Good morning.
The truce between Israel and Hamas has entered its final 24 hours, with the militant group saying it was willing to extend the pause after it freed more hostages, including a four-year-old orphaned by its 7 October attack.
Dozens of hostages have been freed since the pause began on Friday, as well as more than 100 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in return.
Hamas has signalled its willingness to extend the truce, with a source telling the news group Agence France-Presse it told mediators it was open to prolonging it by “two to four days”.
Israel faces enormous pressure from the families of hostages, as well as allies, to extend the truce to secure further releases. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said yesterday he had spoken to Joe Biden and would welcome extending the temporary truce if it meant that on every additional day 10 captives would be freed.
What has Biden said about the deal being extended? The US president said: “That’s my goal, that’s our goal, to keep this pause going beyond tomorrow so that we can continue to see more hostages come out and surge more humanitarian relief into those in need in Gaza.”
Who has been released by Hamas? A four-year-old Israeli-American girl who was among three US hostages held by Hamas was released yesterday. Biden confirmed that Abigail Mor Edan was in the hands of Red Cross officials. Meanwhile, teenage siblings Noam and Alma Or were released only to find out their mother had been murdered by Hamas on 7 October.
Joe Biden will not attend the Cop28 climate meeting in Dubai, US official says
The US president will not attend a gathering of world leaders focused on climate change in Dubai this week, an administration official said yesterday, confirming media reports.
It was reported last month that Biden was unlikely to be at Cop28, which begins on Thursday, as he balances the demands of a Middle East war and a presidential campaign expected to heat up in January.
The president’s schedule for Thursday, which was released by the White House, shows Biden is hosting a bilateral meeting with Angola’s president, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, and attending the the national Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
Who will be at Cop28? The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is expected to attend, and King Charles will give the opening speech, along with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Pope Francis will also be there, as well as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. An invitation has been extended to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
China, Japan and South Korea, line up leaders’ summit amid regional tensions
The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will meet, possibly next year, in the latest attempt to ease regional tensions heightened by North Korea’s weapons programme and a more visible US military presence.
During a meeting in the South Korean port city of Busan yesterday, the three Asian countries’ foreign ministers agreed to step up cooperation in key areas such as security, and to lay the groundwork for what would be the first leaders’ summit in four years.
The weekend’s trilateral meeting – the first between the neighbours’ foreign ministers since 2019 – came soon after the Chinese presidents, Xi Jinping, and Joe Biden met on the sidelines of the Apec summit in California.
The Asia leaders’ summit – preparations for which began in September during talks between the countries’ deputy foreign ministers – is in part designed to address Chinese concerns over closer security ties between Japan, South Korea and the US.
What else was on the agenda in Busan? North Korea was among the topics discussed, a few days after Pyongyang successfully put a spy satellite incorporating banned ballistic missile technology into orbit, in its latest show of defiance against UN-led sanctions targeting its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
In other news …
Authorities recovered the body of an 11-year-old girl Saturday evening from the debris of a landslide in south-east Alaska that tore down a wooded mountainside days earlier, smashing into homes in a remote fishing village. The girl, Kara Heller, was the fourth person confirmed killed by the landslide.
New Zealand’s new government will scrap the country’s world-leading law to ban smoking for future generations to help pay for tax cuts – a move that public health officials believe will cost thousands of lives and be “catastrophic” for Māori communities.
The fate of 41 Indian workers trapped in a collapsed mountain tunnel hung in the balance today as rescuers began a “risky” attempt to drill vertically down to try to pull them out. The labourers have been trapped in the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand for more than two weeks.
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, accused by civil rights groups of amplifying antisemitism on his X social media platform, will meet Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, today, along with Israelis whose relatives have been held by Hamas in Gaza.
Stat of the day: Trillion-tonne iceberg moving beyond Antarctic waters
One of the world’s largest icebergs is drifting beyond Antarctic waters, after being grounded for more than three decades, according to the British Antarctic Survey. The iceberg, known as A23a, split from theFilchner-Ronne ice shelf in 1986. But it became stuck to the ocean floor and had remained for many years in the Weddell Sea. Not any more. Recent satellite images reveal that the iceberg, weighing nearly 1tn tonnes, is now drifting quickly past the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, aided by strong winds and currents. The iceberg is about three times the size of New York City and more than twice the size of Greater London, measuring about 1,500 sq miles (3,885 sq km).
Don’t miss this: Hot chocolate, woolly socks and a good book – why cosy living is good for you
When it’s dark and cold outside (not to mention existentially troubling), our sense of survival kicks in and we withdraw to that place we feel safest – home. Who doesn’t love cosy? It’s like loving puppies, or presents. Even the young – who are supposed to be out with no coat in all weathers, wreaking enjoyable havoc – have embraced it. There are 5.4bn views for #cozy on TikTok, where they’re dressing like chic grandmothers and doing “cozycardio” workouts. But we’re all fully paid-up members of the cult of cosy; we’ve got, not the T-shirt, but the chunky knit and the slipper socks. How did cosy become our dominant aesthetic, one of our most enduring pleasures, and why?
Climate check: Electric heat costs way less than reports say, data suggests
With the holiday season under way in the US, how Americans heat their homes this winter – and how much that will cost them – is the latest focus of the gas v electricity climate culture war. This year, Republicans and the fossil fuel industry were furious at suggestions from US regulators that gas stoves could be phased out over concerns about dangerous indoor air pollution, prompting Biden to rule out such a ban. Now a slew of publications, including the rightwing Daily Caller, have reported that US households using electricity for heat this winter will pay hundreds of dollars more than those who use gas. However, that assertion it’s highly misleading because it fails to address the efficiency of new technologies and the widespread uses of electricity in US homes, according to the pro-electrification group Rewiring America.
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Last thing: Freedom has been a hoot, but can Flaco the owl survive New York City?
Since February, Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl, had been living wild after fleeing the Central Park zoowhen his enclosure was vandalized. The raptor became a fixture of the park, with a growing fanbase huddled around the oak tree it often perched on, after he evaded early attempts at recapture, was then left alone by the zoo and learned to hunt for himself. A Eurasian eagle owl is the world’s second largest owl and has a foraging distance of up to 10 miles. But beyond brief ventures into the neighborhood, Flaco had made Central Park his home for the past nine months, until two weeks ago when he suddenly left. But now the celebrity bird is back. Can he survive New York City?
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