NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-19-2025 5PM EST

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

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It still feels a bit surreal to me that I got to spend an hour talking with filmmaker David Lynch in the last year of his life. Life is such a gift and can be enjoyed and it's all okay. Nothing to worry about, really. I'm Rachel Martin. My conversation with the legendary filmmaker David Lynch is on the Wild Card Podcast, the show where cards control the conversation. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. Three Israeli hostages have arrived

at a hospital in Tel Aviv to receive medical attention. They're the first of 33 hostages to be released by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. NPR's Hadil Al-Shulchi has more from the hospital. Emily Demary, Rony, Gonan and Dorn Steinbrecher, aged between 24 and 31, were all flown by helicopter to the Sheba Hospital outside of Tel Aviv just a couple of hours after they were released from Gaza. Doctors here said that the three women

are in stable condition and their priority was to be reunited with their families. Photos of Demary showed that she had two fingers missing from one hand. Israeli officials said her hand was wounded on October 7th when she was attacked by Hamas militants. Friends and family of the three women gathered in the hospital, some draped in Israeli flags. Bystanders cheered and danced as the ambulances carrying the women drove by. In a statement released by Damari's mother, she said that while the nightmare was over for her daughter,

the wait for the other families waiting for their loved ones to come out of Gaza is still impossible. Hadil Alshalchi, NPR News, Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, Palestinians burst into the streets in celebration of the ceasefire that halted fighting in Gaza with cheering and chanting. But as NPR's Ayah Batraoui reports, people trying to return home will have a devastating site. Nearly everyone in Gaza who's been displaced in this war from their homes are going to return and find their homes likely rubble. And that rubble cannot be easily removed. Not only does Gaza Strip, which is besieged, not have the machinery to lift the rubble,

there are an estimated at least 10,000 bodies under the rubble, unexploded munitions as well. So rebuilding will be a very difficult task. And here's Ayah Batraoui reporting. The war started when Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. Since then, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed nearly 47,000 people, that's according to Palestinian health officials. Millions of Americans have had video sharing app TikTok restored to their mobile devices after it was shut down temporarily last night in response to a TikTok ban law. As NPR's Bobby Allen reports, the app is thanking President-elect Trump for its return.

After a roughly 14-hour blackout, TikTok is back and it follows President-elect Donald Trump posting to Truth Social that he plans to issue an executive order to pause the ban law and provide a legal shield to companies that support TikTok. After that, web hosting firms, including Oracle, brought TikTok back to life. The app remains unavailable in the Google and Apple app stores, so it can't be downloaded or updated, but it's running, though buggier than usual. TikTok's future is far from in the clear. Without being restored by Apple and Google, the app cannot fully function.

And those companies are looking for Trump to comply with the law Congress passed, which requires a divestiture in motion before the law is paused. Bobbi Allen, NPR News. This is NPR News from Washington. The Biden administration has shelved a policy intended to protect the nation's old growth forests, a policy opposed by Republican lawmakers and the timber industry. Katie Myers of Blue Ridge Public Radio reports the proposal would have faced an uncertain future under President-elect Trump. The Blue Ridge Mountains have much of the East Coast's remaining old-growth forest. In western North Carolina, local activist Will Harlan saw Hurricane Helene topple more

than 187,000 acres of trees on Forest Service land. One thing about the old-growth amendment is it really emphasized the pressure that these forests are under because of climate change. However, Harlan said, many forest advocates were frustrated with the amendment because they said it had too many loopholes for logging in old growth forests. Now that the policy is shelved, Harlan and other advocates plan to continue to fight logging projects at the local level. For NPR News, I'm Katie Meyers in Barnardsville,

North Carolina. A quiet weekend at the box office, the buddy comedy One of Them Days debuted in the top spot with an estimated eleven point six million dollars in ticket sales. The R-rated Sony release cost only fourteen million dollars to produce. The well-reviewed film follows friends and roommates as they scramble to get rent money before getting evicted. In second place, buy a hair, Disney's Mufasa, The Lion King, with $11.5 million. So far globally, that prequel has taken in $588 million in ticket sales. I'm Janene Herbst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.