Reuters World News - Brown shooter dead, EU-Ukraine and NY’s new cardinal

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The suspect in the Brown University shooting has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit and linked to an MIT killing. European Union leaders will provide a $105 billion dollar loan to Ukraine -after failing to agree on an initial plan to use money from frozen Russian assets. Plus, Pope Leo XIV has replaced New York's conservative Archbishop Timothy Dolan with relatively unknown Bishop Ronald Hicks from Illinois. Listen to Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.  Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices.  You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Friday, December 19th. Today, the suspect in the Brown University shooting is found dead. The EU sidesteps divisions over frozen Russian assets to agree alone to Ukraine. And the Pope puts his stamp on the American church. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, 7 minutes. days a week. The suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University last weekend has been found dead. Authorities say the body of 48-year-old Claudio Nevese Valente, a former Brown student and Portuguese National, was discovered in a storage unit in New Hampshire. Federal agents found Niz Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive remains a mystery. Two students were

killed and several other people wounded in the attack. Authorities are also investigating whether Valente also killed an MIT professor in Boston two days after the shooting at Brown. European leaders have agreed a $105 billion loan for Ukraine. EU leaders announced the deal, which will see the bloc borrow the money directly from the markets, following lengthy meetings in Brussels. Europe Affairs editor Andrew Gray is there and says this plan was a backup after EU leaders failed to agree on an initial plan to use money from frozen Russian assets.

The other option was to go and use those Russian assets to fund directly a loan to Ukraine. So that option proved a lot more problematic for various reasons. Most of those assets are in Belgium. Belgium wanted a lot of guarantees, was worried about legal action, was worried about being on the hook for a vast amount of money. and ultimately other EU leaders weren't willing to give Belgium basically a blank check. The European Union really had to step up here because the Trump administration has made clear it's not funding aid to Ukraine anymore. They continue to provide weapons, but now the Europeans have to pay for them. And for the Europeans, there's been a lot of criticism from Donald Trump recently.

And so for them, it was very important to be able to show that they were able to act. Now, it may not feel like it, but according to the latest consumer price report, inflation in the US rose lower than expected in November, with prices going up just shy of 3% compared to the same time last year. But economists warned that the report could be distorted by missing data from the government shutdown. US economics editor Dan Burns has more about some of the wins and losses for consumers. So, Jill, there were some things that moderated, like the cost of housing was the lowest in a couple of years. And that's a big part of everybody's monthly budget. But other things, like certain types of food, beef was still up by double digit amounts. Coffee is up still nearly 20% year over a year. And another big monthly cost, electricity is up by 7% and rising and doesn't look like it's about to moderate any time soon. So, While the overall number was something that folks from Donald Trump's White House were cheering as astonishingly good, there are other points that they're likely to continue to hear from consumers and American voters about not liking. The Bank of Japan has raised its interest rates to levels unseen in 30 years and is signaling its readiness for further hikes.

It's a huge step in ending decades of monetary support and near zero borrowing costs. costs. For more, here's Reuters Morning Bid podcast hosts, Alina Kessas. Hi, Kim. Well, savers in Japan can party like it's 1999, but don't spend it all at once because this still only takes rates to three quarters of a percentage point. That's much lower than in other developed markets. And the reaction among traders has been fairly muted. That's because they've been waiting for this rate hike for so long. The economic justification is that inflation in Japan is running about 3%. But that's been the case now for 44 consecutive months. reason the Bank of Japan has kept markets waiting so long for this hike is the election of

new Prime Minister Sanaai Takashi this year. We know that she's in favour of monetary stimulus, and in the past, she said she was opposed to the Bank of Japan hiking rates. So essentially, policymakers have needed to persuade the government, which at the same time is splashing the cash. Takashi has passed a stimulus package of over $130 billion. So that made policymakers a little bit nervous, and it's taken them much longer than the market was hoping to get here. TikTok's Chinese owner BightDance has struck a deal to keep the app alive in the US. It's forming a joint venture with big investors like Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi's MGX. The new entity will control most of TikTok's American operations, while BightDance keeps a minority stake.

The White House has declined to comment, directing questions straight to TikTok. Sticking with business news, Donald Trump is making a sense. $6 billion bet on fusion energy. Fusion energy is the process that fires the sun and stars when atoms are forced together under extreme pressure, releasing huge amounts of energy. He's investing by merging his media company with Google-backed TAE Technologies. To build what they say will be the world's first fusion power plant at a utility scale starting in 2026.

Here's company's editor, David Gaffin, to explain. It's been something that's kind of been under development for decades. The fusion reaction is kind of the thing the sun does. The sun has a tremendous amount of energy all happening at once, and the ability to reproduce that in a controlled small setting is not easy. So they are making a bit on something that is probably not going to be something that can really be commercially viable for a very long time. There have been some talks of breakthroughs here.

The U.S. Energy Department recently met with some people in the industry and recently formed its first ever fusion office. So the timing of it is curious as well in that this would be another example of where the priorities of the Trump administration are lining up with the priorities of the Trump family. and his own personal fortune. Today is the day the U.S. Justice Department is required by law to release unclassified files from its investigation of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Prior to the deadline, Congressional Democrats released dozens of new images from the estate on Thursday. The latest batch includes close-ups of sentences from Lolita, a book about a man's obsession

with a 12-year-old girl, scribbled in black ink, female-looking body parts. Horrific new details are emerging from Sudan's war-torn-dhafore region. The United Nations says more than a thousand civilians were killed, about a third of them summarily executed when the paramilitary rapid support forces entered a refugee camp packed with people who had already fled fighting back in April. The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment

but has previously denied harming civilians. President Trump has signed in order to direct his Attorney General to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 3, putting it on par with common painkillers. If approved, it would mark one of the most significant federal changes to marijuana policy in decades. And finally, New York's 2.8 million Catholics are getting a new, relatively unknown bishop from the Chicago suburbs as their new cardinal, after Pope Leo and pronounced prominent conservative Timothy Dolan is being replaced. The new cardinal is Bishop Ronald Hicks,

whose background resembles the new popes, including time as a missionary in Central America. And as our Vatican reporter Joshua McKelwe explains, it's a significant shift. Dolan was known really as a very gregarious figure, very easy to speak with, but also as a leader of kind of the conservative part of the U.S. Bishop's Conference.

He had given an invocation prayer at President Trump's second inauguration in January. After the assassination of the right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, he praised Kirk as a modern-day St. Paul, which led to a lot of criticism online. At a press conference in New York, shortly after his announcement, as the new Archbishop of New York, Bishop Hicks, spoke first in Spanish, and he spoke about having a great heart for the Latino community, and even mentioned President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and called for immigrants to be treated with respect and dignity.

And for today's recommended read, our team brings you powerful images and on-the-ground reporting from Maritania, where migrants face a police crackdown and rising deportations under an EU migration pact. We'll drop a link to the photo essay in the podcast description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week.

We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.