Four people have been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

International News via Reuters:

The FBI has foiled a bomb plot targeting multiple targets, including immigration agents and vehicles, in Los Angeles and Orange County, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday.

“The Turtle Island Liberation Front—a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group—was preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve. The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles,” Bondi said in a statement.

Four people have been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The bombing plot called for planting explosive devices at five locations targeting two U.S. companies at midnight on New Year’s Eve in the Los Angeles area, it said.

The four defendants named in the complaint are Audrey Illeene Carroll, Zachary Aaron Page, Dante Gaffield, and Tina Lai.

According to a sworn statement in support of the complaint, Carroll in November presented an eight-page handwritten document to a paid confidential source titled “Operation Midnight Sun” which described a bomb plot.

Carroll and Page later allegedly recruited the other two defendants to help carry out the plan, which included them “acquiring bomb-making materials and traveling to a remote location in the Mojave Desert to construct and detonate test explosive devices on December 12, 2025,” the sworn statement alleges.

FBI agents intervened, however, before they could complete their work to assemble a functional explosive device.

Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Katharine Jackson and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said earlier at a midday news conference that a man in his 20s had been taken into custody in connection with Saturday’s gun violence but gave no further details

International News via Reuters:

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 at a midday news conference that a man in his 20s had been taken into custody in connection with Saturday’s gun violence but gave no further details.

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 into 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, adding that investigators later determined there was “no basis to believe that he’s a person of interest, so … he’s being released.”

Authorities said they believed an unidentified person pictured in surveillance footage to be the person they were still looking for.

FBI Director Kash Patel said earlier Sunday in a post on X that the person of interest had been detained in a hotel room in the Rhode Island town of Coventry, a 30-minute drive from the Brown campus. An FBI team specializing in cellular data analysis used geolocation information to track the suspect, Patel said.

While the killer was presumed to remain at large, authorities said on Sunday night they would not reimpose an initial shelter-in-place order for the campus and surrounding community that had been lifted.

The mass shooting — the latest of nearly 400 in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive — shook the community at the university, one of the oldest in the United States. The school canceled exams, and classes, for the rest of the year and the campus was quiet on Sunday as a light snowfall blanketed the city.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said that authorities, as of midday on Sunday, had not yet contacted all of the victims’ family members because some were traveling. He invited residents to a previously planned event on Sunday to light a Christmas tree and a menorah to mark the first night of Hanukkah.

“It is quite clear that if we can come together as a community and shine a little bit of light tonight, I think there’s nothing better that we could be doing,” Smiley said.

AUTHORITIES RELEASE VIDEO OF SUSPECT

Seven people injured at Brown University were in stable condition, Smiley said. One remained in critical but stable condition, while another had been discharged, he added.

Shelter-in-place orders at the university and nearby areas were lifted on Sunday. Smiley said earlier in the day that residents should expect a visible police presence across the city.

The gunman fled after shooting students in a classroom in Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering and physics building, where outer doors had been left unlocked while exams were taking place, officials said on Saturday.

Authorities on Saturday released a short video clip of a person of interest dressed in black walking near the engineering building. Providence Deputy Police Chief Timothy O’Hara said on Saturday the individual may have worn a mask, but officials were not certain. 

Brown President Christina Paxson told reporters that all or nearly all of the victims were students, adding: “This is the day one hopes never happens, and it has.”

STUDENTS CAUGHT BY SURPRISE

Ref Bari, 22, a graduate student at Brown, said he was inside the Barus & Holley building when he heard a series of loud popping sounds that appeared to be gunfire.

Bari ran out of the building and asked another student running in the street if he could hide with her and her friends and she agreed. They returned to her basement apartment and hid in the bathroom.

“She trusted me,” he said. “The only connection between us is we’re both students at Brown but beyond that, we don’t know each other.”

Teaching assistant Joseph Oduro, 21, told CNN he was in a classroom that was attacked.

“The first couple of gunshots went straight to the chalkboard right where I was standing,” Oduro said. “Who knows, if I didn’t duck, maybe I’m not here today.”

A student next to him took two bullets to the leg and was due to undergo surgery on Sunday, he said.

Jack DiPrimio, another graduate student at Brown, said he was initially not concerned when the university went on lockdown because he had experienced many active-shooter drills. The drills have become more common in the U.S. as attacks targeting students have increased.

“I had faced so many lockdowns in high school and even a few at my undergrad, so I wasn’t that worried at first,” DiPrimio said in a TikTok video after coming out of a five-hour lockdown. “Maybe I was desensitized.”

Reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona in Providence and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Additional reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru, Katharine Jackson, Douglas Gillison and Jason Lange in Washington, Jessica DiNapoli and Chris Prentice in New York, Keval Singh in Singapore and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by Ted Hesson and Steve Gorman; Editing by Sergio Non, Christina Fincher, Bill Berkrot, Diane Craft and Stephen Coates

Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom each released statements confirming that Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michele, 68, had died

International News via Reuters:

Actor-director and political activist Rob Reiner and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday, and police are investigating the circumstances as an apparent homicide, authorities said.

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 for our city and our country. Rob 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 inside the residence. Emergency personnel had first responded to a call for medical aid, a city fire department official said earlier.

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.

FROM ‘MEATHEAD’ TO ‘SPINAL TAP’

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 Hollywood career as a director, starting with “This is Spinal Tap,” a 1984 mockumentary following the trials and tribulations of a fictional hard rock band on tour. The satiric film became a cult classic, known for its mostly improvised script, with Reiner playing the faux documentary filmmaker Marty DiBergi.

The movie worked, Reiner later said, because of the cast’s love for rock ‘n’ roll.

“That was the trick – to make fun of it and at the same time, honor it,” Reiner told CBS News show “60 Minutes” in an interview marking the launch of this year’s sequel, “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” which he also directed and appeared in.

Reiner directed nearly two dozen films in all, including classics such as “Stand by Me,” a 1986 coming-of-age drama about four boys who set out to find the body of a missing youth, as well as 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally …,” starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan.

That film, often cited as one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, featured the famed line, “I’ll have what she’s having,” delivered by the director’s real-life mother, Estelle Reiner, playing a bit part as a diner reacting to Ryan’s character faking an orgasm in a restaurant.

Versatile across a range of genres, Reiner directorial credits also included the 1987 fairy tale adventure “The Princess Bride,” the 1990 psychological thriller “Misery,” an adaptation of a Stephen King novel starring Kathy Bates and James Caan, and the 1992 military courtroom drama “A Few Good Men,” starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore.

PROGRESSIVE CAUSES

Reiner’s wife, Michele, 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.”

Rob Reiner, a native of New York City and the son of the late comedy writer and actor Carl Reiner, was also well known as a Democratic Party activist and advocate of various liberal social causes.

In the 2004 presidential election, he backed Democratic candidate John Kerry and featured in advertisements taking aim at incumbent President George W. Bush. Reiner also supported Democratic presidential hopefuls Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

He campaigned against California Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Prop 8 was later overturned by the courts and formally repealed by another voter initiative.

He led a separate campaign to pass Proposition 10, a state ballot initiative that created an early childhood development services program.

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 Singer.

Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Sergio Non and Edwina Gibbs