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Authorities said on Dec. 16 that they launched a homicide investigation after a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home.

Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old theoretical physicist and fusion scientist from Portugal, was found with "apparent gunshot wounds" at his house in Brookline, Massachusetts, on the night of Dec. 15, according to the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office. He was transported to an area hospital and was pronounced dead on Dec. 16.

Massachusetts State Police and the Brookline Police Department responded to the scene after receiving a report of a man shot at his home on Gibbs Street, the district attorney's office said in a statement. Brookline is a wealthy suburb of Boston.

Brookline Police Chief Jennifer Paster stated that the investigation is active and ongoing, adding that patrol vehicles, officers, and unmarked units remained at the scene. No suspects had been taken into custody as of Dec. 16.

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The job market continues to show signs of cooling.

U.S. employers added just 64,000 jobs in November, according to a delayed report from the Labor Department Tuesday, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.6% from 4.4% in September. That's the highest unemployment rate in more than four years.

The jobs report was initially set to come out earlier this month, but the government's ability to monitor the job market was hampered by the six-week federal shutdown.

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/16/nx-s1-5645023/jobs-employment-labor-marketThat delayed job tallies for October and November, both of which were released on Tuesday. The report showed the U.S. saw a net loss of 105,000 jobs in October. That was led by a large drop in the federal workforce, as 162,000 government workers who'd taken buyouts earlier in the year were officially dropped from the payrolls.

Furloughed federal workers were unable to conduct their usual survey of households in October, so the unemployment rate for that month remains unknown.

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A top official at the U.S. Department of Education has been keeping a controversial flag linked to Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 insurrection hung outside his office, according to the agency's union and a department employee who has observed it.

It's the latest in a series of instances in which the flag – which depicts a pine tree and the words "An Appeal to Heaven" – has been associated with agencies and figures at the highest levels of the federal government.

Though long tied to the American Revolution, the banner in more recent years "has been adopted primarily by evangelical Christian nationalist groups," as well as the Proud Boys and certain neo-Nazi groups, according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an independent nonprofit organization. It was flown in 2021 by rioters at the U.S. Capitol as they tried to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

The symbol's emergence at the agency responsible for overseeing billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's schools is already raising concerns about the separation of church and state.

Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union for Education Department workers nationwide, said in a statement that the agency "has no place for symbols that were carried by insurrectionists."

“Since January, hardworking public servants at the U.S. Department of Education have been subjected to threats, harassment, and sustained demoralization," she said. "Now, they are being asked to work in an environment where a senior leader is prominently displaying an offensive flag – one that, regardless of its origins in the American Revolution, has come to represent intolerance, hatred, and extremism."

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At dawn on Tuesday, Israeli occupation forces escalated their invasions across multiple areas of the occupied West Bank, deploying reinforcements toward Nablus in the northern West Bank while continuing widespread military operations in refugee camps, towns, and villages.

Troops broke into and ransacked dozens of homes, abducted many Palestinians, and set up military roadblocks, further tightening restrictions on Palestinian movement and daily life.

The soldiers invaded several neighborhoods including al-Makhfiyya and Rafidia, breaking into homes and abducting young men, including Mohyeldin Abdul-Haq, Ali Shami, and Bassem al-Qutub, in addition to three siblings.

In Balata refugee camp east of Nablus, soldiers stormed homes and abducted Semih Thiab as a means of pressuring his brother to surrender.

Troops also invaded residential buildings in Rafidia and advanced into the city from the military roadblocks of Beit Furik and Deir Sharaf.

In Asira al-Shamaliya northwest of Nablus, the soldiers broke into homes and abducted a young woman, Du’a’ Jarar’a.

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Hamas says Israel’s violations risk jeopardising a ceasefire deal in Gaza and the move towards the second and more complicated phase of the fragile agreement.

In a video statement released on Sunday, the group’s Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed the killing of senior commander Raed Saad in an Israeli attack in Gaza the previous day.

“The continued Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement … and latest assassinations that targeted Saad and others threaten the viability of the agreement,” al-Hayya said.

He called on mediators – US President Donald Trump in particular – “to work on obliging Israel to respect the ceasefire and commit to it”.

Phase one of the October truce called for a cessation of hostilities, the return of living captives and prisoners and the remains of the dead, and for humanitarian aid to be allowed into the enclave.

Once all of those conditions were fulfilled, phase two, which is to include an Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian disarmament and a formal end to the war, could begin.

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President Trump on Monday signed an executive order designating the street drug fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

"The manufacture and distribution of fentanyl, primarily performed by organized criminal networks, threatens our national security and fuels lawlessness in our hemisphere and at our borders," the order declared.

During an event in the Oval Office, Trump said the carnage fentanyl has caused in American families is worse than U.S. deaths in many wars.

"Two to three hundred thousand people die every year, that we know of, so we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction," Trump said.

In fact, Trump's numbers are wildly inflated. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl killed roughly 48 thousand people in the U-S last year - a 27 percent drop from the year before.

Experts also say fentanyl would be difficult to use as a weapon of mass destruction. There is only one documented incident worldwide, in 2002, where the Russian government weaponized fentanyl in gas form. There have been no cases reported in the U.S.

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U.S. envoys arrived in Berlin Sunday morning for another round of talks intended to secure a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner were spotted in downtown Berlin by a photographer for German news agency dpa.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian, U.S. and European officials will hold a series of meetings in Berlin in the coming days.

"Most importantly, I will be meeting with envoys of President Trump, and there will also be meetings with our European partners, with many leaders, concerning the foundation of peace — a political agreement to end the war," Zelenskyy said in an address to the nation late Saturday.

Washington has tried for months to navigate the demands of each side as Trump presses for a swift end to Russia's war and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces, and security guarantees for Ukraine.

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With subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance set to expire, Americans who rely on them will probably switch to plans with lower monthly premiums and high deductibles or decide not to purchase any coverage, which will have a serious and damaging impact on the entire sector, according to healthcare policy experts.

The average amount ACA plan enrollees pay annually for premiums is estimated to more than double, from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 in 2026, according to a KFF analysis.

That will then have economic downstream effects, including for rural hospitals and people who have employer-sponsored health insurance, according to the experts.

With “a significant portion of people dropping their marketplace coverage and being uninsured, it doesn’t just impact them, it impacts everyone”, said Emma Wager, a senior policy analyst for KFF’s program on the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

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