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.
00:09Lost 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, a monster,
01:06and 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.
01:47This heinous atrocity reminds us that we have no greater national security priority than 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 Cash 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 reexamination 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 from 19 so-called countries of concern.
02:46Those countries include Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Venezuela, Haiti, and more.
02:52The 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 reexamination 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 who entered through the program that the suspect came through.
03:33No timeline for how long this reexamination could take or how many people could be affected.
03:37A horrific scene is still unfolding in Hong Kong, where 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, as crews spend a third day picking through charred remains of an eight-tower apartment complex in the Tai Po District.
04:01Firefighters, saw them still doused in ash, are going unit by unit, flashlights in hand, as 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, then raced up the outside of the building.
04:22Officials say fire alarms in all eight buildings were not functional.
04:25Three men from the construction company overseeing the renovation are now under arrest, accused of gross negligence and manslaughter.
04:33Officials are now launching a citywide inspection of all buildings under renovation and 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.
04:46In the strongest signal yet that the U.S. might soon launch a ground operation inside Venezuela, President 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, praising the Air Force's 7th Bomb Wing for destroying suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean.
05:09The military has hit nearly two dozen vessels since September, killing more than 80 people accused of working with cartels.
05:17Trump said maritime trafficking is now 85 percent stopped and claims a ground operation would be, quote, easier.
05:25The U.S. has already moved the USS Gerald Ford into the region as part of a broader military buildup.
05:30Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, who you see here, denies any ties to drug cartels and 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, will now be parked longer than anyone expected, and it could squeeze holiday deliveries.
05:52A leaked internal memo, not Wednesday, says the company's entire McDonnell Douglas MD-11 fleet will be down for months, not weeks.
06:00These aircraft make up 9 percent of UPS's fleet and 11 percent of FedEx's, a 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 and 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.
06:50This little four-inch egg is carved out of rock crystal, wrapped in platinum snowflakes, and encrusted with, get this, more than 4,500 diamonds.
07:00Wow.
07:01Inside, handled with care by the way, a tiny basket of jeweled quartz flowers, because even the Romanovs loved a surprise.
07:08Christie's calls it the Mona Lisa of decorative arts.
07:12Commissioned in 1913 by Tsar Nicholas II as an Easter gift for his mother, the egg vanished for decades, resurfaced in the 1990s, broke price records twice, and is now expected to fetch, get this, more than $26 million.
07:27Bidding starts on Tuesday.
07:29It almost sounds like one of those holiday commercials coming out, right?
07:32You know, the Christmas ones.
07:34This Christmas, tell her you'd love her all over again by getting her a Lexus.
07:37Or Zales, the diamond store.
07:40This fits right in.
07:42All right, hey, we're the fastest, fairest few minutes of news.
07:44We hope you agree.
07:45Tell your friends about us.
07:47You can always watch us on san.com or the app, or stream us on Spotify.
07:52Those who run biased updates for this Friday, we'll see you back here on Monday.
07:55For all of us at Straight Arrow News, I'm Craig DeGrelly.
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