AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

The suspects were a father and son, aged 50 and 24, authorities have said. The older man, whom state officials named as Sajid Akram, was shot dead. His son was being treated at a hospital.

A news conference by political and law enforcement leaders on Tuesday was the first time officials confirmed their beliefs about the suspects' ideologies. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the remarks were based on evidence obtained, including “the presence of Islamic State flags in the vehicle that has been seized.”

There are 25 people still being treated in hospitals after Sunday’s massacre, 10 of them in critical condition. Three of them are patients in a children's hospital.

Also among them is Ahmed al Ahmed, who was captured on video tackling and disarming one assailant, before pointing the man’s weapon at him and then setting it on the ground.

Killings of Rob Reiner and his wife stun Hollywood as decision on charges for their son looms

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police are set to present a case to prosecutors Tuesday following Nick Reiner's arrest in the killings of his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, which stunned their communities in Hollywood and Democratic politics, where both were widely beloved.

Prosecutors are set to decide whether and how to charge 32-year-old Nick Reiner, who is being held in jail without bail. He was arrested several hours after his parents were found dead in their home in the upscale Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on Sunday, police said.

Rob Reiner was the Emmy-winning star of the sitcom “All in the Family” who went on to direct films including “When Harry Met Sally..." and ”The Princess Bride" He was an outspoken liberal activist for decades. Michele Singer Reiner was a photographer, movie producer and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. They had been married for 36 years.

Representatives for the Reiner family did not respond to requests for comment, and it wasn’t clear if Nick Reiner had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. Police haven’t said anything about a motive for the killings.

Investigators believe Rob and Michelle Singer Reiner died from stab wounds, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official, who was briefed on the investigation, could not publicly discuss the details and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Search for the Brown University shooter continues as questions swirl about campus security

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities knocked on doors and scoured yards Monday in search of any video or other evidence that might lead them to the Brown University gunman, whose face was covered or not visible in footage captured before and after the weekend attack that killed two students and wounded nine others.

Officials released three new videos of the man they believe carried out Saturday's attack that show him wearing a mask and a dark two-tone jacket. Although his face wasn't visible, the footage from about two hours before the shooting provided the clearest images yet of the suspect.

The FBI said the man is about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall, with a stocky build. The agency offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person responsible.

"We’re asking for the public’s assistance,” Providence's police chief, Col. Oscar Perez, said at a news conference, urging people who might recognize the suspect to call a tip line.

Police renewed their search after releasing a person of interest Sunday once they determined the evidence pointed elsewhere. Meanwhile, details began to emerge about the students who were shot.

Brown University shooting leaves students, community frustrated with official response

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The ongoing effort to find a man who walked onto Brown University ’s campus during a busy exam season and shot nearly a dozen students in a crowded lecture hall has raised questions about the school's security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.

A day after Saturday's mass shooting, officials said a person of interest taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little actionable insight from the limited security video they had recovered and scrambling to develop new leads.

Law enforcement officials were still doing the most basic investigative work two days after the shooting that killed two students and wounded nine, canvassing local residences and businesses for security camera footage and looking for physical evidence. That's left students and some Providence residents frustrated at gaps in the university’s security and camera systems that helped allow the shooter to disappear.

“The fact that we’re in such a surveillance state but that wasn’t used correctly at all is just so deeply frustrating,” said Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on a Brown University team.

Ding is among hundreds of students who have signed a petition to increase security at school buildings, saying that officials need to do a better job keeping the campus secure against threats like active shooters.

Holocaust survivor and 10-year-old with gentle soul among those killed in Bondi Beach shooting

SYDNEY (AP) — Before the bloodshed and broken hearts, there was a little girl with a gentle soul, a loving grandmother who delivered meals to the needy and a young man dubbed a “golden person” for his kindness. And there was an 87-year-old grandfather who sought solace in Australia after surviving the Holocaust, only to die in what officials have called antisemitic terrorism.

They are among the 15 people killed Sunday evening by two gunmen during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. Australia’s federal police commissioner said it was a terrorist attack inspired by the Islamic State group.

Here is a closer look at some of the victims:

Matilda, a 10-year-old whose last name has been withheld at the request of her family, was the youngest person killed in the massacre.

Matilda’s language teacher, Irina Goodhew, who launched a GoFundMe for the girl’s grieving family, described her in a Facebook post as a gentle girl who saw beauty in everyone.

4 charged with plotting New Year's Eve attacks in Southern California, prosecutors say

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two U.S. companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.

The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.

In the criminal complaint, the four suspects named are Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41. They are all from the Los Angeles area, Essayli said.

Officials did not describe a motive but said they are members of an offshoot of a group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The group calls for decolonization, tribal sovereignty and “the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism,” according to the criminal complaint.

The term “Turtle Island” is used by some Indigenous peoples to describe North America in a way that reflects its existence outside of the colonial boundaries put in place by the U.S. and Canada. It comes from Indigenous creation stories where the continent was formed on the back of a giant turtle.

Crews use sandbags to shore up levee breach near Seattle after failure prompts flood warning

TUKWILA, Wash. (AP) — Crews used sandbags to shore up an earthen levee south of Seattle on Monday after a small section of it failed following a week of heavy rains, prompting an evacuation order covering parts of three suburbs, officials said.

The evacuation order from King County in Washington state was sent to about 1,100 homes and businesses east of the Green River in parts of Kent, Renton and Tukwila, said Brendan McCluskey, the county's emergency management director. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning that initially covered nearly 47,000 people, but was reduced within a few hours to an area covering 7,000 people.

No one was injured, McCluskey said.

Authorities in Renton and Tukwila said Monday afternoon that the flooding was confined to small, industrial areas and that no residents were being evacuated.

The levee breach followed days of heavy rain and flooding that inundated communities, forced the evacuations of tens of thousands of people and prompted scores of rescues throughout western Washington state.

US Army names 2 Iowa National Guard members killed in attack in Syria

WASHINGTON (AP) — The two Iowa National Guard members killed in a weekend attack in Syria that the U.S. military blamed on the Islamic State group were identified Monday and remembered as dedicated soldiers.

The U.S. Army named them as Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds ordered all flags in Iowa to fly at half-staff in their honor, saying, “We are grateful for their service and deeply mourn their loss.”

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, has said a U.S. civilian working as an interpreter also was killed. Three other Guard members were wounded in the attack, the Iowa National Guard said Monday, with two of them in stable condition and the other in good condition.

The attack was a major test for the rapprochement between the United States and Syria since the ouster of autocratic leader Bashar Assad a year ago, coming as the U.S. military is expanding its cooperation with Syrian security forces. Hundreds of American troops are deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting IS.

Big retailers didn't pull ByHeart baby formula fast enough after botulism recall, FDA says

Four of the nation's top retail stores failed to promptly pull contaminated infant formula tied to a dangerous botulism outbreak from their shelves, federal health officials said in warning letters posted Monday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent letters to leaders at Walmart, Target, Kroger and Albertsons, saying the companies continued to sell ByHeart infant formula for days or weeks, despite a Nov. 11 recall of all products in the outbreak that has sickened more than 50 babies in 19 states.

“As a participant in the supply chain, your firm should take prompt and effective action when notified of a product recall,” FDA officials said in warning letters sent to the companies on Dec. 12 and posted online Monday.

The formula was found at Target stores in 20 states “well after the recall was initiated,” one letter said. In addition, it was sold at a Target store in New Hampshire on Nov. 16, despite an electronic block on the product's sales code, the FDA noted. And at a Target store in Arkansas, single-serve packs of ByHeart formula were promoted with a “Sale!” sign and a $2 discount from Nov. 16 to Nov. 22.

Information from state and local health officials said ByHeart formula was found at Walmart stores in 21 states from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26. The formula was found in Albertsons stores in 11 states from Nov. 12 to Nov. 19, and at Kroger stores in 10 states from Nov. 12 to Nov. 19.

US officials say Washington has agreed to give Ukraine security guarantees in peace talks

BERLIN (AP) — The U.S. has agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal to end Russia's nearly four-year war, and more talks are likely this weekend, U.S. officials said Monday following the latest discussions with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin.

The officials said talks with President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, led to narrowing differences on security guarantees that Kyiv said must be provided, as well as on Moscow’s demand that Ukraine concede land in the Donbas region in the country’s east.

Trump dialed into a dinner Monday evening with negotiators and European leaders, and more talks are expected this weekend in Miami or elsewhere in the United States, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly by the White House.

“I think we’re closer now than we have been, ever,” Trump told reporters at an unrelated White House event. He added, “We’re having tremendous support from European leaders. They want to get it ended, also."

The U.S. officials said the offer of security guarantees won’t be on the table “forever.” They said the Trump administration plans to put forward the agreement on guarantees for Senate approval, although they didn’t specify whether it would be ratified like a treaty, which needs the chamber's two-thirds approval.