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Police searching for clandestine crematorium in Mexico say bones found around charred pit are of “animal origin”
Trailed by search dogs and police, María de Jesús Soria Aguayo and more than a dozen volunteers walked carefully through fields of weeds and dry earth with their eyes fixed on the ground Wednesday.
On the fringes of Mexico City, the group was looking for human remains and other evidence after volunteer searchers said the site might be the location of a clandestine crematorium.
The search came after Ceci Flores, a leader of a group seeking the bodies of Mexico’s missing, announced on social media late Tuesday that her team had found bones, clandestine burial pits and ID cards around a charred pit on the southern outskirts of the city.
However, Ulises Lara, Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, disputed the claims Wednesday night, saying that officials found 14 bones and all were of “animal origin.”
“We can confirm that it is not a crematorium, nor from a clandestine grave,” he said.
Flores’ announcement on social media a day earlier had gained attention because it was the first time in recent memory that anyone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the Mexican capital.
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
If such a site were found, it could be a blow to Mexico’s governing Morena party in the runup to June 2 elections. Morena says violence in Mexico hasn’t rippled to Mexico City while it has controlled the local government.
The search Wednesday underscored the slog many Mexican families face as they seek the remains of the 110,000 people declared missing amid cartel violence.
The volunteers, like Soria Aguayo, are mostly the mothers of the disappeared. They have formed their own independent groups to search in violence-torn swaths of Mexico.
The “madres buscadoras” — “searching mothers” — usually aren’t trying to convict anyone of their relatives’ disappearances. They say they just want to find their remains. Many families say not having definite knowledge of a relative’s fate is worse than it would be to know a loved one was dead.
“I started my own search alone, tracking with my own hands and searching alone in the countryside,” said Soria Aguayo, 54, whose son’s remains were recovered in Veracruz state in 2022. “My promise to these women is to continue searching until we can’t any more … because there’s still many (bodies) we haven’t found.”
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
The Mexican government has spent little looking for the missing, so the volunteers conduct their own hunts for clandestine graves where cartels hide their victims.
If the volunteers find something, the most authorities will do is send a police and forensics team to retrieve remains, which in most cases are never identified. The government also hasn’t adequately funded or implemented a genetic database to help identify remains.
The searches increasingly have deadly consequences. At least seven of the activists searching for some of Mexico’s missing have been slain since 2021.
Volunteer groups have been angered by a government campaign to “find” missing people by checking their last known address, to see if they have returned home without advising authorities. Activists say it is just an attempt to reduce the politically embarrassing figures on the missing.
In discussing some of the evidence found earlier at the site, Lara, the Mexico City chief prosecutor, said Wednesday morning that police went to the addresses listed on the ID cards recovered and “found that both of the people to whom those cards belonged are alive and in good health.”
Ginnette Riquelme / AP
Lara said one of them, a woman, told officers that her ID card and cellphone were stolen about a year ago, when thieves snatched them from her while she was stuck in traffic. While that ruled out the possibility the woman’s body could have been dumped there, it suggested criminals had used the site to dispose of evidence. In the wooded and rural fringes of Mexico City, it is not unheard of for criminals to dump the bodies of kidnapping victims.
After hours of searching through fields on the rural outskirts of the Mexican capital, volunteers came up with little other than frustration.
While some in the group cast doubt that they would find any bodies, Flores said they planned to press on in their search, adding they had already spent two days searching the area following an anonymous tip. Volunteers like Flores often conduct investigations based on tips from former criminals.
“If they don’t search, they’re never going to find anything,” Flores said.
Bela Karolyi, the charismatic if polarizing gymnastics coach who turned young women into champions and the United States into an international power, has died. He was 82.
A spokesperson for USA Gymnastics confirmed to CBS News by email that Karolyi died Friday. No cause of death was given.
Karolyi and wife Martha trained multiple Olympic gold medalists and world champions in the U.S. and Romania, including Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.
Ron Jenkins/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
“A big impact and influence on my life,” Comaneci, who was just 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.
The Karolyis defected to the United States in 1981 and over the next 30-plus years became a guiding force in American gymnastics, though not without controversy. Bela helped guide Retton — all of 16 — to the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the floor at the 1996 Games in Atlanta after Strug’s vault secured the team gold for the Americans.
Karolyi briefly became the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics women’s elite program in 1999 and incorporated a semi-centralized system that eventually turned the Americans into the sport’s gold standard. It did not come without a cost. He was pushed out after the 2000 Olympics after several athletes spoke out about his tactics.
It would not be the last time Karolyi was accused of grandstanding and pushing his athletes too far physically and mentally.
During the height of the Larry Nassar scandal in the late 2010s — when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor was effectively given a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment — over a dozen former gymnasts came forward saying the Karolyis were part of a system that created an oppressive culture that allowed Nassar’s behavior to run unchecked for years.
Still, some of Karolyi’s most famous students were always among his staunchest defenders. When Strug got married, she and Karolyi took a photo recreating their famous scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her onto the medals podium after she vaulted on a badly sprained ankle.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
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Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
In their final meeting, China’s leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Biden that his nation was “ready to work with a new administration,” as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over.
The two leaders gathered Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Mr. Biden was expected to urge Xi to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. It marked their first in-person meeting since they met in Northern California last November.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Xi appeared to signal his concern that the incoming president’s protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail could send the U.S.-China relationship into another valley.
“China is ready to work with a new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples,” Xi said through an interpreter.
LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spoke in broader brushstrokes about where the relationship has gone and reflected not just on the past four years, but on their long relationship.
“Over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have experienced ups and downs, but with the two of us at the helm, we have also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation, and generally achieved stability,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Xi, with top aides surrounding them, gathered around a long rectangle of tables in an expansive conference room at Lima’s Defines Hotel and Conference Center.
There’s much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned promising to levy 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
Bobby Djavaheri, president of Los Angeles-based Yedi Houseware Appliances — which manufactures its products in China — told CBS News in an interview this week that such tariffs “would decimate our business, but not only our business. It would decimate all small businesses that rely on importing.”
Trump has also proposed revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, phasing out all imports of essential goods from China and banning China from buying U.S. farmland.
Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most significant foreign policy challenge they will face.
It’s a big moment for Mr. Biden as he wraps up more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most consequential on the international stage and put much effort into cultivating that relationship.
Mr. Biden and Xi first got to know each other on travels across the U.S. and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both have said left a lasting impression.
“For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between. And I think we’ve spent a long time dealing with these issues,” Mr. Biden said Saturday.
But the last four years have presented a steady stream of difficult moments.
The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks. The initial findings have revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.
U.S. intelligence officials also have assessed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine.
And tensions flared last year after Mr. Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States.
