Bloomberg - Alberto Nardelli, Michael Nienaber, and Jennifer Jacobs / Germany Urges US to Send Kyiv Another Patriot Missile System
 

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government is pushing the US to deliver at least one more Patriot anti-missile system to Ukraine to help close the air-defense gap as Russia escalates a barrage of attacks, according to people familiar with the matter. 

• Berlin’s pressure campaign aimed at its transatlantic ally is part of a coordinated effort to get NATO and European Union partners to step up assistance for Ukraine on air defense, the people said on condition of anonymity. 

• Germany will also keep pressing European allies this week, including France and Italy, to assess what they’re able to deliver. 

• Germany’s prodding is something of a role reversal for Scholz, whose government has often been pilloried since Russia’s invasion for dragging its feet on weapons deliveries. The German leader has maintained his resistance to sending longer-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv, arguing that such deliveries risk making the country a party to war.

   

The Washington Post - Steve Hendrix and Jennifer Hassan / Israeli military intelligence head resigns over Oct. 7 Hamas attack
 

• Israel’s top military intelligence chief said Monday he would step down and retire because of his department’s failure to anticipate Hamas’s Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israeli towns along the Gaza border. 

• Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva is the highest-ranking leader to resign over the assault, the deadliest one-day attack in Israel’s history. Hamas fighters overwhelmed Israel’s high-tech border defenses and caught military units off guard as they stormed farming communities and killed an estimated 1,200 people, including 300 soldiers. Militants also took 253 hostages back to Gaza. 

• “The military intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to our mission,” Haliva said in a letter shared by the Israel Defense Forces on Monday. He said he has “been carrying that black day ever since, day and night. I will live with the horrible pain of the war every day.” 

• Hamas planned for the highly coordinated assault for more than a year, building its battle plans from open source materials and repeatedly drilling its troops, Israeli investigators said in November. Israeli intelligence failed to detect those preparations and didn’t heed warning signs that emerged in the hours before the attack, early reviews found.

  
  Related article: Al-Jazeera - Simon Speakman Cordall / Israel gave no evidence UNRWA staff linked to ‘terrorism’: Colonna report

Financial Times - Joe Miller / Donald Trump trial opens with allegations he tried to ‘corrupt’ 2016 US election
 

• Donald Trump attempted to “corrupt” the 2016 election when he directed his team to buy the silence of a porn actor who threatened to go public with claims of an extramarital affair, Manhattan prosecutors said during opening arguments in the first criminal trial against a former US president. 

• A lawyer for Trump, Todd Blanche, countered that his client was “cloaked in innocence” and had merely been trying to “protect his family, his reputation and his brand”. The 77-year-old former president was “not on the hook” for the way the payments were organised or recorded by his employees, with which he “had nothing to do”, Blanche added. 

• The competing narratives of the events that form the core of the “hush money” case against Trump came during the opening salvos of the first — and possibly only — criminal trial to proceed against the Republican nominee for president before November’s vote. 

• As Trump sat feet away at the defence table in a cold Manhattan courtroom on Monday morning, silently glowering, the seven men and five women on the jury heard assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo outline a “catch and kill” scheme allegedly orchestrated by the former president and his inner circle to buy the silence of porn actor Stormy Daniels.

   

The Guardian / Dozens arrested at Yale and NYU as pro-Palestinian student protests spread
 

• Police arrested dozens of people at pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Yale University in Connecticut and New York University in Manhattan, as student protests over Israel’s war in Gaza continue to roil US campuses. 

• On the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut, authorities arrested at least 47 protesters on Monday evening, the university said in a statement. Students who were arrested will be referred for disciplinary action. 

• The police crackdowns came after Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday in response to protesters setting up tent encampments at its New York City campus last week. 

• Several hundred people had been protesting on the Yale university campus, demanding the university divest from military weapons manufacturers. Yale said it had repeatedly asked students to leave, and warned them they could face law enforcement and disciplinary action if they didn’t.

Our opinion reads for today:

• Foreign Policy - Howard W. French / Why Aren’t We Talking More About the Famine in Gaza? 
• Project Syndicate - Justina Nixon-Saintil / AI Holds the Key to Resilient Cities