First Thing: ‘Defining moment’ as auto workers strike after talks fail with car giants

Strike is the largest auto worker action in a generation. Plus, Hunter Biden indicted on federal charges

Good morning.

Auto workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement with the US’s three largest manufacturers over a new contract, kicking off the most ambitious industrial labor action in decades.

The deadline for talks between Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and the United Auto Workers (UAW) expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far apart on the union’s new contract priorities.

The strike, which marks the first time all three of the “Detroit Three” carmakers have been targeted by strikes at the same time, is being coordinated by the UAW president, Shawn Fain. He said he intended to launch a series of limited and targeted “standup” strikes to shut individual auto plants around the US.

“This is our defining moment,” Fain said. UAW is staggering the strikes, rather than having all 150,000 members walk out at once, to allow the union to stretch resources.

How many workers are employed at the first plants on strike? Strikes kicked off at midnight at three plants of a combined 12,700 workers (a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, and a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan).

What do workers demand? Among the demands are a 40% pay increase, an end to tiers – where some workers are paid at lower wage scales than others – and the restoration of concessions from previous contracts such as medical benefits for retirees, more paid time off and rights for workers affected by plant closures.

How much is the strike fund? The UAW has a $825m strike fund that is set to compensate workers $500 a week while out on strike, and could support all of its members for about three months.

Hunter Biden indicted on gun charges after plea deal falls apart

Hunter Biden was indicted by federal prosecutors on gun charges on Thursday, after a plea deal with the president’s son fell apart in July. His lawyer said prosecutors were “bending to political pressure” by filing the indictment.

A court filing in the US district court in Delaware alleged Biden, 53, illegally obtained and possessed a Colt revolver in October 2018 after falsely declaring that he was not a user of, or addicted to, narcotic drugs.

This is the first time the son of a sitting US president has been indicted on federal criminal charges.

The surprise indictment was brought by David Weiss, a Donald Trump appointee as US attorney for Delaware, who was named by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, as a special counsel last month after the collapse of the plea deal that included two misdemeanor tax charges.

How long could he face in prison if convicted? Up to 25 years. Biden faces up to 10 years in prison on each of two counts of making false statements to a Delaware gun dealer who sold him the gun, and five for possessing it as someone with drug addiction.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy to visit Biden as Congress debates $24bn in aid

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is expected at the White House and on Capitol Hill next week as he visits the US during the United Nations general assembly.

Zelenskiy’s trip comes as Congress is debating President Biden’s request to provide as much as $24bn in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.

Congress is increasingly divided over providing additional funding for Ukraine as the war is well into its second year, with conservative Republican lawmakers pushing for spending cuts looking to stop money to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, on the frontlines, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces has reported that it has seized the village of Andriivka from Russian forces in the partially occupied Donetsk region, and that it shot down 17 drones launched at Ukraine by Russia.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, continues to host the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the pair visited afar-eastern Russian city on Friday that builds fighter jets.

How much is Biden seeking to aid Ukraine? Biden has sought a package of $13.1bn in additional military aid for Ukraine and $8.5bn for humanitarian support. It also includes $2.3bn for financing and to catalyze donors through the World Bank.

When was the last time Zelenskiy visited Washington, DC? In December 2022, he delivered an impassioned address to a joint meeting of Congress, thanking Americans for their “investment” in global security and democracy.

In other news …

Libya’s attorney general has been asked by senior politicians to launch an urgent inquiry into the catastrophic floods that killed thousands of people, including into allegations local officials imposed a curfew on the night Storm Daniel struck.

British television channels agreed to let Buckingham Palace censor television coverage of King Charles’s coronation, according to the former boss of Sky News, including demanding the “Orwellian” right to retrospectively ban footage after it had been broadcast.

Brazil’s supreme court has sentenced a far-right fanatic to 17 years in prison for his role in the failed attempt to topple the country’s leftwing government on 8 January this year.

Spanish police have arrested three unnamed reserve players at the soccer giant Real Madrid for allegedly distributing a sexual video featuring a minor. The arrests follow an ongoing furore about misogyny and entrenched sexism in Spanish football.

Three artworks by Egon Schiele believed stolen from a Jewish art collector during the Holocaust have been seized by New York law enforcement authorities. The art was seized from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Don’t miss this: ‘I survived rabies’

“In 2004, when I was 15, I watched a petrified little bat flap around inside my church in Wisconsin during a Sunday service. I didn’t know it, but that bat would change my life. It clamped down hard on my finger. The puncture mark was no bigger than a pinprick, but it oozed blood and was very painful. Three weeks later, I started feeling unbelievably tired. My mom mentioned the bat bite to a paediatrician and his face went white. The next day, the rabies diagnosis was confirmed. My parents were told this was a near-guaranteed death sentence. No one had survived rabies without a vaccination.”

Climate check: New files shed light on ExxonMobil’s efforts to undermine climate science

ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal. The documents were subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. Many of the documents date back to the 2006-16 tenure of former chief executive Rex Tillerson. Exxon publicly accepted that the climate crisis posed risks in 2006 yet continued to bolster climate denial.

Last Thing: Reanimated spiders and smart toilets triumph at Ig Nobel prizes

This year’s Ig Nobel prizes – a satire of the more stately Nobel prizes that awards achievements to unusual or trivial scientific phenomenon since 1991 – has celebrated using dead spiders to grip objects and smart toilets that monitor stool. This year’s Ig Nobel prize for public health was awarded to researchers for the development of a smart toilet that uses various technologies to monitor human waste for signs of disease and an anal-print sensor as part of its system to identify the user, Nicola Davis writes.

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