From the BBC World Service: FIFA has said it will release $60 seats for next year's World Cup, following complaints from fans over high prices. After all, average ticket prices are about seven times what World Cup tickets cost when the event was hosted in Qatar. Thing is, there's a catch. Then, French soccer player Kylian Mbappé has been awarded $70 million in compensation for unpaid wages in a court case against his former club, Paris-Saint Germain.
WSJ Minute Briefing - Trump Orders Blockade of Sanctioned Oil Tankers In and Out of Venezuela
Plus: Medical-supplies distributor Medline raises $6.26 billion in the biggest initial public offering of the year. And, California regulators give Tesla 90 days to meet compliance after a judge says the company deceived customers by falsely implying its cars could drive on their own. Luke Vargas hosts.
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WSJ What’s News - Trump Takes Aim at Venezuela’s Maduro With Tanker Blockade
A.M. Edition for Dec. 16. President Trump orders a “total and complete blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. Plus, WSJ deputy finance editor Quentin Webb discusses the appetite for IPOs in 2026, after Medical-supplies distributor Medline completes the biggest initial public offering of the year. And America’s white-collar workers are filled with anxiety. WSJ economics reporter Rachel Louise Ensign unpacks the latest jobs report, which is an ominous sign in an era of big corporate layoffs and CEOs warning that AI will replace workers. Luke Vargas hosts.
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Native America Calling - Wednesday, December 17, 2025 – Saving historic architecture and other important places
During the brief time it was open, the Turtle building in Niagara Falls, N.Y. served as the Native American Center for the Living Arts. It was designed by Northern Arapaho architect Dennis Sun Rhodes. Now it stands vacant and is in the way of a proposal for a high-rise hotel. It is on the most recent list of Most Endangered Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Another place on the list is the Pamunkey Indian Reservation. Tribal leaders say their land will be underwater within the next 65 years. We’ll hear about some of the threatened historic places and the efforts to save them.
GUESTS
Chief Kevin Brown (Pamunkey)
Shaun Wilson (Mohawk), president of the board of directors for the Friends of the Niagara Turtle
Emma Wilson (Mohawk), student and social media manager for the Friends of the Niagara Turtle
Charles Vaughn (Hualapai), council member and former chairman of the Hualapai Tribe
Break 1 Music: Stomp Dance (song) George Hunter (artist) Haven (album)
Break 2 Music: Hug Room (song) Chuck Copenace (artist) Oshki Manitou (album)
Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - Developer Chats – Petr Petrenko of Bumble
Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.
In this episode, we are talking with Petr Petrenko, Senior PHP Backend Engineer at Bumble. Petr will take us through his developer journey, in working on large scale backends, managing the tension between stability and innovation, and designing systems to interact with culturally different economies.
Questions
- You’ve worked on large-scale backends that serve millions of users. At what point do systems start to outgrow the teams that built them?
- At some point, every mature backend reaches a stage where rewriting is no longer realistic. How do you recognize when a system has crossed that line, and what’s the right way to handle it?
- There’s always this tension between stability and innovation. How do you decide when a system needs refactoring versus when you just need to live with the technical debt?
- Let’s talk about the human side of legacy systems — what have you learned about culture, documentation, and knowledge transfer that keeps old systems alive and reliable?
- You’ve also built and maintained complex payment systems for global users. What’s something most engineers underestimate about cross-border transactions?
- When you’re designing systems that deal with different currencies, laws, and tax regulations, how do you balance the technical with the ethical — for example, user privacy or data sovereignty?
- For engineers listening who want to build something durable — not just fast — what advice would you give about writing code that will still make sense years from now?
- One of your most impressive projects is a high-performance image-matching system you built yourself, capable of scanning tens of millions of images with sub-second results. Can you walk us through the moment you realized you needed to redesign the system — and what engineering choices made that level of performance possible?
- You’ve also worked on billing systems and fraud mitigation at scale. Was there ever a moment when you had to choose between a technically “clean” solution and a solution that better protected users or the business? How did you make that call?
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Curious City - “A Christmas Carol”: An amateur actor’s journey into a Chicago holiday tradition
The Christkindlmarket, the CTA holiday train and “A Christmas Carol” at the Goodman Theatre. Chicago is full of holiday traditions. In this episode, we get an intimate look at the annual theater production through the eyes of our Chicago Sun-Times colleague, Stefano Esposito as he takes to the stage.
Headlines From The Times - Bondi Beach Terror Attack Linked to ISIS, U.S. Unemployment Hits Four-Year High, TX Pushes Turning Point USA Into High Schools, Holiday Storm Threatens CA Travel, FCC Pressure Chills Bay Area Radio, Roomba Maker Files for Bankruptcy, and More
The suspected gunmen of an antisemitic terrorist attack in Australia are a father and son, reportedly inspired by ISIS. In the U.S., the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.6%, the highest it's been in four years. Meanwhile, in Texas, the state is moving to expand conservative student clubs in public high schools, with Governor Greg Abbott emphasizing his support for Turning Point USA. Also, in Southern California, forecasters are monitoring a strong storm that's expected to reach the coast on December 23rd and last through Christmas Day. And, new reporting is showing the impact of Brendan Carr's leadership at the Federal Communications Commission on San Francisco-based station KCBS and beyond. In business, the company behind Roomba files for bankruptcy, and an Amazon warehouse near LAX sells for a record price.
Marketplace All-in-One - Tech sector job postings on Indeed (mostly) stabilized this year
A career in tech was once seen as a safe bet — the jobs were plentiful, the pay was ample. But this year the tech sector had another “meh” year for hiring according to the job site Indeed. Tech jobs have been declining now for several years, but this year, the losses at least seemed to stabilize, according to Indeed's latest Jobs & Hiring Trends Report. Still, job postings in the industry remain well below their pre-pandemic baseline.
Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Indeed senior economist Cory Stahle for a look at how this year turned out for the tech job market.
The Daily - The Tragic Death and Enduring Legacy of Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner, the classic film director, and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were killed on Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. On Tuesday, prosecutors charged the couple’s son, Nick, with first-degree murder.
Julia Jacobs, an arts and culture reporter for The New York Times, explains what we have learned about the deaths, and Wesley Morris, a critic at The Times, discusses why many of Rob Reiner’s films are so beloved.
Guest:
- Julia Jacobs, who reports on culture and the arts for The New York Times.
- Wesley Morris, a critic at The New York Times who writes about art and popular culture.
Background reading:
- Rob Reiner, the actor who went on to direct classic films, died at 78.
- Nick Reiner was formally charged on Tuesday with murdering his parents.
Photo: Universal/Getty Images
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Up First from NPR - Republican Healthcare Vote, Susie Wiles Interview, Nuclear Reactor Regulations
Congress has two days to take action on health care subsidies, before lawmakers head home for the holiday recess. Vanity Fair has published a story featuring rare interviews conducted over more than a year with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. And, the Trump administration is fast-tracking construction of new nuclear reactor designs.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Kelsey Snell, Rebekah Metzler, Brett Neely, Lisa Thomson and Alice Woefle.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange. And our Supervising Editor is Jan Johnson.
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