News Wrap: U.S. Army ship en route to Mediterranean for construction of pier for Gaza

Laura Barron-Lopez:

Good evening. I'm Laura Barron-Lopez. John Yang is away. Today. talks aimed at securing a six-week ceasefire in Gaza remain stalled as efforts to increase aid deliveries by sea moved ahead at a crawling pace. A U.S. Army ship full of equipment to build a temporary pier off Gaza's coast for delivery aid is in route to the Mediterranean. Construction of the pier is expected to take weeks, another ship full of aid is still waiting in Cyprus.

As the civilian death toll in Gaza climbs President Biden stepped up his public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview on MSNBC.

Joe Biden, U.S. President:

He must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken. He's hurting. I, my view is hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world is contrary to what is your stance for.

Laura Barron-Lopez:

Biden also said an Israeli military operation into the southern city of Rafah would cross a red line, but added that the U.S. would continue sending weapons shipments to Israel.

Alabama Senator Katie Britt responded to criticisms today about a misleading story she told in her Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address. In criticizing Biden's border policies, Britt talked about meeting a woman who had been sex trafficked at age 12. In reality, the trafficking occurred outside of the U.S. decades ago. Britt appeared on Fox News Sunday.

Woman:

To be clear, the story that you relayed is not something that's happened under the Biden administration, that particular person.

Sen. Katie Britt (R) Alabama: Well, I very, very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12. So I didn't say a teenager. I didn't say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12.

Laura Barron-Lopez:

Senator Britt's office confirmed on Saturday that she was speaking about a woman who had been sexually abused in Mexico from 2004 to 2008. And in Haiti, the U.S. military airlifted non-essential embassy personnel out of the capital Port-au-Prince overnight and added U.S. forces to bolster security as escalating gang violence threatens to bring down the government.

The Caribbean nation is under a state of emergency. Thousands of Haitians have been forced from their homes and the unrest and efforts to assemble a foreign armed force to aid Haitian police have been unsuccessful so far.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, a new examination of the relationship between the U.S. and Saddam Hussein and the conservative push to give fetuses legal rights.