AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, were hospitalized in critical condition after the Wednesday afternoon shooting near the White House. President Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that Beckstrom had died.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said the charges against Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War, now include one count of first-degree murder and two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed.

The Trump administration said Friday it is halting all asylum decisions and has also paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports.

Beckstrom and Wolfe were deployed with the West Virginia National Guard as part of Trump’s crime-fighting mission that federalized the D.C. police force. The president also has deployed or tried to deploy National Guard members to other cities to assist with his mass deportation efforts but has faced court challenges.

Trump criticizes the program that brought Afghan refugees to the US who fought the Taliban

The man accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington is one of about 76,000 Afghans brought to the United States after the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. from their country as the Taliban took over, authorities said.

The program, called Operation Allies Welcome, was created after the 2021 decision to leave Afghanistan following 20 years of American intervention and billions of dollars of aid.

Democratic President Joe Biden, who oversaw the withdrawal started by his predecessor — Republican President Donald Trump — said the U.S. owed it to the interpreters and translators, the fighters and drivers and others who opposed the Taliban to give them a safe place outside of Afghanistan.

But others — including Trump and many Republicans — said the refugees were not properly vetted in a resettlement process they said was as chaotic and poorly planned as leaving the country to the Taliban.

"This individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and servicemembers deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden Administration’s catastrophic failures,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said.

Death toll rises to 128 in Hong Kong residential fire as 8 more arrested over towers' renovation

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong firefighters found dozens more bodies Friday in an intensive apartment-by-apartment search of a high-rise complex where a massive fire engulfed seven buildings, and authorities arrested another 8 people involved in the towers' renovation. The death toll in one of the city's deadliest blazes rose to 128, and many remain unaccounted for.

First responders found that some fire alarms in the complex, which housed many older people, did not sound when tested, said Andy Yeung, the director of Hong Kong Fire Services, though he did not say how many were not working or if others were.

The blaze jumped rapidly from one building to the next as foam panels and bamboo scaffolding covered in netting apparently installed by a construction company caught fire.

Authorities on Friday arrested seven men and one woman, ranging in age from 40 to 63, including scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consultant company and project managers supervising the renovation, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said in a statement.

On Friday, crews prioritized apartments from which they had received emergency calls during the blaze but were unable to reach in the hours that the fire burned out of control, Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services, told reporters. It took firefighters a day to bring the fire under control, and it was not fully extinguished until Friday morning — some 40 hours after it started.

Zelenskyy's chief of staff resigns after anti-corruption investigators search home

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Friday the resignation of his powerful chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, who was also the country's lead negotiator in talks with the U.S, after Yermak's residence was searched by anti-corruption investigators.

The unprecedented search at the heart of Ukraine’s government was a blow for the Ukrainian leader that risked disrupting his negotiating strategy at a time when Kyiv is under intense U.S. pressure to sign a peace deal nearly four years after Russia's full-scale invasion.

Yermak has long been a trusted confidant of Zelenskyy, who has resisted persistent pressure to replace him.

In a nod to the controversy over Yermak’s long stay at his side, Zelenskyy said Russia was waiting for Ukraine to make missteps and upset the delicate and tense peace negotiations.

“We don’t have a right to retreat or argue between ourselves. If we lose unity, we risk losing everything — ourselves, Ukraine, our future,” Zelenskyy said. “We must unite, we must hold on. We have no other choice. We won’t have another Ukraine.”

Trump says he plans to pardon former Honduran President Hernandez for 2024 drug trafficking sentence

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted for drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

The president explained his decision on social media by posting that “according to many people that I greatly respect,” Hernandez was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

In March of last year, Hernandez was convicted in U.S. court of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S.A. He had served served two terms as the leader of the Central American nation of roughly 10 million people.

Hernandez has been appealing his conviction and serving time at the U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton in West Virginia.

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, Hernández’s wife and children gathered on the steps on their home in Tegucigalpa and kneeled in prayer, thanking God that Hernández would return to their family after almost four years apart.

Israeli forces kill at least 13 people in southern Syria raid, officials and residents say

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israeli forces raided a Syrian village and opened fire when they were confronted by residents on Friday, killing at least 13 people, Syrian officials said, in the deadliest Israeli attack since its troops seized a swath of southern Syria a year ago.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry called the attack a “horrific massacre” and said women and children were among those killed.

The Syrian state news agency SANA said Israeli forces entered the village of Beit Jin aiming to seize local men and opened heavy fire after being confronted by residents. Dozens of families fled the area.

Israel said Friday it conducted an operation to apprehend suspects from the Jamaa Islamiya militant group in Beit Jin who were planning IED and rocket attacks into Israel. It said other militants opened fire at the troops, injuring six, and that troops returned fire, including bringing in air support. It said the operation had concluded, all of the suspects were apprehended and a number of militants were killed.

A local official in the village, Walid Okasha, told The Associated Press that those killed were civilians. Among the dead were a man, his wife, his two children and his brother as well as another man who had gotten married the day before.

Guinea-Bissau soldiers appoint ally of deposed president as prime minister

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau (AP) — Soldiers in Guinea-Bissau on Friday appointed a close ally of the deposed president as prime minister, after seizing power following disputed national elections earlier this week.

The country's new military leader, Gen. Horta Inta-a, announced the appointment of finance minister Ilídio Vieira Té as prime minister in a decree.

Vieira Té is a close ally of the deposed President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, having served as his party's campaign director during the legislative election on Sunday.

Soldiers seized power on Wednesday, three days after the closely contested presidential election. During the ongoing military takeover, the president told French media over the phone he had been deposed and arrested.

The opposition claimed that Embaló had “fabricated” the coup to avoid an election defeat in Sunday’s vote. The military takeover and the reported arrest of Embaló were manufactured to disrupt election results, according to his rival Fernando Dias, who, like Embaló, claimed to have won the vote.

Russia outlaws Human Rights Watch as crackdown on dissent continues

Russian authorities on Friday outlawed Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable organization,” a label that under a 2015 law makes involvement with such organizations a criminal offense.

The designation means the international human rights group must stop all work in Russia, and opens those who cooperate with or support the organization to prosecution.

“For over three decades, Human Rights Watch’s work on post-Soviet Russia has pressed the government to uphold human rights and freedoms,” the executive director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Bolopion, said in a statement. “Our work hasn’t changed, but what’s changed, dramatically, is the government’s full-throttled embrace of dictatorial policies, its staggering rise in repression, and the scope of the war crimes its forces are committing in Ukraine."

The decision by the Russian prosecutor general’s office is the latest move in an unrelenting crackdown on Kremlin critics, journalists and activists, which has intensified to unprecedented levels since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In a separate statement on Friday, the office said it was opening a case against Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot that would designate the group as an extremist organization.

Death toll from floods in Thailand reaches 145 as receding water reveals widespread damage

BANGKOK (AP) — The death toll from flooding in southern Thailand has reached at least 145, officials said Friday, as receding waters started to reveal devastating damage across the region.

More than 1.2 million households and 3.6 million people have been affected by floods triggered by heavy rains in 12 southern provinces, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said Friday.

Government spokesperson Siripong Angkasakulkiat said in a news conference in Bangkok that flooding has killed 145 people in eight provinces, particularly in Songkhla province which recorded at least 110 deaths.

He said search and rescue efforts have become more successful as floodwaters started to recede further.

Songkhla province recorded a sharp increase in the death toll after flooding began to subside. News reports showed rescuers gained more access to residential areas that had previously been submerged under high water and recovered more bodies, particularly in Hat Yai, the largest city in the south.

Paris prosecutor says arrested man is thought to be 4th member of Louvre heist gang

PARIS (AP) — A man arrested by French police earlier this week is thought to be the fourth member of the team that stole France’s crown jewels from the Louvre Museum, the Paris prosecutor said Friday, meaning that the entire gang that carried out the brazen heist is now believed to have been caught.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau, whose office is heading the investigation, said the 39-year-old man has a criminal record, with six previous convictions, including for receiving stolen goods, for which he was given a 2-month suspended prison sentence in 2010.

He has now been handed preliminary charges of robbery by an organized gang, punishable by 15 years imprisonment, and criminal conspiracy, which can carry a 10-year sentence if he is convicted for his suspected role in the stunning Oct. 19 theft at the world's most-visited museum. The robbery gang's haul of loot was worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102 million) — a monetary value that didn't include the jewels' huge historical value to France.

The prosecutor's statement didn’t say what role, exactly, the man is thought to have played in the daylight heist, carried out with angle grinders, a freight lift and subterfuge, with robbers dressed as workers in bright vests.

Three other people also taken into police custody for questioning this week have been released without charge, the prosecutor said.