Gaza, special counsel report, Trump’s inherited economy, Russian oil and Hegseth
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Today, why a new Gaza peace deal could be close at hand. A special counsel report finds Donald Trump engaged in criminal efforts to overturn 2020's election. Trump's Pentagon pick is set to face a Senate grilling and how new oil sanctions on Russia could offer Trump a negotiating chip in Ukraine. It's Tuesday, January 14th.

This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Jonah Green in New York. And I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool.

President Joe Biden says his administration is working urgently to close a deal that would secure the release of hostages and achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. We have a structure which would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel.

and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. Egypt, the US and Qatar are mediating the negotiations. And there's another round of talks in Doha today as they work to finalize the details.

Our foreign policy editor, Don Durfee, breaks down why this time a deal may just make it across the finish line. We have both Biden's Middle East envoy, Brett McCurk, and Trump's incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, both working together on this deal. It's pretty rare for that to happen before a new administration comes into place.

And I think it's fair to say that the Biden administration really has done the great bulk of work here, right? They've been working on this for over a year. And Trump has given this deadline. He says he wants a ceasefire to be accomplished by the time of his inauguration or else there is going to be all hell to pay. It seems

It seems like it set this default deadline for all of the parties, and that seems to have been a helpful thing in terms of giving people something to focus on and getting a deal done. It is really important to bear in mind that a lot has changed in the region. Hamas itself severely weakened.

Hezbollah has been effectively defeated by Israel, and Syria, the government of Assad has fallen. And Assad was an ally of the Iranians who supported both Hamas and Hezbollah. So for what remains of Hamas's leadership, there weren't a whole lot of options left anymore.

A report by US special counsel Jack Smith has concluded that President-elect Donald Trump would have been convicted of election interference, but his return to the White House made that impossible. It says Trump engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election. On Truth Social, after the report's release, Donald Trump called Smith a "lame-brain prosecutor" who was unable to get his case tried before the election.

Los Angeles firefighters are braced for more high winds today, with concern they could fuel the two huge wildfires still burning. Some of the winds could reach hurricane force. The U.S. House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would pave the way for the purchase of Greenland. If passed, the "Make Greenland Great Again" act will allow Donald Trump to enter into negotiations with Denmark once taking office.

Denmark has repeatedly said it's not interested in selling Greenland. The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down a bid by Facebook owner Meta to avoid a multi-billion-dollar class action lawsuit by advertisers. The suit accuses the company of overcharging them by inflating the number of people their ads might reach.

With the U.S. dollar on the rise and a blowout December jobs report last Friday, President-elect Donald Trump is inheriting a strong economy. So where does that leave his campaign promises of aggressive import tariffs, strict immigration curbs, and deregulation? Howard Schneider has been looking into it.

It's a very different economy than it was in 2017. Just maybe not a lot of room for improvement on some of the big top-line metrics like GDP growth and unemployment. That's not to say there aren't things he couldn't do to achieve his campaign goals, which are kind of distributional in nature, more microeconomic. You know, too many immigrants in jobs, let's get more native-born workers in those jobs. Too many goods made abroad, let's find a way to make more things at home.

Just saying that from a big macro perspective, it's not clear how much room there is to improve. So what happens with the economic proposals he made, for instance, with immigration? Again, it depends on how aggressive he gets with this. Are the immigration rules going to be really widespread, aggressive roundups that hollow out industries of labor they relied on? Or is it going to be more targeted people with outstanding arrest warrants or criminal records sort of thing that kind of has a high publicization

publicity value add, but doesn't actually result in that many people leaving the shores of the U.S. New U.S. sanctions aimed at cutting off Russia's cash resources for the war in Ukraine are targeting Russian oil producers and a fleet of tanker ships known as the Ghost Fleet or Shadow Fleet. Those are ships with concealed or complicated origin and ownership.

The move will likely push some of Russia's main customers, like refiners in China and India, to look for new sources of crude. It could also provide Donald Trump with some leverage on Ukraine. Our White House reporter, Andrea Shalal, has been looking into the timing of these restrictions.

Well, you know, the Biden administration was at pains throughout this crisis with the Ukraine war to find a way to thread the needle, to impose pain on Russia with

without driving up the price of U.S. oil. But they've been struggling to sort of find a way to put pressure on the ghost fleet. And I think at this point, they have a lot less to lose because they're walking out the door. So we've already seen oil prices go up and consumers are going to have to bear that price at a time when inflation has started to come down. But that doesn't mean that prices are lower. So how's Trump expected to handle these sanctions?

We haven't heard from Trump's team specifically on this, but, you know, we do know that he likes to maintain a high level of uncertainty and that he feels that that gives him advantages in trying to achieve policy outcomes. You know, we also know that he's trying to end the Ukraine war and end the flow of billions of dollars of U.S. money to Ukraine.

So, imposing pain on Russia is not a bad thing. I suppose, in terms of his negotiations with Putin, and we do hear that there will be a conversation between Trump and Putin early on, he can say, look, I didn't put these sanctions in. I can lift them if you do this, right? So, it's a good negotiating tool. So, a handy early negotiating chip for Trump on Ukraine.

But a possible early headache on the cards, too, as today marks a Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, his pick to run the Defense Department. The former Fox News host is likely to face tough questions from Democrats on his controversial views and troubling allegations over past behavior. Phil Stewart covers the Pentagon.

Pete Hegseth is one of the most divisive nominees for this job in memory. He's made a lot of very controversial remarks, including about whether the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got his job because he's black, he's opposed women in combat, and he's really railed against the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that conservatives have taken aim at. And so I think he's going to find...

a very kind of a heated nomination hearing in a way that's not really seen so much at the Senate Armed Services Committee. And what about the allegations against him? Some of those allegations include a 2017 allegation of sexual assault, which did not result in charges and which Hegseth

strongly denies, but there are going to be questions about whether there might have been other allegations of sexual assault against him. We reached out repeatedly to Mr. Hegseth and to the Trump transition folks for comments, and we have not gotten a response. Pete Hegseth has also been accused of excessive drinking on the job at Fox, and also in his work after leaving the military at veterans organizations. He's accused of mismanaging funds at those veteran organizations.

And so there are questions among lawmakers about whether he has the ability to manage a department with over $800 billion in annual budgets. What is his acumen to lead a vast organization, given that for many lawmakers, they're seeing more of a bomb thrower, more of a provocateur than a leader?

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And for today's recommended read, record-breaking coastal water temperatures in China. They're up for the second year in a row in 2024, the hottest year since records began, to over 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There's a link to a story in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.