CBS News
Gaza officials say Israeli strike hits school as IDF recovers remains of 6 hostages and Biden says Hamas “backing away” from cease-fire proposal
There were conflicting messages about the prospects of a truce deal in the Israel-Hamas war Tuesday as the death toll on both sides continued to climb. Civil defense officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said an Israeli strike on a school being used as a shelter in the enclave’s biggest city killed at least 10 people.
The strike on the Mostafa Hafez school in Gaza City came as a children’s activity took place next to the building, officials in the territory told CBS News. The Israel Defense Forces said the air force had struck the school as it was being used as a Hamas command center.
“The command and control center was embedded and hidden by the Hamas terrorist organization inside” the school, the IDF said in a statement, adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.”
Dawoud Abu Alkas/REUTERS
The IDF also said Tuesday that troops had recovered the bodies of six more hostages inside Gaza. Five of them were already known to have been killed in captivity, and a sixth was confirmed Tuesday. Israeli authorities said the bodies of Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, and Haim Perry were recovered from near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in an intelligence-led operation.
IDF operations in Gaza — where officials say more than 40,000 people have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel sparked the war — have continued apace during the cease-fire negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the war will not end until Israel achieves its stated objectives of destroying Hamas and bringing home the remaining hostages. There were 109 people still listed as hostages in Gaza by Israeli authorities before the recoveries on Tuesday, including 34 known to have been killed whose remains were yet to be returned.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken left Israel Tuesday morning to head for Qatar and Egypt, which have helped the U.S. negotiate the long-sought but thus far elusive cease-fire agreement to halt the fighting in Israel’s war with Hamas and to secure the release of the hostages. The talks appeared to be making headway Monday, as Blinken said Netanyahu had backed a so-called “bridging proposal” from the U.S. aimed at closing the final gaps in demands between Israel and Hamas.
Blinken and President Biden said the onus was on Hamas to agree to the proposal, but a Hamas official told CBS News right after the announcement by Blinken that the group “didn’t receive any new proposals.” Both sides have accused each other of blocking a truce agreement for months.
Blinken said Monday that Netanyahu had “confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal, that he supports it. It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”
Speaking Tuesday morning, Mr. Biden said Hamas was “backing away” from the deal, saying it was “still in play, but you can’t predict” the outcome of the talks.
“Israel says they can work it out,” the president said in Chicago, but “Hamas is now backing away.”
Hamas fired back Tuesday, accusing Mr. Biden and Blinken of issuing “misleading” statements that “do not reflect the true position of the movement [Hamas], which is keen to reach a cessation of aggression.”
The group, in a statement released on social media, again accused Israel of changing the terms of a truce proposal tabled in early July that it says was “based on Biden’s own declaration on May 31st,” calling U.S. acceptance of the changes purportedly sought by Israel, “acquiescence to the terrorist Netanyahu’s new conditions and his criminal plans towards the Gaza Strip.”
During his visit to Israel on Monday, Blinken said the talks were at “a decisive moment — probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.”
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.
