Claudio Neves Valente came to the United States as an ambitious physics student at Brown University, but ended his life while hiding from police after killing two students at the Ivy League institution as well as an MIT professor.Authorities say Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, shot dead Brown students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and wounded several others, on December 13 before heading to the home of renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro and killing him two days later.The Chief Medical Examiner’s office released autopsy results Friday, saying Neves Valente “died as a result of a gunshot would to the head, and that his manner of death was a suicide.” He is “estimated to have died December 16,” the medical examiner said.Federal officials also released results of early ballistic and DNA testing Friday.”Two 9mm pistols were recovered in New Hampshire with the body,” according to a joint statement from the FBI and federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm (ATF) agency officials. One of the two firearms recovered “is positively correlated with the firearm used in the Brown University mass shooting. The other of the two firearms is positively correlated with the murder of” Loureiro, the statement said.The FBI-ATF statement also said a rapid DNA test “has preliminarily matched Neves Valente with DNA recovered from evidence at Brown University,” without mentioning any testing at the MIT professor’s home.  The FBI-ATF statement did not say whether either of the recovered guns were used in the shooter’s suicide, one of many questions that still loom about the incidents.No motive has been made public for any of the killings, which cast a long shadow on two of New England’s normally genteel elite universities. It has been suggested he did not know the students.Portuguese media outlet Expresso reported that Valente, from Torres Novas in central Portugal, attended Lisbon’s IST institution at the same time as Loureiro.They were classmates, and Valente was the top student that year. “Most classmates have no memory of the student Claudio Valente, other than the fact that he was the best in the class that year,” IST president Rogerio Colaco told the outlet.By contrast, Loureiro — who taught nuclear science and engineering as well as physics — maintained links with IST professors, he added.Investigators struggled to produce viable leads in the days after the incidents, with President Donald Trump criticizing Brown University for failing to link its security cameras to police systems.During the protracted manhunt, dozens of names surfaced on social media and elsewhere in connection with the shooting — almost all false and unlinked to the bloodshed.Rhode Island officials denounced the misinformation, saying it complicated their investigation.- Reddit tip-off -As media reported the name of a military veteran initially detained and released, social media filled with his image — and a torrent of erroneous posts sharing photos of another man with the same name.Colonel Darnell Weaver, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, said “the endless barrage of misinformation, disinformation, rumors, leaks and clickbait were not helpful in this investigation.”But it was a tip from an often murky, irreverent corner of the internet  — Reddit — that was the breakthrough for detectives.Officers were directed to a post on the social media forum site that told investigators to probe a grey Nissan SUV. A tipster called “John” by investigators then came forward and described to officers an encounter with a suspicious man at Brown prior to the slayings.The information was crucial for the investigation and allowed officers to link the Brown campus shootings and the MIT professor’s murder.In their briefing announcing the conclusion of the case, officials revealed that Valente had taken elaborate steps to conceal his identity including using false license plates and a cell phone investigators struggled to trace.The hunt for the Brown gunman dragged into a sixth day until officers found Valente’s body in a self-storage facility in Salem, Massachusetts. Questions continued to swirl around the episode.Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told the Thursday briefing “in terms of why Brown? I think that’s a mystery.”

A Delaware appeals court cleared the way Friday for Elon Musk to receive a long-contested $56 billion Tesla pay package, reversing an earlier judgment in the protracted case.The decision by the Delaware Supreme Court rejects a pair of judgments by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the state’s Court of Chancery and sets the stage for the world’s richest person to get another windfall.In a pair of 2024 rulings, McCormick invalidated the 2018 package, which once loomed as historically large but have since been eclipsed by the tech tycoon’s most recent Tesla package.The five-judge appeals panel determined that McCormick ruled improperly in ordering a rescission, the tossing out of Musk’s package in its entirety.”It is undisputed that Musk fully performed under the 2018 grant, and Tesla and its stockholders were rewarded for his work,” the ruling said as it reversed the rescission.Though approved by a majority of Tesla shareholders, the 2018 package ended up in court when Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta challenged the award as excessive.In a statement posted online Friday, attorneys representing Tesla shareholders said they were considering next steps.The court struck down the award in January 2024 following a five-day trial, calling the process “deeply flawed.” The board proved vulnerable to manipulation by Musk, “the paradigmatic ‘Superstar CEO,'” wrote McCormick, who upheld her determination in December 2024 following an appeal.But Tesla’s board has staunchly supported Musk throughout the legal saga, approving an “interim” compensation award in August worth about $29 billion for him and then unveiling a pay package worth as much as $1 trillion.Tesla shareholders on November 6 easily approved the latest package, which is tied to a number of performance and valuation targets.

The first major gathering of Turning Point USA since the murder of its influential founder was supposed to bring America’s right-wing activists together to celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk. Instead, it is laying bare the divisions of a fractious conservative coalition, increasingly worried about its electoral prospects and about President Donald Trump’s fraying popularity.Key figures in the Make America Great Again movement took to the stage in Phoenix on Thursday to tear into each other, blasting opponents for cozying up to fascists or accusing them of besmirching the memory of a man who acted as a unifying force.Influential podcaster Ben Shapiro came straight out of the gate, attacking former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for an uncritical interview with self-described white nationalist Nick Fuentes.”The conservative movement is… in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty,” he said.Shapiro said Carlson should never have given oxygen to Fuentes, whose views are described as antisemitic, misogynistic and racist. Kirk had “despised” Fuentes, Shapiro added.”He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility, and that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.”Carlson shot back, mocking Shapiro for suggesting censorship, which he claimed was anathema to the Turning Point founder.”Deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event. I’m like, what? It’s hilarious,” he told the audience a few hours later.The brewing MAGA civil war is over who will take the reins when Trump — who cannot run for the White House again — steps back.- JD Vance -No one has formally declared their candidacy for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but a number of names are being bandied around as pretenders to the throne.They include Fuentes and firebrand congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who last month broke with Trump, saying his second term agenda was a betrayal of his voters.Vice President JD Vance, who is due to speak at the gathering on Sunday, got a significant boost Thursday when Erika Kirk endorsed him for a 2028 White House run.”We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she said to cheers from the thousands-strong crowd. The next US president will be the country’s 48th leader.Former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2024, did not comment directly on Kirk’s endorsement.”We’re at a fork in the road, and I think that there are competing visions for the future of the right,” Ramaswamy told AFP. “I think it’s great for us to have that conversation.”The Vance endorsement from Turning Point’s new CEO is why Shapiro is annoyed, hinted Carlson, whose newsletter on Friday gloated “Sorry, Ben Shapiro, JD is America First.””Trump created this amazing coalition, bringing in people who had never voted Republican before…and that coalition took over the most powerful government in the history of the world,” Carlson told the audience on Thursday.”So there’s a lot of blood at stake here, as the question becomes, who gets to run it after, who gets the machinery when the President exits the scene.”There are a lot of people in Washington, maybe even in this room, who aren’t quite sure what they want, but they know they don’t want — JD Vance.”The spat between two of the loudest voices in the conservative mediasphere comes as former Daily Wire host Candace Owens continues to cause waves with a series of provocative claims.Owens, whose YouTube channel has 5.7 million subscribers, is involved in a bizarre fight with French President Emmanuel Macron over wild claims his wife Brigitte is actually a man.She is also in a quarrel with Erika Kirk over unsubstantiated claims of a conspiracy involving the US and Israeli governments in the killing of her husband.Kirk on Thursday sought to tamp down the divisions on the right, which she said had appeared after Charlie’s death.”When he was assassinated, we saw infighting. We’ve seen fractures,” she said.”We’ve seen bridges being burned, that shouldn’t be burned.”

Afghans who worked alongside US troops during almost two decades of war were once promised a home in the United States to shelter them from the extremist intolerance of the Taliban.But after two National Guard soldiers were shot — one of them fatally — in Washington last month, allegedly by an Afghan national, their fates have been put on hold, and many are now terrified about what the future might bring.”Everybody is scared,” a 31-year-old Afghan green card holder told AFP.”We are scared that we will be judged by people for the crimes committed by one individual from Afghanistan.”West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her wounds after what officials described as an “ambush-style” attack that also left fellow Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, 24, fighting for his life.The following day President Donald Trump announced he was halting all migration from what he called “third world countries,” including Afghanistan, as his administration announced a review of all residency grants for people from 19 countries — around 1.6 million people, according to an AFP tally.Now Afghans fear they might be sent back to a nation run by the Islamist extremists who they once worked to defeat.”I made my home in America, now this is my home. If I leave here where I have to go then?” sobbed Maryam.Like all Afghan nationals AFP spoke to for this story, Maryam did not want to be identified for fear of angering US immigration authorities.”When I sleep my chest feels very painful, empty,” she said. “I feel like I belong to nowhere.”- Collapse -The 27-year-old worked on projects for the US embassy in Kabul, where she helped produce education materials that she says cast the Taliban in a bad light.When the American-led international force was there, her country began to modernise, giving rights to women that their mothers did not have.”I did education, I had a big dreams for my country, for myself,” she said from her home outside Los Angeles.But in August 2021, the last US troops hurriedly withdrew from Afghanistan as the Taliban ran riot, taking over the institutions that American taxpayers had spent billions of dollars to prop up.Hundreds of thousands of Afghans scrambled to leave the country, terrified that the Islamists would exact revenge on anyone who had helped the West.”It was so difficult to get into the airport,” said Khan, who describes printing out dozens of documents, including proof that his wife was a US citizen living in California.”There was no water, no food, nothing. And we spent four days in there,” he said. “It was too cold during the night.”Khan, who worked in a university and at a government bank, finally got a plane to Qatar, then on to Germany before being flown to New Jersey, where he underwent two months of background checks and processing.”We truly thank United States. They helped us a lot to come… and rebuild our life here.”- Scared -Khan says he worked day and night in Anaheim, California to save money, often doing two jobs, and now has his own used car dealership.He has also bought a triplex, part of which he rents out to provide a source of income, and secured his green card for permanent US residency.”I was about to apply to my citizenship by the end of December, but unfortunately, after the incident in Washington DC, everything is paused,” he said.”Everybody is scared, whoever is having like a green card, a parole status, or they have applied for asylum or whatever status they have, all of them are scared.”We had a lot of dreams,and now every day everything becomes more difficult, and our dreams are, like, going the other way.”For Maryam, who works for an NGO in California’s Orange County, all she wants is to be able to get her green card application back on track, and for her community to be treated fairly.”What the person did does not represent us,” she said of the shooter in Washington.”We are all committed to America; we are not the traitor, we are the survivor.”