Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, December 31st. Here's what we're covering.

Tracy Mumford: I have a severe head wound. Shrapnel pierced my central nervous system. Why haven't they discharged me?

Tracy Mumford: The Times has gotten access to more than 6,000 confidential complaints filed by Russian soldiers and their families.

Tracy Mumford: They're treating us like dogs. They held me in a pit for a week and a half.

Tracy Mumford: Together, they show how Moscow has used a pattern of brutality and coercion to keep up its war effort in Ukraine.

Tracy Mumford: He can't even hold a spoon or fork, and now he's being sent back to the special military operation.

Tracy Mumford: My colleague Paul Sony is part of the team that reviewed the documents, including those excerpts, after the whole trove was inadvertently put online by the Russian government and shared with the Times by an exiled Russian media outlet. The Times then tracked down dozens of people who'd filed the allegations to verify their authenticity.

Tracy Mumford: Reading through the complaints, we found evidence of people being sent into battle despite serious injuries and illnesses, advanced cancer, cerebral palsy, and broken and missing limbs. One of the videos attached to a complaint shows men walking around on crutches as they are allegedly being sent into battle.

Tracy Mumford: We also found evidence of significant abuse. Soldiers who were beaten by their own commanders, tied to trees, and often held in really inhumane conditions.

Tracy Mumford: Among the thousands of documents, the most disturbing allegations were complaints that mentioned abna, which is a practice in the Russian military that is common enough to have its own name. And it's a term for a commander killing his own soldiers, whether executing them directly on the battlefield or sending them into battle into a place he knows they won't return. We found in more than 100 complaints, threats by commanders to kill their own soldiers.

Tracy Mumford: When you're reading all of the complaints, I think you get a sense that the violence within the system and the fear that Russian soldiers have is a feature, not a bug. It's how Vladimir Putin keeps his soldiers on the attack in Ukraine.

Tracy Mumford: The Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to multiple requests for comment. You can find the full investigation at ny times.com.

Tracy Mumford: Now, two quick updates from Washington. First, the Times has learned new details about just how many documents the Justice Department has left to review in the Epstein files. Earlier this month, the DOJ made about a 100,000 pages of files related to its investigations of the convicted sex offender public after Congress ordered the release. The department then said it had at least a million more documents that still needed to be reviewed. Now, sources tell the Times it's reviewing 5.2 million pages of documents. The DOJ is trying to enlist about 400 of its lawyers to comb through the files and redact any details about victims or other sensitive information. The process is expected to take until at least January 20th.

Tracy Mumford: Also, intrepid journalists have made shocking and credible allegations of extensive fraud in Minnesota's childare programs. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services say they have blocked $185 million in child care payments to Minnesota days after a right-wing influencer posted a video claiming to uncover rampant fraud at Somalrun daycare centers there. While none of the centers in the video have been accused of fraud by authorities, it sparked a new wave of calls by conservatives for a crackdown in the state. In recent years, dozens of people there, many of them Somali, have been convicted in a sprawling social services fraud scheme that prosecutors say cost taxpayers billions of dollars. In a statement after the funding freeze, the Democratic Governor Tim Walls said, quote, "Fraud is a serious issue, but this is a transparent attempt to politicize the issue to hurt motans and defund government programs that help people.

Tracy Mumford: In Gaza, as of tomorrow, more than three dozen humanitarian groups will have their authorization to operate in the territory suspended after the Israeli government said they did not comply with new registration rules. Israel says the rules, which require the groups to provide detailed information about their workers, are meant to weed out militants, which it claims have infiltrated aid groups in the past. But many of the groups have objected to the requirements, saying they exposed their staff to risk at a time when humanitarian and healthcare workers have been subject to harassment and attacks. Doctors Without Borders, one of the groups that's expected to be suspended and will have to clear out of Gaza by March, warned that there would be devastating consequences for Palestinians. The organization said it supports about 20% of all hospital beds in the territory and the delivery of one in three babies there. Israeli officials, meanwhile, argued the suspended groups are not critical to providing aid to Gazans, saying they only supply a fraction of the humanitarian assistance there.

Tracy Mumford: And finally, this is our very last episode of the year, and we usually round out the show with the most "I did not know that" stories that the Times is covering. There have been a lot of them. So, here are a few highlights as we close out 2025. What if I told you that there is a 13th zodiac sign? This was the year we learned our horoscopes might all be wrong since the Earth's view of the stars has shifted over the last 2,000 years. The coating is not chocolate, it's chocolate flavored coating. We learned a lot of people's favorite chocolate bars aren't as chocolaty as they used to be as cocoa prices have been driven up by climate change. We also learned sharks can make noise. Even though scientists had long thought of them as the strong silent type. um, dragons and romance specifically like romance and fantasy. We tracked how romantic has become the hottest literary genre out there to the point that it's propping up the whole fiction market. We checked in with people trying to skip rocks the farthest or sound the most like seagulls, which are both real annual competitions in case you want to start practicing now for next year. We also said goodbye to the penny, which is no longer in production, and hello again to the direwolf, which scientists brought back from extinction. And there were some moments of really solid life advice, like officials reminding people not to ski down active volcanoes, looking at you, Mount Etna, and a timely bit of wisdom for this time of year when health officials in Belgium warned people not to eat their Christmas trees.

Tracy Mumford: We will be back with more in 2026. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We are off tomorrow. The show will return on Friday. Happy New Year everybody.