--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, December 13th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. The Times has been on the ground, gathering details from California to New York, Hawaii to Maryland, even Japan, to try and piece together the path of Luigi Manjone, the suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare's CEO.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The rough outline of Man Jones' life has been widely shared. Valedictorian at a prep school in Baltimore, computer science grad at Penn. But my colleagues have been narrowing in on the last two years, when things seemed to shift for him.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He quit his job at a tech company in early 2023, calling it mind-numbingly boring. He spent a lot of time trying to get relief from a back injury, posting about unbearable pain. It was so bad he told one friend that it kept him from dating.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Eventually, he got back surgery. That seemed to help. By early this year, he was off trying to find peace on a trip through Asia with stops in Thailand and Japan. In a voice message, he told a friend, I want some time to zen out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Manjohn recorded that on April 27th. It was apparently one of the last communications he had with friends and family before he seemed to cut ties. Where in the world are you? One friend texted. No response.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In May, his Reddit account shows one final post in a forum dedicated to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Overall, my colleagues say that Man Jones' online footprint showed that he had a growing impatience with living in a, quote, capitalist society.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's unclear where he spent the summer or fall. His family called up old friends, asking if anyone knew where he was. By November 18th, they filed a missing persons report.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Just a few days after that, police say Manjohn got on a bus that was winding its way from Atlanta and headed to New York City. The Times' full look at what we know about Manjohn is at nytimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The dramatic overnight fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has reignited a heated debate about immigration in Europe. What should happen to the Syrians who fled Assad regime and have settled across the continent?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the past decade more than a million people left Syria for Europe and many filed asylum claims to try and avoid being sent back. Within hours of the Assad regime falling, you quickly had Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, saying they were pausing asylum processing.
--:-- Christopher Schutz: The main argument is that most asylum seekers, they will write on their application specifically that they're in danger because of the Assad regime. The Assad regime is no longer in place. So it's difficult to actually legally give somebody asylum if the reason that they're claiming asylum is no longer valid.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But what was happening at the same time is you had many politicians, both from the far right and conservative politicians, who had for years denigrated migration, seemingly rejoiced at the fact that so many people could go back home.
--:-- Christopher Schutz: Some legal experts think courts would block any effort to send Syrians back if there's still significant violence in the country. But he says that politicians talking about it so openly is already making some Syrians uneasy.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: What you hear Syrians saying in Germany, I've spoken with several, is we made our lives here. We spent a lot of time and effort, A, getting here, but B, learning the German language, integrating. Why should we go back?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, America's tech giants have pulled out their checkbooks for Donald Trump. Meta, Facebook's parent company, said it's donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, Amazon said it also plans a million-dollar donation to the fund, which helps pay for celebrations around Inauguration Day. Trump's committee says that seven-figure gifts to their fund come with perks for the donors, like tickets to the ceremony at the Capitol and a, quote, elegant and intimate dinner with the president-elect.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But donors and corporations often pour big money into inaugural funds in order to get on the good side of an incoming administration. There are no legal limits on how much a person or a company can give to them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Both Amazon and Meta's founders, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, have had rocky histories with Trump and seem to be trying to shore up their relationships with him before he takes office.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Every morning as the sun comes up tens of thousands of people across the U line up at addiction clinics to get a cup of methadone. The clinics have become a crucial part of fighting the opioid crisis.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A dose of methadone can help stave off withdrawal symptoms and even lower the risk of overdoses. But the Times has uncovered troubling practices at the nation's largest chain of for-profit methadone clinics run by Acadia Healthcare.
--:-- Jessica Silver-Greenberg: What we found is that this business, which is generating billions of dollars in revenue, is built in a large part on deception.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Because methadone is a narcotic, the clinics are supposed to follow strict state and federal guidelines that require them to provide counseling for patients.
--:-- Jessica Silver-Greenberg: But that's not happening in a lot of cases. Instead, employees are falsifying the medical records that Acadia then uses to bill insurers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We found a counselor who was bragging to her superiors and to anyone else who would listen that she wasn't providing counseling at all. Instead, what she was doing was she was walking up to people who were waiting in line, saying hello, then going back to her office and recording those hellos as counseling sessions and billing for them.
--:-- Jessica Silver-Greenberg: Jessica says it became clear as they investigated that Acadia built its business model on volume. The more patients that come through, the more money it makes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In some cases, they're enrolling people who aren't even addicted to opioids, but are dependent on other drugs. For someone who has a different kind of drug addiction, methadone does not treat that addiction at all.
--:-- Jessica Silver-Greenberg: Instead, what it could potentially do is set that person on a lifelong path of dependence on methadone. So they are creating a lot of future dangers for patients just to get another person in the door.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A spokesperson for Acadia told The Times the company does not falsify medical records or pressure employees to enroll people who don't qualify and, quote, patently rejects claims that Acadia places profits over patients.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, Here one See how low they are Since the middle of last month people across New Jersey and parts of New York City have been reporting mysterious flying objects in the night sky.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is a video of the Morris County drones with characteristic triangle lights underneath. Dozens of drone sightings have been reported, including 50 in just one night last weekend, sparking alarm among residents and concern from lawmakers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'll ask an open-ended question. What is going on in New Jersey?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Capitol Hill this week, members of Congress pressed the FBI for answers about what exactly the objects are. The Bureau says it's been actively investigating the sightings.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, efforts by state and local police to track the flying whatever they are with helicopters and drones of their own have gone nowhere so far.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But yesterday, from a podium at the White House, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, tried to put a lid on the fears.
--:-- John Kirby: We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said that federal authorities had used what he called sophisticated electronic detection technologies to look into the sightings and found no evidence that the flying objects were drones at all.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One possible theory for what could be behind the sudden rush of sightings is that the viral UFO mystery could have just prompted more people to start looking up.
--:-- Joshua Tan: There are other things in the sky that have been in the sky at night for a long time. Planes, helicopters, stars, planets. Things that are very bright that people don't necessarily know that they're looking at.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how ultra-processed foods took over the American diet. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The show is made by Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford, with help from Isabella Anderson.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann. The headlines will be back on Monday.
