alerts into perspective.

And now for the Back Story on …

The Times on TV

“The Weekly,” a new TV show from The New York Times, is premiering Sunday on FX and Monday on Hulu. The half-hour show tells one big story every week, featuring different reporters as they investigate the most important stories on their beats.

It’s not easy.

“We’re basically plugging really excellent world-class television journalism, which is what the production side provides, into this gigantic, world-beating news machine that is the New York Times newsroom,” Jason Stallman, the show’s editor, said.

Michael Landry, who runs T.M. Landry College Preparatory School in Louisiana, in the first episode of "The Weekly."

That involves meeting with journalists across the paper, staying ahead of what they are reporting on and asking them to take time away from their other projects to film.

Interviewing for a narrative documentary takes hours, requires the right setting and involves a camera crew. Add to that preproduction (the research and planning stage), dozens of hours of filming, then editing and revising, and the process for one episode — there are 30 in the first season — can take months.

“It takes an enormous amount of planning, and it takes a huge pipeline of stories, and it takes the cooperation and participation of reporters and editors around the world,” Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor, said. “But we’ve got all that.”

See for yourself at nytimes.com/theweekly or on FX and Hulu this weekend.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Alisha

Thank you
To Mark Josephson, Eleanor Stanford and Kenneth R. Rosen for the break from the news. Melina Delkic, on the briefings team, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is about Robert Mueller’s statement.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Podcaster’s need (3 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• When Jeremy Egner, The New York Times television critic, started writing “Game of Thrones” recaps, his daughter was a toddler. He wrote about how the show wove itself into their lives.