Anti-Drone Laser Is Said to Have Caused El Paso Airport Chaos, and Bondi Refuses to Apologize to Epstein Victims

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0:32From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, December 19th. Here's what we're covering.

0:44Good evening, everybody. Tonight, our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier. In a minute, Colonel Perez will share the latest details. Late last night, officials announced that the suspect in the shooting at Brown University has been found dead. nearly a week after they say he opened fire in a lecture hall, killing two students. An individual was identified as Claudio Neves Valenti, and he was a 48-year-old man. He was a Portuguese national, and his last known address was in Miami, Florida. In a press conference, authorities laid out how a post on Reddit helped lead them to the suspect and ultimately connect him to a separate shooting of an MIT professor.

1:28A Reddit user described a suspicious car that he'd seen on Brown's campus. And the man later came in to give police more details, including a description of the suspect. He blew this case right open. He blew it open. And that's how these cases sometimes go. Looking at surveillance footage, authorities found the vehicle had also been near the Massachusetts home of a professor at MIT who was killed just days after the attack at Brown. Initially, the FBI had said the cases didn't seem to be connected. They then tracked the car to a storage facility in New Hampshire, where the suspect was found dead last night of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

2:07Officials say the motive remains unclear, though both the suspect and the MIT professor attended the same physics program in Portugal in the 90s. The suspect then came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2000 and enrolled briefly in a graduate program at Brown. The university's president said he likely spent considerable time in the campus building where the shooting happened.

2:36Now, three quick updates on the Trump administration. We want our hospitals returning to healing, not harming the patients entrusted with their care. They're going to pay a very steep price. The administration is moving to end gender-related care for minors by threatening to pull federal funding from any hospital that offers those treatments. Their proposed rules would effectively shut down hospitals that don't comply, since they rely on that money to operate. Gender-related treatments for minors can include puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapies, and in rare cases, surgeries. Those treatments have been endorsed by most medical groups in the U.S., but have been the subject of fierce debate.

3:18And Trump's been targeting them since he returned to office, calling the treatments dangerous and a, quote, stain on our nation's history. The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, meanwhile, called the new proposals a dangerous intrusion of the federal government into private medical decisions. Also, in a separate move. This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers, and future treatments. President Trump signed an executive order to downgrade cannabis from a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive category, to a Schedule III.

3:59The change does not legalize the drug, which many states have done, but is instead an acknowledgment that it has some medicinal value and that there's a lower potential for abuse. Trump's order follows steps taken by the Biden administration to reclassify the drug, signaling a shift across the political spectrum in attitudes toward cannabis. And lastly, a quick follow-up on the news from yesterday about what Trump called warrior dividend checks going out to soldiers. The president promised that over a million members of the military would be getting$1 ,776 each, saying, we made a lot more money than anybody thought because of tariffs.

4:39In fact, the checks are coming out of a pot of money that Congress allocated earlier this year for military housing stipends.

4:56The Democratic National Committee not to release it because he thinks it could be counterproductive. That decision has some in the party split. There's the how can we address problems if we don't name them camp and the haven't we rehashed 2024 enough camp. A national poll this week found that Democrats are facing a tough political reality. Just 18 % of voters approve of how Democrats in Congress are doing their jobs, a record low. But there's also rising dissatisfaction with Trump and the GOP. The same poll showed more voters would prefer Democrats to control Congress instead of Republicans.

6:01Either money today or blood tomorrow. And I am not talking about Ukraine only. I am talking about Europe. Early today, European leaders hashed out a high-stakes plan for how to keep supporting Ukraine in the face of Russia's onslaught. We have to find a solution today. We'll not leave the European Council without a solution for the funding for Ukraine for the next two years. Many countries had wanted to use Russia's own money to do that by redirecting billions of dollars in frozen assets. The whole idea is a stupid one, to take away the money off somebody. But not everyone was on board with that idea, including the prime minister of Hungary, who has remained close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

6:48So they moved on to plan B. They've announced they're going to funnel over$100 billion to Ukraine with a loan backed by the EU budget. The timing is key. Ukraine is expected to begin running out of money in early 2026. The hope is that this will not only head that off, but strengthen the country's position in the ongoing peace negotiations that the U.S. has been leading. European leaders also hope it will demonstrate that the EU is a powerful force in its own right that should have a say in those negotiations, even as President Trump and the Kremlin have often left Europe out of the talks.

7:29And finally, the James Webb Space Telescope recently gathered data on a planet that's kind of stretching the idea of what a planet can be. It is way wider around the equator than anywhere else. Basically, it's kind of the shape of a lemon. The lead author of a new paper describing it said, quote, It's the stretchiest planet that we've confirmed the stretchiness of. It orbits a pulsar. That's what's left of a star after it goes supernova. And that's what's giving it the unusual shape, the star's gravity pulling on it. It is such a strange phenomenon and has such a strange atmosphere, researchers think it might not even be a planet at all.

8:10It could be the remnants of a star in its own right, basically being eaten alive by the first. Or it could be, quote, an entirely new type of object that we don't have a name for. For now, it's just PSRJ2322-2650B. Catchy.

8:33Those are the headlines. If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, it's just after these credits. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Kate Lopresti, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann.

8:52Now, time for the quiz. We have a few questions about stories the Times has been covering this week. Can you get them all? First up. We just had traffic pass directly in front of us within five miles of us, maybe two, three miles. And he was at our altitude. This week, the Times reported on a recent close call for a JetBlue flight that was going from Curacao in the Caribbean to New York City. Just 20 minutes after takeoff, the plane suddenly leveled off, stopping its climb. The pilot told air traffic control, we almost had a mid-air collision up here. What did the flight narrowly avoid colliding with?

9:38The answer? The pilot said he almost hit a U.S. military aircraft. They pass directly in our flight path. They don't have their transponder turned on. It's outrageous. He told the controller that the refueling tanker was flying without broadcasting its position, and he didn't notice it until it was only two or three miles away. That might sound far, but it's less than 20 seconds flying time at its speed. The skies over the Caribbean have become increasingly crowded lately, as the U.S. has built up more of a military presence against Venezuela.

10:18OK, next question. These are great guys. They look like male models with a brain, you know? They're male models with a big, beautiful brain. Since returning to office, President Trump's become a fan of a pair of brothers who've made a splash in cryptocurrency. A Times investigation detailed how the men have forged close ties to the Trump administration, donating to the planned East Wing Ballroom, for example, and making multiple trips to the White House. but they were once in the news for a different billion-dollar reason. Who are they?

10:53A hint? We don't even have to do that. That's right. We can do that ourselves. I'm 6 '5", 220, and there's two of me. I'm with this guy. Well, whatever. I'm saying let's calm down until we know what we're talking about. One actor played both of them in an Oscar-winning movie. The answer? The Winklevoss twins. They famously claimed that Facebook was originally their idea, not Mark Zuckerberg's, a feud that was captured in the film The Social Network. They went on to become early investors in Bitcoin, became billionaires as crypto took off, and have benefited from the Trump administration's more lax stance toward crypto regulation.

11:38And final question. Many people this week have been taking the time to re-watch their favorite Rob Reiner films in the wake of his death and the death of his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner. He may have been best known for directing, including classics like The Princess Bride and Stand By Me, but he also had a lot of acting credits over the years on TV and film. We are going to play you a few clips of Reiner's on-screen roles. Can you name the show or movie? First one. Priscilla, come here, come here. I want you to meet my daughter, Jessica. Remember, I told you about her. She's the one that doesn't play tennis.

12:13Oh, the teacher from Hollywood. Next up. Tell them about the sides. I ordered the sides. Sides? $26 ,000 worth the sides? What are these sides? They cure cancer? And last one. The good news is you split the check. I don't think I could let a woman pay for dinner. Great. They'll throw a parade in your honor. You'll be man of the year in Seattle Magazine. One more time. Come here, come here. I want you to meet my daughter. Jessica. $26 ,000 worth of sides? They'll throw a parade in your honor. You'll be man of the year in Seattle Magazine. That was In Order, New Girl, where Reiner played the very protective father of Zooey Deschanel's character, The Wolf of Wall Street, another father role, this time for Leonardo DiCaprio's hard-partying stockbroker, and Sleepless in Seattle, in which he gives dating advice to a new widower played by Tom Hanks.

13:09One bonus question. Reiner's wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, is credited with changing the course of movie history because meeting her inspired Rob Reiner to change the end of one of his most beloved films. What was it?

13:28The answer? When Harry met Sally. Originally, Harry and Sally were not going to end up together. But as Reiner later remembered, Then I met Michelle and I thought, okay, I see how this works.

13:46That is it for the news quiz, the last one of 2025. We have loved trying to stump you. And now we'd love to hear your quiz questions from the news this year. You can send them to us at the headlines at nytimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. The show will be back on Monday.

14:09Most careers don't follow the path we're told to expect. So how do the best leaders actually make decisions when the stakes are high and the answers aren't clear? Work Life from Ted is back with a new host, Molly Graham. She goes inside real careers, the trade-offs, hidden truths, and hard lessons that shaped how today's leaders work and lead. Start with her first episode, A Conversation with Adam Grant, available wherever you get your podcasts.