Blinken to visit Middle East in effort to rally support for cease-fire
CBSN
Tel Aviv — Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make another trip to the Middle East next week as the U.S. attempts to ramp up support for a cease-fire proposal in the Israel-Hamas war announced last week by President Biden.
Blinken will make stops in Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Qatar, the White House said, where he "will discuss with partners the need to reach a cease-fire agreement that secures the release of all hostages."
The announcement comes just one day after international scrutiny over an Israeli airstrike on a school in the central Gaza refugee camp of Nuseirat, where thousands of Palestinian civilians had been sheltering. Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, said at least 35 people were killed in the strike.
Southern Gaza Strip — In a rare moment of access to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, CBS News visited a critical aid distribution center on Wednesday just inside the Gaza Strip, near the Karem Shalom border crossing from Israel. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza after more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war remains dire.
Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies over the Ukraine-orchestrated killing of a senior general in Moscow. Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's chemical and biological weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia's unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.