16/12/2025

TUESDAY | DEC 16, 2025

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Director Reiner, wife found dead at home

PROVIDENCE: The man held as a “person of interest” in the Brown University shooting that left two students dead and nine injured will be released from custody, authorities said on Sunday night. Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said earlier that a man in his 20s was taken into custody in connection with Saturday’s gun violence. But at a late-night news conference hours later, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and other state and local officials told reporters the man detained would be released from custody, saying the investigation was going in a “different direction”. “We have not yet solved this case, but I am confident we are going to do that in the near future,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. Officials declined to elaborate on why the man who was taken into custody was detained in the first place. “There was a quantum of evidence which justified detaining this person as a person of interest,” Neronha said. Authorities said they believe an unidentified person pictured in surveillance footage to be the person they were still looking for. FBI Director Kash Patel said earlier on Sunday that the person of interest had been detained in a hotel in Coventry. – Reuters Police to free shooting suspect charges. Gleizes, a sportswriter, was convicted of “glorifying terrorism” in June. “I respectfully ask you to consider granting Christophe a pardon, so that he may regain his freedom and his family,” Sylvie Godard wrote in the letter dated Dec 10. Gleizes’s lawyers are also seeking a new trial with the country’s highest court. Gleizes was arrested in May last year while travelling to northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region to write about top football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie. – Reuters ROMANIANS PROTEST JUDICIAL ABUSES BUCHAREST: Thousands took to the streets of Bucharest and other cities on Sunday to support judges and prosecutors denouncing systemic abuses. Roughly 700 Romanian judges and prosecutors have signed an open letter on social media complaining of “profound and systemic dysfunction” in the justice system. President Nicusor Dan responded by announcing he would hold consultations with members of the judiciary on Dec 22, saying that when so many magistrates complained of “an integrity problem in the justice system, things are very serious”. The letter came after independent media outlet Recorder aired a documentary last week that alleged that chief judges use legal loopholes for unethical practices, including questionable acquittals, and that judges or prosecutors who complain often face disciplinary action. – Reuters JAILED WRITER’S MUM PLEADS FOR PARDON PARIS: The mother of jailed French journalist Christophe Gleizes wrote a letter to Algeria’s president requesting he pardon her son from his seven-year sentence on terror-related

BR I E F S

Detectives of the LAPD’s robbery-homicide unit were waiting for a search warrant before entering the home to conduct a thorough search and full-fledged investigation of the premises, Hamilton said, adding that a cause of death will be made public by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office. As an actor, Reiner was best remembered for his role on the 1970s CBS television comedy hit All in the Family as Mike “Meathead” Stivic, the son-in-law and liberal foil of the lead character, working-class bigot Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor. The role garnered Reiner two Emmy awards for outstanding supporting actor. Reiner went on to have a prolific

o Police probe apparent homicide

LOS ANGELES: Actor-director and political activist Rob Reiner (pic) and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday, and police are investigating the circumstances as an apparent homicide. While police declined to publicly identify the two people found deceased, Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom each released statements confirming that Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michele, 68, had died. “This is a devastating loss. Reiner’s contributions reverberate throughout American culture and society, and he has improved

countless lives through his creative work and advocacy fighting for social and economic justice,” the mayor wrote. The Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement on social media calling the case an “apparent homicide”. Police had not detained anyone for questioning nor identified a suspect as of Sunday night, Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton told a press conference. LAPD patrol officers dispatched to the home late Sunday afternoon discovered two bodies. Emergency personnel had first responded to a call for medical aid, a fire department official said.

Hollywood career as a director. Reiner’s wife, Michele Singer, was at one time a photographer who captured the image of Donald Trump that appears on the cover of his book Trump: The Art of the Deal. Reiner was first married to Penny Marshall, who played Laverne in the TV sitcom Laverne & Shirley , and was also a producer and director. He was an adoptive father to Marshall’s daughter and had three children with Michele. – Reuters

Kast and his wife Maria Pia Adriasola celebrate his election in Santiago. – REUTERSPIC

Hardliner Kast wins Chile presidency

SANTIAGO: Jose Antonio Kast won Chile’s presidential election on Sunday, leveraging voter fears over rising crime and migration to steer the country in its sharpest rightward shift since the end of the military dictatorship in 1990. Kast secured a commanding 58% of the vote in a runoff with leftist candidate Jeannette Jara, who won 42% and swiftly conceded. Throughout his decades-long political career, Kast has been a consistent right-wing hardliner. He has proposed building border walls, deploying the military to high-crime areas, and deporting all migrants in the country illegally. His victory marks the latest win for the resurgent right in Latin America. He joins Ecuador’s Daniel

neighbours Peru and Bolivia, major international marine ports, and surge of migrants susceptible to human and sex trafficking. The vast majority of migrants in Chile illegally have arrived from Venezuela in recent years, government data shows. Kast’s proposals include creating a police force inspired by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to rapidly detain and expel illegal imigrants. He has also touted massive cuts in public spending. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and a major producer of lithium, and expectations of less regulation and market-friendly policies have already buoyed the local stock market. – Reuters

Kast supporters arrived at the campaign headquarters in Santiago on Sunday evening, waving Chile flags. Some wore caps emblazoned “Make Chile Great Again”. Ignacio Segovia, a 23-year-old engineering student, was among them. “I grew up in a peaceful Chile where you could go out in the street, you had no worry, you went out and you never had problems or fear,” he said. “Now you can’t go out peacefully.” While Chile remains one of the safest countries in Latin America, violent crime has spiked in recent years as organised crime groups have taken root, capitalising on the country’s porous northern desert borders with coca-producing

Noboa, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and Argentina’s Javier Milei. In October, the election of centrist Rodrigo Paz ended almost two decades of socialist rule in Bolivia. The campaign was Kast’s third run at the presidency and second runoff, after losing to leftist President Gabriel Boric in 2021. Once seen by many Chileans as too extreme, he has attracted voters increasingly worried about crime and immigration. His definitive win, even in parts of Chile that traditionally vote for leftist candidates, was also likely driven by voter rejection of Jara, who as a member of the Communist Party was seen by many as too extreme, said Claudia Heiss, a political scientist at the University of Chile.