NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-24-2025 6PM EST

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

NPR News: 12-24-2025 6PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. A powerful winter storm is bringing heavy rains and possible flash flooding to Southern California. Forecasters urging holiday travelers to avoid the roads, as NPR's Joel Rose reports. Forecasters say Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years, warning drivers to stay off the roads in the coming days. The National Weather Service says flash flooding is possible in parts of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties. Further north, much of the Sacramento, Meadow Valley and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area are under a high wind warning. Forecasters are also predicting heavy rain and a chance of flooding along the northern California coast and heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Severe weather conditions could also disrupt air travel from California to the Pacific Northwest. Joel Rose, NPR News. The Justice Department says it may take a few more weeks to finish releasing the Epstein files.

DOJ said today that more than a million more documents that could be relevant. have been found by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. A Justice Department statement says lawyers are working around the clock to review those documents and make the necessary redactions under the law passed by Congress that set a December 19th deadline. NPR's Ashley Lopez reports that many of the documents that have been released so far are heavily redacted and some weren't done properly. Parts of the Epstein document released from the Justice Department include hastily redacted information that could be easily read by simply copying and pasting some of the redacted sections.

So far, this new information has not shed any significant new light on the case of the disgrace financier, but it has raised more questions about the process and decision-making behind how the DOJ decided to redact and release information. In a letter to Congress earlier this week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the agency created a protocol to properly and legally work through the thousands of documents related to Epstein. He also said the agency is committed to full transparency. Ashley Lopez and PR News. Raw oysters have been linked to an ongoing food poisoning outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating more than 60 cases of salmonella,

including many requiring hospitalization in Pierce Ping Huang reports. The salmonella outbreak spans 22 states from California to Florida and Texas to Maine. People are getting serious cases of the bacterial illness after eating raw oysters and getting hospitalized at higher rates than usual in these types of outbreaks, according to the CDC. Investigators are trying to see if there's a common source for these cases, which have been linked to a type of salmonella that's not frequently reported. The cases stretch back for months, but picked up in November.

Health officials advise cooking oysters with heat before eating them. Hot sauce and lemon juice do not kill salmonella. And they recommend that people with symptoms such as high fever or diarrhea over several days seek health care immediately. Those can be signs of a serious salmonella infection. Ping Huang and PR News. This is NPR. The Honduran presidential candidate backed by President Trump has been declared the winner.

The country's November 30th election, the country's electoral authority, says Nasserie Osfiro won a tight election marked by weeks of delays, technical problems, and allegations of fraud. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued a statement urging all parties to respect the results in calling for a peaceful transition. The United Nations has issued an appeal to a... assist those fleeing the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Reporter Michael Koloki has more. In a statement posted on social media, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has described the conditions

faced by those who have fled the fighting in Eastern Congo as terrible. The agency warns that there is not enough food and water to cater for those who have fled, citing that they are also facing inadequate shelter and health care provision. Fighting in Eastern Congo between the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels and Congolese forces has been going on for decades now. In mid-December, the UN warned that within a period of two weeks, over 84,000 people had fled to neighboring Burundi, overwhelming reception sites that had been set up to provide assistance. For NPR News, I'm Michael Kaloki in Nairobi. One of the biggest lottery prizes in American history is on the line this Christmas Eve.

The Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated 1.7. billion dollars for tonight's drawing. The jackpot swelled to the fourth largest in U.S. history. After Monday's drawing produced no winners, the odds of hitting the jackpot are one and more than 292 million. I'm Giles Snyder, NPR News.