Olympic Murder, Brain Timing, & Word of the Year

News without the noise

Adam Rogers
November 20, 2025

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The Justice Department charged former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding with ordering the murder of a federal witness in Colombia in January. Wedding, a Canadian national, faces witness tampering, murder, and drug trafficking charges. The State Department is offering a $15 million reward for his arrest.
Wedding allegedly placed a bounty on a witness from a 2024 narcotics case against him and enlisted others to kill the victim. Attorney General Pamela Bondi called Wedding's organization one of the most prolific drug trafficking networks, claiming it imports 60 metric tons of cocaine annually into the US.
Wedding competed for Canada in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and was convicted of attempting to buy cocaine in LA in 2010. He was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List in March. The investigation has resulted in 35 indictments and the seizure of 2,000 kilos of cocaine and $3.2 million in cryptocurrency.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers resigned from OpenAI's board on Wednesday, two days after saying he was 'deeply ashamed' of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The House Oversight Committee released Summers' email exchanges with Epstein last week, found in documents in Epstein's estate.
Summers said he was stepping back from public commitments to 'rebuild trust and repair relationships.' He previously flew on Epstein's aircraft and served as Harvard president when the university received millions in gifts from Epstein before his 2008 guilty plea. No Epstein survivor has alleged wrongdoing by Summers.
Harvard announced Wednesday it will launch a new investigation into Summers and others at the university who were associated with Epstein. Later, Summers said he would go on leave from his teaching duties at the university.

Scientists have discovered how the brain tracks time for actions like speaking or swinging a bat. A new study in Nature shows that two regions, the motor cortex and the striatum, work together like an hourglass to measure the passage of time and control when movements happen.
Researchers trained mice to lick a spout after a set delay while recording thousands of neurons. They found the motor cortex sends signals that “flow” into the striatum, where they build up until the movement is triggered. Silencing the motor cortex paused this buildup, delaying the action, while silencing the striatum reset the timer entirely.
The findings explain a basic function the brain performs constantly and may help researchers understand, and eventually treat, movement problems in disorders like Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.

President Trump signed a bill forcing the Justice Department to release all unclassified Jeffrey Epstein files within 30 days. (More)

NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will retain Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, signaling continuity on public safety despite his past criticism of the NYPD. Both emphasize shared priorities on crime reduction. (More)

Billionaire Tom Steyer is running for California governor. He spent over $300 million on his failed 2020 presidential run and now promises to take on corporations and lower costs. (More)

Denmark’s Social Democrats suffered major local-election losses, including losing Copenhagen’s top post for the first time in a century. PM Mette Frederiksen blamed rising prices and immigration concerns. (More)

London thieves are returning stolen Android phones after realizing they're not iPhones. iPhones hold value far better on resale markets, losing 47% after four years versus nearly 80% for Androids. (More) (More)

Two of the 25 schoolgirls kidnapped Monday in northwestern Nigeria have escaped and are safe. Security forces and local hunters are now searching nearby forests where armed gangs are believed to be hiding with the remaining students. (More)

US stock markets closed higher on Wednesday (S&P +0.38%, Nasdaq +0.59%, Dow +0.10%). The S&P 500 broke a four-day tech-driven slide. (More)

Mortgage rates rose for the third straight week to 6.37%, causing applications to drop 5.2%. Refinance requests fell 7% while home purchase applications dropped 2%. (More)

Nvidia beat Wall Street expectations with $57 billion in revenue and forecast $65 billion next quarter. The AI chipmaker's stock rose 4% after hours. (More)

Major League Baseball is returning to NBC starting in 2026. The three-year deal includes 25 Sunday night games and the entire wild-card playoff round on NBC and Peacock streaming. (More)

Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr. tore his ACL and needs season-ending surgery. Kirk Cousins will start the rest of the season. (More)

Singer D4vd is a suspect in the death of a missing 15-year-old whose remains were found in his impounded car. He hasn’t been charged, and investigators say key facts are still under review. (More)

Yale scientists developed an imaging technique that uses machine learning to read age, gene activity, and genetic variants from routine tissue slides, potentially improving early disease detection and diagnostics. (More)

Smoking just two cigarettes a day increases your risk of death by 60% and heart disease by 50%, a Johns Hopkins study found. (More)

TikTok is letting users control how much AI-generated content they see in their feeds through a new setting. The app is also testing invisible watermarks to better label AI content. (More)

Cambridge University’s word of the year is “parasocial.”

New British coin design honors Freddie Mercury.

Gustav Klimt painting sells for $236M at auction.

How Raising Cane’s keeps its dipping sauce a secret.

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