The Pentagon says its expanding maritime campaign against drug smuggling has now resulted in more than 100 deaths, following a pair of U.S. strikes Thursday on boats traveling in the eastern Pacific.
According to the U.S. military, two separate vessels were targeted along routes long associated with drug trafficking. Three people were killed when the first boat was hit, while two others died in the strike on a second vessel, the military said in a post on social platform X that also included a 30-second video of the attacks.
U.S. Southern Command said the boats were moving through “known narco-trafficking routes” in the eastern Pacific Ocean and were “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” The command added that the vessels were operated by members of designated terrorist organizations, though it did not identify which groups were involved.
The military emphasized that no U.S. service members were injured during the operations.
Since early September, when the campaign began, U.S. forces have carried out at least 26 strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing a minimum of 104 people described by the Pentagon as narco-terrorists.
One of those earlier missions, conducted on Sept. 2, has drawn particular attention. During that operation, U.S. forces launched four strikes on a suspected drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean. The Washington Post later reported that a second attack during the same mission killed two individuals who had survived the initial strike and were clinging to the boat.
Amid the scrutiny, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said Thursday that he has seen “no evidence of war crimes” connected to the operation. Some Democrats and experts in the law of armed conflict have argued that the follow-up strike may have violated international law.
{Matzav.com}
WATCH:
Law enforcement officials announced Thursday evening that the man suspected in last weekend’s deadly shooting at Brown University was also believed to be responsible for the killing of a prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology nuclear scientist days later. The suspect was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, according to Providence police.
Federal and local officers located Neves-Valente dead Thursday night after spending hours outside a storage unit associated with him in Salem, New Hampshire. Authorities said tactical teams breached the unit at about 9 p.m. and made the discovery shortly thereafter.
“This evening at approximately 9 p.m., federal agents breached a storage locker in Salem, New Hampshire, in search of Claudio Neves-Valente, a Portuguese national we believed shot and killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts,” said Leah B. Foley, the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, during a separate briefing. “Federal agents found Neves-Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The Brown University shooting occurred Saturday afternoon at approximately 4 p.m. during a finals week study session in the Barus and Holley Building on the eastern side of campus. Two students were killed and nine others were wounded. Investigators have not identified a motive, and the case remains under active investigation, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters.
University officials confirmed that Neves-Valente had previously been enrolled at Brown. Brown President Christina Paxson said he studied physics at the university from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2001, later taking a leave of absence before formally withdrawing in 2003.
The Barus and Holley Building, where the shooting took place, has long been home to physics and engineering classes, Paxson said.
“I think it’s safe to assume that this man, when he was a student, spent a great deal of time in that building for classes and other activities as a Ph.D. student in physics,” Paxson said. “He has no current active affiliation with the university or campus presence.”
Records also show that a man with the same name was dismissed from a monitoring position at the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugal in 2000. Authorities believe that individual is the same person identified as the shooter.
That institution is also where MIT nuclear physics professor Nuno Loureiro studied. Loureiro was found fatally shot Monday at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, roughly 50 miles from Brown’s campus. Rhode Island officials said the Loureiro investigation was being led by Massachusetts authorities, who later confirmed Neves-Valente was the prime suspect.
In the days following the Brown attack, police pursued several leads, including questioning a person of interest at a hotel outside the city, who was later ruled out. Investigators canvassed surrounding neighborhoods for surveillance footage, which produced images of a masked, stocky individual estimated to be about 5 feet 8 inches tall and walking with an unusual gait.
Susan Constantine, a body language expert, pointed to a distinctive movement pattern in the footage, noting that the person’s right leg appeared to bow inward with the toe angled outward while walking. Police later released images of a second individual believed to have information related to the case and asked the public to assist in identifying both people.
As of Thursday afternoon, six of the wounded victims remained hospitalized and were listed in stable condition. The two students who were killed were identified as Ella Cook of Alabama and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov of Virginia.
{Matzav.com}
Federal prosecutors warned Thursday that an enormous share of the roughly $18 billion in federal funding directed to 14 Minnesota-administered programs since 2018 may have been siphoned off through fraud, calling the scope of the alleged theft unprecedented in size and complexity.
Speaking at a news conference in Minneapolis, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said investigators are uncovering schemes that go far beyond routine billing abuses. Instead of inflated claims for real services, he said, some operators set up shell companies that provided nothing at all while billing Medicaid and spending the proceeds on international travel, luxury cars, and extravagant personal expenses.
“The magnitude cannot be overstated,” Thompson said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”
According to Thompson, the losses are not abstract. He said the alleged fraud threatens critical services, including housing assistance for adults leaving addiction treatment programs and one-on-one therapy for children on the autism spectrum.
The latest disclosures come after years of federal investigations that began with the Feeding Our Future case, a $300 million scheme that prosecutors described as the largest COVID-era fraud involving child nutrition programs in the country. In that case, 57 defendants have already been convicted. Prosecutors say the nonprofit at the center of the operation exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide meals to children.
From there, investigators began tracing money flows into other state programs. Thompson said the inquiry into Minnesota’s autism services grew directly out of the Feeding Our Future case.
“Roughly two dozen or so Feeding Our Future defendants were getting money from autism clinics,” Thompson said. “That’s how we learned about the autism fraud.”
On Thursday, prosecutors announced additional charges tied to the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program, which is designed to support children with autism. Court filings allege that a newly charged defendant approached parents in the Somali community to “recruit their children” for a clinic and paid kickbacks to inflate enrollment. Prosecutors say the clinic later submitted $6 million in Medicaid claims. In a related case, a woman previously charged in the same scheme pleaded guilty Thursday morning after allegedly receiving $14 million in reimbursements.
Authorities also unveiled new charges in a separate housing services fraud. Five defendants were charged with stealing funds meant to help Medicaid recipients secure stable housing. Thompson said one of those defendants left the country after his company was served with a federal grand jury subpoena.
Two of the newly charged individuals are Philadelphia residents accused of what Thompson described as “fraud tourism,” saying they viewed Minnesota’s Housing Stability Services Program as a source of “easy money.” Prosecutors allege they submitted $3.5 million in fraudulent claims. Those defendants join eight others charged in September in connection with the same program, which has since been shut down entirely.
Investigators are now examining yet another state-run initiative, Integrated Community Supports, which is intended to help adults with disabilities live independently. Authorities served a search warrant Thursday as part of that probe. Prosecutors noted that payments to providers are projected to reach $180 million this year, a dramatic increase from the program’s early years, prompting concerns that it too has been exploited.
“Every day, we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” Thompson said.
The findings have added fuel to President Donald Trump’s criticism of Minnesota’s leadership. He has repeatedly labeled the state a center of financial crime, pointing to the fraud cases under Gov. Tim Walz, who was the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in last year’s election.
Trump has also focused his attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest Somali population in the United States. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota, 82 of the 92 defendants charged across the child nutrition, housing, and autism-related cases are Somali Americans.
Last month, the rhetoric escalated after City Journal reported that taxpayer dollars from defrauded programs may have ended up benefiting al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliate. Thompson said funds sent overseas could have indirectly reached the group but stressed that investigators have found no evidence that defendants intentionally supported terrorism.
“There’s no indication that the defendants that we’ve charged were radicalized or seeking to fund al-Shabab or other terrorist groups,” Thompson said.
He added that large sums of fraudulently obtained money were sent abroad and used primarily for personal enrichment. Prosecutors said some defendants purchased real estate in Nairobi, Kenya, which has a large Somali diaspora. In other cases, one Feeding Our Future defendant spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an aircraft in Nairobi, another wired $1.5 million to China and Kenya while texting that he had invested $6 million in Kenya, and another bought coastal property in Alanya, Turkey.
Despite Thompson’s statements, Trump has continued to use inflammatory language, referring to the Somali community as “garbage” and saying he does not want immigrants from Somalia in the United States. Community leaders say the comments have intensified fear and anger.
At the state level, Walz has taken steps to respond. In October, he ordered a third-party audit and paused payments to the 14 high-risk Medicaid programs for 90 days.
“We will not tolerate fraud, and we will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught,” Walz said in a statement Thursday.
Last week, Walz appointed a statewide director of program integrity tasked with identifying and preventing fraud. Still, Republican lawmakers have continued to fault his administration, arguing that the failures allowed billions of taxpayer dollars to be misused before authorities intervened.
{Matzav.com}
A court in Nanterre, outside Paris, handed down a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence on Thursday to a 42-year-old Algerian woman who worked as a nanny and was convicted of poisoning the parents of Jewish children in her care, according to AFP. Alongside the custodial sentence, judges ordered her barred from entering France for five years.
The panel also convicted the woman of possessing and using a forged Belgian identity card, a separate offense uncovered during the investigation.
Judges described the crimes as a grave violation of the family’s confidence, with the presiding judge calling the conduct a “major betrayal of trust” against the parents of children who were then aged 2, 5, and 7.
Despite disturbing elements raised during the probe, the court declined to classify the case as aggravated by antisemitism. The judges said that statements attributed to the defendant emerged later in the investigation and were not made in the presence of her lawyer, preventing them from being used to support that charge.
The case stemmed from events in 2024, when the parents began noticing unusual and alarming signs inside their home. In January, they contacted authorities after discovering that a bottle of grape juice reeked of bleach and that the mother experienced severe eye pain after using her makeup remover.
Investigators determined that several household items had been deliberately tainted. During questioning, the nanny acknowledged that she had poured cleaning substances into bottles of alcohol owned by her employers. At that time, she told police she “never should have worked for a Jewish woman.”
At trial, however, the defendant reversed course. She told the court that the incriminating statement was fabricated under pressure during interrogation and insisted that her actions were not motivated by antisemitism.
{Matzav.com}
TikTok has finalized an agreement to separate its US business into a newly formed company controlled by American investors, according to an internal company memo first reported Thursday by Axios.
The arrangement is expected to bring to a close a protracted battle between TikTok and Washington that has unfolded over several years, driven by US government demands that ByteDance, the app’s China-based parent company, relinquish control of its American operations due to national security concerns.
In a message to employees, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said the transaction is scheduled to be completed on January 22. The new company will operate under the name TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. Under the ownership structure outlined in the memo, Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will together control 45 percent of the venture. Affiliates of existing ByteDance investors will retain close to one-third of the company, while ByteDance itself will hold just under a 20 percent stake.
According to Axios, the US-based entity will assume full authority over sensitive areas including data security, protection of the algorithm, content moderation, and software integrity. The memo states that the company will place special emphasis on “retraining the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation.”
The document also notes that a “trusted security partner” will be tasked with auditing and verifying compliance with US national security requirements. Oracle is set to take on that role once the divestment is finalized.
The agreement follows legislative action taken shortly before Joe Biden left office, when he signed a law mandating a ban on TikTok if ByteDance failed to divest its US assets. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has issued multiple executive orders aimed at keeping the platform operating while negotiations moved forward.
Trump had previously backed a TikTok ban during his first term but later reversed course, promising to “save TikTok” during his campaign. He has credited the platform with helping him connect with younger voters and boost support in his victory over Democrat Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election.
{Matzav.com}
Authorities say the man suspected of carrying out the deadly shooting at Brown University was discovered dead Wednesday night inside a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.
According to multiple law enforcement sources cited by Boston25 News, the gunman is “no longer with us.” Officials have not yet released details about how he died, and the circumstances surrounding his death remain under investigation.
Earlier in the evening, police converged on an Extra Storage facility in Salem after locating a vehicle they believed was connected to the suspect. The car reportedly matched the make and model of one seen near the Brown University campus at the time of the shooting, as well as near the Brookline location where MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was murdered.
The suspect is believed to have entered Brown’s Barus & Holley building on Saturday and opened fire inside a lecture hall. Two students were killed in the attack: Ella Cook, 19, a sophomore from Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, a freshman described as an Uzbek American.
In addition to the two fatalities, nine other people were struck by gunfire during the attack. As of Wednesday, six of the wounded victims remained hospitalized, according to reports.
Investigators have not yet said whether the suspect’s death is being treated as a suicide or whether other factors may have been involved.
{Matzav.com}The Knesset moved forward with a disputed piece of legislation dealing with Jewish religious expression in public life, approving it in a 49–35 vote and sending it onward in the legislative process.
Opponents quickly charged that the proposal crosses into religious coercion, while its backers said it is meant to safeguard Jewish identity in the public sphere.
The bill, titled “Realization of Jewish Identity in the Public Sphere,” was introduced by Likud MK Galit Distel Atbaryan together with Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzchak Kroizer. Its stated aim is to guarantee that Jewish citizens can openly express their national and religious character without obstruction. Supporters argue that it formalizes protections for traditional Jewish observance in public settings.
Among its provisions are requirements that mezuzahs be affixed in public institutions and that public observance of Orthodox Jewish practices be shielded from interference. Actions that hinder such practices — including administrative or bureaucratic obstacles — could be treated as criminal offenses under the proposal. Public acts such as prayer and the donning of tefillin would receive explicit legal protection.
The bill also includes a highly contentious section that would require judges serving in civil courts to demonstrate proficiency in halacha as a condition for appointment. In addition, it assigns exclusive authority over disputes arising from the legislation to the Grand Rabbinical Court. If implemented, this clause would effectively block the appointment of any judge who failed to pass such an exam.
That aspect of the bill has drawn particularly sharp opposition. The Ministerial Committee for Legislation objected to the judicial provisions, and Distel Atbaryan indicated during a stormy Knesset debate that these elements are likely to be revised or removed during committee discussions.
Following its approval in a preliminary reading, the legislation is now slated to move to committee, where it will be prepared for the first of three required votes before it can become law.
The proposal has reignited long-standing tensions over religion and state in Israel. Similar disputes surfaced in September 2023, when mechitzos were erected during large Yom Kippur tefillah gatherings in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square, defying a municipal ruling and triggering confrontations with secular activists.
Criticism of the bill has come from opposition lawmakers, civil rights and religious freedom groups, and, according to Hebrew media reports, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. While rabbinical courts already function within Israel’s judicial system — handling matters such as marriage, divorce, conversion, and inheritance — they do not currently hold authority over the secular court system.
{Matzav.com}
As the nation looks ahead to marking America’s 250th anniversary in 2026, a renewed debate is surfacing on Staten Island over whether the borough should once again pursue breaking away from New York City.
The discussion has gained momentum following the recent election of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Although Mamdani secured more than half of the vote across the city, his support on Staten Island was far more limited, drawing just 23% there, while former Gov. Andrew Cuomo won 55% of the borough’s vote, underscoring the political divide.
Borough President Vito Fossella said the election results have prompted some residents to push for revisiting the idea of secession. “This is a number of people on Staten Island who want to pursue the secession question and determine the future of Staten Island in very short order,” Fossella said in an interview with 1010 WINS on Thursday.
The idea is hardly new. Staten Islanders previously voted on the issue in a 1993 referendum, when 65% supported seceding from New York City. Despite that result, the proposal stalled and was never advanced by lawmakers in Albany.
According to Fossella, dissatisfaction with citywide policies continues to drive interest in separation. “We talk about different things that happen across New York City. We don’t want them,” he said. “We get things we don’t want, and we don’t get things that we do want.”
He added that longstanding worries remain central to the debate. “There are concerns about public safety and what will happen,” Fossella said. “There’s always a concern about taxes and the services we get in return. So there’s a real palpable sense that secession might be the long-term solution for the people of Staten Island, and I think they deserve to have that conversation.”
Fossella also said he expects the incoming mayor to ensure that Staten Island receives equal treatment. “I’m a big believer that actions speak louder than words and the choices that are made really are more important than the rhetoric that’s on the table,” he said. “I will take the incoming mayor on his word that he wants to help. I hope he does.”
At the same time, Fossella acknowledged that any move toward secession would face significant hurdles. “I put more faith in the people of Staten Island than I do in leaders of other parts of the city to determine Staten Island’s fate,” he said. “But it’s not as easy as that. You can’t just wave a wand. There’s a legislative political process that needs to be addressed and followed, and I hope it doesn’t take years. We hope to get to it sooner rather than later.”
{Matzav.com}
Discussion on ABC’s “The View” on Thursday centered on President Donald Trump’s proposal to issue bonus payments to active-duty military personnel, with co-hosts offering sharply different reactions to the plan.
During the broadcast, Whoopi Goldberg voiced skepticism about the intent behind the proposal, suggesting it was designed to secure loyalty. She later said, “And what he’s doing now is he’s thinking, if I make sure the soldiers have what they need they’ll back me and what I want.”
The comments followed remarks Trump made Wednesday night announcing the initiative. He said, “Tonight, I am also proud to announce that more than 1,450,000 — think of this —1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call ‘warrior dividend,’ before Christmas, a warrior dividend in honor of our nation’s founding in 1776. We are sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that, and the checks are already on the way. Nobody understood that one until about 30 minutes ago.”
Goldberg questioned whether the payments would actually materialize, telling viewers, “Let’s see if they get the check. I want to see if they get it first.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin acknowledged the benefit to service members, saying, “The one thing I’ll give him credit is bonus to troops and giving them $1700.”
Griffin went on to argue that while the money could provide short-term relief, it did not address broader economic concerns. “Listen, coming off the government shutdown and the delay that they all had — they got back pay — but people need help. But all Americans need help right now and just a handout isn’t the answer. Smart policies are the answer,” she said.
{Matzav.com}
