News Wrap: Blinken visits Qatar in diplomatic effort to contain Israel-Hamas war

John Yang:

Good evening. I'm John Yang. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's urgent mission to the Middle East is pressing ahead on multiple fronts today as Israel's war against Hamas and Gaza enters its fourth month. In Qatar, Blinken sought to revitalize talks aimed at winning the release of the more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, including some Americans.

But the Qatari prime minister acknowledged that this past week's targeted killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut had affected the talks which Qatar is mediating. It had a Blinken stop in Israel that begins tomorrow. Military officials there said they doubt dismantled a mosque in northern Gaza.

In southern Gaza, an airstrike killed two journalists. One of them the son of Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh. In October airstrike killed Dahdouh's wife, two other children and a grandson.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says he takes full responsibility for the delay in informing the White House and top Pentagon colleagues of his hospitalization. In a statement he said, I recognize I could have done a better job of ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better.

Pentagon officials told the White House that Austin had been in the hospital since Monday only after they themselves learned about it on Thursday. President Biden has spoken with Austin who remains in the hospital and expressed his confidence in him.

Major winter storms are dropping the first major snowfall of the season in the east and packing heavy snow from the Rockies to the Sierras and the Cascades in the West. Parts of Massachusetts and Maine already had nearly a foot of snow by this morning and more is expected to fall through the night.

In the south, severe storms. In Fort Lauderdale last night a tornado damaged structures but didn't appear to cause any injuries.

And a rocket launch scheduled for early tomorrow morning will try for the first moon landing of a U.S. craft in more than a half century. NASA hopes the private effort will kickstart more commercial deliveries to the moon and eventually a manned mission.

In a nod to Star Trek, the booster rocket is called Vulcan, and it will carry the DNA of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry along with the DNA of George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, what's behind the spike in childhood speech development delays in the United States, and a follow up investigation as new questions about a widely used breathing machine.