NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-29-2025 10PM EST

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

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Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR produce programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. President Trump is warning Iran against reconstituting its nuclear program saying, quote, will knock the hell out of them. And speaking of Iran, I hope they're not trying to build up again because if they are, we're going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup. So I hope Iran is not trying to build up, as I've been reading, that they're building up weapons and other things. Meanwhile, Iran is experiencing its biggest protests in three years after the currency there plunged to a record low due to international sanctions. The country's central bank governor resigned today. Demonstrations broke out in Tehran and other cities as traders and shopkeepers rallied. Police used tear gas in some areas of the capital.

The U.S. State Department has announced it will contribute $2 billion to the United Nations for humanitarian aid work. As NPR's Gabriela Emmanuel reports, this is a fraction of what the U.S. contributed in past years. The State Department says the aid will provide life-saving support to tens of millions of people facing hunger and disease. However, it said the money requires the U.N. to make some structural changes to address what the administration calls, quote, ideological creep within U.N. agencies. This year, the U.S. has dramatically cut the amount of money it spends on foreign aid. And it has now shifted its emphasis to distributing aid directly to countries rather than working through institutions like the U.N. Gabriela Emmanuel and PR News. Homeland Security Secretary Christine Nome says federal officials are conducting a fraud investigation in Minneapolis.

Nome posted a video showing DHS officers going into an unidentified business and questioning the person working behind the counter. Nome says officers were, quote, conducting a massive investigation on child care and other rampant fraud. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota in recent weeks. A new report is raising concerns about risks among teenagers who, you know, use AI chatbots, more than a third of teens turn to them for personal companionship, as NPR's Retoo Chatterjee reports. ORA is an online safety company that released the report. Psychologist Scott Collins is ORA's chief medical officer.

He says 37% of conversations between teens and their chatbot companions involve violence. Role play that is interaction about harming somebody else, physically hurting them. Parents should keep a close eye on how their kids are using chatbot, says pediatrician Dr. Jason Nagata at UC San Francisco. Parents don't need to be AI experts. They just need to be curious about their children's lives and ask them about what kind of technology they're using and why. And tell their teens explicitly that chatbots come with risks. Read through Chatterjee, NPR News. Stock slipped on Wall Street today. This is NPR News. A historic theater in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol has opened its doors more than three years after it was pummeled in a Russian airstrike that killed hundreds.

Moscow installed authorities marked the reopening with a gala concert on the building's new main stage. The original theater was destroyed when it was targeted by a Russian airstrike in March of 2022. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft has been checking out the scientific instruments it'll be using when it reads. which is Jupiter. Joe Palco reports on one of the mission's goals to look for signs of life on a Jovian moon. Europa is one of the moons of Jupiter, Galileo, discovered in 1610. It's of particular interest to scientists today because there appears to be a liquid ocean underneath the moon's icy outer crust. And where there's water, there might, maybe, possibly be life. In addition to a suite of cameras, Europa Clipper has instruments to measure the gravitational and magnetic fields around the moon. It also

has ice penetrating radar. To reach Jupiter, the probe needs gravity boost from two planets. It got one of them when it flew past Mars last March. The second boost comes next December when the probe flies by Earth. It's on track to arrive at Jupiter in 2030. For NPR news, I'm Joe Palka. A $400,000 load of lobster bound for Costco locations in the Midwest vanished after being picked up in Massachusetts. According to Boston 25, the shipment disappeared just before Christmas. The CEO of the freighter, Rexing, says it was the second major seafood theft in Massachusetts this month, raising concerns about repeat targeting. This is NPR News from Washington.