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| The hush-money case will be Donald Trump’s first criminal case to go to trial. Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times |
Trump’s hush-money trial to begin next month
A New York judge yesterday set a March 25 trial date for Donald Trump’s hush-money case, clearing the way for the first prosecution of a former American president and ensuring that Trump will face at least one jury before Election Day.
The judge rejected Trump’s bid to throw out the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal charges against him, which stem from a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
It will be Trump’s first criminal case to go to trial, and it might not be the last: He is facing 91 felony counts across four criminal indictments in Washington, D.C., Florida and Georgia, as well as Manhattan.
Unlike the federal cases in Washington and Florida, the case in Manhattan is insulated from federal intervention, so Trump would not be able to pardon himself or otherwise use the presidency as a legal shield.
Washington: The trial date in Manhattan leaves the door open for Trump’s Washington trial to take place in the late spring or early summer, once the Supreme Court decides its fate.
Georgia: At a hearing for the Georgia case on Thursday, defense lawyers argued that the district attorney leading the prosecution should be removed because she benefited financially from a relationship with a prosecutor she hired.
Civil fraud: A judge is considering the New York attorney general’s request that he fine Trump about $370 million and effectively bar him from doing business in New York. That decision could come today.
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| Damage at the Nasser Medical Complex in December. Israeli troops raided it yesterday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Israeli forces raid a major Gaza hospital
The Israeli military raided the largest hospital still functioning in the Gaza Strip in what it called a search for Hamas fighters and the bodies of hostages.
Explosions and gunfire rocked the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Younis before the predawn raid. Several people were killed and wounded, according to a doctor there and Doctors Without Borders, which had staff members at the hospital. (The specific casualty claims could not be immediately confirmed.)
Gazan officials said that at the start of the week there were 8,000 displaced people sheltering at the hospital, and hundreds of patients and medical workers. Many of them fled before the raid, and it was not clear how many people remained in the hospital when it happened.
The Israeli military said it had detained dozens of people, but it did not say who, or why, and it did not say whether hostages or Hamas fighters had been found.
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| A rocket carrying a military missile tracking system launching in Florida this week. Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today, via Associated Press |
A new U.S. satellite push
The Pentagon is experimenting with new approaches to bolster the military’s growing presence in space, an initiative that feels urgent after intelligence revealed that Russia was making advances on a space-based nuclear weapon that could potentially strike U.S. satellites.
One such approach aims to blanket low Earth orbit with hundreds of smaller, cheaper satellites, instead of a few very large ones. (The idea is rather like the Starlink internet communications system that Elon Musk’s SpaceX already has in orbit.) Even if an adversary knocked out several U.S. satellites, there would still be many more to take their place.
An aerospace engineer and space security scholar at the American Enterprise Institute said that by the end of the decade, the Pentagon would most likely have 1,000 new satellites in low-Earth orbit.Continue reading the main story
| THE LATEST NEWS |
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| Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters |
| Greece legalized same-sex marriage and equal parental rights for same-sex couples, becoming the first Orthodox Christian country to pass such a law.Ukrainian soldiers are withdrawing from positions in the town of Avdiivka.Venezuela expelled a U.N. agency that defends human rights, an extraordinary move that will further strip the country of foreign oversight. |
Asia News
| Japan’s economy slipped into a recession. The country now has the world’s fourth largest economy, behind those of the United States, China and Germany.Prabowo Subianto is expected to win Indonesia’s presidential election, but it remains unclear what type of leader he will be. |
U.S. News
| The White House clashed with the Justice Department about disparaging comments in a special counsel report about President Biden’s handling of classified information before the report was released, previously undisclosed correspondence shows.A shooting that killed one person and wounded nearly two dozen at Kansas City’s Super Bowl celebration appeared to have stemmed from an argument, the authorities said.The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden has charged a former F.B.I. informant with fabricating claims that Biden and his father sought $10 million in bribes from a Ukrainian energy company. |
What Else Is Happening
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| Alice Ewing/Ecology Australia |
| Scientists recently identified a wild platypus that was just shy of 24 years old, the oldest discovered so far.Chocolate chip vanilla ice cream, long a staple of the freezer aisle, has fallen out of favor. |
The Week in Culture
| The photojournalist James Nachtwey captured a dozen of the world’s best actors far from the set for The New York Times Magazine.Presidential libraries offer a lot more than historical documents, like interactive situation room experiences.A lander that took off for the moon yesterday had 125 miniature moon sculptures by the artist Jeff Koons as part of the cargo. |
A Morning Read
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| Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters |
Russian troops with amputated limbs and other serious injuries return home to find a patchwork system of treatment and, often, efforts to keep them out of the public eye.
The Kremlin wants to avoid encouraging an antiwar movement that could undermine the war in Ukraine. As for the soldiers, they are often sent back to the front as soon as possible, or left to navigate what some described as an indifferent system for treatment.
| SPORTS NEWS |
Arguing with referees: Who in the Premier League gets penalized the most for dissent?
A familiar snag: Money again delays a bid to reorganize professional tennis.
Formula 1’s 107 percent rule: How it works, and why it’s not always enforced.
| ARTS AND IDEAS |
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| Mauricio Lima for The New York Times |
The Seine’s booksellers get an Olympic reprieve
Bouquinistes, booksellers whose wooden stalls have lined the Seine in Paris for centuries, are a beloved symbol of the city’s culture.
So the stalls’ proprietors, and many intellectual Parisians, were incensed when they learned that nearly 600 of the stalls would have to be moved away from Paris’s great river during the Olympic Games there this summer. Bouquinistes vowed to fight, and petitions supporting them circulated widely.
Their efforts appear to have succeeded. This week, President Emmanuel Macron deemed the booksellers “a living heritage of the capital” and said they could stay.
