WORLD Radio News - WORLD Radio News: 12-19-25 (1/3)

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The latest headlines in three minutes from WORLD updated three times throughout the day.Sign-up for the daily Sift email at thesift.org.Support sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth at wng.org/donate.

With World Radio News, I'm Kent Covington. President Trump at the White House Thursday signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The facts compel the federal government to recognize that marijuana can be legitimate in terms of medical applications when carefully administered in some cases. This may include the use as a substitute for addictive and potentially lethal opioid painkillers. The move reclassifies it from a Schedule 1 drug alongside things like heroin to a Schedule 3 alongside drugs like ketamine and anabolic steroids. But Trump says this does not legalize marijuana nationally in any way, shape, or form. And in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug. It's nothing to do with that.

But the change comes as numerous states have already moved to legalize marijuana for medical and or recreational purposes. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris argued, It will, quote, send the wrong message to America's children, enable drug cartels, and make our roads more dangerous. The Trump administration says it is time for hospitals to stop performing transgender procedures on children. FDA commissioner Marty McCarrey. Pushing transgender ideology in children is predatory. It's wrong and it needs to stop. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed a declaration stating that procedures that it's

attempt to change a child's sex are unsafe, he says the directive is based on the overwhelming body of evidence that these procedures hurt, not help children. Under the new plan, hospitals that perform such procedures on minors could lose Medicare and Medicaid funding. So-called gender affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine. It is malpractice. Administration officials argued that the move is necessary to protect kids from ideologically driven, experimental, and life-altering medical procedures. A French court has sentenced a hospital anesthetist to decades behind bars for poisoning dozens of patients. World's Kristen Flavin has more.

Frédéric Pichier tampered with IV bags over nearly a decade while working at two clinics in eastern France, injecting them with pharmaceuticals. The youngest of his victims was just four years old. That child did survive, but 12 of Pichier's 30 victims did not. They add that he often targeted patients under the care of doctors he feuded with. After creating the emergencies, he could then step in and be seen as a hero. For World, I'm Kristen Flavin. And I'm Kent Covington. For more sound journalism grounded in facts in biblical truth, visit worldradio.com.

Thank you.