Up First from NPR
Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached, Next Steps For TikTok, Anger Over Private Firefighters
Fri, 17 Jan 2025
Negotiators have reached a deal for a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza, according to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A law banning TikTok starts Sunday, but the Supreme Court is poised to rule on whether it is legal or not, and if it will be delayed. Plus, the wildfires in Los Angeles surfaced an industry that is attracting scorn: private firefighting.For more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Kara Platoni, Jerome Socolovsky, Ally Schweitzer and Lisa Thomson. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas, Iman Ma'ani and Lilly Quiroz. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis and our technical director is Stacey Abbott.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the ceasefire deal reached in Gaza?
Israel's security cabinet has voted to approve a ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Now, the long-awaited deal still isn't final, but if passed by the full cabinet, it could go into effect as early as Sunday, sending 33 hostages back home and bringing an end to 15 months of war in Gaza.
I'm Michelle Martin with Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News. The Supreme Court has upheld a ban on TikTok effective in the U.S. on Sunday under a law signed by President Biden. A bipartisan majority in Congress passed a bill last year that said the Chinese parent company ByteDance had to sell the popular video sharing app or shut it down in the U.S.
President-elect Donald Trump had once agreed with the ban but changed his mind and now says he wants to save it. So what's next?
And the Los Angeles wildfires brought attention to a luxury enjoyed by some homeowners in fire-prone areas. private firefighters. Their existence is making some people very angry. So what do they actually do and why are more insurance companies hiring them? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of the TikTok ban?
We know several Israeli hostages will be released that first day in exchange for several Palestinian detainees. We also know that the fighting will stop in Gaza and Israeli troops will start to withdraw. The plan is for it to stop for at least six weeks. Over that time, 33 of the remaining 98 hostages should be released and around a thousand Palestinian detainees are also expected to be released.
There's also supposed to be a significant increase in the flow of much needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. And also in that time, negotiations for the next phase of this deal will also take place in the hopes of, you know, continuing the ceasefire with more releases and more withdrawal of Israeli troops.
OK, so not an end to the war, but a pause for now. But right now there isn't a ceasefire. What's happening in Gaza?
Yeah, the fighting is very much still ongoing. Israel says it carried out around 50 airstrikes in the past day. It says it killed a Hamas fighter who participated in the 2023 attacks on southern Israel that started this war. Meanwhile, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the time since this deal was announced on Wednesday night, many of them children, according to civil defense reports.
in Gaza. So, you know, the cost, the human cost of keeping this war going is still very, very high. Our producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, says that people there are feeling anxious. They're worried that the fighting is going to get worse before it gets better.
That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Kat. Thank you. The Supreme Court has upheld a ban on the popular short video app TikTok that takes effect in just two days on Sunday. That's unless the app sells its U.S. operations away from a Chinese company. The court unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling holding that the national security concerns about the app are the number one concern.
It's unclear what could come next under President-elect Donald Trump, who once agreed with the ban but now has vowed to save it. And PR's Bobby Allen joins me now to discuss. Hey, Bobby. Hey, Leila. Okay, so what did the court just decide exactly?
The court decided that the national security concerns that Congress established about TikTok are indeed the paramount concern here. And I want to quote sort of the crux of the matter here, which was an opinion. It was unsigned by the court.
And they say, quote, there is no doubt that for the more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinct and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security. So basically what this decision is saying is Congress decided that TikTok is a threat.
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Chapter 3: How are private firefighters involved in LA wildfires?
Oh, okay. That's something I didn't know insurance companies were doing this. What exactly do these services do?
Yeah. So I spoke with David Torgerson. He's executive chairman of Wildfire Defense Companies, and they work on behalf of nearly three dozen insurers, and they're regulated under California law. So when there's a wildfire endangering homes insured by these companies, his crews arrive loaded with water, but most of what they provide is labor.
We clean, we sweep, we clear gutters, we take away the places where the embers can ignite on the property or take away the access that the embers have to get in the buildings.
Embers can get into a house through the dryer vent, so his crews will tape those shut. They'll also come back after the fire passes to make sure there isn't a bush or a fence that's burning that could still ignite the house.
So for the insurance companies, they are paying for these firefighters, but is this about limiting their losses by the much larger expense of properties burning down in the first place?
It's about prevention rather than having to pay for replacing all those lost homes. So more and more insurers are including this as a standard part of their homeowners policies in wildfire prone states.
How does this work? Does a truck full of trained firefighters and water just show up to protect homes that have these specific insurers and then just ignore everybody who doesn't have those insurers?
Well, it's obviously sort of hard to know exactly what happens in the field. When I asked a spokesperson at the Insurer USAA that question, she said the providers that they work with don't just drive on by a house that's on fire, that they're staffed with a lot of retired fire chiefs, and it's just embedded in them to help the community.
But still, private companies obviously might have different priorities than firefighters who work for the public.
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