Briefly

UNITED STATES

Hunter Biden agrees to plead guilty on 2 charges

Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, has agreed to plead guilty to two federal criminal tax charges and admit to illegally possessing a firearm, according to a court filing on Tuesday. The US Department of Justice said in the court filing that Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time. He has been under federal investigation by a federal grand jury in Delaware since 2018. The president's son also agreed to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement regarding a separate charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. When asked on Tuesday about the plea deal, President Biden, 80, told reporters at an event in California that he was "very proud of my son".

FINLAND

Coalition government assumes office

The new government of Finland, led by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, took office on Tuesday. The government consists of the prime minister and 18 ministers from the National Coalition Party, the Finns Party, the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats. Orpo said in his speech during the government's welcome visit to the presidential palace that the Finnish people have "voted for change". The country joined NATO in April.

NORTH ATLANTIC

Undersea sounds heard in hunt for sub

Search teams detected underwater sounds while scanning the North Atlantic for a tourist submersible that vanished with five people aboard during a deep-sea voyage to the century-old wreck of the Titanic, the US Coast Guard said early on Wednesday. The sounds were detected by Canadian aircraft on Tuesday — day three of the search — as the clock ticked down to the last hours of the missing craft's presumed oxygen supply. Robotic undersea search operations were diverted to the area where the sounds seemed to originate, but there was still no tangible sign of the missing vessel, the Coast Guard said on Twitter.

Agencies - Xinhua