Chapter 1: What recent military actions did the U.S. take against Islamic State forces?
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Louise Schiavone. The U.S. yesterday launched a deadly strike against Islamic State forces in Nigeria. Amid persistent charges, the militants have been persecuting Christians. President Trump posted news of the strike on his social media site.
Nigeria's Foreign Minister Yusuf Maithama Tugar says that Nigeria was in on the strategic planning of the Christmas Day strike.
This is coming from intelligence, intelligence also from the Nigerian side, because it's our country. We monitor, we're in a better position to monitor movements and its shared intelligence. And it's, like I said, a joint operation between Nigeria and the U.S.
Chapter 2: How is the U.S. addressing visa restrictions for Nigerians involved in attacks?
Tugar spoke to the BBC. The U.S. State Department has announced that there will be restrictions on visas for Nigerians and family members found to be involved in attacks on Christians. In Christmas Day raids at more than 100 locations in Istanbul, police detained over 100 suspected members of the militant Islamic State group.
Authorities there say that terrorists were planning attacks at Christmas and New Year's celebrations. 2025 has been a year of unprecedented immigration enforcement across the U.S. as the Trump administration has deported more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants. NPR's Jasmine Garst says that some undocumented parents are taking steps to make sure that their children are safe.
Immigration lawyers are advising that undocumented parents set up emergency guardianship for their U.S.
Chapter 3: What steps are undocumented parents taking to protect their children?
citizen children. What that means is legally designating someone who can step in as a guardian if the parents are detained. Over the summer, I spoke to an American mom in Washington, D.C., who asked to remain anonymous because she didn't want to put the Honduran family she's friends with at risk.
She had just signed this paperwork to become the emergency guardian for her teenage son's best friend in case his parents were deported to Honduras.
NPR's Jasmine Garst. American motorists are getting a nice Christmas gift this week. According to AAA, gasoline is averaging just $2.85 nationwide, down 19 cents last year. Prices have been drifting downward, and PR's Camilla Dominovsky reports.
This year, the price of gasoline has been relatively low and remarkably stable. Instead of rising in the summer, the national average was basically a straight line.
Chapter 4: How are lower gasoline prices impacting American travelers this holiday season?
Partly that's because oil prices have been low, thanks largely to the oil cartel OPEC pushing more barrels onto the market. AAA expects that nearly 110 million Americans will travel by car this holiday season. The app GasBuddy estimates that the lower gas prices this year will save Americans collectively nearly $400 million weekly on those trips.
AAA says the cost of public EV charging remains steady, averaging 38 cents per kilowatt hour. Camila Dominovsky, NPR News.
This is NPR. Walk down any aisle on a train or airplane, you'll find someone staring at a phone playing Candy Crush. Seems mindless, but is it? In the state of Maine, education officials think they can make it work for them. And math classes about probability and more.
Chapter 5: What innovative teaching methods are being used to improve math scores?
Anything that works as the data shows students everywhere are struggling to bring their math scores back up to pre-pandemic levels. Maddie Smith of Maine Public reports on what that looks like in the classroom.
We're going to do the Candy Crush Data Challenge.
In Sean Donovan's career math class, high school students in Brewer, Maine, are using Skittles to get the mean, median, and mode of the color distribution across each pack. Donovan says these skills are necessary for things like election polling, medical sampling, and more. Senior Andre Lutz appreciates learning about math's real-world relevance. He wants to study criminal justice.
When we did our first project, we had to relate something in the real world to some of the stuff that we were learning in math. So I just did it based off of like
As for the color distribution of Skittles, turns out it's pretty random, a lesson that also applies to the real world.
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Chapter 6: What weather challenges are affecting Southern California and the Sierra Nevada?
For NPR News, I'm Maddie Smith in Brewer, Maine.
In Southern California today, the National Weather Service says that heavy rain will continue. The heaviest will be in the Los Angeles basin with the potential of flash flooding. In the Sierra Nevada, a prolonged heavy snowfall is underway with snow and strong winds making travel difficult. I'm Louise Schiavone, NPR News, Washington.