CNN Radio News Day: December 26, 2012

CNN Radio News Day is an evening news program providing an informative, thoughtful and creative look at the day's events. It's posted Monday through Friday at 4:30 pm ET.

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(CNN) – Welcome to CNN Radio News Day.

• The president and senators return to work tomorrow, only days away from what could become a very serious situation. The event is known as the fiscal cliff.  Without action from Congress, come January 1st, taxes, unemployment checks, the economy and more are on the line. Talks are frozen, but CNN's Lisa Desjardins found some smart relief for the dilemma with a selection of new songs about the fiscal cliff:

"While it's a serious thing, it's almost comical in nature, because we knew this was coming since last summer. It's just really a deadline that was arbitrarily established and it's all sort of arbitrary," says songwriter Jeff Michaels.

• Should you know which of your neighbors owns a hand gun? Editors at a newspaper in suburban New York think so. The Journal News published an interactive map on its website showing the names and addresses of every owner of a legal handgun in Westchester and Rockland counties.  Louis Romero's name and address apprear on the map.  The owner of a gun shop in Yonkers called it a shopping list for criminals looking to steal guns:

You might as well just publicize.. you know.. stand in front of his house and when he's gone so you can go in and rob his house.  They're doing everything to deter people from legally owning guns.  I mean if I owned guns illegally it wouldn't be in the paper."

• Police in northern Nigeria say at least a dozen people were killed when gunmen attacked two churches during Christmas Eve services. No one has claimed responsibility, but similar attacks in the past have been blamed on the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. The religion editor of the Times Literary Supplement in London, Rupert Shortt, says they're the latest strikes against Christians in the region:

"I dare say that some people are put off attending church, but a lot of people want to make a stand and practice their faith despite the danger...  There is a lot of conflict in the north because of the drive to impose Sharia law on entire states – even states which have quite large Christian minorities."

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