Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. We're watching for news from Rafah, pondering this week's Stormy Daniels testimony and, on the World News podcast, offering you a second dose of cow cuddling - and bird flu.
Developing: Israel told people in Rafah to evacuate and head to what it calls an expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, in a further indication that the military is pressing ahead with its plans for a ground attack. A military spokesperson also urged people in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza and 11 other neighborhoods to go immediately to the shelters west of Gaza City.
The art of the trade war: President Biden is set to announce new tariffs, including a major tax rise on imported electric vehicles. The announcement is likely to maintain existing tariffs on many Chinese goods set by the Trump administration, and comes after TikTok and ByteDance sued to block a U.S. law seeking to separate the social-media platform from its Chinese parent or risk a ban in the United States.
A trial and then some: Porn star Stormy Daniels packed her testimony at Donald Trump's hush-money trial with details of the sexual encounter she said she had with the former president in 2006. Modesty and word count forbid me from typing more, but it's all in the links. The trial over Trump's payment to Daniels continues next week with former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who got a warning from the judge to zip it before he testifies.
The latest: The armored ground attack on Ukraine's second-largest city opens a front in the northeastern part of the country. It is unclear whether Russia will develop the campaign. Ukraine is trying to bolster its stretched armed forces by nearly any means necessary, including an effort to make it legal for some convicts to enlist in the army and cracking down on draft dodgers. In India, police arrested four people on suspicion of luring young men to Russia with the promise of jobs or university places, only to dragoon them into fighting in Ukraine.
Money better spent elsewhere? Anger at falling living standards is expected to dent support for mainstream parties in June's European Parliament elections. "At some point you need to start thinking about the French before others," said Killiams Perron of Dunkirk, who argued that prioritizing domestic issues like affordable housing as prices for everything rise would be better than throwing money at Ukraine's war effort.
Before I forget:
Italy banned small planes used by charities to search for migrant boats in the Mediterranean from using airports on the islands of Sicily, Pantelleria and Lampedusa. One German charity called the move "an act of cowardice and cynicism" and defied the ban with a fresh takeoff.
Defense lawyers for Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladić, who is serving a life sentence for his role in the bloody 1992-95 war in Bosnia, want him released to Serbia on health grounds.
Northern Ireland's police forceregularly obtained reporters' telephone billing data to find out if police officers were leaking information, lawyers representing two investigative journalists told a London tribunal.
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