In partnership with

International

Hostages and prisoners released as Israel-Gaza ceasefire begins

Each side is swapping those held as conflict is put on pause. During the first day of the long-awaited ceasefire deal, three Israeli women who had been held hostage by Hamas for almost 470 days were freed along with 90 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

The temporary truce, which will be implemented in three phases, starting with the exchange of people detained on either side, aims to end the 15-month conflict.

What’s going on now?

The three women are part of a group of 33 hostages that Hamas is anticipated to release over the course of the next month and a half in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israel.

• Around 250 hostages were taken during Hamas’ October 7th attack in 2023.

  • Israel believes that around 95 hostages remain, with ~32 of them already dead.

• The prisoners freed from Israel included 69 women and 21 teenage boys.

The exchange is a part of the ceasefire agreement's first phase, which also calls for a 42-day truce and the evacuation of Israeli forces from Gaza's most populated regions. The next exchange is scheduled for January 25th, if the ceasefire isn’t broken.

What about the following phases? Next month will see the start of negotiations for a second phase, which would see the release of further detainees on each side. It seems likely that a third phase will concentrate on rebuilding Gaza and bringing back any hostages who have passed.

Social Media

TikTok is back in America… for now

Praying for those who went without scrolling for a whole day. TikTok began restoring its services to US users on Sunday after a brief outage period that lasted from late Saturday into Sunday morning.

The company cited promises made to it and its service providers by the Trump administration that the "TikTok Ban" law would not be enforced. That is, for the time being.

A TikTok Timeline

For those who don’t invest hours of their day following TikTok drama or are simply confused by what’s going on with the platform, here’s a brief timeline of the past few days:

• On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law that could ban TikTok from operating in the US until its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the video-sharing app.

• Shortly after, on Saturday night, TikTok “went dark” and users were greeted with a message saying the ban made its services “temporarily unavailable”.

  • The app was also briefly removed from the Apple and Google app stores late Saturday.

• Then, on Sunday morning, the came back online to many of its 170 million US users, and the message updated to say that the platform is “fortunate” that President Trump stated he would “work with us on a solution”.

  • This occurred after Trump announced that he would sign an executive order extending the ban’s deadline by 90 days after he was sworn into office yesterday.

What now? Trump said that, as a part of his executive order, the US would get a “50% ownership position” in TikTok, indicating that he would want the US government to own at least part of the platform.

Switch-a-roo

Trump’s avid support of the platform is a reversal of his previous position during his first term when he attempted to ban TikTok due to national security concerns. However, the President isn’t the only one who’s switching sides:

• Yesterday, China's Foreign Ministry stated that businesses are free to choose how they do business and conduct acquisitions.

  • This is a 180 from its earlier position when the Chinese government said that it would block any forced sale of TikTok.

While both parties want the app to stay active in the US, legally speaking, a deal must be in the works for the deadline to be extended. Several parties have shown interest in buying the app, but no evidence has been shown that a deal is currently underway, at least publicly.

TikTok hasn't completely rallied: Although the majority of US users now have access to the app again, others reported that they were still unable to download it from the Apple and Android app stores.

Health

Cancer rates have fallen in the US

A recent report from the American Cancer Society revealed that cancer rates have declined significantly. The overall cancer mortality rate decreased by 34% in the US between 1991 and 2022, averting over 4.5 million deaths. However, despite the broader decline, cancer diagnoses among younger adults and women have spiked.

Rise and Fall

The American Cancer Society’s latest report (see here) highlighted the broader decline of cancer in the US, but the progress has been stunted by increases across several cancer types, especially among women and young adults:

• Women under 50 now have 82% higher cancer rates than men, up from 51% in 2002.

• After rising for decades, the incidence of cancer in children (ages 14 and under) has come down, although it is still rising in teenagers (ages 15 to 19).

The survey also noted that pancreatic cancer fatalities and incidence (or new cases) are still rising for both men and women, and only 8% of patients with pancreatic exocrine tumors survive after five years.

According to the study, the increased incidence is due to better treatment regimens and improved detection techniques, and due to increased life expectancy, more people are living with cancer than before.

Influential disease: For people under the age of 85, cancer continues to be the top cause of death and the second most common cause in the United States. The changes in cancer rate and incidence are attributed to lifestyle modifications, environmental influences, and possibly hereditary factors, according to researchers.

Grab Bag

The Australian Open (literally) got animated

One of the biggest tournaments of the year looked like Wii Tennis. In an effort to draw in new viewers, Tennis Australia, the organization that oversees the professional tennis tournament, has been broadcasting animated versions of its live events on YouTube.

Tennis tunes

The new take on the sport, called AO Animated, uses a computer-generated court, ball, and players. It follows the real-life movements happening on the live broadcast, recreating the outfits and surroundings with only a two-minute delay.

• Last year, when Tennis Australia debuted the animation tech, 140,000 people tuned in through the first four days.

  • Viewership peaked during the men’s final, which garnered around 800,000 views on YouTube.

• This year, there were 950,000 viewers throughout the same time frame.

To get a seamless result, the innovation team at AO Animated uses over 12 cameras to track and process the players’ silhouettes in real time, taking data from 29 points of the skeleton and feeding it into a system that then creates the animated alternative.

Since the events are technically animated (even though they follow the live broadcast) it permits the Australian Open, which has sold profitable exclusive broadcast rights to partners worldwide, to air a portion of the tournament's live events on its channels.

Join the club: The NFL has experimented with the technology, airing a SpongeBob Squarepants-themed Wild Card game on January 11th, as well as a Simpsons-themed game in December.

Turns out, a lot of people want to talk to their pets

I mean who wouldn’t want to hear their dog press the treat button 100 times every hour? Since the pandemic, consumers have bought millions of “talking buttons” for their dogs and cats, giving pet owners a new way of communicating with their furry friends.

Talking Shih Tzu

The talking pet buttons have gone viral across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, entering a record number of pet owners’ homes as they try to get their pets to press the “more”, “food” and “now” buttons consecutively.

• According to the NYT, the original talking buttons company, FluentPet, has sold more than two million buttons.

  • The owner of the company, Alexis Devine, says her dog Bunny knows over 100 words. Over one million people follow Bunny on Instagram.

But do these buttons actually teach animals to talk? Researchers have mixed opinions. Some say that pets catch on to the “right” combinations since they are reinforced by treats and affection. One study says that most button presses aren’t random and instead show a level of understanding by the pets.

Regardless, the tech allows pet owners to put down their phones and actually spend time with their animals, so it’s really a net positive either way.

Fast Facts

Milk Mitigation: A study of the diets of over 500,000 postmenopausal women over nearly 20 years found that drinking a half-pint of milk daily could reduce the risk of bowel cancer, often known as colorectal cancer, by over 20%.

Eternal Employee: Around 20% of all online job listings last year were "ghost jobs", or positions that companies advertise with no intention of actually filling, according to a data analysis by hiring platform, Greenhouse. 

Nano-Noodle: English researchers developed a "nanospaghetti" for ultrafine bandages that are both bacterially resistant and porous enough to allow water to pass through. It is 1/200th the width of a human hair.

Language Learners: After TikTok users departed in large numbers to Xiaohongshu, a TikTok alternative also known as RedNote, language study platform Duolingo recorded a ~216% increase in new Mandarin learners in the US compared to the same period last year.

Purse Pet: Yukai Engineering released a $70 furry robot companion that latches on to your purse and acts like a shy infant. Perfect for people who consider their cats their children.