Your Friday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/briefing/trump-indicted-europe.html

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Donald Trump will be the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges. A grand jury in New York City voted to indict him for his role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, people with knowledge of the matter told The Times.

Trump’s surrender is expected on Tuesday. He will face arraignment, at which point the specific charges will be unsealed.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his aides were caught off guard by the timing, my colleague Maggie Haberman reports. They thought any such action was still weeks away and might not occur. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing.

The development will shake up the 2024 presidential race, in which Trump is a candidate: It’s uncertain if an indictment would rally Republican voters to Trump’s side — or erode his standing among them. Notably, Trump faces other investigations, but any indictment or conviction would not bar him from running.

The indictment will also test American democracy, our chief White House correspondent writes in an analysis: “For all of the focus on the tawdry details of the case or its novel legal theory or its political impact, the larger story is of a country heading down a road it has never traveled before, one fraught with profound consequences for the health of the world’s oldest democracy.”

What’s next: The arrest will be anything but routine. And a conviction is not assured; the legal theory has yet to be evaluated by judges.

Trump’s statement: “This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.” He has consistently painted the investigation as a larger political conspiracy.

Russia announced the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. He is believed to be the first American reporter to be held as an accused spy in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The arrest was a stunningly provocative move, aimed at one of the best-known Western journalists still working inside Russia — and his employer, a pillar of the American news media. With the arrest, President Vladimir Putin signaled to the world that he was doubling down on Russia’s wartime isolation.

Gershkovich, like other Western journalists, had the Kremlin’s formal approval to work there. But Russia’s options for retaliation have grown increasingly limited — Europe has largely weaned itself off its dependence on Russian energy imports, and major Western companies have largely cut ties with Russia. Western journalists have thus become one of the few remaining potential pressure points, as a possible spring offensive looms.

Details: Gershkovich, 31, grew up in Princeton, N.J., as a child of Soviet émigrés. The Journal vehemently denied the accusations against him. The White House condemned the arrest. Russian officials said he was “caught red-handed” and jailed in Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow.

A swap? In past espionage cases, Russia has used detentions to instigate prisoner exchanges. Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. Acquittals in such cases are virtually unheard-of.

Other updates:

Finland won final approval to join NATO, a major shift in the balance of power between the West and Russia resulting from the war in Ukraine.

Satellite images show how Ukraine became darker over months of Russian attacks on its infrastructure.

In the Middle East, A.I. and other emerging technologies have become part of everyday policing. The spread shows the proliferation of certain surveillance technologies, once believed to be widespread only in China.

A police conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, provided a rare look at an increasingly global police surveillance business. A brain wave reader that can detect lies. Miniaturized cameras that sit inside vape pens and disposable coffee cups. Video cameras that zoom in from more than a kilometer away to capture faces and license plates.

The technologies expand the potential reach of law enforcement in the U.A.E. and other countries in the region and signal a new era of policing that raises questions about the effects on people’s privacy and about how political power is wielded.

In related news: Wealth funds in the U.A.E. and Qatar invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.

Our A.I. newsletter: Six ways to use chatbots.

President Emmanuel Macron is trying to improve water conservation after one of France’s driest winters — and to move past the retirement fight.

Pope Francis, 86, is “gradually improving” after a night in a hospital.

China is trying to improve relations with the E.U., as the U.S. urges the bloc to pick sides.

Mexican officials said they had arrested five people after a fire in a migrant detention center near the U.S. killed at least 39 people.

A fire on a passenger ferry in the Philippines killed at least 28 people.

At least 35 people were killed in India when a well cover collapsed in a packed temple.

Two U.S. Army helicopters collided over Kentucky, killing nine soldiers.

Four sailors were rescued in the Pacific Ocean after their sailboat hit a whale and sank.

A Chinese billionaire once had ties to the Communist Party and Donald Trump’s allies. Now, he’s accused of fraud on two continents.

The Vatican formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a legal concept that was used to justify colonization.

A jury found Gwyneth Paltrow not liable in damages over a crash with another skier on a Utah slope in 2016.

The Fitzwilliam Museum, in Britain, is expected to return a painting by Gustave Courbet to the heirs of a Jewish engineer who fled Paris before the Nazi occupation of France.

Investigators seized an ancient bronze statue, valued at $25 million, from the Met. They said there was evidence that the statue was stolen from Turkey.

Culinary habits in Afghanistan are changing under the Taliban, as people learn to cook with less. In Kabul, many restaurants have closed. Even middle-class families have cut back.

How English soccer became addicted to smokeless tobacco: Use of the product is soaring among professionals and young players at academies — and nobody knows how to stop it.

The Premier League midfielder on the radar of the biggest clubs: Mason Mount’s contract at Chelsea expires in the summer of 2024, and he is drawing interest from elite teams, including Liverpool.

Why Arsenal Women is starting to believe: Arsenal Women is making progress at home and abroad under its coach, Jonas Eidevall; who knows where the team might go?

And from The Times: The start of a new Major League Baseball season has brought significant changes.

Less than four years ago, a Mexican grandmother named Ángela Garfias Vázquez — who goes by Doña Ángela, or Mrs. Ángela — began posting cooking videos to YouTube.

Since then, she has become one of the most watched cooks in the world. Her channel has gotten 437 million views, which is more than Martha Stewart’s channel (roughly 172 million) and the NYT Cooking channel (about 72 million) combined.

Mrs. Ángela’s fans say that her appeal lies in her grandmotherly aura. In her, people of Latin American descent see their abuelas: whether by Mrs. Ángela’s shirts flecked with flowers, by the spots on her hands or by her ability to handle hot tortillas without flinching.

“It’s all these little revelations of memories coming back to you,” said a longtime fan whose grandmother is from Mexico.

For a weekend project, make a bright lemon cheesecake tart.

“Humanly Possible” is a sweeping new survey of the humanist tradition.

In “London Brew,” an ambitious jazz album, a collective of noted U.K.-based musicians drew inspiration from Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew.”

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Make boasts (four letters).

And here are today’s Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Thanks for spending this week with me! — Amelia

P.S. The Times won two National Magazine Awards.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is about changes to professional baseball.

You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.