Gaza families are starving. Aid agencies want action.

Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 17th. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, humanitarian conditions in Gaza more than 100 days into the war, how a small fish could upend the power of federal agencies, And why tennis balls are serving up controversy among pro players.

First, to the Middle East, where the United States struck Houthi targets in Yemen again. The U.S. has been targeting the Iran-backed rebel group for attacking commercial ships. And the Biden administration is reportedly planning to put the Houthis back on its list of designated terrorist groups. Also, Iran has launched attacks inside Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria, all while Israel wages war on Hamas in Gaza.

Not enough water, not enough food, no place to sleep. It's very difficult to describe.

Dr. Paul Spiegel worked in Cairo with a UN agency to support the public health response in Gaza. And he told "CBS," survival needs are barely being met.

It's completely insufficient. And therefore, the ability in the humanitarian space to respond is not possible. The health care services, the hospitals and many health centers are being actively attacked and bombed. And therefore, the amount of care that is available is reducing on a continuous basis.

With no immediate end in sight to the war, families in Gaza are caught

in the middle, trying to feed their children when food is scarce and help is falling short. Now let's take a quick look at some other stories that are in the news. Brutally cold weather is sweeping across America. There are more than a dozen deaths blamed on the Arctic blast. Many are in Oregon, where power outages are making it hard to deal

with freezing temperatures. Portland's "Fox" station talked to a resident about trees knocked over in the storm.

We had three oaks come down in the backyard, big ones that did damage to the roof. We had two fir trees come down in the front yards that took down power lines and everything.

Across the country, there are school closures and travel disruptions, with thousands of flights canceled or delayed. Nashville got more snow in a day than it typically gets in a year. And in Texas, the power grid operators asked people to conserve electricity to avoid outages. It looks as though things are holding up. Grid failures in a Texas winter storm in 2021 killed hundreds of people.

student who wanted to use the restroom matching his gender identity. With the high court declining to step in, that ruling will stand. Staying with the Supreme Court, today it's hearing arguments in a pair of cases that are technically about rules around commercial fishing.

But the impact could go far beyond questions about catching herring. The court could deliver a ruling that blows away decades of precedent, and weakens the ability of federal agencies to regulate the environment, financial markets, workplaces, healthcare, and more. These cases were brought by fishing companies, and they're backed by conservative legal groups. They believe a government mandate requiring them to pay people to monitor their boats is unreasonable.

And that case set up a framework that judges have used now since 1984 to evaluate regulations that federal agencies have put into effect and whether the agencies made a reasonable interpretation of statutes set by Congress. And that may sound like a boring academic exercise, but it's really important.

The case was enormously influential. It created what judges and lawyers now call Chevron deference. In short, it requires courts to defer to federal agencies when it comes to turning laws passed by Congress into actual regulations. If Congress was not explicit about something, courts have to trust how agencies interpret it, as long as they're reasonable. Critics of Chevron deference say that it has given federal agencies too much power in recent decades and resulted in too much red tape.

Chevron is being heard by a court that has really been remade with the addition of three justices nominated by former President Trump, whose administration put a premium on recruiting judges who were skeptical of federal power and what they refer to as the administrative state. They think that unaccountable bureaucrats should not have this much power and that it should really be up to judges to use their independent judgment when looking at these, what they consider, burdensome regulations.

If the fishing companies win here, Chevron deference could fall or be scaled back. And these aren't the only cases this term that will test the power of the federal government.

There's one challenging the in-house administrative judges at the Securities and Exchange Commission that looks to limit fraud in the financial markets. And there's another case challenging the funding for the CFPB, that's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So this one being heard today about Chevron deference is just one of a series going after really the power of the administrative state.

The Supreme Court's upcoming cases on abortion and Trump's election eligibility may be getting more attention. But these other cases, starting with today's arguments,

could fundamentally change how much power the federal government has when it comes to regulating the important issues of our time. The Australian Open, the tennis world's first major of the year, is underway. And right now, the sport has some controversy involving the highlighter yellow-greenish balls, with some players saying they're causing injuries.

So they say the balls are inconsistent across tournaments. Sometimes they're heavier or fluffier. And some balls, they say they have to hit a lot harder. One top player said playing with some of these balls are like hitting a grapefruit, forcing players into 30-shot rallies because they can't hit winning shots. Different tennis ball brands are used at different tournaments, and players say the lack of consistency is actually dangerous.

There's been a lot of discussions on the effect of the different balls, basically every week, on the joints and the wrists and the shoulders and the elbows.

He and other top players say professional tennis should standardize ball designs so that all manufacturers can stick to common specifications and players will know what to expect at different tournaments. In response, the governing bodies for men's and women's professional tennis are now conducting a "strategic review" of tennis balls. They say they'll aim for more consistency without disrupting the money-making sponsorship deals with the companies that make the balls in question.

For now, at least one player says he's actually planning his tournament schedule for the year based on the kind of balls being used. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We've got a Narrated Article coming up next from "The Atlantic" that aims to answer a question that American parents, prospective parents, and observers around the world can't seem to figure out.