A person of interest is in custody this morning in connection with a shooting at Brown University yesterday afternoon that killed two and injured nine.

• The person is in their 30s, Col. Oscar Perez, the police chief in Providence, R.I., told reporters.

The shooting took place at an engineering building on campus, inside a room where around 60 students had gathered for an economics exam review session, the N.Y. Times reports.

• Joseph Oduro, a 21-year-old senior and teaching assistant who was leading the review, told The Times the session was wrapping up around 4 p.m. ET when a masked man with a rifle entered and started shooting.
• Of the nine injured people, seven are in stable condition, one person is in stable but critical condition, and one person has been released.

Brown is canceling all remaining exams and assignments for this semester, the university's provost said this morning.

📱 Being there: "About 30 students gathered on campus for a service Saturday afternoon to mark the end of the Jewish sabbath. When news of the shooting reached them through the school alert, they headed to a safe room, locking doors and piling desks and chairs against them," The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link).

• "Many of the students didn't have their phones with them since it had been Shabbat, so they passed around the phones they did have to call families and let them know they were OK."

Get the latest ... Context: Deadly shootings at U.S. colleges.

At least 11 people were killed after gunmen targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney today. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an antisemitic terrorist attack.

• At least 29 people are wounded, including two police officers. One of the gunmen was fatally shot by police. The other was arrested and is in critical condition.

"The shooting is the latest in a series of antisemitic attacks in Australia that intensified last year. The violence has unnerved many in the country, which has the world's highest concentration of Holocaust survivors after Israel. Arsonists last year targeted a Jewish business and a synagogue, prompting calls for greater accountability," the N.Y. Times reports.

📺 A dramatic clip broadcast on Australian television showed a man appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man's weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground.

• Get the latest ... Watch the clip.

Two charts are going up and to the right at the same time: States are raking in tax revenue from sports betting and online casinos, and calls to the National Problem Gambling Helpline are on the rise, Axios' Erica Pandey reports.

• Why it matters: America's gambling boom is driving more people into financial and emotional distress, with young men at the epicenter. But the industry continues to expand at breakneck speed, powered by aggressive marketing, state budget incentives and AI.

🔎 Zoom in: Recent studies spotlight the toll of sports betting, which is legal in some form in most states.

• In states with online gambling, bankruptcy rates rose 28% and debt collection amounts rose 8% — roughly two years after legalization, one paper found.
• Another study found that every dollar spent on sports betting shaved 99 cents off investments — meaning bettors are pulling from savings, not "fun money."
• A third study tracked a 20% jump in mass-market alcohol consumption and a 75% spike in calls to helplines after legalization.

The crisis is on display on college campuses, The Economist reports (gift link).

• Colleges' mental health help centers are increasingly hearing from students — overwhelmingly young men — in distress after losing large sums of money in bets.
• An 18-year-old student at the University of Rhode Island told the Economist that he struggles to enjoy watching sports without the high of betting.
• Young men are also making risky bets on crypto, meme stocks and the prediction markets, The Wall Street Journal reports.

🦾 What to watch: AI is poised to supercharge the gambling industry, says David Sasaki, a tech policy expert at the American Institute for Boys and Men.

• The technology can help sportsbooks fine-tune their odds — making them even less likely to lose. It can also figure out when users are most likely to place bigger or riskier bets, pinpoint who's prone to making bad ones, and target them with ads at their most vulnerable moments.

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The stigma around end-of-year layoffs may be easing — taking us back to a time when businesses were less worried about the optics of firing people right before the holidays, Axios' Emily Peck reports.

We still don't have official employment numbers from November, but there are red flags:

• Job cuts this November were up 24% from the same time a year ago, per private market layoff data from Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
• Private employers announced 71,321 planned cuts. That's only the second time since the 2008 financial crisis that cuts have been above 70,000 in November. The other time was 2022.

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Churches across the U.S. and abroad are quietly experimenting with AI-generated Christmas content, from Nativity visuals and kids' lessons to Christmas Eve sermons.

• Why it matters: Churches' growing reliance on AI raises questions about whether algorithms can handle faith's deepest themes, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

🤖 Zoom in: Church Communications, a group that helps thousands of churches, published an AI guide, advising congregations to generate Nativity devotionals, Christmas graphics, Advent calendars and kids' stories with the tech.

• ChurchLeaders, another major ministry outlet, encourages pastors to use AI for planning Christmas services, creating sermons, scheduling volunteers and generating social media content.

The other side: The dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco tested AI last Christmas Eve, asking ChatGPT to write jokes and a Nativity sermon, but found it "flat" and had "no heart."

• Todd Brewer, a New Testament scholar, asked ChatGPT to write a 1,000-word Christmas sermon based on the Nativity narrative. He said it was better than some authentic sermons he'd heard, but it still lacked empathy.

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Former President Biden "has raised only a small fraction of the money needed to construct a presidential library, leaving uncertainty about when a library might be built and its viability as a stand-alone project," the N.Y. Times reports.

• John Morgan, a longtime Democratic donor who was a top Biden bundler, said he won't give "a penny" to the library, citing poor treatment from Biden staff: "He'll be lucky to have a bookmobile." (That's today's N.Y. Times Quote of the Day.)
• An idea that's under serious discussion: merging the presidential library with a planned "Biden Hall" for the University of Delaware's Joseph R. Biden Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration ("The Biden School") in Newark, Del. Biden graduated from the university.

Biden spokeswoman Kelly Scully tells Axios: "This last year has been about doing the research, the due diligence, and finalizing the location [Delaware] and infrastructure for the library. We've hired a development director and are building out a full fundraising team. Substantial commitments have been made, and we expect fundraising to ramp up in the new year."

🔮 What's next: Biden, 83, will greet potential library donors, along with former top officials of his administration, at a holiday reception tomorrow in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, hosted by Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, The Times reported earlier.

• Go deeper.

Vulgarity is in vogue, on both sides of the aisle.

• During a rally in Pennsylvania last week, President Trump used profanity at least four times.

Why it matters: The frequency, sharpness and public nature of Trump's comments are intentional. They build on his effort to combat what he sees as pervasive political correctness, AP reports.

Leaders in both parties are seemingly in a race to the gutter:

• Vice President Vance called a podcast host a "dips---t" in September. In Thanksgiving remarks before troops, Vance joked that anyone who said they liked turkey was "full of s---."
• Former Vice President Harris earned a roar of audience approval in September when she condemned the Trump administration: "These mother----ers are crazy."
• After Trump called for the execution of several Democratic members of Congress last month, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said it was time for people with influence to "pick a f----ing side."

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Ancient humans may have learned to make fire around 350,000 years earlier than we previously believed, scientists report in a new Nature study.

• Until now, the oldest confirmed evidence had come from Neanderthal sites in what is now northern France, dating only to about 50,000 years ago.

⛏️ Zoom in: A team led by the British Museum identified a site in Barnham, Suffolk, England, with evidence of repeated burning in the same location.

• That pattern, they say, is consistent with a constructed hearth rather than a lightning strike.

The burned deposits were sealed within ancient pond sediments, allowing scientists to reconstruct how early people used the site.

• Go deeper.

🏈 President Trump tosses the coin before the Army-Navy Game ("America's Game") yesterday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. Navy beat Army, 17-16.

Fernando Mendoza, 22, the enthusiastic quarterback of No. 1 Indiana, won the Heisman Trophy, becoming the first Hoosier to win college football's most prestigious award since its inception in 1935. Mendoza is a junior from Miami.

• More from Axios' Russ Contreras ... Heisman list.

Cena-mania in D.C.: Pro wrestling superstar John Cena, 48, salutes last night as he ends his 24-year WWE career at Saturday Night's Main Event at Capital One Arena in Washington.

• More Cena photos.