 May 8, 2024 |
Good morning. We’re covering Israel’s incursion into Rafah and Stormy Daniels’s testimony at Donald Trump’s trial.
Plus: Allegations of an assassination plot against Volodymyr Zelensky.
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| Watching an area of Rafah hit by Israeli strikes on Tuesday. Hatem Khaled/Reuters |
Negotiators arrived in Cairo after Israel seized Rafah crossing
Delegations from Israel and Hamas arrived in Cairo yesterday to resume talks on a proposed cease-fire deal. Hours earlier, Israeli tanks and troops entered the southern Gaza city of Rafah and seized control of the border crossing with Egypt, halting the flow of aid into the enclave. U.N. officials warned that the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory would worsen. Here’s the latest.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who is under pressure from the U.S. and other allies to agree to a truce, said that while he had sent negotiators back to the talks, “in tandem, we continue waging the war on Hamas.”
Analysts said that Israel’s incursion into Rafah could either ratchet up the pressure on Hamas to make a deal or sabotage the talks. But the move did not appear to be the full ground invasion of Rafah that Israel had long been threatening and that its allies had been working to avert, and the Israeli military called the move “a very precise” counterterrorism operation.
Devastating consequences: The head of a hospital in Rafah said that 27 bodies and 150 wounded people had been brought to his facility since the start of the incursion. The Israeli military said it had killed about 20 people in Rafah, describing the dead as Hamas militants.
Analysis: Netanyahu, under pressure from all sides, is trying to reassure his many domestic, military and diplomatic critics. Here’s a look at what he is confronting.
In other news from the war:
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| Stormy Daniels leaving court on Tuesday. Seth Wenig/Associated Press |
Stormy Daniels testified
Stormy Daniels, a porn star who received $130,000 to keep silent about her account of having had sex with Donald Trump in 2006, testified yesterday in the former president’s trial in Manhattan.
Over almost five hours, she recounted her story about an encounter that she said had left her shaking and bewildered — and about the hush-money payment that had bought her silence. Trump’s lawyer unsuccessfully moved for a mistrial, calling Daniels’s testimony, which was often explicit, prejudicial.
Daniels’s account and the subsequent payment, which she received in 2016 from Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, are at the heart of the case. Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up the payment. He has pleaded not guilty and has denied that the sexual encounter ever happened.
Cross-examination: Susan Necheles, a Trump lawyer, painted Daniels as a lying opportunist, using excerpts from her book to suggest that her story had changed over time. Daniels responded indignantly.
From inside the courthouse: “Her derision toward Trump is very clear, and the tension in the courtroom during her testimony about him is the highest it has been at this trial so far,” my colleague Jonah Bromwich reported.
Read six takeaways from the day’s events.
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| Volodymyr Zelensky has said his security services had told him of numerous assassination attempts on his life. Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Ukraine said it foiled a plot to kill Zelensky
Ukraine’s security services said yesterday that they had stopped a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top military and political figures. Two Ukrainian colonels have been arrested on suspicion of treason.
Ukrainian intelligence said in a statement that the plot had involved a network of Russian intelligence agents — including the two colonels. They were tasked with identifying people close to Zelensky’s security detail who could take him hostage and later kill him.
MORE TOP NEWS |
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| Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Europe
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Science
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MORNING READ |
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| Qilai Shen for The New York Times |
China’s Communist Party has all but declared war on feminism, jailing activists and silencing prominent women online.
But pockets of resistance are growing in some cities, as women gather in bars, salons and bookstores to question misogynistic tropes and to debate their place in a country that wants to choose it for them.
Lives lived: Kris Hallenga, a writer and educator who was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer at 23, spent years teaching young people in Britain about early detection. She died at 38.
CONVERSATION STARTERS |
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SPORTS NEWS |
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| Manu Fernandez/Associated Press |
La Liga champions: How Real Madrid won its 36th title.
Miami Grand Prix: Race takeaways from the International Autodrome.
Tennis payout: A federal jury has ordered the United States Tennis Association to pay $9 million to a player in an assault case.
ARTS AND IDEAS |
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| Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters |
The Garrick Club’s big vote
One of London’s oldest clubs, the Garrick, voted yesterday to admit women as members, ending a decades-long dispute that has lately made life acutely awkward for some members. The vote passed by a margin of roughly 60 percent to 40 percent.
Some members had said they planned to swiftly nominate a slate of prominent women, including the actress Judi Dench and the classics scholar Mary Beard.
More culture news:
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| Sang An for The New York Times |
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Play the Spelling Bee. And here are today’s Mini Crossword and Wordle. You can find all our puzzles here.
That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Natasha
Reach Natasha and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.
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