TV News LIES

The US state department has frozen all applications for passports with “X” sex markers and changes to gender identity on existing passports, following a new executive order signed by Donald Trump on his first day of office.

In an internal cable obtained by the Guardian, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, instructed department staff on Thursday to implement the strict new guidelines for official documentation.

In the days since a fragile ceasefire took hold in the Gaza Strip, Israel has launched a major military operation in the occupied West Bank and suspected Jewish settlers have rampaged through two Palestinian towns.

The violence comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic pressure from his far-right allies after agreeing to the truce and hostage-prisoner exchange with the Hamas militant group. U.S. President Donald Trump has, meanwhile, rescinded the Biden administration’s sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.

A federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship for the children of many migrants, a major hit to one of the president’s Day 1 orders.

Trump’s order directly contradicts the Constitution, which guarantees citizenship for all people born within the U.S. under the 14th Amendment.

The order ignited suits from 22 different states as well as civil rights groups who argued the order ran afoul of the law by denoting citizenship based on the immigration status of their parents.

Federal judges presiding over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection cases, including the one who had overseen charges against President Donald Trump himself, are excoriating his blanket pardons for all the people charged, particularly those previously convicted of violent attacks on police officers.

Al Jazeera asked Farhan Haq, the UN spokesman for the secretary-general, for a response to the comments made by the nominee for the US ambassador to the UN about the occupied West Bank.

Elise Stefanik on Tuesday had told US senators that she agreed that Israel had a “biblical right” to the occupied West Bank.

Here’s what Haq said:

“Our response is that the West Bank is part of the occupied Palestinian territories, and of course, as such, the future of that of the West Bank, Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories as a whole needs to be dealt with through negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian authorities.”

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After more than 15 months of relentless Israeli air and ground assaults on Gaza, many of the tiny Palestinian enclave's 2 million residents are homeless and scrambling to obtain basic necessities. If last week's ceasefire holds, experts caution that rebuilding the devastated territory will take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars.

The three-phase ceasefire deal places the reconstruction of Gaza as the final phase, following a permanent end to the war. Dima Toukan, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, says it's important to acknowledge that this last phase could be a long way off — or never happen at all.

"The path forward beyond the first phase of the agreement is fraught with challenges and remains unclear," she says.