
After CNN report, White House bringing back program for Gold Star families to honor service members buried abroad
CNN
The White House is pushing to reestablish a program for Gold Star families to honor their loved ones buried in American military cemeteries overseas after the shuttered program was featured in a CNN report, a White House official exclusively tells CNN.
The White House is pushing to reestablish a program for Gold Star families to honor their loved ones buried in American military cemeteries overseas after the shuttered program was featured in a CNN report, a White House official exclusively tells CNN. Biden administration officials have worked with the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) to restore the program, which allows Gold Star families to have flowers placed on their loved one’s grave at US military cemeteries abroad. “The White House worked with the ABMC and this program will now be re-established,” the official said. It is expected to be included in the coming budget year. For years, Gold Star families who lost loved ones in battle could pay for flowers and have the ABMC deliver them to the grave of their fallen family members in, say, Normandy. That program ended in 2015. On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” reported on the loss of the program. Rondy Elliott, a Gold Star daughter, lost her father, Corporal Frank Elliott, during the Normandy invasion 80 years ago.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.

Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.

Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.

As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.









