The Headlines - C.E.O. Shooting Suspect Arrested, and Netanyahu’s Corruption Trial

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Plus, Google’s quantum computing breakthrough.   Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:Suspect Is Charged in C.E.O.’s Murder After Arrest in Pennsylvania, by Ed ShanahanDaniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway, by Hurubie Meko and Anusha BayyaThe Netanyahu Corruption Trial, Explained, by Patrick KingsleyTikTok Asks Court to Temporarily Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law, by Sapna MaheshwariQuantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough, by Cade Metz

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, December 10th. Here's what we're covering. After a five-day long manhunt, a suspect has been arrested and charged in the murder of UnitedHealthcare's CEO. He has been identified as Luigi Nicolass Mangione. He's a male, 26 years old.

He was born and raised in Maryland. Luigi Mangione was arrested yesterday at a McDonald's in central Pennsylvania after an employee recognized him from photos and called in a tip. We asked for the public's help in identifying this subject and the public responded. The NYPD's chief of detectives, Joseph Kenney said Mangione was sitting eating and local officers responded to the call. He was found with a fake ID that matched the one used by the suspect. He had a gun, potentially made with a 3D printer, a silencer,

and a three-page handwritten manifesto condemning the healthcare industry for putting profits over patients. We don't think that there's any specific threats to other people mentioned in that document, but it does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America. Mangione's been charged with second degree murder, as well as other crimes in both New York and Pennsylvania. The Times has been gathering more details about his background. He was

a high achiever growing up, valedictorian at a private high school in Baltimore, and he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in engineering. We don't know if he had a personal experience with the insurance company, but we do know that he had been in regular contact with his friends and his family until about six months ago. My colleague Maria Kramer has been looking into Mangione's background. That's when he suddenly stopped communicating with them. And his friends have told us that he had been suffering from a painful back injury at the time. And that's when communication went dark and his relatives and friends began to become very anxious about him.

Why hadn't anyone heard from him? Maria walks through more of her reporting on today's episode of The Daily. In Manhattan yesterday, a jury delivered a verdict in the subway chokehold case that became a flashpoint in the debate over mental health and public safety. Daniel Penny was found not guilty in the death of Jordan Neely. On May 1st of last year, Penny, who is white, restrained Neely, who is black, after Neely got on the subway and began yelling. Some witnesses described Neely's behavior as frightening.

Penny told detectives he thought he was a threat. But after his death, some held Neely up as an example of a person who needed help but fell through the cracks in the system. Neely was homeless and had a history of mental health problems. Leaders of the city council's Black, Latino, and Asian caucus said the verdict, quote, effectively greenlights vigilante justice against the most vulnerable New Yorkers. After the verdict was read, Neely's father lashed out at penny supporters in the courtroom and was asked to leave. He spoke to reporters outside. I miss my son.

My son didn't have to go through this. I didn't have to go through this. I didn't have to go through this either. It hurts. It really, really hurts. It's a busy scene here at the Tel Aviv courthouse. We've got protesters out front protesting against Netanyahu. We've got his supporters protesting on his behalf and scores of journalists, TV cameras, all trying to squeeze into an underground courtroom that is being used specifically for the Prime Minister's testimony.

My colleague Patrick Kingsley is in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is testifying today in his corruption trial that's been delayed multiple times, stretching on for years. Netanyahu has been charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust for allegedly granting political and diplomatic favors in exchange for gifts and positive media coverage. This trial began back in 2020, but it was temporarily paused because of the pandemic

and the war in Gaza. Patrick said that if he's convicted, Netanyahu, who's denied any wrongdoing, could face several years in prison. In some senses, it's a dramatic moment to have the country sitting prime minister in the courthouse answering lawyers' questions in the middle of a war. On the other hand, it's also become slightly normalized in Israeli society. The question of the prime minister's guilt has been preoccupying Israeli politics for years now.

Most Israelis have decided on what their position is on his guilt and what would have been unimaginable for a sitting prime minister to refuse to stand down even as he's being arrested for corruption has now been normalized. TikTok is trying to fend off being banned in the US, but it's running out of time. The company asked a federal court yesterday to temporarily freeze a law that requires the app to be sold off by January 19th or face a ban. The law was passed earlier this year, with lawmakers citing national security concerns about TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance. They raised questions about how Americans' data could be used or if the app's algorithm

could be leveraged for propaganda purposes. TikTok has denied any such concerns and said the ban will violate the First Amendment rights of the more than 170 million Americans who use the app. The company's latest legal request comes after it just lost an attempt to overturn the law in appeals court last week. Now it's asking that the law be frozen until either the Supreme Court can take up the case or until Donald Trump

takes office. Right now the law is set to kick in the day before Trump's inaugurated, but he has said he would rescue the app, so TikTok is trying to buy time. Some TikTok influencers are getting nervous, though. They've been asking fans to follow them on Instagram and YouTube instead, just in case. And talent agents have been telling TikTok stars to hold off on any big purchases, like buying a house, until the future of the app is more clear. And finally, this week, researchers at Google have announced they're one step closer to a revolution in computing. They unveiled their new quantum computer and said that in their experiments, it needed less than five minutes to finish a calculation that one of the world's most powerful supercomputers

couldn't finish in 10 septillion years. That's longer than the age of the known universe. The difference is in how the computers operate. While traditional computers store information as ones and zeros, quantum computers are built around tiny particles that can hold a combination of ones and zeros at the same time. That gives quantum computers exponentially more processing power. And while scientists say it will take years to refine the technology enough to actually

be useful, they'll eventually be able to do things like supercharge AI systems and accelerate research into new medicines. Google is just one of many companies racing toward that goal, and governments are pouring billions of dollars into the effort. One expert told the Times that new developments in quantum computing mean the technology is, quote, no longer science fiction. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.