Up First from NPR - Israel-Hamas Hostage Deal Holds, Riot in Dublin, Paying for Holiday Shopping

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Hamas released 24 hostages Friday as Israel freed 39 Palestinian prisoners. Another exchange is expected today. Anti-immigrant sentiment fuels looting and vandalism in central Dublin. Why "buy now pay later" plans are expected to grow even more common this holiday season.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The temporary ceasefire in the Middle East appears to be holding as it enters day two. Hamas is expected to release more hostages today. In exchange, Israel is freeing Palestinians. It's taken prisoner. I'm Sarah McCammon. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. At least 50 hostages could be freed during the four-day ceasefire. The pause in fighting has also let much more humanitarian aid enter Gaza. Also a riot in Ireland fueled by anti-immigrant hatred.

And just in time for the holidays, why buy now, pay later plans are getting so popular. Please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. Now Our Change will honour 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. The hostage for prisoner swap in the Middle East continues. Hamas released 24 hostages yesterday. And Israel freed 39 Palestinians it had been holding in prison.

And Paris, Brian Mann joins us now from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Brian, thanks for being with us. Good morning, Scott. Please tell us about the Israelis and others freed by Hamas. This happened late in the afternoon local time. The International Red Cross busts these hostages out of Gaza into Egypt, where they were taken quickly into Israel to military base and also to hospitals. It's really impossible to overstate how emotional and crucial this is for Israelis getting these

hostages freed. Here's Debbie Kaye, who spoke this morning with our colleague Daniel Estrin in Jaffa. I mean, I think I feel what most Israelis feel, which is a little bit of relief and massive amount of worry about the rest that are not back yet. And Kate said she knows Palestinians are also suffering in this crisis. It's all just really sad, she said. So the mood was far from celebratory. Although I will say yesterday's release did include Hannah Katsira, 77-year-old mother and grandmother, Scott, who had been reported dead. Then it turns out she's still alive, which is just fantastic. There were also 10 hostages from Thailand and one from the Philippines held by Hamas who were released yesterday. A sad note, there are roughly 10 Americans

being held according to US officials. None of them have been let go so far. Brian, you were in Ramallah to see Palestinian prisoners released by Israel. What was that like? Yeah, it was really emotional here. The first prisoners, young teenage boys, many of them detained for throwing stones or Molotov cocktails, arrived here in Ramallah long after dark. And this massive crowd erupted in cheers, carrying them on their shoulders. And one thing I've heard here is loud support for Hamas. Many people chanting Hamas slogans last night and flying the green Hamas flag. Over the last 50 days, the group appears to have won a lot more backing. And why is that, Brian? The group attacked the south of Israel last month, killed about 1,200 people there,

many of them civilians, young children and the elderly. Yeah, this is hard. Years of Israeli occupation and now the death of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza during this war, that's all brought anger here against Israel to a boiling point. That's what people tell me. Many people see Hamas's violence as resistance. I spoke about this last night with a woman named Amin Nafa, who was in the crowd. She was shaking with rage toward Israel. No normal people will do something to children, to buildings, to hospitals. What do you say when the Israelis say they also hurt children, Hamas hurt children as well? I believe they took soldiers. They did not come to civilians.

And that's not accurate. Hamas killed a lot of Israeli civilians and children in their attack. But I hear this claim over and over among Palestinians here in the West Bank. Brian, what could happen next if the temporary ceasefire holds? Now, the goal on both sides right now seems to be to get through Monday with hostages and prisoners released each day. In the meantime, humanitarian aid is flowing fast into Gaza. More than 200 trucks crossing the border yesterday from Egypt. There are still hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians there now with little food or water and no medical supplies.

And Piers Bryan, man in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. More than 30 people have been arrested for taking part in a riot in central Dublin on Thursday night. They were apparently motivated by a rumor that an immigrant stabbed three children earlier in the day. It's a sign of just how volatile anti-immigrant sentiment is in Ireland today. Conor Gallagher, a reporter for the Irish Times, has been covering the unrest and joins us now. Mr. Gallagher, thanks for being with us.

My pleasure. At this moment, what do we know about the stabbing that seems to have somehow initiated a riot? We know that the most seriously injured victim, a five-year-old girl who was queuing outside of this school, remains in an extremely serious condition. Two other children were stabbed. A young girl who's six years old received some head injuries she seems to be recovering well and another five-year-old boy received more minor injuries he's been released from hospital there's also a woman who worked in the school she'd received quite serious injuries but uh they're non-life-threatening, as I understand. And the accused man, or the suspect rather,

because he hasn't been arrested yet, he's under armed guard in a hospital. He received relatively serious injuries while he was being apprehended by members of the public. He is expected to be arrested in the coming days once he is well enough, basically, to be interviewed. Do we know if the suspect is indeed an immigrant yes well the suspect is an algerian national we understand he came here about 20 years ago he's a naturalized irish citizen guardi are keeping this quite close

to the chest in terms of motivations guardiia, which is the Irish police force, they say they still haven't established a motivation. Now, it seems terrorism probably wasn't a motive, but we're still somewhat in the dark, and there are some indications that this man had some serious mental health problems, but we just don't know at the minute. How did this attack become an anti-immigrant riot in Dublin?

Well, really, really quickly, news spread on social media sites that the attack had occurred. False information also spread just as quickly that one or more of the victims had died. And then information that the attacker was a foreign national also spread. So, I mean mean within 45 minutes of the attack you had people gathering at the crime scene and it quickly turned violent then there was calls for for more people to come into the city center she just had people streaming in and what started as kind of a core group maybe 100-right and anti-immigrant protesters. They were soon joined by a more opportunistic cohort who didn't really have any political affiliation,

but were just intent on causing trouble, doing some looting, attacking the police, you know, with the little chance of being caught. And that's when the worst violence occurred. That's when we saw public transport being set alight. We saw Garda cars being broken into and burned, Garda being assaulted, and then, of course, the stores being looted. We want to play with what the Prime Minister of Ireland said yesterday when he forcefully condemned the rioters. These criminals did not do what they did because they love Ireland. They did not do what they did because they wanted to protect Irish people.

They did so because they're filled with hate. They love violence, they love chaos, and they love causing pain to others. Mr. Gallagher, has there been much anti-immigrant violence before this time? It has been rampant up, unfortunately. Ireland has never had the far right really as a strong political force. But in recent years, we've had huge increases in the number of asylum seekers seeking refugee status in Ireland. And then with the war in Ukraine, we have granted refugee status to a huge number of Ukrainians,

I think just coming up on 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war. And that has created huge pressure on housing. There has been tensions in local communities where they've had to open these kind of immigration residential centres at very short notice upsetting the community and that has created some flash points we had a violent protest outside a Leinster house which is where the of Parliament sit, in September on the first day of term, you had a migrant camp being burnt down in the city centre a few months before that. So there is some sort of sense that we had been building up to something, yes.

Conor Gallagher of the Irish Times, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Uh-oh, only 30 shopping days left before Christmas. And if you don't want to use a credit card and don't have enough in your bank account, there's another option. Buy now, pay later plans that give shoppers what amounts to a mini-loan to purchase a particular item, usually online. But they do come with some risks.

Personal finance reporter Cora Lewis from the Associated Press is here to explain. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure. come with some risks. Personal finance reporter Cora Lewis from the Associated Press is here to explain. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure. Happy to be here. So Cora, just remind us, what is buy now, pay later? How does it work? And can consumers pay for things later without actually paying more? Buy now, pay later does tend to work the way it's marketed most of the time. So a consumer makes a down payment at the time of purchase and then makes an agreement to make between four and six payments at two-week intervals down the line. And they are typically zero interest loans. And Cora, who are the typical consumers who tend to rely on buy now pay later as a financing option?

Research has found that users of buy now, Pay Later tend to be younger. They're more than twice as likely to be under 35, and they tend to be more economically fragile. So they might have subprime or near-prime credit scores, or they might have less good credit or no credit profile at all. So some Black Friday deals are still going on, and we have Cyber Monday coming up. How much are consumers putting on buy now, pay later? and this is predicted to be their biggest year yet. So in October, people spent $6.4 billion online with Buy Now, Pay Later.

That's up 6% year over year. In November, that number should be $9.3 billion with $782 million on Cyber Monday. So as many as one in five people plan to use Buy Now, Pay Later over the holiday season. And why? Why is this becoming so much more popular? I think there are a lot of reasons. Interest rates for credit cards are at record highs, and Americans are carrying more credit card debt than ever. Inflation is causing people to really stretch their budgets. Student loan repayments have restarted. And so what different analysts have found is that buy now, pay later is a way to let consumers balance some of these debt obligations that they have while still buying gifts or meeting basic household needs. So how much time do you really have? And what are the

penalties if you don't pay on time? So one of the tougher things about this type of payment is that it can't really help you build credit because positive payments aren't reported to credit bureaus, but it can hurt your credit. So if you do miss payments and you are delinquent or if you eventually default, that can show up on your credit score. Other risks include fees. Sometimes as you miss payments, those could add up to either a percentage of your purchase or kind of flat fees. And then the interest models are also different across companies, across purchases. So it can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. So it can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. So lots of things can go wrong. When does this kind of financing make sense? I

mean, when can it actually work in your favor? So if you are really on top of your budget and you know your cash flow, you know what your future economic situation is going to be, it can make sense. I think one thing about buy now, pay later is that merchants and retailers love it because people tend to buy more when they use these financing options. So good for the companies, maybe not for the consumer always. I think that's what is going to have to be seen down the line in terms of the consequences of this new payment model. You know, will it be safe for the consumer? Will regulation kind of catch up to it? Or will people be overextending themselves because the loan companies aren't talking to one another or

reporting to the credit bureaus, which means that maybe people are able to sign up for credit more easily than they would if it were a more regulated form of credit. Cora Lewis with the Associated Press, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you so much, Sarah. And happy holidays. And happy holidays to you. And that's Up First for Saturday, November 25th, 2023. I'm Scott Simon.

And I'm Sarah McCammon. Andrew Craig, Fernando Naro, and Lennon Sherburn produced this Saturday version of Up First. Diedrich Skanky, Donald Clyde, and Matthew Sherman edited it. Our director is Michael Radcliffe with engineering support from Jay Ciz. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Oliver is our executive producer. And Jim Kane is our deputy

managing editor. Thanks to all those fine people who also lend their talents to Weekend Edition as well. And at first, we'll be back on Monday with all the latest news. And there is more news, interviews, books, and music this weekend on the radio. Weekend Edition airs every Saturday and Sunday morning. You can find our NPR station at stations.npr.org.