TODAY'S T ALKING POINTS

TODAY'S T ALKING POINTS

The suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks may have been killed. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that two senior European officials said Abdelhamid Abaaoud was one of two people killed in a raid in Saint-Denis. It turns out his own family has actually been hoping he was dead for a while now (paywall). One thing French prosecutor François Molins said for sure was that Abaaoud was not one of the eight arrested during the raid.

French officials said Wednesday's raid thwarted a terrorist cell that was preparing for another attack. During the blitz, five police officers were injured, and Diesel, a 7-year-old police dog, was killed. Belgian police carried out six raids this morning and detained at least one person in connection with the Paris attacks.

ISIS released a photo of the bomb it says it used to bring down Russia’s Metrojet. The extremist group flaunted a photo of Schweppes Gold, which it said it transformed into an explosive device that detonated on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. ISIS claimed that Russia became the target after the country's military launched airstrikes against the group in Syria.

ISIS reportedly has a unique way to make sure their attacks go smoothly — they have their own 24-hour jihadi help desk.

A #StudentBlackOut spread throughout the country. The Black Liberation Collective called for protests with the goal of putting an end to racial injustice on college campuses, and students at more than a dozen colleges heeded the call. Nearly double that number released lists of demands.

There’s something very different about the latest wave of student activism. (Hint: It has a lot to do with how quickly it goes viral.)

Ta-Nehisi Coates won the National Book Award. The esteemed writer got the honor for nonfiction for Between the World and Me, the book you've probably seen all of your friends reading that explores race relations in the U.S.

The World Economic Forum thinks it could take 118 years to close the gender pay gap. Women now are finally earning the amount men did in 2006, according to the group's recently released Global Gender Gap report. And despite the fact that about a quarter of a billion more women are in the global workforce today than a decade ago, researchers found that "progress on closing the wage gap has been stalling markedly" — and it might have something to do with a lack of attitude change at home.

Wondering how equal you are? You can find your country's gender equality ranking here.