AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

US halts all asylum decisions as suspect in shooting of National Guard members faces murder charge

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports days after a shooting near the White House that left one National Guard member dead and another in critical condition.

Investigators continued Saturday to seek a motive in the shooting, with the suspect a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War and now faces charges including first-degree murder. The man applied for asylum during the Biden administration and was granted it this year under Trump, according to a group that assists with resettlement of Afghans who helped U.S. forces in their country.

The Trump administration has seized on the shooting to vow to intensify efforts to rein in legal immigration, promising to pause entry from some poor countries and review Afghans and other legal migrants already in the country. That is in addition to other measures, some of which were previously set in motion.

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died after the Wednesday shooting, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was hospitalized in critical condition. They were deployed with the West Virginia National Guard as part of Trump’s crime-fighting mission in the city. 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.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said the charges against Rahmanullah Lakanwal also include two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed. In an interview on Fox News, she said there were “many charges to come.”

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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.

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Trump officials and judge face off over flights to El Salvador in rare, high-stakes contempt probe

Two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants out of the U.S. were midair on March 15 when a federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration to turn them around.

Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador hours later, touching off an extraordinary power struggle between the judicial and executive branches of the U.S. government over what happened and why the judge’s order went unexecuted.

That fight entered a critical phase on Friday when U.S. District Judge James Boasberg relaunched an investigation to determine whether the Republican administration deliberately ignored his instruction, letting the planes continue onto El Salvador.

The judge previously concluded it did and threatened to have the responsible official or officials prosecuted on a contempt charge. The administration has denied any violation.

But an appeals court threw Boasberg’s decision out. The contempt probe appeared dead until in yet another twist, a larger panel of judges on the same appeals court ruled on November 14 that the investigation could proceed.

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Turkish official says Black Sea tankers may have been hit by mines, missiles or drones

ISTANBUL (AP) — Two oil tankers said to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that were set ablaze off Turkey’s Black Sea coast may have been hit by mines, drones or missiles, a senior Turkish official said Saturday.

Tankers Kairos and Virat were struck in quick succession late Friday afternoon, prompting rescue operations. Crew members on board both vessels were reported to be safe.

Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said rescue services first received reports that the Kairos may have hit a mine before being told of an explosion on the Virat.

“Our crews indicate that there were explosions on the other ship and that these were also caused by external interference,” Uraloglu told broadcaster NTV early Saturday.

“The first things that come to mind for external interference could be a mine, a missile, a marine vessel or a drone. We don’t have definitive information on this,” he added.

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Pope visits Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, but does not pray, as he focuses on unifying Christians

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — Pope Leo XIV visited Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque on Saturday but didn’t stop to pray, as he opened an intense day of meetings and liturgies with Turkey’s Christian leaders where he again emphasized the need for Christians to be united.

Leo took his shoes off and, in his white sock,s toured the the 17th-century mosque, looking up at its soaring tiled domes and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns as an imam pointed them out to him.

The Vatican had said Leo would observe a “brief moment of silent prayer” in the mosque, but he didn’t. An imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was “Allah’s house,” but the pope declined.

Speaking to reporters after the visit, Tunca said he had told the pope: “It’s not my house, not your house, (it’s the) house of Allah,” he said. He said he told Leo: “’If you want, you can worship here,’ I said. But he said, ‘That’s OK.’”

“He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased,” he said.

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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.

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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.

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Airlines adopt software fix for Airbus A320 after plane has sudden altitude drop

Airlines around the world canceled and delayed flights heading into the weekend to fix software on a widely used commercial aircraft after an analysis found the computer code may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a JetBlue plane last month.

Airbus said Friday that an examination of the JetBlue incident revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls on the A320 family of aircraft.

The FAA joined the European Union Aviation Safety Agency in requiring airlines to address the issue with a new software update. More than 500 U.S.-registered aircraft will be impacted.

The EU safety agency said it may cause “short-term disruption” to flight schedules. The problem was introduced by a software update to the plane’s onboard computers, according to the agency.

In Japan, All Nippon Airways, which operates more than 30 planes, canceled 65 domestic flights for Saturday. Additional cancellations on Sunday were possible, it said.

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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.

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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.