Your Friday Evening Briefing

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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday.

1. President Biden said Russia was poised to invade Ukraine “in the coming week, in the coming days.”

Speaking from the White House, Biden said that he was convinced that President Vladimir Putin had “made the decision” to attack and that the capital of Kyiv would be targeted. “It is not too late to de-escalate,” Biden said, adding that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, would meet next week to give diplomacy one more chance.

Shelling struck a ring of frontline towns in eastern Ukraine today. Russia-backed separatist leaders urged some 700,000 residents to flee eastern Ukraine and seek safety in Russia, claiming Ukraine was about to attack the region. Ukraine denied the claim, saying the separatists were trying to sow panic, a tactic the U.S. believes could be used by Russia as a pretext for an invasion.

In Moscow, many analysts say that Putin remains rational and that the huge troop buildup could be a convincing bluff. But others believe that he has changed during the pandemic, a shift that may have left him more reckless.

2. The National Archives confirmed that it had uncovered classified information among the documents Donald Trump took with him from the White House.

In January, 15 boxes of materials that Trump had taken from the White House were sent back to the National Archives. The archives said that it had “identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes.” It added that staff had consulted with the Justice Department on the matter.

The archives also said that the Trump White House had failed to turn over records that included “certain social media records” and nonofficial electronic messaging accounts that were used for official business. It’s the latest in a series of disclosures that have raised new questions about whether Trump followed federal record-keeping laws or mishandled classified information after he left office.

3. Hundreds of police officers in Canada began arresting protesters, hoping to end the weeks of gridlock that have roiled Ottawa.

The arrests came 22 days after a trucker convoy blocked the nation’s capital to protest pandemic restrictions. Among those arrested was Tamara Lich, one of the main voices of the protest movement who has advocated the secession of Canada’s western provinces.

Law enforcement and officials faced mounting criticism that they moved too slowly to end the protests, permitting protesters to taunt local residents. Here’s what it looked like on the ground.

4. The former police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was sentenced to two years in prison, far less than the standard sentence of about seven years for manslaughter.

Jurors convicted Kim Potter on two counts of manslaughter in December. They found that she had acted recklessly when she fired a bullet into Wright’s chest after warning that she was going to stun him with a Taser during a traffic stop near Minneapolis. Potter maintained that she had accidentally pulled her gun instead of her Taser.

Judge Regina Chu sentenced Potter on only the most serious count, first-degree manslaughter, and said the case was different from other manslaughter cases because Potter had never intended to fire her gun. “This is a cop who made a tragic mistake,” Judge Chu said.

5. There will soon be no statewide mask mandates on the mainland U.S.

A number of states governed by Democrats are reversing their mask requirements in quick succession as Covid case counts drop. New Mexico and Washington were the latest states to do so.

Hawaii is now the only state that has not announced plans to relax mask requirements. Puerto Rico also has yet to announce any changes to its island-wide mandate.

In other virus news:

• The U.S. is ramping up vaccination assistance to 11 African countries.

• For the first time in two years, Australia will reopen to international travelers.

6. The Beijing Games are heading into their final weekend. So, how did it go?

China will have you think it went swimmingly. The country used digital tools during the Games to amplify official messages and try to smother critics, our investigation with ProPublica found.

Many people are worried about young athletes such as Kamila Valieva, the Russian star who fell repeatedly during her free skate. She had been under pressure since it was revealed that she had failed a doping test. The president of the International Olympic Committee called the treatment of the 15-year-old “chilling.”

The question is: What can sports officials do to protect vulnerable teenagers from the kind of night that exposed the worst of Olympic sports? Some say the answer is raising the minimum competition age, our Sports reporter writes.

Norway leads the medal count in the final days — again. Its success has prompted experts from other countries to figure out how the tiny nation keeps doing it.

7. Officials announced a plan to remove homeless people from New York City subways.

Responding to an increase in crime and concerns over rider safety, Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul said that they would no longer allow New York City’s subway system to be used for anything but transportation. The plan includes stronger enforcement by the city’s police, as well as more mental health services and housing options for people who shelter underground.

Critics say the plan amounts to criminalizing mental illness.

With elections looming and violent crime rates rising in cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, progressive prosecutors are facing resistance to their plans to roll back stricter crime policies of the 1990s.

8. Pitchers and catchers were supposed to report for spring training this week in Florida and Arizona.

Instead, stadiums are empty because of a dispute over a new labor contract between Major League Baseball and the players’ union. Many hurdles remain in the way of a deal. It would be the third consecutive year that spring training — which affects the towns, people and economies that thrive off it — was not normal. Fans and businesses are eager for its return.

“I’m just disgusted,” one fan said. “I like my baseball and to have baseball as soon as I’d like to have it.”

Today, the M.L.B. announced that spring training games were postponed until “no earlier than” March 5.

9. We have your weekend cooking projects covered.

Let’s start with cake for breakfast. Most crumb cakes are more crumb than cake. But a truly great slice — or square — balances each bite with an interplay of spices, butter and sandy brown sugar. So what’s the right crumb cake ratio? The secret is a base layer of cake that’s delicious enough to eat on its own, Melissa Clark writes.

For dinner, whole oranges take center stage in Genevieve Ko’s version of roasted orange chicken, her latest take on American Chinese home cooking. It was partly inspired by a takeout dish that was developed 35 years ago for the first Panda Express in Hawaii.

10. And finally, new cousins for a very old crab.

For hundreds of millions of years, horseshoe crabs have been trundling along the ocean floor — outliving woolly mammoths, Neanderthals and even dinosaurs — to become some of the oldest living creatures on Earth. Scientists have widely accepted that horseshoe crabs have occupied their own branch in the history of life — until now.

Using genetic sequencing, a team of researchers suggests that horseshoe crabs belong to the arachnid family, making them relatives of spiders and scorpions. If their analysis is correct, it throws the roots of the arachnids’ tree into question and suggests arachnids have an earlier, stranger and more complicated evolutionary history than scientists realized.

Have a timeless weekend.

Angela Jimenez compiled photos for this briefing.

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