Good morning. It's Friday, Dec. 19, and we're covering the Brown University gunman, pressure on the Justice Department to release Epstein files, and much more. First time reading? Join over 4.5 million insatiably curious readers. Sign up here.
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Police said yesterday they found the body of the suspected gunman behind Saturday's Brown University shooting and the killing days later of MIT physics professor Nuno FG Loureiro.
Authorities identified the gunman as 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, a former Brown University graduate student last known to be living in Miami, Florida. Police did not publicly identify a motive as of this writing. Valente had attended the same university in Portugal as the slain MIT professor. He had also studied physics at Brown University from 2001 to 2003, when he took a leave of absence. Until yesterday, police had not publicly identified a connection between the attacks. Valente was discovered dead by suicide in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.
Loureiro had researched magnetic fields in the universe. Learn more about the two Brown University victims, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, here. |
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released roughly 70 photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate yesterday, one day before the Justice Department’s deadline today to disclose a separate trove of “Epstein files” under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The photos, from a batch of 95,000 the committee received last week, include passports, text messages, and private gatherings with public figures, as well as phrases from the book “Lolita”—which covers child sex abuse—written on parts of a woman’s body. The photos are not timestamped and do not implicate anyone. Republicans have accused Democrats of selectively publishing the photos to shape a misleading narrative. See photos (warning: sensitive content).
The act, signed by President Donald Trump in November, orders the DOJ to post all Epstein- and Ghislaine Maxwell-related materials in a publicly searchable database. Agencies may redact limited details to protect victim safety, privacy, or national security, but cannot withhold information for political or personal reasons. |
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to Earth at approximately 1 am ET this morning, offering a rare glimpse at an object from beyond our solar system.
First spotted in July, 3I/ATLAS has been traveling roughly 137,000 mph and is the third-ever interstellar object observed in the Milky Way; the first two were spotted in 2017 and 2019. Last month, NASA confirmed 3I/ATLAS is a comet, dismissing speculation that it is alien technology. As 3I/ATLAS came within roughly 170 million miles of Earth, today was astronomers' best opportunity to gather data on the comet before it exits our solar system in the mid-2030s. A recent study found the 0.3- to 3.5-mile-wide comet is full of carbon dioxide, suggesting it originates in an environment with more radiation than our solar system.
Separately, the year's last major meteor shower peaks Sunday into Monday and will be visible until Dec. 26 in the Northern Hemisphere. |
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Sports, Entertainment, & Culture |
> College Football Playoff begins tonight, with Alabama versus Oklahoma at 8 pm ET (More) | YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul to fight two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua at 8 pm ET on Netflix (More) |
> Former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, his wife, and their two children are among those killed in a North Carolina business jet plane crash (More) |
> Tennessee governor pardons Jelly Roll, whose convictions include robbery and drug felonies; country star says pardon will make it easier for him to travel internationally for concerts and Christian missionary work (More) |
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> Federal regulators unanimously agree to let data centers siphon energy directly from power plants—a decision celebrated by several technology companies but criticized by some consumer advocates (More) |
> Experimental drug successfully fights toxic peptides that appear to drive several of the earliest brain changes associated with Alzheimer's disease in a mouse model, suggesting a new strategy to prevent—significantly delay—the disease (More) |
> Researchers create first scientifically validated personality test framework for AI chatbots, supporting the notion that models display human-like traits and that these traits can be manipulated with prompting (More) |
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> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +0.8%, Dow +0.1%, Nasdaq +1.4%) (More) | Consumer price index rose 2.7% year over year in November, down from 3% rise in September—the last month of available data (More) |
> TikTok signs deal to sell US entity to joint US venture controlled by investor group including Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX; agreement to close Jan. 22 (More) |
> Trump Media to merge with Alphabet-backed fusion energy company TAE Technologies in an over $6B all-stock deal (More) | Explore the Trump family business empire (More) | Hogan Lovells to merge with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, creating fifth-largest global law firm by revenue at $3.6B (More) |
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> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces proposed rules to cut Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals providing gender-related medical care to minors (More) | President Donald Trump orders the Justice Department to fast-track reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III substance (More) |
> Pope Leo XIV appoints little-known Bishop Ronald Hicks from his Illinois hometown to succeed Cardinal Timothy Dolan in leading the New York diocese, the US' second-largest by population after Los Angeles (More) |
> Kennedy Center board, including members selected by President Donald Trump, votes to rename the center the "Trump-Kennedy Center" (More) | White House installs plaques in the complex mocking former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama (More) |
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> Price of Nostalgia
The American Scholar | Jess Love. A mother gets a binder of 92 DVDs from a Facebook group and cancels her family's streaming services. Can they resist the pull of modern life? (Read) |
> Women Rethinking Retirement
NY Times | Staff. When it came time to retire, Robyn Yerian cashed out her 401(k), bought a plot of land in East Texas, and established the Bird's Nest—a women-only retirement community. (Listen) |
> Concert Ticket Conundrum
Business Insider | Staff. The most expensive ticket at a 1965 Beatles concert cost $5.65—roughly $58 today. The average ticket price for a Taylor Swift concert last year was $204, and the average resale price was $3.8K. What changed? (Watch) |
> Barbie vs. Lilli
Literary Hub | Tarpley Hitt. Instead of Barbie, we almost had Lilli. Go inside the little-known legal battle waged to corner the market on a woman-looking doll. (Read) |
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Historybook: First edition of "The American Crisis" published by Thomas Paine (1776); French entertainer Édith Piaf born (1915); First National Hockey League game played (1917); President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Christmas message is first radio broadcast from space (1958); President Bill Clinton is impeached (1998).
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