00:00A National Guard member ambushed near the White House has now died.
00:05Who she was, and the latest on the soldiers still fighting to survive.
00:09Plus, the death toll rises in that Hong Kong high-rise fire,
00:12and how investigators believe the inferno spread so fast.
00:16And President Trump is not being subtle,
00:18telling U.S. troops a land attack in Venezuela against drug cartels could be coming soon.
00:25The stories that matter, clear and credible.
00:28From across the country to around the world.
00:31These are your unbiased updates from Straight Arrow News.
00:37Good morning, I'm Craig DeGrelli.
00:39We begin this morning on a somber note.
00:41One of the two West Virginia National Guard members shot in an attack near the White House Wednesday has now died.
00:48In a Thanksgiving call with troops,
00:50President Trump announced that 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom died from her injuries.
00:5424-year-old Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe remains in critical condition.
00:58The president called the suspect, identified as 25-year-old Ramanula Lackinwall, an Afghan national,
01:05a monster, and labeled the attack an act of terrorism.
01:08He also blamed the Biden administration for bringing Lackinwall into the country.
01:12As you may know, DHS has confirmed that the suspect is an Afghan national flown here by the previous administration who was such a bad administration.
01:25And I have a picture of a plane.
01:30This is what it looked like when they came in.
01:31It was total bedlam.
01:32Do you remember that period of time?
01:34Total bedlam.
01:35People crammed onto the plane.
01:38And the toughest, meanest, most capable physically got on the plane, not the people that we were looking for.
01:47The Sainteous atrocity reminds us that we have no greater national security priority
01:51than ensuring that we have full control over the people that enter and remain in our country.
01:59Lackinwall served in a CIA-backed Afghan army unit before coming to the U.S. in 2021 as part of the mass Afghan evacuation.
02:09He applied for asylum in 2024, and that asylum was approved this year under the Trump administration.
02:15While President Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel say Lackinwall was not properly vetted,
02:20a senior U.S. official tells ABC News he was vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center and, quote,
02:26he was clean on all checks.
02:28In the wake of that shooting, the White House is ordering a wide-ranging re-examination of U.S. immigration records,
02:35and that move begins with green cards.
02:37U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it will review every green card issued to immigrants
02:43from 19 so-called countries of concern.
02:46Those countries include Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Venezuela, Haiti, and more.
02:51The Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joe Edlow, said he's acting at the President's direction,
02:58posting on X,
02:59I have directed a full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern.
03:07In a statement to CNN, DHS Assistant Secretary Trish McLaughlin said,
03:12In a video address Wednesday night, the President said the shooting underscores the need to recheck anyone
03:29who entered through the program that the suspect came through.
03:32No timeline for how long this re-examination could take or how many people could be affected.
03:37A horrific scene is still unfolding in Hong Kong,
03:41where a high-rise fire has now become the city's deadliest in more than half a century.
03:46The death toll has surged to 128, with officials warning it's likely to rise.
03:51About 200 people are still unaccounted for,
03:54as crews spend a third day picking through charred remains of an eight-tower apartment complex in the Tai Po District.
04:01Firefighters, some still doused in ash, are going unit-by-unit, flashlights in hand,
04:06as parts of the building continue to smolder.
04:09The fire department confirms one of their own died after collapsing at the scene.
04:14Investigators say the Inferno started in bamboo scaffolding and flammable construction netting,
04:19then raced up the outside of the building.
04:22Officials say fire alarms in all eight buildings were not functional.
04:26Three men from the construction company overseeing the renovation are now under arrest,
04:30accused of gross negligence and manslaughter.
04:32Officials are now launching a citywide inspection of all buildings under renovation
04:37and say they may finally move away from bamboo scaffolding, a practice used there for generations.
04:43This is now Hong Kong's deadliest fire since 1948.
04:47In the strongest signal yet that the U.S. might soon launch a ground operation inside Venezuela,
04:53President Trump told American troops that land action against the Maduro regime is coming very soon.
04:59The president made the comment during his Thanksgiving call with U.S. troops,
05:03praising the Air Force's seventh bomb wing for destroying suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean.
05:09The military has hit nearly two dozen vessels since September,
05:13killing more than 80 people accused of working with cartels.
05:17Trump said maritime trafficking is now 85 percent stopped
05:21and claims a ground operation would be, quote, easier.
05:24The U.S. has already moved the USS Gerald Ford into the region as part of a broader military buildup.
05:31Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, who you see here, denies any ties to drug cartels
05:36and says the U.S. is fabricating a war against him.
05:40A fleet of UPS cargo planes grounded after this month's deadly crash in Louisville, Kentucky,
05:46will now be parked longer than anyone expected, and it could squeeze holiday deliveries.
05:51A leaked internal memo, now Wednesday, says the company's entire McDonnell Douglas MD-11 fleet
05:57will be down for months, not weeks.
06:00These aircraft make up 9 percent of UPS's fleet and 11 percent of FedEx's.
06:06A small slice on paper, but they represent hundreds of daily flights and thousands of packages.
06:12Boeing, which now owns McDonnell Douglas, reportedly told UPS the required inspections
06:17and structural repairs are far more extensive than first thought,
06:21and that every single aircraft will need to be torn down to identify and remove aging parts.
06:27The remaining 109 MD-11s for UPS are all more than 30 years old on average.
06:33Finally this morning, after a brutal news cycle, we're ending with something shinier.
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