The Headlines - A Fragile Israel-Hezbollah Truce, and a Push to Make You Love Plastic

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Plus, the A.I. granny scamming the scammers.  Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Tell us what you think at: [e-mail] Today’s Episode:Thousands Return to Southern Lebanon as Cease-Fire Takes Effect, by Euan WardTrump Picks Stanford Doctor Who Opposed Lockdowns to Head N.I.H., by Sheryl Gay StolbergInside the Plastic Industry’s Battle to Win Over Hearts and Minds, by Hiroko TabuchiRecord Number of Travelers Expected Over Thanksgiving Week, by Hank SandersAn A.I. Granny Is Phone Scammers’ Worst Nightmare, by Ali Watkins

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Wednesday, November 27th. Here's what we're covering. Just after 4 a.m. this morning, the skies above the Lebanese capital Beirut basically erupted in celebratory gunfire. In fact, I can still hear it now. As people took to the streets to celebrate

what was an end to a bloody year-long conflict and a brutal bombardment in and around the Lebanese capital. My colleague Ewan Ward is in Beirut, where the ceasefire between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah went into effect early this morning. Lebanese lawmakers still have to formally approve the deal today, but the fighting has already stopped.

The truce is supposed to last for 60 days. The terms of the ceasefire call for Israel to pull its troops out of Lebanon over the next two months, while Hezbollah is supposed to move its forces north, away from the Israeli border. I've spoken to people today who are already looking to return. There's bumper-to-bumper traffic heading south. There's thousands make their way back to their home villages,

which they've been displaced from. This comes despite warnings by both the Lebanese military and Israeli military that they should wait. Israeli troops are obviously still deployed in the south, and it remains unclear exactly that they should wait. Israeli troops are obviously still deployed in the south and it remains unclear exactly when they will withdraw and how long that might take. Over the course of the fighting, nearly 4,000 people were killed and more than a million were displaced. A vast majority of the casualties and displacements were on the Lebanese side.

Just as the Lebanese people deserve a future of security and prosperity, so do the people of Gaza. They too deserve an end to the fighting and displacement. While marking the ceasefire in Lebanon, President Biden turned his focus to Gaza. Over the coming days, the United States will make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.

As soon as the deal in Lebanon was announced, world leaders, including President Biden, were expressing hope that the deal would create momentum toward a deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. But analysts are skeptical about this. Patrick Kingsley is the Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem. The Hezbollah deal was possible because the Lebanese militia was weakened by months of assassinations of its leaders and battlefield losses,

and it had essentially lost its leverage at the negotiating table. These dynamics are not the case in Gaza, where a breakthrough is a lot harder because Hamas still has quite a strong negotiating position. Hamas has held out for 14 months, largely because it holds 100 hostages. So that means it can hold out for its maximalist aims, which are to survive the war intact as the dominant power in Gaza and for Israel to withdraw from Gaza. And on the Israeli side, Netanyahu has vowed to completely remove Hamas from power.

So striking any kind of deal with them would look like a failure to much of the Israeli electorate, and in particular to his base and to his far-right governing allies, and potentially threaten his grip on power. Donald Trump has continued to fill out the public health leadership for his next administration, naming Dr. J. Bhattacharya to be the director of the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya is a physician and economist at Stanford who co-authored a controversial manifesto in 2020 arguing against COVID lockdowns. He said the virus should be allowed to spread among young, healthy people, and that prevention efforts should be targeted to older people and the vulnerable. He and his co-authors' ideas have been dismissed as fringe by the public health establishment,

though some gave the arguments a second look as the economic and mental health impacts caused by the lockdowns became clear. Bhattacharya is the latest in a series of Trump's health picks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who gained prominence during the pandemic by sharing views outside the mainstream. There have been a stream of videos across social media over the past few years. They feature cheery influencers going about their days while casually talking up the benefits of certain plastic bottles. Did you know that PET plastic bottles are a closed-loop, zero-waste system? Now, The Times has obtained documents that show that those videos were part of a million-dollar campaign

by a trade group that represents some of the world's largest plastics and petrochemical companies. The businesses behind the group, known as NAPCOR, make everything from coke bottles to solo cups, and they've been trying to reverse what their internal files describe as a quote, tide of anti-plastic sentiment. There's been growing awareness in recent years that the vast majority of plastic doesn't ever get recycled, creating millions of tons of waste a year. So we got these documents from a group called Fuel Notes, which is a watchdog group that focuses on the oil and gas sector.

And basically what interested me was just the very frank way in which this plastics industry group was discussing a how to kind of win over hearts and minds, but also how they were saying we need to get this messaging out in a way that kind of hides the fact that this messaging was coming out of the plastics industry. Hiroko Tabuchi covers the environment for the Times. She says Napcore hired half a dozen influencers to promote their products on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. And while many of the ads did note that they were part of a campaign, the ad campaign's

social media pages never mentioned Napcore. The group also partnered with the actor Dennis Quaid to make a pro-plastics episode of his TV show. And they ran a social media campaign pushing back when the Paris Olympics banned single-use plastics. In the documents, we see the industry group really saying that they're pleased with how these influencer campaigns turned out. They say surveys show that people who saw the content had a much better view of the

plastics industry, for example. And this is part of a wider battle that's being waged over the future of plastics. There are global talks right now going on in South Korea where nations are trying to hammer out a treaty that would tackle the plastic pollution problem once and for all. And one of the options on the table is a measure that would restrict plastic production so that we are just using less plastic. That's something that the plastic industry would like to avoid.

They're arguing that plastics has a place in modern life as long as we're recycling, as long as we are making sure it doesn't end up in the environment. This week around Thanksgiving is always one of the busiest times to travel, but this year is shaping up to be record breaking. More than 18 million Americans are expected to travel by air this week, and AAA says more than 70 million Americans will hit the road. That would put the number of Thanksgiving travelers on track to beat out even pre-pandemic peaks. Travel patterns are also changing. Since many people can now work remotely for a day or two, they're extending the holiday.

A lot of Americans already left Monday or Tuesday, and they may not come home until next week. And some people are skipping the big family meal altogether. There's been a surge in solo travel at this time of year. Travel experts say the stigma of spending the holidays alone has been fading, and the appeal of a little self-care vacation has grown. That's given people the green light to head to the beach or to Vegas

instead of having to sleep back in their childhood bedroom or trying to make small talk with the uncle they haven't seen since last year. And finally, phone scams have reached mind-boggling levels with tens of millions of scam calls a day. The scammers dial people up looking for banking details, passwords, personal information, which they have then used to steal billions of dollars. Older adults in particular are seen as easy prey.

And now one British phone company, O2, has recruited a senior citizen of its own to fight back. Well, I do have a computer, but I'm not currently at it. I was actually just about to sit down with a nice cuppa and some biscuits. Do you like biscuits, Peter? Meet Daisy Harris. She's got a cat, she likes to knit, and she really loves to talk. She was generated by artificial intelligence specifically

to be chatty. At first scammers may think that's a good thing. She doesn't immediately hang up. What they don't realize is that Daisy is designed to waste their time. Are you there? Oh yes Ients about her hobbies and to play dumb about technology. On one call, three phone scammers ended up on the line at one time to talk to her for nearly an hour as they struggled to get her to type www dot into the browser. Slowing scammers down to try to keep them from ripping off anyone else isn't a new idea. There are humans who like to do this, too,

to stretch out the calls. But they only have so much time. Daisy's schedule is wide open. For now, there is no way to deploy her en masse against the scammers. Instead, the scammers have to dial one of the few lines that she answers and fall into her trap. Experts say the best thing you can do if you get a scam call is don't be like Daisy.

Hang up. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a Times investigation into Israel's tactic of using Palestinian detainees as human shields. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. This show is made by Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford, with help from Isabella Anderson. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy and Paula Schuman. The headlines will be back on Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.