From the New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today is Wednesday, August 14th. Here's what we're covering. The question of abortion access is shaping up to be a defining issue in this year's election, and millions more Americans will now be voting on it directly. This week, Arizona and Missouri became the latest states that will have measures guaranteeing abortion access on the ballot in November. Abortion rights groups spent months collecting enough signatures to put forward state constitutional amendments on the issue. Those signatures were just certified. So far, six other states will have similar measures to establish or protect abortion rights on their ballots, including Florida, New York, and Nevada. Notably, every time the question of how to regulate abortion has come up for a vote since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the majority of voters have sided with abortion rights groups. Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping the measures will energize voters and drive higher turnout in their favor, particularly in Arizona and Nevada, two key battleground states. The Times has learned previously unreported details about Hunter Biden's business dealings while his father was vice President. Newly released records from 2016 show that Hunter Biden asked the State Department for help on a potentially lucrative energy project.

At the time, Hunter was on the board of the energy company Burisma, which was having trouble getting approval for a geothermal power project in Italy. He wrote at least one letter to the US ambassador there, hoping to help push the plans forward. Hunter Biden's lawyer say the outreach was proper, but documents show that embassy officials seemed uncomfortable with the request.

This outreach is part of a pattern that we've seen with Hunter Biden over the years, particularly when his father was vice as President, the time during which subsequently, he's drawn a lot of criticism for implicitly leveraging his father's political clout to try to solicit and advance these foreign business arrangements. We've seen it in China, we've seen it in Ukraine, we've seen it with his work in Romania.

Kenneth Vogtle is an investigative reporter at the Times. He spent years trying to get access to any files showing contacts between Hunter Biden and government officials.

We actually initially filed Freedom of Information Act request. Back in 2021, the State Department didn't produce any records. We had to sue the State Department. They began trickling out these records and actually tried to close the request at one point. Then only in the week after, President Biden dropped out, did they actually produced these documents that shed light on the issue that we most wanted to find out about. That is Hunter Biden's outreach to the US government on behalf of his foreign businesses.

According to the State Department, the timing was coincidental. One source familiar with the plans to release the documents said they were underway weeks before Biden made his decision not to run for re-election. Still, Kenneth says the delays in making the documents public are likely to cause political fallout.

You could see this causing frustration for Republicans who had spent years, most of the Biden campaign and presidency, trying to spotlight Hunter Biden's foreign business as a way to hold against President Biden, they are probably going to raise some questions about why this information wasn't available to them while he was still in the race for his re-election before he dropped out and endorsed Kamala Harris.

The energy project in Italy that Hunter Biden was working on never got off the ground. And so far, he has not been charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people to disclose when they lobby the government on behalf of foreign interests. But Hunter Biden is facing charges of evading taxes millions of dollars in income from Burisma and other foreign businesses. His trial in that case is set to begin in three weeks. In the Middle East, mediators are preparing for the latest round of negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza. The talks will be held tomorrow, but as of now, Hamas representatives say they are not planning to take part. Hamas's expected absence does not That does not mean they've completely left the bargaining table, though. Throughout the war, Hamas leaders have relied on Egypt and Qatar to act as intermediaries, and representatives from those countries, as well as the US and Israel, are still expected to meet. Officials tell the Times that Hamas is willing to engage with mediators after the meeting if Israel puts forward a, quote, serious response to the group's latest offer, which they made in July. Starbucks abrupty ousted its CEO yesterday after slowing sales had its investors demanding change.

Loxman Naira Simeon had held the top spot since last March. While he'd previously run a company that owned big brands like Lysol, he had essentially no background in restaurant chains. Under his tenure, Starbucks stock dropped 20%. The coffee giant has been struggling in its biggest markets, the US and China, and it's faced accusations of retaliating against workers trying to unionize. Aiming for a fresh start, Starbucks has announced that its new CEO will be Chipotle's chief executive, Brian Nickel. Nickel knows his fast casual. He spent three years at the top at taco Bell before taking over Chipotle in 2018. Since then, Chipotle's stock soared from around $6 a share to a record high of $65 this summer. Still, steering Starbucks will be a massive challenge. It has 38,000 stores, more than 10 times the number of Chipotles. Finally, in Bangladesh, it's been just over a week since the country's authoritarian Prime Minister fled and resigned amid mass protests, putting the country on the brink of collapse. Almost all of the police who led harsh crackdowns on the protesters have gone into hiding, and there's been a wave of violence, including revenge killings. In the midst of the chaos, the young people who started the protest movement have stepped up to take control.

Times reporter Mujib Mishal is currently in the country's capital.

I arrived in Dhaka on Friday, and it is quite remarkable what's happening here. Basically, it's a city run by young students and teenagers. You see them at roundabouts, blowing whistles and guiding traffic. You see them at a museum trying to clean the mess that was left by the mob that burned it down. You see them on duty outside the residents of the Prime Minister that fled the country, you see them taking on the responsibility to restore some order to a city that basically collapsed into anarchy. They're not just visible in taking roles on the streets. Two of the 17 members of this interim cabinet are 26-year-old student leaders. Around them is a larger group of student leaders. They have abstract principles that they have articulated, that they want a Bangladesh that is built on compassion, responsibility, and dignity. Bangladesh's new interim leader, who is this Eid four-year-old Nobel Laureate, he has basically declared publicly that he only takes orders from these students, that he is in his job to implement the vision of these students that coupled an entrenched former government. So what's clear is they are the most dominant force right now about shaping a future for this country.

Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, what the blockbuster antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s tells us about how the government's current case against Google could play out. You can listen on the Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.