📌 Gaza Peace Looms, Youths Want TikTok, More

Israel intensified strikes on Gaza after a hostage release deal and ceasefire, residents and authorities in the Palestinian enclave said.

The complex ceasefire accord between Israel and militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, emerged on Wednesday after mediation by Qatar, Egypt, and the US and 15 months of bloodshed that devastated the coastal territory and inflamed the Middle East.

The deal outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands have been killed. Hostages taken by Hamas would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.

Israel's acceptance of the deal will not be official until it is approved by the country's security cabinet and government, and a vote was slated today, an Israeli official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of making last-minute demands and going back on agreements. “The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement,” a statement from Netanyahu's office said.

Hamas is committed to the ceasefire agreement announced by mediators on Wednesday, senior group official Izzat el-Reshiq said today. Negotiators are working on implementing the ceasefire to take effect on Sunday, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said.

About 73% of 13–39-year-olds in the US don't support a TikTok ban, reports a survey by youth research organization YPulse.

The app could go dark as soon as Sunday if the Supreme Court upholds a law that forces a ban if the app is not sold to a US buyer. China-based owner ByteDance sued over the law and hasn't indicated it plans to sell.

The representative group of 1,000 surveyed Jan 8–15 has “a more positive view of social media than a negative one, even while being aware of the drawbacks,” said MaryLeigh Bliss, YPulse's chief content officer.

Around 64% of respondents said they would miss watching TikTok content, and a slightly smaller share (58%) said they'd miss specific creators and accounts. While both millennials and Gen Z oppose a ban, the older generation was five percentage points more likely to support it, the survey says.

Influencers and content creators are asking followers to find them on other platforms. Most respondents said they'd turn to YouTube (32%) and Instagram (25%) if TikTok shuts down. Short-form video app Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote in English, was rapidly downloaded as a potential ban loomed.

Inflation picked up in late 2024, fueled by an increase in gas prices, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that the consumer price index increased by 2.9% in December from a year earlier, in line with economists’ expectations and hotter than a 2.7% rise in November. It was also above a 2.6% annual increase in October.

On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.4% from November. That was the largest increase since March, driven by a rise in energy prices, particularly for gas, which rose 4.4% from November. It was the largest monthly increase since August 2023, though gas prices remain lower than where they were a year ago.

Overall, prices remain much higher than in 2019, before the pandemic, amid a surge of consumer spending driving up the costs of health care, transportation, and other categories of consumer services.

“Service sector inflation has proven quite stubborn due to robust consumer demand driven by a strong jobs market and wage gains above inflation,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. Despite a national shortage of new housing and higher mortgage rates, housing prices have shown few signs of abating.

Food prices grew by 0.3% monthly, driven in part by a 3.2% rise in prices for eggs. Since December 2023, egg prices are up 36.8%.

Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, today launched its massive New Glenn rocket.

An initial test launch of the towering 320-foot rocket, dubbed New Glenn in honor of legendary American astronaut John Glenn, had been scrubbed early Monday morning after repeated halts during the countdown.

The mission is seen as critical to Blue Origin's efforts to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX, which dominates the commercial space industry. The white New Glenn dwarfs SpaceX's 230-foot Falcon 9 and is designed for heavier payloads.

“SpaceX has for the past several years been pretty much the only game in town, and so having a competitor... this is great," G. Scott Hubbard, a retired senior NASA official, said, expecting the competition to drive down costs.

Blue Origin will now attempt to land New Glenn's first-stage booster on a drone ship stationed about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket's upper stage will fire its engines toward Earth orbit, reaching a maximum altitude of roughly 12,000 miles above the surface.

Like Musk, Bezos has a lifelong passion for space. But where Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos envisions shifting heavy industry off-planet onto floating space platforms to preserve Earth, "humanity's blue origin."

Tensions in rural Colorado arising from the reintroduction of wolves remain high.

Over the last year, the voter-mandated reintroduction has faced a series of legal challenges, a petition from ranchers to pause the next releases, potential budget cuts, a claim for over $500,000 in wolf-caused damages and a proposed ballot to repeal the first statewide vote authorizing the program just over four years ago.

Biologists expect to add up to 15 more wolves imported from British Columbia, Canada, this month to the nine other wolves already roaming the state in the wild. Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioners weighed whether to grant ranchers' request to delay them.

Ranchers told commissioners that their livelihood, their way of life, and their children's futures were at risk. They said they felt under attack.

The state is working to hire and train more staff members to work as range riders to ward off wolves and investigate potential killings by wolves, and handle a backlog of requests for site assessments. The latter helps ranchers minimize their risk of attracting wolves to their land.

A survey of 500 Colorado voters commissioned by the pro-wolf group Colorado Nature Action and released last week found that 52% of respondents favored continuing the reintroduction, 42% opposed the effort, and 6% did not know or answer the question. Support was close to the 2020 vote of nearly 51% in favor.

The Congressional Budget Office revised its population projection to 372 million residents in 30 years, 2.8% down from 2024.

The budget office last year projected 383 million people living in the US in 30 years but reduced that by 11 million residents in estimates released this week, citing declining birth rates and less expected immigration.

In the next 10 years, the yearly growth rate in the US will be, on average, 0.4%, but then it slows down on average to 0.1% from 2036–2055, the budget office said. The overall yearly growth rate over the next three decades, 0.2%, is projected to be less than a quarter of what it was in 1975–2024.

Without immigration, the US population will shrink, starting in 2033, in part “because fertility rates are projected to remain too low for a generation to replace itself,” the budget office said.

The Congressional Budget Office releases population projections each year to guide decisions on the federal budgets and the economy, as well as estimating Social Security payroll taxes and benefits.

A diving expert helped a photographer and a model conduct a photo shoot at 163.38 feet underwater, the deepest session ever.

Canadians Steven Haining and Ciara Antoski underwent a year of technical training, gas blending, and decompression practice for a photo shoot on the deck of the Hydro Atlantic shipwreck in Boca Raton, Florida, which was particularly remarkable because it is past the decompression zone.

The decompression zone is the furthest you can dive – 130 ft – before it is recommended to make 3-5 minute stops on the ascent. This gives the body time to release the nitrogen gasses that build up in tissues at deeper pressures.

The team experimented with different lighting techniques and angles to create their gorgeous images. Steven had two plans for lighting – one with flashing lights to create different angles and effects, and another with powerful torch lights that could illuminate Ciara with an ethereal glow.

Oxygen levels were viewed on monitors, and Ciara frequently took breaks to breathe in the oxygen mask and communicate via body language with the team.

Even though everything went smoothly, Steven called the shoot 15 minutes early, because he knew they would have to stop partly on their ascent to compress for 20 minutes before coming up for air. Later, viewing the photos, they were all thrilled with the results and looked forward to another challenge.