Evening Update: Pentagon chief confirms U.S. paused bomb shipment to Israel to signal concerns over Rafah invasion

Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:A shipment of bombs earmarked for Israel from the United States was paused by the Biden administration last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S., Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin says.An official who wasn’t named in an Associated Press story said the shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs. The focus of U.S. concern was the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting like Rafah, where more than one million civilians are sheltering after evacuating other parts of Gaza amid Israel’s war with Hamas, which came after the militant group’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.