NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-16-2025 1AM EST

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

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It's been a fantastic year for movies, and we know you can't see them all. So we're recommending some great films that might have flown under the radar to add to your watch list. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stevens. Investigators in Australia are calling Sunday's mass shooting in Sydney a terrorist attack, inspired by the Islamic State. Two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more. As Katie Silver reports, one suspect is in custody while his alleged accomplice and father was killed at the scene.

He came on a student visa. He was then shot dead by the authorities. He wasn't known to police, but his 24-year-old son, Naveem, who was born in Australia. We found out he was investigated in 2019 over four years of radicalization, and we have since seen. a video emerge of him pledging allegiance to ISIS. Katie Silver in Melbourne. Police in Rhode Island are seeking the public's help in identifying the gunmen who killed two people and injured nine others at Brown University on Saturday.

Ocean State Media's David Wright has more. The FBI and local authorities are going door-to-door in the neighborhood around Brown, asking local businesses and residents to share doorbell camera footage from Saturday that might show the suspect. Providence police released new images of a person of interest. Some of them taken hours before the shooting just two blocks away.

His face masked, but his eyes visible. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Nerona. These investigations are like threads that you pull on a garment, and some of them you pull and the garment doesn't open up, and other ones you pull, and the garment comes undone. The FBI is now offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to, to an arrest and conviction. For NPR news, I'm David Wright in Providence. President Trump has signed an executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

NPR's Frankl Ordonez reports that Trump has called the opioid crisis a public health emergency. President Trump said there's no doubt that adversaries are trafficking fentanyl to the U.S. in order to kill Americans. Speaking in the Oval Office, he said the drug kills more Americans than any war. No bomb does what this is doing. 200 to 300,000 people die every year that we know of. So we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. According to the CDC, the U.S. has roughly 100,000 drug overdose deaths in a year. Fentanyl has been blamed for tens of thousands of those.

Trump also said his administration is considering reclassifying marijuana. from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 drug, which he said would allow more research to be conducted. Franco, Ordonez. NPR News, the White House. U.S. futures are flat, and after-hours training on Wall Street following Monday's losses, the Dow fell 41 points. This is NPR. The FBI says it's thwarted a plot to carry out attacks on multiple targets in California.

Director Cash Patel says four suspects are accused of plotting New Year's eve attacks on two companies. Patel says the four allegedly gathered materials to make explosive devices and test them in the Mojave Desert. Investigators say the suspects are part of a pro-Palestinian anti-capitalist group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The maker of Rumba robot vacuums has declared bankruptcy. NPR's Alina Seljuk reports that iRobot is being acquired by its main supplier based in China. IROBOT was founded in 1990 by researchers from MIT, and its devices have been used by the military and scientists tracking oil spills, but its claim to fame is the Roomba, the smart floor vacuum. In recent years, the home robot market

got very competitive with lots of foreign rivals, often at cheaper prices. Last year, regulatory scrutiny killed iRobot's merger with Amazon. Now it faces new tariffs for products. They tend to come from Vietnam. And iRobot has been losing money. It owes nearly a hundred million to its main supplier based in Shenzhen, and that firm has agreed to take over iRobat, assuring that devices will keep operating as normal. Alina Selyuk, NPR News. President Trump is suing another media company. This time, it's the BBC.

The lawsuit alleges the British broadcaster misled viewers by heavily editing parts of a speech Trump made before the January 6th Capitol riot. The episode led to an apology and the resignations of two BBC executives. This is NPR. message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's Apply.