Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Person of interest identified in connection with deadly Brown University shooting as police gather evidence; Bondi Beach gunmen who killed 15 after targeting Jewish celebration were father and son, police say; Nebraska farmers get help from Washington for crop losses; Study: TX teens most affected by state abortion ban; Gender wage gap narrows in Greater Boston as racial gap widens.

TRANSCRIPT

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, December the 15th, 2025.

I'm Mike Clifford.

A person of interest detained in connection with yesterday's deadly shooting at Brown University has been identified as 24-year-old Benjamin Erickson of Wisconsin, multiple law enforcement sources tell CNN.

They report the person of interest was found with a revolver and a small Glock handgun in his room.

The shooting left two students dead and nine others injured at the Ivy League School in Providence.

And from the BBC, New South Wales police say 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed in a shooting at Bondi Beach on Sunday.

Their ages range from 10 to 87.

They report the two gunmen were father and son.

Police say the 50-year-old man died at the scene and at last report the 24-year-old in critical condition.

Meantime, Nebraska farmers can expect a portion of a $12 billion aid package announced by the Trump administration.

Ag producers have been hit with higher costs as a result of U.S. trade policies.

The money to fund the so-called "bridge payments" is coming from the revenue the U.S. has collected from tariff.

Ben Lilliston with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says the aid aims to ease an immediate cash flow problem for farmers receiving less for their crops, but does nothing to address the higher cost of equipment they use to process them.

And many of those costs are associated with these tariffs.

So higher prices for machinery, for buildings, for crop inputs across the board.

At least $1 billion of the $12 billion in aid will go to row crop farmers, which will have a big impact in Nebraska.

The Trump administration said it imposed tariffs to level the international economic playing field with other countries.

I'm Mark Moran.

And Texans younger than 18 years old are impacted the most by the state's abortion ban.

That's according to a research paper published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The study was conducted after lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8 in 2021.

It compares abortion statistics from September 2020 to May 2021 to data from September 2021 to May 2022 after the law went into effect.

Co-author Carrie White with ReSound Research for Reproductive Health says abortions for Texans under 18 years old decreased more than 26 percent and decreased by almost 20 percent for young adults from ages 18 to 24.

It may be that young people just recognized their pregnancy later and so certainly weren't able to get into an abortion providing facility before embryonic cardiac activity could be detected.

They also just may have been reluctant to disclose their pregnancy to a family member.

After the law went into effect, both in-state and out-of-state abortions for Texans between 25 and 29 decreased by 17 percent.

I'm Freda Ross reporting.

This is Public News Service.

Data show the gender wage gap in Greater Boston has decreased, but a persistent racial wage gap continues to grow.

The Boston Women's Workforce Council finds women now earn 12 cents on the dollar less than men in base compensation.

That's down from a 21 cent difference in 2023.

Executive Director Kimberly Borman says a reduction in men's salaries and the hiring of more women for senior executive positions helped.

Women advancing at this rate and continuing to be advanced at this rate it says good things about the state.

It says that leadership is trying to make

It's a big net for here and it's working.

Still the racial wage gap increased for the second year in a row.

Data show people of color earn 31 cents on the dollar less than their white counterparts up from 27 cents in 2023.

Borman notes these workers hold the bulk of low paying jobs while white employees tend to dominate in managerial and executive roles.

I'm Katherine Carley.

And while Maryland expanded foster care capacity in the state this year, child advocates note, many older kids continue to live in temporary placements despite being eligible for adoption.

As kids in foster care grow older, they face increasingly long odds of finding a permanent home.

And by age 10, the likelihood of a child being adopted falls by 50 percent.

Nationally, there are more than 100,000 adoption eligible kids in foster care.

Sarah McCackney with the Barker Adoption Foundation says every child deserves the kind of secure foundation found in a family.

Being able to step forward for that child that they can see a new reality, they can see a new trajectory to be able to see themselves as something that they might not have envisioned before.

All of those things are necessary as children really are the bedrock of society.

There are over 3,000 kids in the Maryland foster care system.

Brett Pivito reporting.

Project Wait No Longer has placed over 200 children with adoptive families of Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC.

Finally, experts believe folks in Tennessee deserve quality nutritional advice to guide school meals and food programs but the US Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services say the nation's official dietary advice will not be released until early 2026.

The Center for Biological Diversity says that these guidelines impact public health and more than 40 billion dollars in government spending.

Leah Kelly with the Center for Biological Diversity calls a delay a to dietary guidelines every five years.

She expects the final guidelines to promote diets rich in fruits and vegetables, falling in line with the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee scientific report.

And also in the most protein-rich plant sources, so those are beans, peas, lentils, legumes.

Danielle Smith reporting.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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