Good morning and welcome to a new week, the last official one of fall. We woke up to the news that the director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, were found dead in their Los Angeles home yesterday afternoon. The police are investigating the deaths as “an apparent homicide.” Read his obituary. We have more on that below, as well as a deep look at the global fertility industry. But first, the latest from Brown University and Bondi Beach, the sites of two shootings over the weekend.
At Brown UniversityThere’s been a setback in Rhode Island. The police released a person of interest they had detained after a shooter killed two people at Brown University. They said they did not have enough evidence to connect the person to the shooting. So now, the search continues. The mayor of Providence said that officials didn’t know if the attacker was still in the city. “Obviously we have a murderer out there,” the state attorney general said. The police released a video of a suspect, but footage is minimal. “There just weren’t a lot of cameras in that Brown building,” the attorney general also said. The shooting occurred during a study session for an exam in the school’s engineering and physics building. Students shared more details about their 12 hours of fear in lockdown, as hordes of law-enforcement officers descended on the Ivy League campus. Exams are canceled, and university officials told students they were free to go home. Follow updates on the search here. At Bondi Beach
As Australia reels from a mass shooting at its most famous beach, we’ve learned more about the suspects. A father and his son targeted Jews at a Hanukkah celebration and killed at least 15 people, Australian officials said. The older man died after being shot by officers. At least 38 people remain hospitalized from injuries. It was an act of terrorism, the authorities said. But they did not give details about the suspects’ ideology or motive. Neither gunman was known to have any history of previous criminal offenses, officials said. They plan to bring criminal charges against the surviving suspect. (See our maps and videos of how the shooting unfolded.) More on the suspects: The father had a recreational hunting license and owned a gun, the police said. He was an immigrant who came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa and stayed on other visas, officials said. It was unclear what country he was from. The son is an Australian citizen. The threat to Jews: Members of Australia’s Jewish community said they had warned the government of rising antisemitism. “We feel very let down,” said Ahron Eisman, 37, who said his next door neighbor was killed. “We’ve been saying it’s only a matter of time.” The victims: The victims’ names have not been released, but we know a Holocaust survivor, a devoted rabbi of the Bondi community and a French citizen are among the dead. Read more about them. A hero: Finally, the bystander who tackled one of the gunmen was a man named Ahmed el Ahmed, the police said. He is recovering from injuries in a hospital. “That man is a genuine hero,” one official said. “And I’ve got no doubt that there are many, many people alive tonight as a result of his bravery.” If you haven’t seen it already, watch the video of el Ahmed (The Times verified it’s real). And read the latest.
The cost of childrenNearly 200 million people every year struggle with infertility. Some estimates say it touches one in six adults. That’s a lot of potential customers for a strange global marketplace — one that often operates in legal gray areas and moves from nation to nation to dodge regulations and meet demand: If you want a baby and have enough money, almost anything is possible. As my colleague Sarah A. Topol reported from the Caucasus and elsewhere: This has led to all kinds of elaborate arrangements for the creation of children. In Georgia, intended parents from China can import Ukrainian eggs or semen from Denmark, create embryos in Tbilisi and use Thai wombs to bear and birth babies before bringing a child home to Shanghai. Sarah spent six months reporting the tale of Thai women who traveled 4,000 miles to become surrogates. They believed they’d be paid large sums. Instead, they experienced a nightmare. A last resortPeople who become surrogates in the global fertility industry are often in precarious financial situations. Sarah spoke to one of them, a 24-year-old Thai woman named Eve. She had worked in construction, restaurants, security and as a masseuse. She was working as a motorcycle delivery driver when her father was hospitalized and her family’s life fell apart. Pursued by loan sharks, they stopped sleeping at home. One day, Eve saw a Facebook post: I’m looking for a woman to work in Georgia. Legally. Income 500,000-530,000 baht. Age range: 20 to 35. The work, she discovered, was surrogacy, which she’d only vaguely heard of, but which sounded helpful to others. More important, she thought, it would pay well enough to clear her family’s debt. Soon Eve landed in Tbilisi. She surrendered her passport to the Chinese people who had paid for her trip and installed her in a derelict hotel. They gave her fertility medication to prepare her for an embryo transfer. It was cold. There were many house rules. The doctors wouldn’t talk to her. She learned only this: If she wanted to leave, she should pay back the cost of her travel. If she didn’t have the money to do that, she could sell her eggs. The moving marketWildly differing regulations and prices mean that intended parents are often incentivized to travel across borders. The destinations change all the time, as nations take new or different views of what’s called assisted reproductive technologies. India was the hub of commercial surrogacy until 2012, Sarah reports, when it started to regulate the practice in response to reports of abused surrogates, sick babies and mixed-up embryos. Later, the hub moved to Thailand, Mexico and Nepal — all of which experienced scandals, too. By 2016, all three countries had banned surrogacy.
The market also evolved in Russia, where it was extremely popular with Chinese parents until Moscow shut it down. (China is a huge player on the buy side of the fertility market, Sarah reports. Between 67 and 133 million people there might make use of assisted reproductive technologies.) From Russia it moved to Ukraine and, after Russia invaded the country in 2022, to tiny Georgia. The rush on Georgia was overwhelming: The country simply did not have enough wombs, so clinics and agencies began importing them. On any night in Tbilisi, it’s possible to see clusters of heavily pregnant women — from Kenya, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine — treating themselves to a meal from their regional restaurant or going to the supermarket. Whac-a-MoleThere are, in fact, ethical guidelines for commercial surrogacy. They’re meant to protect the health, autonomy and rights of aspiring parents and the people who carry their babies. There’s meant to be psychological evaluation and counseling in addition to health screenings. Also: “informed consent,” which includes letting surrogates know about all the risks; compensation regardless of what happens in the pregnancy; legal representation for the surrogates and for the people paying them; health insurance and postpartum care; compensation for lost wages; and more. Ethical surrogacy is expensive, though, and inexhaustible demand means that the market can always move to new, less-regulated countries. Today, these include Argentina, Colombia, Ghana, Nigeria and Kyrgyzstan, among other places. Industry observers even have a name for it, Sarah reports: Whac-a-Mole surrogacy. Whac-a-Mole surrogacy doesn’t bother with those ethical guidelines, and the company that brought Eve and many others to Georgia didn’t follow them. For “traveling surrogates” like Eve, there are precious few protections at all. Eve, who Sarah interviewed extensively, eventually escaped her confinement in Tbilisi with the help of a group that works with survivors of human trafficking. Please read all of Sarah’s harrowing story.
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Western leaders should stand up for liberal values and pressure China to free Jimmy Lai, writes Mark Clifford. Here is a column by David French on the dangers of viewing everything as a crisis. Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.
Travel 101: Spotting these red flags in an Airbnb listing can help you avoid a vacation disaster. Work friend: My boss got too drunk at the holiday party. Help! Your pick: The Morning’s most-clicked link yesterday was about cheap holiday dinner party ideas. Metropolitan Diary: Two readers, same book.
27— That is the number of game-day balls allotted to teams in the National Football League. Twelve are denoted primary balls and 12 are kept as backup. There are three kicking balls. The N.F.L. can fine players for throwing them into the stands. For this season, the first offense is $8,114 and the second is $13,911.
N.F.L.: The Kansas City Chiefs will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2014 after a 16-13 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. The team’s star quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, left the game with a knee injury. College football: Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia apologized for criticizing Heisman Trophy voters after he lost the award to Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza.
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