with breaking news. among 17 hostages released by hamas is an american little girl. this comes on the third day of a four-day ceasefire. other groups of hostages were released on friday and late saturday after some delays. president biden is now speaking about these new developments. >> two days ago, two days ago, one of our fellow americans, a little girl named abigail, turned 4 years old. she spent her birthday, that birthday, at least 50 days before that held hostage by hamas. today she is free and jill and i together with so many americans are praying for the fact that she is going to be all all right. you know, she is free and she is in israel now. and so those who are now wrapping abigail in love and care, the supportive services

she needs, she has been through a terrible traumatic a her mom was killed in front of her when her kibbutz was attacked by hamas terrorists on october 7th. abigail ran to her dad then, who then was gunned down, gunned down as well, while using his body to shield little abigail. she then roon to a neighbor for help where they were all taken hostage, that entire house of neighbors, taken hostage by hamas. and held for 50 days. what she endured is unthinkable. abigail was among 13 hostages released today from gaza under the brokered and sustained though intensive u.s. diplomacy. she is now safely in israel and we continue to press and expect for additional americans to be released as well. we will not stop working until every hostage is returned to their loved ones. as i said when i spoke about this deal on friday, this has been the product of a lot of hard work and weeks of personal

engagement for me and my team. we have been in close contact with the leaders of qatar, egypt and israel, speaking with each one of them repeatedly over the past few weeks to help secure this deal. we spoke again yesterday with the em ear of qatar in order to keep the hostage releases on track and push for abigail to be a part of this release and i will be spoken again shortly with prime minister benjamin netanyahu and we will continue to remain personally engaged to see that this deal is fully implemented and work to extend the deal as well. for weeks i have been advocating a pause in the fighting for two purposes. it tin crease the assistance getting into the gaza civilians who need help and to facilitate release of hostages. and we know that innocent children in gaza are suffering greatly as well because this war that hamas has unleashed is so -- has such consequences. thousands have been killed, and

from the earliest days of this crisis iing with president sisi of egypt, king abdullah of jordan and leaders to expand humanitarian assistance to help innocent palestinians in need who are not part of hamas. under this deal, fighting in gaza has now been paused three days. over that time 58 hostages have been released, including a thai, filipino and russian nationals. dozens of families have been reunited and we worked urgently to take advantage of the pause to surge aid into gaza. we have moved approximately 200 aid trucks into gaza each day, loaded with food, water, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas. more is needed, but this deal is delivering life-saving results. critically needed aid is going in and hostages are coming out. this dole structured so that it can be extended to build on

these results. that's my goal. that's our goal, to keep this pause going beyond tomorrow so that we can continue to see more hostages come out and surge more humanitarian relief into those in need in gaza. we have seen this is the day-by-day approach, hour by hour approach. nothing is guaranteed and nothing is taken for granted. but the proof that this is working and worth pursuing further is in every smile and every grateful tear we see on the faces of those families who are finally getting back together again. the proof is little abigail. more than 20 other children, 18 years and younger, have been released. they have been released through this deal as well. they have endured a terrible ordeal and they can now begin the long journey towards healing. i am going to continue working with the emir of qatar, president s sissy and prime minister netanyahu to do

everything to do to see all the hirngs are freed. i am grateful for the partnership as we pursue this deal. as we work together to see the -- all this implemented and now to extend it further. i will continue working with all our partners to take the hard but necessary steps to build an integrated and more prosperous and peaceful future in the region. a two-state solution is the only way to guarantee a long-term security to both israelis and palestinian people. to make sure israel and palestinians alike live in equal measure of freedom and dignity. we will not give up on working towards that goal. so thank you very much. thank god she is home. the little -- i just can't imagine the enjoyment and the -- i just -- i wish i was there to hold her. >> mr. president, do you have an update on the other americans being held and any sense as to when they would be released? >> we are hopeful, but i don't

have anything firmly to tell you at this moment. >> were you expecting anything to use this momentum to extend the pause? do you have any guarantees about proof of life for other hostages or an expectation how much longer you could push this? >> look, you know the deal calls for every ten hostages released, extend another day. so i'm hopeful this is not the end. that it's going to continue. but we don't know. and i get a sense that all of the players in the region, even the neighbors who aren't -- haven't been directly involved, are looking for a way to end this so the hostages are all released and hamas is completely -- how can i say it? no longer in control of any portion of gaza. >> do they have control of all of the hostages? are there still other militant

groups that have -- >> we think there are other militant groups. we are not certain. >> mr. president, how is abigail doing? what's her physical condition? do you have any information? >> i haven't gotten that information. i just wanted to let you know immediately, they were going to cross into egypt, as you recall. but an older, non-american elderly woman is very sick and was in need of immediate medical help. so they arranged a cross directly in israel to take her to a hospital. all i know is that she has been held. i don't know, i haven't seen a photograph. i just been in communication with my team. but she is safely ensconced in israel. but there is a lot more work to be done. >> how many days would you like to see the pause? >> i would like to see us move to a point where we were able to -- well, let me put it this

way. i'd like to see the pause go overnight as long as prisoners keep coming out. all right? thank you all so very much. i know, you know, we have to call you -- i know to you say, what's he call me with only ten minutes or so notice. that's the notice i get because we didn't know -- i didn't want to have be having this press conference if they weren't physically, even when they were in the red cross ambulance, i didn't want to do it because they were not out. they were still in gaza. so i don't thank you enough. but thanks for your patience. and i know -- >> we are here anytime. >> all right. jill and i thank -- okay, happy holidays to you guys. >> president biden addressing the nation, talking about the first american hostage to be released by hamas. she is abigail edan, 4 years old. she is free and she is in israel now. he also talked about the entire

release of all of these hostages and the fact that we are on day three of four of a ceasefire. the president saying he hopes that that can extend. he says i'm hopeful this is not the end and he is hopeful that day after day there will be more hostages released. he also talked about critically needed aid, getting into gaza as hostages come out. nbc's erin mclaughlin is in tel aviv. the president said he doesn't know the status of abigail at this point. do we know any more from the family? >> well, we are waiting to hear from the family no doubt they are preoccupied, reuniting with abigail potentially as i speak. what was notable to me there about what the president said was the change in procedure. normally, what happens when they release these hostages, the hostages are brought through the rafah crossing into egypt and on to an israeli air force base.

but the president saying that they had issues, one of the hostages, an elderly non-american hostage, israeli, had medical issues and had to be immediately evacuated to a hospital and so the hostages, including abigail, were brought directly into israel. that, of course, is notable because up until this point the hostages that had been released seem to have been in fairly good medical condition, although, you know, psychologically it's a completely different story. the trauma that each and every one of these hostages has endured, one israeli military spokesperson saying there is not a single one them that doesn't have either a loved one still in gaza or a family member that was killed in front of them on october 7th as is the case of little abigail. and they don't know, many of them, if they even know at this point if they are aware of the kind of trauma, if they are aware of the loved ones that they lost on october 7th. so all of that they are having to work through at this point:no

doubt abigail's family is going through this process. she is getting the specialized medical care and treatment that is necessary. and we are waiting for those first images of little abigail reunited with her brothers and the rest of her family, kate. >> yeah, we are showing pictures of abigail. we showed a little bit of video of another family who is reunited in a really heartfelt scene a couple of days ago. we are seeing a lot of video like that. talk about the big picture here. the president mentioned more than 20 children have been among those hostages released on three days of releases now. who else is being released and what's happening on the other side of things? israelis are releasing palestinian prisoners. >> reporter: yeah, the focus of the releases so far have been very much on women and children, and appears as though they are also trying to keep families together. so the thinking being that the

other two americans that potentially could be relead maybe even tomorrow, we just don't know, are two american women that would qualify in that women and children category. you heard there the president though express the hope that this pause will continue as part of this deal for every single day of additional ceasefire, they -- hamas should, under the agreement, release ten hostages. but a spokesperson for the israeli government earlier today saying that really at this point in his view it's up to hamas to continue the release, to continue this pause. now, momentarily now that the israeli hostages have crossed into israel, we are expecting some 39 palestinians that have been held in israeli prisons to be released as part of this exchange. once that happens, it will mark the completion of the exchange for the third day, and certainly be a good sign for tomorrow's

exchange. kate. >> erin, thank you so much. let's bring in nbc news white house correspondent alley rafah, who was listening to the president. you heard the president say he has been in close contact with the players, with egypt, with qatar, israel. he said i pushed for release of abby. he has been working behind the scenes. talk more about that. >> reporter: absolutely, kate. as recently as yesterday the president was on the phone with the emir of qatar to add pressure and iron out any problems that could impede this deal moving forward. as we saw, this hours-long pause in the release of hostages by hamas yesterday. and qatari and israeli officials credited the president and senior administration officials for adding the needed pressure to be able to seal this deal, to get this cease-fire deal accomplished. but the president in those remarks there it is not lost on him how incredibly fragile and delicate this deal continues to

be. he called it a, quote, day-by-day approach. he said nothing is guaranteed. and nothing is taken for granted. and as you mentioned, he is pushing now for the extension of this ceasefire. that's something that national security advisor jake sullivan was asked about on the sunday shows this morning. and he said israel has laid its card out on the table and now the ball is in hamas' court as to whether this ceasefire could be extended. >> all right. thank you. thanks to you both. that concludes this nbc news special report. of course, we have much more online anytime at nbcnews.com, throughout the day. i >> the privacy and security is an interesting point. it does bring up what i was alluding to earlier. we learned post 9/11 -- your

software didn't exist at the time. but we heard about how one set of fbi agents were suspicious about a bunch of guys trying to learn to fly airplanes on one side of the country. there's an agent in arizona, same agency, who is writing a memo saying, i think somebody might use a plane. they couldn't connect the dots. they develop a system in which so much can be shared. then we end up with that kid in massachusetts who -- allegedly, gave away secrets because he could access it. there's a balance between making sure those who need the sensitive data can get it and those who shouldn't be seeing it don't see it. >> we find this really motivating. it hits in the hurt of why we built our technology. trying to thread that needle between enabling operations and often multi-agency, multi-jurisdiction operations or investigative processes that involve municipalities, regions,

counties, and very often the federal government as well. walking into one of these operation centers, it's common to see many different disciplines and many different types of departments all trying to interact together. making sure that everyone can see exactly and only what they are allowed to see while being able to get all the information that they need to be able to drive their processes forward is critical and very motivating to our team. >> the unique american way of doing policing, where you have everything on a very local level, works very well, except the cityof richmond may not know they are looking for the same guy as the city next door. >> it's true. they might look for the same person at the same moment in time. they don't have any signal that there's another person that's trying to collaborate on the same case, or maybe two cases that are open at the same time and two different people don't realize if they were to connect

the dots, they would be able to help each other. >> one agency has a piece of information that would finish the problem for the other agency. you came from a company that does something similar. >> yeah. in the department of defense and the national security space with the u.s. federal government and allied countries, many of the engineers and myself have come out of that world. >> ten years ago on this show, we did a piece about predictive policing, sending cops to the scene before -- the scene of the crime before the criminal shows up. santa cruz was one of the cities that was the first to experiment with it and later banned the practice. this is not what you are doing, right? could it be used in predictive policing? >> that's correct, it's not what we are doing. we have seen in law enforcement, there have been evolutions of strategies to try to not just respond to crime but prevent

crime, the ultimate holy grail. there was a rush about 10, 15 years ago toward predictive policing. that's evolved into other concepts in policing. there's a lot of thought leadership inside of academic institutions and think tanks on the east coast and west trying to advance a lot of these concepts. we have avoided the concept of predictive policing in its entirety. we find having a human in the loop is necessary. what we try to do is serve the data to the people who can make human judgment calls. often what we find is those people simply don't have access to the data when they need it. >> i think that's the most important thing. we have information, including us in the public about what the police were doing and where crimes were happening. it's the idea of combining all of these bits of data that may

make a huge difference. >> yeah. we find comparative statistics, trying to analyze what's happening now relative to what happened yesterday or the week before or the year before is a very common way to analyze performance for a public safety agency. even the act of trying to compare what happened today to what happened this time last year, those reports can be 30 days late or more. typically, the processes to get that data are very static. the time it takes to put that data together has his tore he can -- historically been very slow. we try to automate the processes so things become a more accessible process. so much so that we see cities and counties adopting similar strategies.

>> somebody said the most important tool, once you have the peregrine technology, is a swivel chair, because you can look at many screens and discover so many things. >> it's surprising to see what creative minds can do when they are provided the technology. all of the learning that informed the engineering work we do in the valley here are from the front lines. we try to embed side by side. >> i appreciate you being with us. nick noone is the ceo. we will be back in a moment.

welcome back. we wrap up this week's show with something the industry is calling cozy games. video games that are not about killing or racing or scoring

touchdowns, but more simple things like animal crossing. this is animal crossing, an open-ended game with no specific goal. you don't beat an opponent or win a round. kennedy rose, a former lawyer turned tiktoker talks about it with her nearly one-third of a million subscribers. kennedy, who goes by the nickname cozy k online joins me now. good morning. kennedy or cozy k, let's start with, what is a cozy game? what's the definition as you understand it? >> i like to think of cozy gaming as kind of the antithesis or pushback to the competitive games you were talking about, the shooters, things like that. those are the post prominent in the gaming space. i think there's a time and place for those. cozy games are people who just want to take part in something with low stakes. playing out a story, building up

a town, taking care of animals, things like that. >> easy going. i love when i see someone in the movies or whatnot, and they are supposed to play a video game and they are mashing buttons like mad. i guess there are a few games like that. these are more thoughtful. you don't have to take action right away. you can think about what you are going to do or just simply enjoy whatever is on the screen. >> absolutely. exactly. >> this is -- i'm going to guess it's more popular with women. is that a fair statement? >> yeah. i would say that there are some cozy games that are popular across the board. i think it brings women into the fold a little bit more. it tends to tap into skills people socialized as women may have been encouraged to foster like community building, decor and design and it's more accessible. competitive shooters tend to

have more toxic environments. the lobbies are pretty heated. i think tend to exclude women a lot. cozy gaming is the opposite of that. it's pretty solitairety. it's welcoming. they want to welcome them in. for women who maybe were encouraged to game in their youth and are taking a look into the gaming world in adulthood, they find cozy gaming more welcoming. >> one of the og cozy games would have been the sims. it was almost hard to describe to people. they said, what do you do? i don't do anything. what's the point? there kind of isn't a point. >> exactly. exactly. >> fair enough. a lot of people i think discovered -- i have been playing video games since atari and nintendo. people discovered video games that hadn't played them before during the pandemic, right?

you ran out of things to do. a video game is something you could download. >> yeah. absolutely. i have got more into it during the pandemic. i think for a lot of people, it was a forum of self-care, a new hobby. it was something to turn your brain off for a little bit and focus on something with a little bit more whimsy and light heartedness and build toward when you are stuck at home. now it's transformed into a real lifestyle for some people. it's something they can do when they want to relax and shift into a different head space. it's nice to come from the pandemic. >> i mentioned animal crossing. can you give folks at home an idea of what other cozy games are out there? >> yeah. i have two categories. one is stimulating, get you out of the house. one of those is -- it's a newer

game. you have this little augmented reality pet. you can take care of it at home. i like that it gets you out of the house. you can walk around with them. i think it's so cute. another favorite, when i like to cozy up on the couch, get a cup of tee, animal valley. there's farming, town building, decorating, fun storylines and stuff. very fun. >> the gaming industry has noticed this. it's not like they are dragging kicking and screaming. there's money in this. they have noticed this. >> absolutely. i personally love as somebody who has been into gaming my whole life and started with harvest moon. that was the only cozy game out there. now that there are so many more games out there for cozy gamers, it's great. it can bring more people into

the fold and get more people interested in gaming that might not have considered it to be a hobby they would be interested in. >> i started the segment with, you used to be a lawyer. now you are a tiktoker. tell me about that. >> it was one of those ones where you had to take the leap, take the leap of faith. i spent any life working to be a lawyer. that was my identity. this is who i am, i'm a lawyer. i just had to follow the passion is what it was. i had so much joy and passion in this. that's what i'm doing now. >> people can find you on social media on tiktok. >> yep. >> cozy k as the nickname, kennedy rose, thank you for joining us this morning. that was fun. we will be back in a moment.

that's our show this week. thanks to my guests. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. ♪♪

football. >> sunday night