Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Mediators herald Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal; Israel says final details are in flux. As deportation threat looms, WA groups underscore the importance of immigrants. And how IL's grid plans will focus on underserved communities.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, January 16, 2025.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to pause the devastating war in Gaza.

Mediators announced Wednesday, raising the possibility of winding down the deadliest and most destructive fighting between the bitter enemies.

That's from the Associated Press.

Meantime, leaders of California's Jewish and Muslim communities say they are relieved that Israel and Hamas have taken the first steps toward ending their brutal war in Gaza.

In the first phase of the agreement, Hamas has agreed to release an initial group of 33 hostages and Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian detainees and implement a ceasefire.

Joy Cicisky with the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund of the Bay Area says she remains concerned about the 65 hostages who will still remain captive after this first six-week phase of the agreement.

Even the return of all of the hostages is not the end because they've been held in captivity, many of them for 467 days, and that there is a long road to recovery for not just the hostages, but for their families, for their friends, and for many of us here too, who consider them like friends and family.

The war started when Hamas militants crossed into Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed about 1,200 people, kidnapping 250 more.

Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza has killed approximately 46,000 Palestinians.

Teams from the Biden administration and the Trump camp worked together to press both sides to agree to a deal.

Sarah Ballou with the Council on American-Islamic Relations San Francisco says the ceasefire announcement is bittersweet because it is so long overdue.

Right now the international community needs to prioritize accountability, upholding human rights, and providing urgently needed relief to the people in Gaza and the West Bank who have suffered incomprehensibly for more than a year now.

This is Suzanne Potter reporting.

Meantime, as threats of deportation of illegal immigrants increase with the incoming Trump administration, groups in Washington say that immigrants are an integral part of the state.

Research from the Washington State Budget and Policy Center and Economic Policy Institute finds nearly a fifth of workers in the state are immigrants, and they generate $145 billion in economic output.

Senior policy analyst with the Washington State Budget and Policy Center Katie Dong says incoming President Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations are a threat to the state.

One, that is just inhumane and horrendous.

We don't stand by that at all.

Secondly, it's bad for our state economy.

Dong's research also found 29 percent of Main Street businesses are owned by immigrants.

A coalition of groups and lawmakers in the state, including Working Washington, is urging Governor Bob Ferguson to protect immigrants.

I'm Eric Tegethoff reporting.

This is Public News Service.

Next to Illinois, a state that plans to spend more than $1.5 billion through 2027 in significant grid investments to help meet the state's ambitious clean energy goals.

With nearly half of the funds going toward addressing environmental disparities.

The Climate and Equity Jobs Act requires at least 40 percent of the state grid investments to benefit underserved and low-income communities.

Brad Klein with the Environmental Law and Policy Center says fulfilling it means first learning about existing issues.

That requires new tools to sort of analyze disparities in service.

So do some neighborhoods enjoy better reliability than others?

There's new modeling in the plans to try to discover that.

As well as plans to upgrade substations, which include poles and wires, to close any existing gaps, and what Klein calls full and fair access for people in all communities to invest in things like rooftop solar, electrification, and heat pumps.

I'm Judith Ruiz Branch reporting.

And with the Iowa legislature gaveling in this week, and a new administration set to take office in D.C., advocates for food producers are watching for the effects of the revolving door.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania native Tom Vilsack was a quiet, nondescript mayor from the town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, when he was elected to the state Senate in 1992.

He went on to become the second longest serving agriculture secretary in U.S. history.

Sylvia Seki, an economist and sustainability expert at the University of Iowa, says as he is set to leave office as Ag Secretary, Vilsack now stands to benefit from the very policies he helped create.

He was Secretary of Agriculture under Obama.

He went into lobbying, now Secretary of Agriculture under Biden.

And then, if possible, he will go back into lobbying.

Seki says while the revolving door is not illegal, the practice gives insiders an outsized role in shaping laws and regulations in the industry they oversee.

I'm Mark Moran.

And the U.S. Forest Service is facing a lawsuit from Montana conservation groups.

The Round Star Logging Project, located 13 miles west of Whitefish, would cover over 9,000 acres of forest land in an area inhabited by Canada lynx and grizzly bears.

Both are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act, which means they should take priority in logging plans, says Steve Kelly with the Council of Wildlife and Fish, one of the plaintiffs.

It's already been logged heavily, so we're really talking about some of the last places that lynx can even survive locally, never mind connectivity from one place to another.

I'm Kathleen Shannon.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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