Federal prosecutors charged Hunter Biden, the president’s son, with lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018. The indictment could lead to a high-profile trial of Biden next year, coinciding with his father’s re-election campaign.
The charges — which carry a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, though are rarely prosecuted — were brought by the special counsel David Weiss after a plea deal between Biden and government prosecutors collapsed last month. That agreement would have resolved the Justice Department’s long-running investigation without Biden serving prison time.
The defunct deal would have also resolved an investigation into Biden’s late filing of his tax returns for several years. Prosecutors could still file charges against Biden in that case. They have also signaled that they are continuing to investigate his foreign business ties.
House Republicans have stepped up efforts to use Hunter Biden’s work abroad to build a case for impeaching his father. Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Tuesday that the House would proceed with a formal impeachment investigation focused on whether President Biden and his family benefited from what Republicans have contended were corrupt activities by Hunter Biden. No evidence has surfaced publicly implicating the president in any wrongdoing.
Autoworkers are poised to strike
The United Auto Workers union, which represents about 150,000 workers, is planning to strike tomorrow if a deal is not reached by midnight with three of the country’s biggest automakers. The U.A.W. president said the initial strike locations would be “limited and targeted,” but more of the union’s workers will join if talks remain bogged down.
So far, the two sides remain far apart: The U.A.W. is demanding 40 percent wage increases over four years, while the companies have offered 14 to 16 percent raises. If the strike lasts for weeks or longer, prices for new and used cars, as well as auto parts, are likely to increase. But the larger economic effects, my colleague Santul Nerkar said, would be felt most acutely in the Midwest.
“The majority of workers for these companies are based there,” Santul said. “As they have less money in their pockets, they will in turn spend less, which will affect overall growth.”
Rescuers are scrambling amid chaos in Libya
The official count from flooding that destroyed most of the city of Derna and ravaged other coastal towns rose today to 3,065 dead, with 4,227 formally reported missing, according to the health minister for the eastern government in Libya.
Efforts to respond to the devastation have been unorganized and uncoordinated, volunteers said. With many health facilities out of service and those that are still operational overwhelmed, the W.H.O. was preparing an airlift with 28 tons of surgical and medical supplies to take off from Dubai in the next 48 hours.
Politicians collect millions from migrants rushing to the U.S.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants are pouring through a sliver of jungle known as the Darién Gap, the only land route to the U.S. from South America, in a record tide that the Biden administration and the Colombian government have vowed to stop.
But the entrepreneurs behind the migrant gold rush are not underground smugglers hiding from the authorities. They are politicians, prominent businessmen and elected leaders operating in plain sight and making millions of dollars a month. They have quickly turned the Darién Gap into one of the Western Hemisphere’s most pressing political and humanitarian crises.
The Rolling Stones refuse to mellow with age
The Rolling Stones are back in full force. “Hackney Diamonds,” their new album due Oct. 20, has everything you would expect: Keith Richards’s sinewy guitar riffs, Mick Jagger’s proudly intemperate vocals and ever-improvisatory guitar interplay.
The songs are unapologetically hand-played and organic, Jon Pareles, our chief pop music critic, writes. They’re “not quantized onto a computer grid; they speed up and slow down with a human pulse.” For the new album, the sometimes fractious songwriting partnership of Jagger and Richards found a way to realign.
Building a sculpture, over 1,200 years
Last weekend, a six-by-four-foot block of concrete was placed alongside three others on a hill near the town of Wemding, Germany. The collection of blocks looks vaguely like an abandoned construction site, but it will eventually be a completed work of art. In the year 3183 A.D.
The “Time Pyramid” was proposed by the artist Manfred Laber in 1993 to mark the 1,200th anniversary of his town. Every decade, a new block is added — in whatever manner the townspeople decide — until there will be 120 in all.
Welcome to the wild world of competitive boat docking
Every summer, on the shores of Maryland and Virginia — and perhaps nowhere else in the world — boaters who call themselves the cowboys race to see who can dock their boats the fastest. Think extreme parking with some rodeo at the end.
Sometimes the boats hit pilings. Sometimes they don’t stop. The crowd gets a kick out of any mishap. “It’s redneck like NASCAR, just on the water,” one competitor said.
Have a speedy evening.
