Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton.

Desperate Palestinians are burning trash to keep warm in Gaza after two years of the Israel-Hamas war.

Meanwhile, in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump inaugurated his Board of Peace to oversee

reconstruction of the enclave.

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, says the next phase of the ceasefire deal will address disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential, and this is for the people of Gaza, we've developed into zones. In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone, and then we have a Hamas zone. And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success. We have signed a deal demilitarized.

That is what we are going to

enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. President Trump's ambitions for

the Board of Peace have grown. He says it could rival the United Nations role in resolving

international conflicts, but many U.S. allies have opted not to participate

so far. Trump has said he's not sure if he would chair the group after his term in office.

A new study says the U.S. homicide rate has fallen to a historic low. NPR's Windsor Johnston reports

it marks what researchers are calling a dramatic turnaround and violent crime.

The national homicide rate is on track to reach its lowest level in 125 years and the steepest

single year drop on record. That's according to the Council on Criminal Justice, which

analyze crime data from 40 major U.S. cities. The report found 25% fewer homicides, 13% fewer shootings, and a nearly 30%

drop in carjackings compared to 2019, all now below pre-pandemic levels. The FBI hasn't

released full national data yet, but local trends suggest the pandemic crime spike was a blip,

not a lasting trend.

Drug crimes were the only category that ticked up last year, but they remained lower than before the pandemic. Windsor Johnston, NPR News, Washington. The Supreme Court has received an emergency

request from California's Republican Party to block the state's new Democratic-leaning congressional map.

As NPR's Hansi-Low Wong reports, the map is California Democrats counter to the nationwide

gerrymandering push led by President Trump and his Republican allies.

...