“Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday proposed tougher national [victim disarmament] laws after a mass shooting targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, leaving at least 15 people dead. Albanese said he would propose new restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain. His proposals were announced after the authorities revealed that the older of the two gunmen — who were a father and son — had held a gun license for a decade and amassed his six guns legally. … At least 38 people were being treated in hospitals after the massacre on Sunday, when the two shooters fired indiscriminately on the beachfront festivities. Those killed included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor. … The horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws primarily aimed at removing rapid-fire rifles from circulation.” (12/15/25)
“Thailand’s military said on Monday that it has stopped fuel shipments passing through a border checkpoint with Laos because of fears they were being diverted to Cambodia, with which it is fighting a fierce border conflict. The Thai and Cambodian militaries are clashing at multiple locations along their 817 km (508 mile) land border, both sides said, with no signs of the fighting abating despite international efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, including calls by U.S. President Donald Trump. … Over half a million people have been displaced by the fighting, which has killed at least 38 on both sides over the past eight days, according to national authorities, who mounted a round of evacuations in July when the neighbours clashed for five days before Trump helped broker a truce.” (12/15/25)
“The parent company of Roomba, which has sold millions of cleaning robots, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday after 35 years of operation. In a Sunday press release, Massachusetts-based robotics company iRobot said it had filed for bankruptcy protection in the District of Delaware court. The company said that it would be wholly acquired by its main manufacturer and lender, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA. … iRobot went through a failed acquisition attempt by Amazon. In 2022, Amazon announced that it would buy iRobot for $1.7 billion, but pulled the deal in January 2024, citing regulatory hurdles in the US and Europe.” (12/14/25)
“The High Court of Hong Kong has convicted pro-democracy activist and newspaper founder Jimmy Lai on three charges related to accusations that he undermined China’s national security, as part of a widely scrutinised trial. Lai now faces the possibility of a life sentence in prison. On Monday morning, a panel of three judges found Lai, 78, guilty of two counts of conspiring with foreign forces to threaten national security and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious material.” (12/15/25)
“Chile has elected the far-right wing José Antonio Kast to be its next president, after an election campaign that was dominated by themes of security, immigration and crime. Kast beat the governing left-wing coalition candidate Jeanette Jara decisively with more than 58% of the vote in his third attempt at running for president. It marks the biggest shift to the right since the end of Chile’s military dictatorship in 1990. Kast has openly praised Chile’s former right-wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet.” (12/14/25)
In the “good news” category, RRND is going to have a “real” office for the first time since 2002.
By “real office” I mean a little $700 camper I bought this weekend and parked behind our house.
It needs some work (that’s an understatement), but I hope to be publishing RRND/FND out of it by next week. I’ve always worked from whatever home we’re living in, but at the new (to us) house there’s not a good segregated “office space” in the “open floor plan” layout. I’m up at 4:30am each day to bring you your daily dose of news, commentary, and podcasting; now I’ll have to walk (10 feet or so) to work, too. The rent’s not too high, but I hope you’ll help with it:
“Shares of cannabis companies jumped on Friday after the Washington Post reported U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to push the government to dramatically loosen federal restrictions on marijuana. U.S.-listed shares of Tilray Brands gained 35%, while SNDL, Canopy Growth and ETF AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis were up between 20% and 31% in morning trading. According to the report from Thursday, Trump plans to direct agencies to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, reducing oversight of the plant and its derivatives to the same level as some common prescription painkillers and other drugs. … Trump’s administration has been looking to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a shift that could ease criminal penalties and reshape the industry through potentially lower taxes and by making it easier to secure funding.” (12/12/25)
“Astronomers have seen the orbit of a star wobbling around a black hole — a spectacular dance in the cosmos that serves as one of the very few direct confirmations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity made over 100 years ago. The result, derived from periodic changes in X-ray and radio emissions in a tidal disruption event, is essentially a new window onto the workings of a spinning black hole that warps space and time around it. According to the study, researchers analysing the tidal disruption event AT2020afhd noticed that both the swirling disk of stellar debris and the black hole’s powerful jets were wobbling in unison, repeating roughly every 20 days. This motion matches a phenomenon called frame-dragging, where a rotating black hole literally drags spacetime around with it — an effect first described by Einstein and later quantified by Josef Lense and Hans Thirring.” (12/12/25)
“Israel announced Saturday it had killed Ra’ad Sa’ad, the head of the Weapons Production Headquarters in Hamas’[s] military wing and one of the architects of Oct. 7. ‘Sa’ad was one of the last remaining veteran senior militants in the Gaza Strip and a close associate of Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing. He held several senior positions and was a central figure within the organization’s military leadership,’ the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wrote on X. The IDF added his death ‘significantly degrades Hamas’ ability to reestablish its capabilities.’ An IDF official told Fox News that, in recent months, Sa’ad had been working to reestablish the terror group’s capabilities and weapons manufacturing in violation of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. The official also stated that, under the ceasefire agreement, Israel is allowed to strike targets that are actively engaging in terrorism.” (12/13/25)
“Farmers in southwest France blocked roads and set fire to bales of hay on Saturday, December 13 to protest the culling of cows due to a skin disease as the government said one million cattle would be vaccinated. French farmers have been angry over what they see as the government’s heavy-handed response to an outbreak of nodular dermatitis, widely known as lumpy skin disease. On Friday, veterinarians slaughtered a herd of more than 200 cows in the village of Les Bordes-sur-Arize near the Spanish border after discovering a single case of the sickness. The police had to disperse angry farmers to escort in a team to carry out the culling. … On Saturday, dozens of tractors blocked traffic, while others were parked in front of public buildings, with farmers setting fire to bales of straw and tires.” (12/13/25)
