Hamas was studying Tuesday Israel's offer of a 40-day truce in the war in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of scores of hostages held since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attacks.

Returning to Qatar after the latest talks in Cairo, the Hamas delegation said it would "discuss the ideas and the proposal... we are keen to respond as quickly as possible," a Hamas source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Egyptian sources told Al-Qahera News, a site linked to Egyptian intelligence services, that the Hamas delegation would "return with a written response".

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s President Xi Jinping and other Beijing officials as differences between the two nations grow on a number of issues. 

Blinken said he outlined the U.S. worries with China, mentioning Beijing’s backing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has surpassed the two-year mark, and Taiwan.

“Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” Blinken said to reporters following the meeting.

The areas where the United States and China can work together seem to be shrinking fast, and the risks of confrontation are growing. But it was clear on Friday that both countries are trying to salvage what they can.

Preserving some semblance of cooperation — and the difficulty of doing so — was at the heart of a meeting between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Friday. It was the latest effort by the rivals to keep communications open even as disputes escalate over trade, national security and geopolitical frictions.

China is making “attempts to influence and arguably interfere” in the 2024 elections in the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a diplomatic tour to the communist country.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in China on Wednesday to try to preserve the recent and delicate stabilization of ties between the United States and China, as tensions over trade, territorial disputes and national security threaten to derail relations again.

Qatar is reconsidering its role as cease-fire broker between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Gulf state’s prime minister said, expressing concerns that Doha’s mediation has been subject to “political exploitation.”

In a late-Wednesday statement, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani “lamented the political exploitation by some politicians with narrow interests, marketing their electoral campaigns through the defamation of Qatar’s role.”

When I began working as a consular officer at the US embassy in Ankara, Turkey, I was at the beginning of what was supposed to be a 20-year diplomatic career. Maybe I didn’t love all of US foreign policy, but in my routine visa assignment I was deeply committed to treating everybody I interviewed fairly and playing my part in facilitating the American immigrant dream. Then, on 27 June 2017, Donald Trump issued orders to begin implementing the “Muslim ban”.

The United Nations Security Council has failed to pass a United States draft resolution calling for, but not demanding, a ceasefire in Israel’s continuing war on Gaza after two permanent members chose to veto it.

The draft put before the Council on Friday received 11 votes in favour, three against – from Russia, China and Algeria – and one abstention by Guyana.

Russia and China both exercised their veto against the resolution, which would have spoken of the “imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire” and condemned the October 7 attack by Hamas.

Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Friday that condemned Hamas for its October 7 attack against Israel authored by the United States. 

“Russia and China still could not bring themselves to condemn Hamas as terrorist attacks on October 7,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield told the 15-member body which has yet to take a stand against the terror group.

“Can we just pause on that for a moment?,” Thomas-Greenfield said. 

Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-backed United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” in Gaza on Friday.

Eleven countries voted in favor of the resolution on Friday morning, while those two, along with Algeria, voted against it, and there was one abstention. This was the fourth attempt by the Security Council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire, and the United States didn’t support any of the first three, none of which passed.