Good morning.
Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the release of hostages taken by Hamas during an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 is expected to begin on Sunday if the security cabinet approves the deal. As of this writing, a cabinet meeting is underway where the deal will be discussed and voted on.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office said that "subject to cabinet and government approval and the implementation of the agreement, the hostage release can proceed according to the planned framework and is expected to be released as early as Sunday" in a statement reported by AFP.
Hamas also issued a statement on Friday saying obstacles related to the ceasefire agreement had been resolved.
Is the fighting still going on? Yes. Israeli attacks continued, with the Palestinian Authority saying late Thursday that at least 86 people had been killed, a day after a truce was declared.
Los Angeles County authorities warned evacuees not to return to their homes because of the presence of toxins such as asbestos and mercury, as well as exposed electric and natural gas lines.
Los Angeles County Public Works Chief Engineer Yonah Halpern spoke at a news conference Thursday, telling residents to delay returning until the Environmental Protection Agency and the county fire department assess the situation at their homes and remove all hazards at no charge waste.
The warning comes as the extreme winds that have fueled the wildfires are expected to calm down on Friday and into the weekend, with hopes that firefighters will be able to make progress in extinguishing the Palisade and Eaton blazes.
Has the death toll risen? Yes, by age 27 - and expected to continue to be so. There are still 38 people missing.
How close are we now to containment? The Palisades Fire remains only 22% contained after burning more than 23,700 acres, while the Eaton Fire is 55% contained after burning about 14,100 acres. But the situation is expected to improve in the coming days.
Elon Musk's SpaceX's latest test flight of its Starship rocket failed on Thursday after the spacecraft was destroyed.
SpaceX said the spacecraft's six engines appeared to shut down one by one, and contact was lost eight and a half minutes into the flight. "We did lose all communications with the spacecraft, which essentially told us that there was an abnormality on the upper level," SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said before confirming the spacecraft was missing.
SpaceX used the launch tower's giant robotic arm to grab the returning booster before the spacecraft disappeared.
Hollywood pays tribute far-sighted Director David Lynch, His family announced Thursday that he died this week at the age of 78.
Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Tao was indicted by a federal grand jury. It has been seven months since the FBI raided her home, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. It's unclear what she's been charged with, but it's expected to be announced Friday.
Scientists criticize UK government for failing to strictly regulate 'forever chemicals' And deal with the resulting pollution as vigorously as the EU does.
One-third of American adults use TikTok, and if you only look at adults under 30, this proportion rises to a staggering 59%. With the Supreme Court likely to ban the platform on January 19, many US users are turning to Chinese social media to use the Rednote app despite security concerns.
Spotify's Billions Club playlists, launching in 2021, are essentially a fairly exclusive category—only songs with 1 billion or more streams can enter. It gives us a new metric for measuring a song's popularity. Sure, we have charts: but they're a way of measuring current hits, not historical hits, and album sales don't provide details on the most played tracks. Dorian Lynskey takes a deep dive into what playlists—which don't contain many of the most familiar pop songs—tell us about the nature of pop in the streaming age (hint: TikTok is very important here).
Survivors of the catastrophic wildfires burning in Los Angeles are calling on Big Oil to recoup losses caused by the fossil fuel industry. The scientific community agrees that the climate crisis is making wildfires more frequent and severe. Lawmakers will once again introduce legislation aimed at forcing the industry to do so, after previously failing to pass it.
Here's a No. 1 player you're unlikely to have heard of: the Pokémon World Champion. Fernando Cifuentes won the trophy in Hawaii last year and was even invited to the presidential palace after returning to Chile to celebrate with friends and family. He attributes much of his success to luck: "If you have a good deck and today is your day, who says you can't be the next Pokémon Champion?" What are you waiting for?
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