U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell grilled a Justice Department lawyer over the government’s plans to suspend security clearances from lawyers at the firm of Perkins Coie and pressed him to explain why the Trump administration was forcing law firms to disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in its hiring practices.

“Why does the administration view those three words as dirty?” Howell asked.

Justice Department attorney Richard Lawson said the government remains concerned about what it considers the “unlawful” evaluation by law firms of applicants based on of “race, sex and ethnic based issues unrelated to them as individuals.”

At issue Wednesday were requests from two law firms — Perkins Coie and WilmerHale — to permanently halt executive orders imposed against them last month. Judges last month temporarily blocked enforcement of key provisions of both orders, but the firms are asking for the edicts to be struck down in their entirety and for judges to issue rulings in their favor. Another firm, Jenner & Block, is expected to make similar arguments next week.

The firms consider the orders to be unconstitutional assaults on the legal profession that threaten their relationships with clients and retaliate against them based either on their past legal representations or their association with particular attorneys who Trump perceives as his adversaries.

The executive actions have generally imposed the same sanctions against the targeted firms, including ordering the suspension of security clearances, the termination of federal contracts and restrictions in access to federal buildings for firm employees.

In court Wednesday, Howell said she was troubled that the administration was putting the “cart before the horse” by stripping security clearances en masse without first conducting an individualized review of attorneys. She appeared to grow exasperated as Lawson struggled to answer questions about the basic mechanics for implementing the security clearance suspension or the review process for the targeted attorneys.

“You can’t tell me which agencies are conducting this review?” she asked at one point.

“You don’t know whether the firm or the attorney whose security clearance has been suspended has been given notice about the timing of the review” or whether they will have an ability to object to the review, she said.

The executive order targeting Perkins Coie singled out the firm’s representation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race, and the one against WilmerHale cited the fact that special counsel Robert Mueller — who investigated Trump during his first term over potential ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign — was for years a partner at the firm.

Since then, more than a half-dozen other firms have reached agreements with the White House that require them, among other things, to dedicate free legal services to causes the Trump administration says it champions.

They include Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Milbank; Willkie, Farr & Gallagher; Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins LLP; Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US LLP; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP; and Cadwalader, Taft & Wickersham.

Police described the incident as a “terror attack” and blamed militants fighting against Indian rule. “This attack is much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years,”��, the region’s top elected official, wrote on social media.

Two senior police officers said at least four gunmen, whom they described as militants, fired at dozens of tourists from close range. The officers said at least three dozen others were injured, many in serious condition.

Most of the tourists killed were Indian, the officers said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with departmental policy. Officials collected at least 24 bodies in Baisaran meadow, some five kilometers (3 miles) from the disputed region’s resort town of Pahalgam. Two others died while being taken for medical treatment.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Police and soldiers were searching for the attackers.

“We will come down heavily on the perpetrators with the harshest consequences,” India’s home minister, Amit Shah, wrote on social media. He arrived in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and convened a meeting with top security officials.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was cutting short his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia and returning to New Delhi early Wednesday, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

, a key resistance politician and Kashmir’s top religious cleric, condemned what he described as a “cowardly attack on tourists,” writing on social media that “such violence is unacceptable and against the ethos of Kashmir which welcomes visitors with love and warmth.”

The gunfire coincided with the visit to India of��, who called it a “devastating terrorist attack.” He added on social media: “Over the past few days, we have been overcome with the beauty of this country and its people. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they mourn this horrific attack.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on social media noted “deeply disturbing news out of Kashmir. The United States stands strong with India against terrorism.” Other global leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, condemned the attack.

Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.

Kashmir has seen a����of Hindus, including immigrant workers from Indian states, after��in 2019 and drastically��.

Tensions have been simmering as India has intensified its counterinsurgency operations. But despite tourists flocking to Kashmir in huge numbers for its Himalayan foothills and exquisitely decorated houseboats, they have not been targeted.

The region has drawn����who enjoy a strange peace kept by ubiquitous security checkpoints, armored vehicles and patrolling soldiers. New Delhi has vigorously pushed tourism and claimed it as a sign of normalcy returning.

The meadow in Pahalgam is a popular destination, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and dotted with pine forests. It is visited by hundreds of tourists every day.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, while condemning the attack, said the Modi government should take accountability instead of making “hollow claims on the situation being normal” in the region.

Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

In March 2000, at least 35 civilians were shot and killed in a southern village while then-U.S. President Bill Clinton was visiting India. It was the region’s deadliest attack in recent years.

Violence has ebbed in recent times in the Kashmir Valley, the heart of anti-India rebellion. Fighting between government forces and rebels has largely shifted to remote areas of Jammu region including Rajouri, Poonch and Kathua, where Indian troops have faced deadly attacks.

Associated Press writers Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Michelle Price in Washington contributed to this report

His death was announced by Cardinal Kevin Farrell in a statement which read, “At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church.″

The pope passed hours after he had celebrated Easter. He blessed the faithful in St. Peter’s Square and, rode through the crowd gathered there in what�� (AP)��called “a surprise popemobile romp.”

The pope’s death was confirmed by Dr. Andrea Arcangeli, the head of the Vatican health department, according to the��.

The doctor said Pope Francis also had episodes of respiratory insufficiency. He had suffered previously from bilateral pneumonia, type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

The pope’s time of death was 7:35 a.m. local time. The first public commemoration of Pope Francis began. With sunset, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, began a Rosary prayer for Francis.

��to an icon of the Madonna as a choir sang. Sister Raffaella Petrini, one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican, presented the first reading.

In the statement announcing the pope’s death, Farrell said, “He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with faithfulness, courage, and universal love, especially for the poorest and most marginalized.

Flags were lowered to half-staff in Italy to mourn his death. The day — Easter Monday — was already a public holiday there. Bells rang in mourning at the Vatican.

��ordered flags to fly at half-mast at “all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, on the day of interment.”

One of those at St. Peter’s Square on Monday, Evan Bonnano, who is from Philadelphia, said it is “a very sad day. It is honestly impressive, I think, that he made it to Easter. I think that is almost like a miracle for Italy.”

Pope Francis had several health challenges over his lifetime. He had part of one lung removed when he was a young man,�� reported.

In 2022 and 2023, he had to cancel planned travel due to his health.

In addition to his breathing issues, Francis had diverticulitis and had part of his colon removed in 2021.

, going so far as to sign a resignation letter in December 2022 that would be used if he became “impaired.”

On Feb. 14, he was hospitalized after having bronchitis symptoms. He was diagnosed with double pneumonia. He was in Rome’s Gemelli hospital for five weeks.

During Holy Week, the pope did not lead the main services, but he did make appearances throughout the past few days, visiting a prison for 30 minutes on Thursday, visiting St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, and giving the Easter blessing from the basilica on Sunday.

He blessed Rome and the world with an aide reading his address. Francis performed the blessing, with a weak voice but without the nasal cannula that he had been wearing to receive oxygen, saying, “Brothers and Sisters, Happy Easter.”

Pope Francis will be buried outside of the Vatican, the first in more than a century. Instead of being buried beneath the basilica, he will be buried at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. He announced the plan in December 2023, saying he had a “very strong connection” with the basilica where he would visit to honor the Virgin Mary.

The last pope not to be buried at St. Peter’s Basilica was Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903.

The Archdiocese of Seattle sent ����Xվ 7 News the following statement about his death:

The Archdiocese of Seattle��is deeply saddened by the news of the death of Pope Francis, who has been the universal shepherd not just for Catholics, but for all of God’s children. He fought through his recent health challenges with such grace and had a beautiful public moment on Easter Sunday – our holiest of days, celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. What a beautiful gift to the world.

We are immensely grateful for the pastoral care he shared with us and for his lifelong commitment to demonstrating the love of Jesus Christ. He loved the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the earth and all of God’s children. His papacy will be celebrated for teaching all of us to love like Christ did.”

Archbishop Paul D. Etienne issues the following statement:

I am deeply saddened at the news of the death of Pope Francis. I am also profoundly grateful for his years of witness to the Gospel. By his teaching and pastoral charity, he has reminded us that the heart of God is loving mercy and all people are called to exercise this mercy in all of our relationships. May Pope Francis now experience the same loving mercy from the living God he served so selflessly throughout his ministry and life. Please join me in praying for the peaceful repose of this good shepherd.”

By early Friday, memorials of candles and flowers dotted the campus and a school-wide vigil had been scheduled as students and faculty tried to start healing from the previous day’s shooting, which sent shockwaves of fear across the campus.

“I heard some gunshots and then, you know, just blacked out after,” said Carolina Sena, a 21-year-old accounting student who was inside the student union when the shooting started. “Everyone was crying and just panicking. We were trying to barricade ourselves in a little corner in the basement, trying to protect ourselves as much as we could.”

The shooter, identified by police as Phoenix Ikner, is believed to be a Florida State student and the son of a sheriff’s deputy who opened fire with his mother’s former service weapon, investigators said. Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the��, which began around lunchtime Thursday just outside the student union.

Officers quickly arrived and shot and wounded the gunman after he refused to comply with commands, said Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell.

The two men who were killed were not students, said Florida State University Police Chief Jason Trumbower, adding that he would not release additional information about the victims.

The shooter obtained access to a weapon that belongs to his mother, who has been with the sheriff’s office for over 18 years and has been a model employee, said Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil. Police said they believed Ikner shot the victims using his mother’s former service handgun, which she had kept for personal use after the force upgraded to new weapons.

Five people who were wounded were struck by gunfire, while a sixth was hurt while trying to run away, Revell said in a statement Thursday night. They were all in fair condition, a spokesperson for Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare said.

The shooter was a long-standing member of the sheriff’s office’s youth advisory council, the sheriff said.

“He has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have,” McNeil said. “So it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”

As of Thursday night, Ikner was in the hospital with “serious but non-life-threatening injuries,” according to Revell.

Witness says the suspect’s shotgun jammed

Ambulances, fire trucks and patrol vehicles from multiple law enforcement agencies raced toward the campus just west of Florida’s capital after the university issued an active shooter alert.

Aidan Stickney, a 21-year-old studying business management, was running late to class when he said he saw a man get out of a car with a shotgun and aim at another man in a white polo shirt.

The gun jammed, Stickney said, and the shooter rushed back to his car and emerged with a handgun, opening fire on a woman. Stickney ran, warning others as he called 911.

Three of the students were injured by gunfire and the fourth was injured in their lower body, according to the . The department said units were dispatched to Wilmer-Hutchins High School just after 1 p.m. and that the four students, all of whom are male, were taken to hospitals with injuries ranging from serious to not life-threatening.

“Quite frankly, this is just becoming way too familiar. And it should not be familiar,” Stephanie Elizalde, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, said at a news conference.

The school district said in a statement Tuesday night that a suspect was apprehended within hours of the shooting, but didn’t provide details about the person or say whether they had been arrested.

The three who were shot were between the ages of 15 and 18, while the age of a person with a “musculoskeletal injury” was not known, Dallas Fire-Rescue said.

School district officials and police gave few details during the news conference held several hours after the shooting, which drew a large number of police and other law enforcement agents to the roughly 1,000-student campus.

“I know that there are many questions and we’re not going to have all of the answers right now because some of the information will be inaccurate,” Elizalde said.

Authorities said other students and their parents had been safely reunited after the students had evacuated earlier in the day from the campus. Aerial television footage taken above the high school Tuesday afternoon showed multiple police vehicles thronging the complex.

The victims included Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, a global manager at an energy technology company, and three children, in addition to the pilot, a person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press. The person could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Photos posted on the helicopter company’s website showed the couple and their children smiling as they boarded just before the flight took off.

The flight departed a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. and lasted less than 18 minutes. Radar data showed it flew north along the Manhattan skyline and then back south toward the Statue of Liberty.

Video of the crash showed parts of the aircraft tumbling through the air into the water near the shoreline of Jersey City, New Jersey.

Witnesses describe the helicopter’s plunge into the Hudson

A witness there, Bruce Wall, said he saw it “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and main rotor coming off. The main rotor was still spinning without the helicopter as it fell.

Dani Horbiak was at her Jersey City home when she heard what sounded like “several gunshots in a row, almost, in the air.” She looked out her window and saw the chopper “splash in several pieces into the river.”

The helicopter was spinning uncontrollably with “a bunch of smoke coming out” before it slammed into the water, said Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey.

On air traffic control radio, an NYPD helicopter pilot can be heard saying, “Be advised, you do have an aircraft down. Holland Tunnel. Please keep your eyes open for anybody in the water.”

About five minutes after that, someone asks, “Hey Finest,” a reference to the NYPD’s call sign, “what’s going on over there by the Holland Tunnel?”

“The ship went down,” someone else responds.

Rescue boats circled the submerged aircraft within minutes of impact near the end of a long maintenance pier for a ventilation tower serving the Holland Tunnel. Recovery crews hoisted the mangled helicopter out of the water just after 8 p.m. using a floating crane.

The bodies were also recovered from the river, Mayor Eric Adams said.

The flight was operated by New York Helicopters, officials said. No one answered the phones at the company’s offices in New York and New Jersey.

A person who answered the phone at the home of the company’s owner, Michael Roth, said he declined to comment. Roth told the New York Post he was devastated and had “no clue” why the crash happened.

“The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,” the Post quoted him as saying. He added that he had not seen such a thing happen during his 30 years in the helicopter business, but noted: “These are machines, and they break.”

Emails seeking comment were sent to attorneys who have represented Roth in the past.

The Federal Aviation Administration identified the helicopter as a Bell 206, a model widely used in commercial and government aviation, including by sightseeing companies, TV news stations and police. It was initially developed for the U.S. Army before being adapted for other uses. Thousands have been manufactured over the years.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it would investigate.

Tragedy strikes a family from Spain

Escobar worked for the tech company Siemens for more than 27 years, most recently as global CEO for rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, according to his LinkedIn account. In late 2022 he briefly became president and CEO of Siemens Spain. In a post about the position, he thanked his family: “my endless source of energy and happiness, for their unconditional support, love … and patience.”

Escobar regularly posted about the importance of sustainability in the rail industry and often traveled internationally for work, including journeying to India and the UK in the past month. He also was vice president of the German Chamber of Commerce for Spain since 2023.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic helicopter crash in which Agustin Escobar and his family lost their lives. Our heartfelt condolences go out to all their loved ones,” Siemens said in a statement early Friday.

Camprubí Montal worked in Barcelona, Spain, for energy technology company Siemens Energy for about seven years, including as its global commercialization manager and as a digitalization manager, according to her LinkedIn account.

Spanish regional government officials said the family resided in Barcelona.

“(I am) dismayed by the tragic helicopter accident in the Hudson River in New York which cost the lives of six people, five of which were members of a Barcelona family,” Catalan regional president Salvador Illa wrote on X.

Another regional official said Agustin Escobar was originally from Puertollano, a town in central Spain.

“I want to express my sorrow for the traffic helicopter accident in New York that claimed the lives of Agustín Escobar and his family,” Castilla La Mancha regional president Emiliano García-Page wrote on X. “Agustín is native of Puertollano and in 2023 we named him a Favorite Son of Castilla La Mancha.”

What may have caused the crash

Video of the crash suggested that a “catastrophic mechanical failure” left the pilot with no chance to save the helicopter, said��, an aviation lawyer who was a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps.

It is possible the helicopter’s main rotors struck the tail boom, breaking it apart and causing the cabin to free fall, Green said.

“They were dead as soon as whatever happened happened,” Green said. “There’s no indication they had any control over the craft. No pilot could have prevented that accident once they lost the lifts. It’s like a rock falling to the ground. It’s heartbreaking.”

The skies over Manhattan are routinely filled with planes and helicopters, both private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights. Manhattan has several helipads from which business executives and others are whisked to destinations throughout the metropolitan area.

At least����in New York City since 1977. A collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson in 2009 killed nine people, and five died in 2018 when a charter helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River.

New York Helicopters also owned a Bell 206 that lost power and made an����during a sightseeing tour in June 2013. The pilot managed to land safely and he and the passengers — a family of four Swedes — were uninjured. The����that a maintenance flub and an engine lubrication anomaly led to the power cutoff.

Thursday’s crash was the first for a helicopter in the city since one hit the roof of a skyscraper in 2019, killing the pilot.

The accidents and the noise caused by helicopters have repeatedly led some community activists and officials to propose banning or restricting traffic at Manhattan heliports.

Other recent crashes and close calls have already left some people����in the U.S.

��were killed when a medical transport plane plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood in January. That happened two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided in midair in Washington in the����in a generation.

Associated Press reporters Mike Balsamo and Philip Marcelo in New York, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, contributed to this report

It was seemingly an attempt to narrow what had been an unprecedented trade war between the U.S. and most of the world to a showdown between the U.S. and China. The S&P 500 stock index jumped more than 7% after the announcement, but the drama over �հ��ܳ���’s tariffs will now be prolonged as the administration engages in negotiations that could cause uncertainties to persist in the world economy.

Gee Scott: Stock market is ‘like the casino right now, this is awful’

Gee Scott, co-host of “The Gee and Ursula Show” on ����Xվ Newsradio, expressed his outrage at Trump’s actions.

“Something criminal is happening,” Gee proclaimed on “Gee and Ursula” Wednesday. “This is criminal.”

Gee added that while he is doing well financially, he is concerned many people won’t be able to recover.

“What makes me mad is the criminal activity in this, what makes me mad is that there will be people in this country that won’t recover from what has happened over the last week or two,” he said. “It is awful. It is criminal to be doing this stuff, to play these games with the stock market. Like, Nick came in here and said, it’s like a dang jackpot, like the casino right now. This is awful.”

Gee emphasized that �հ��ܳ���’s moves are directly affecting people.

“I don’t care if you’re conservative or Democrats, you gotta see the criminal activity that is happening,” he added.

Ursula Reutin, co-host of “Gee and Ursula,” threw out the question: “Was this all part of the plan? Could you look at it as OK, this is part of the negotiation?”

“There was never a plan,” Gee responded. “It is literally like standing in front of a house setting a fire. And once you set the fire, you tell your people, ‘Hey, come put the fire out.'”

Trump posts on Truth Social about 90-day tariff pause

Trump posted on Truth Social that because “more than 75 Countries” had reached out to the U.S. government for trade talks and have not retaliated in meaningful way “I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately.”

Trump later told reporters that he pulled back on many global tariffs — but not on China — because people were “yippy,” and “afraid,” adding that while he expected to reach deals that “nothing’s over yet.”

The president said he had been watching the bond market and that people were “getting a little queasy.” But after his tariff pause, Trump described the bond market as “beautiful.”

It seemed impossible to fully deny the pressure created by volatile financial markets that had been pushing Trump to reconsider his tariffs, even as some administration officials said the reversal had always been the plan. The pause was announced after the����appeared to be in open rebellion against����tariffs as they����Wednesday, a signal that the U.S. president was not immune from market pressures.

The 10% tariff was the baseline rate for most nations that went into effect on Saturday. It’s meaningfully lower than the 20% tariff that Trump had set for goods from the European Union, 24% on imports from Japan and 25% on products from South Korea. Still, 10% would represent an increase in the tariffs previously charged by the U.S. government.

Looking at the next 90 days

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the negotiations with individual countries would be “bespoke,” meaning that the next 90 days would involve talks on a flurry of potential deals. Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, told reporters that the pause was because of other countries seeking talks rather than brutal selloffs in the financial markets.

“The only certainty we can provide is that the U.S. is going to negotiate in good faith, and we assume that our allies will too,” Bessent said.

The treasury secretary said he and Trump “had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along” and that the president had “goaded China into a bad position.” Bessent said that Canada and Mexico would now be tariffed at 10%, even though those two countries had been tariffed by as much as 25% by Trump ostensibly to address fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration.

Prior to the reversal, business executives were warning of a����caused by his policies, some of the top U.S.����are retaliating with their own����and the stock market is quivering after days of decline.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the walk back was part of �հ��ܳ���’s negotiating strategy.

Leavitt said that the news media “clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect the entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets.”

But market pressures had been building for weeks ahead of �հ��ܳ���’s move, with the president at times suggesting the import taxes would stay in place while also saying that they could be subject to negotiations.

Particularly worrisome was that U.S. government debt had lost some of its luster with investors, who usually treat Treasury notes as a safe haven when there’s economic turbulence. Government bond prices had been falling, pushing up the interest rate on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note to 4.45%. That rate eased after �հ��ܳ���’s reversal.

Markets are looking for trade truce

Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities, said before the announcement that markets wanted to see a truce in the trade disputes.

“Markets more broadly, not just the Treasury market, are looking for signs that a trade de-escalation is coming,” he said. “Absent any de-escalation, it’s going to be difficult for markets to stabilize.”

John Canavan, lead analyst at the consultancy Oxford Economics, noted that while Trump said he changed course due to possible negotiations, he had previously indicated that the tariffs would stay in place.

“There have been very mixed messages on whether there would be negotiations,” Canavan said. “Given what’s been going on with the markets, he realized the safest thing to do is negotiate and put things on pause.”

Contributing: Josh Boak, The Associated Press; Julia Dallas, MyNorthwest

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on ����Xվ Newsradio.��

The decision comes a day after the Supreme Court����with the Trump administration in another lawsuit filed over mass firings.

A split panel for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the terminations of federal workers should probably be appealed through a separate employment process rather than fought out in federal court. Two judges appointed by Republican presidents sided with the administration, while a third Democratic appointed judge dissented.

The decision comes in a lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen states, who said the mass firings will cause irreparable burdens and expenses to support recently unemployed workers. They said at least 24,000 probationary employees have been terminated since Trump took office.

The states could still seek further review as the lawsuit continues to play out.

The Republican administration has argued that the states have no right to try to influence the federal government’s relationship with its own workers, but also had already reinstated some 15,000 workers to full duty or paid leave as the lawsuits played out, according to court documents.

The appeals court order halts a decision from U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore, who was one of two judges appointed by Democratic presidents who found that the Trump administration violated federal laws in carrying out the terminations at 20 agencies in the states that sued.

The Supreme Court blocked another order from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco on Tuesday, finding that nonprofit groups lacked legal standing to sue over the firing of probationary workers. The case still has additional plaintiffs, however, and Alsup was weighing Wednesday whether to again order reinstatement on behalf of the state of Washington and labor groups.

Probationary workers have been targeted for layoffs across the federal government because they’re usually new to the job and lack full civil service protection.

The states suing the Trump administration in the Baltimore case are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, along with Washington, D.C.

Associated Press writer Janie Har in San Francisco contributed to this report

, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho. Prosecutors say the four were killed in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, and their bodies were discovered later that day.

Kohberger, then a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was����weeks after the killings. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.

When asked to enter a plea to the charges, Kohberger stood silent, prompting the judge to enter a not-guilty plea on his behalf.

Here’s what to know about the case and the motion hearing as his trial is set to begin this summer.

What will happen at the hearing?

Attorneys on both sides of the case have filed hundreds of pages of��, including whether Kohberger should face the death penalty if he is convicted, whether witnesses should be allowed to testify about things like “touch DNA,” and about who should be allowed in the courtroom during the trial.

The hearing will give the attorneys a chance to make their case in person, discussing the legal reasoning behind their requests. It will also give 4th District Judge Steven Hippler a chance to ask the attorneys questions as he weighs their arguments.

What will the judge be deciding?

Many of the motions are focused on what evidence can be presented to jurors during the trial.

For instance, defense attorneys have asked the judge to find that an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis would make Kohberger ineligible for the death penalty. The defense and prosecution will also likely present arguments over whether jurors should hear����made by two women in the house roughly eight hours after the killings, as they realized one of their roommates wasn’t waking up.

Legal filings also show that prosecutors want to introduce evidence of Kohberger’s “click history” at Amazon.com showing that he purchased a Ka-Bar brand fixed-blade knife eight months before the killings. A Ka-Bar knife sheath was found next to one of the victims.

Kohberger’s attorneys have asked the judge to exclude that online shopping history, saying it could be taken out of context or not reflect the influence of algorithms that recommend purchases.

Prosecutors also want to introduce a photo that Kohberger took of himself hours after the time of the killings because they say it shows what he looked like at that time. A roommate who was in the rental home told police she woke up and saw a stranger with “bushy eyebrows” wearing a face mask inside the home.

Defense attorneys want the judge to bar any testimony about “bushy eyebrows,” because they say it could prejudice the jury against him.

Other topics that could come up include what kinds of questions will be asked during the jury selection process. Attorneys on both sides have submitted proposed questionnaires that could be used to narrow the jury pool down to a small group of candidates, but so far those documents have been sealed from public view.

Will the judge issue rulings during the hearing?

Hippler can “rule from the bench”—simply telling the attorneys what his decision is on each request—but he can also decide to issue a written ruling sometime after the hearing is over. Sometimes written rulings can be particularly helpful in complicated legal cases like this one, because they can help attorneys quickly find and refer to the judge’s decisions months or even years down the road.

When is the trial?

Jury selection in the case is expected to begin July 30, with the trial starting Aug. 11 in the Ada County Courthouse in downtown Boise.

The trial is expected to take nearly three months to complete, lasting into the start of November.

Whether the move will boost lumber supplies as Trump envisioned in an����last month remains to be seen.����also sought more logging in public forests��, which are worsening as the world gets hotter, yet U.S. Forest Service timber sales stayed relatively flat under his tenure.

Agriculture Secretary����did not mention climate change in Friday’s directive, which called on her staff to speed up environmental reviews.

It exempts affected forests from an objection process that allows outside groups, tribes and local governments to challenge logging proposals at the administrative level before they are finalized. It also narrows the number of alternatives federal officials can consider when weighing logging projects.

Logging projects are routinely contested by conservation groups, both at the administrative level and in court, which can drag out the approval process for years.

The emergency designation covers�� (455,000 square kilometers) of terrain primarily in the West but also in the South, around the Great Lakes and in New England. Combined, it is an area larger than California and amounts to 59% of Forest Service lands.

Most of those forests are considered to have high wildfire risk, and many are in decline because of��.

“National Forests are in crisis due to uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species and other stressors,” Rollins said in her directive, echoing concerns raised by her predecessor under Biden, Tom Vilsack.

Those threats — combined with overgrown forests, more homes in wild areas and decades of aggressive fire suppression — add up to a “forest health crisis” that could be helped with more logging, said Rollins, a former conservative legal activist and president of a Trump-aligned think tank.

Concerns about lost safeguards

Environmentalists rejected the claim that wildfire protection was driving the changes to forest policy.

In response to the new directive, Forest Service officials at the regional level were told to come up with plans to increase the volume of timber offered by 25% over the next four to five years. In a letter from Acting Associate Chief Chris French, they were also told to identify projects that could receive “categorical exclusions,” which are exemptions from stringent environmental analyses.

“This is all about helping the timber industry,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley of the environmental group Earthjustice. “It’s not looking at what will protect communities. It’s about the number of board feet, the number of trees you are pulling down.”

The Forest Service has sold about 3 billion board feet of timber annually for the past decade. Timber sales peaked several decades ago at about 12 billion board feet amid widespread clearcutting of forests. Volumes dropped sharply in the 1980s and 1990s as environmental protections were tightened and more areas were put off limits to logging. Most timber is harvested from private lands.

Under Biden, the Forest Service sought to more intensively manage national forests in the West, by speeding up����including logging in so-called “priority landscapes” covering about 70,000 square miles (180,000 square kilometers).

Much of that work involved smaller trees and younger forests that add fuel to wildfires but are less profitable for loggers.

Biden proposed more protections for��, drawing backlash from the timber industry, but that plan was��.

Timber industry wants more trees available

Industry representatives said they hope the Trump administration’s actions will result in the sales of more full-grown stands of trees that are desired by sawmills. Federal law allows for the harvest of about 6 billion board feet annually — about twice the level that’s now logged, said Travis Joseph, president of the Oregon-based American Forest Resource Council, an industry group.

“This industry needs a raw supply to remain competitive and keep the doors open,” he said. “We’re not even reaching half of what forest plans currently call for. Let’s implement our forest plans across the country, and if we did that, that should increase the volume that’s available to American mills and create American jobs and create revenue.”

Trump last month ordered federal officials to investigate the possible harms of lumber imports to national security. The administration said Canada and other countries engage in lumber subsidies that disadvantage the United States. Canadian timber was left out of the president’s latest round of tariffs.

The massive sell-off in riskier assets at the start of the trading week follows President Donald �հ��ܳ���’s announcement of sharply higher U.S. import taxes and����that saw markets fall sharply Thursday and Friday.

Where the markets stand

Asia:��Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened and futures trading for the benchmark was briefly suspended. It closed down 7.8% at 31,136.58. Chinese markets often don’t follow global trends, but they also tumbled. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 13.2% to 19,828.30, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 7.3% to 3,096.58.

Europe:��Germany’s DAX index briefly fell more than 10% at the open on the Frankfurt exchange, but recovered some ground to move down 5.8% in morning trading. In Paris, the CAC 40 shed 5.8%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 4.9% in the European morning.

US:��Futures signaled further weakness ahead. For the S&P 500, they lost 3.4%, while for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, they shed 3.1%. Futures for the Nasdaq lost 5.3%. If the pre-market futures losses materialize when the U.S. market opens, the S&P 500 will enter bear market territory — defined as a fall of more than 20% from the peak. The index was off 17.4% as of the end of last week.

Trump digs his heels in

In a Truth Social post Monday morning, the president showed no interest in changing course despite turmoil in global markets.

He said other countries had been “taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA” on international trade.

“Our past ‘leaders’ are to blame for allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our Country,” he wrote. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump criticized China for increasing its own tariffs and “not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate.”

Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump since the tariff announcement

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington Monday. Whether his visit succeeds in bringing down or eliminating Israel’s 17% tariff remains to be seen, but how it plays out could set the stage for how other world leaders try to address the new tariffs.

Netanyahu’s office has put the focus of his hastily organized Washington visit on the tariffs, while stressing that the two leaders will discuss major geopolitical issues including the war in Gaza, tensions with Iran, Israel-Turkey ties and the International Criminal Court.

In a preemptive move last week, Israel announced that it was removing all tariffs on goods from the U.S., mostly on imported food and agricultural products.

Trump called tariffs ‘medicine’ as he promised not to back down

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday, President Donald Trump said he didn’t want global markets to fall, but also that he wasn’t concerned about the massive sell-off either, adding, “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump said. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”

Panic Monday: World stock markets plunge again

Global stock markets extended a severe plunge Monday, fueled by fears that����would lead to a global economic slowdown. European and Asian shares saw dramatic losses, the leading U.S. index flirted with bear market territory in pre-market trading, and oil prices sagged.

The massive sell-off in riskier assets at the start of the trading week follows President Donald �հ��ܳ���’s announcement of sharply higher U.S. import taxes and����that saw markets fall sharply Thursday and Friday.

The Associated Press’ Chris Megerian, Elaine Kurtenbach, and David McHugh contributed to this reporting

The S&P 500 was down 3.8% in midday trading, after earlier dropping more than 5%, following its����wrecked the global economy in 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,349 points, or 3.3%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 3.8% lower.

So far there are few, if any, winners in financial markets from the trade war. European stocks saw some of the day’s biggest losses, with indexes sinking roughly 4%. The price of crude oil tumbled to its lowest level since 2021. Other basic building blocks for economic growth, such as copper, also saw prices slide on worries the trade war will weaken the global economy.

China’s response to U.S. tariffs caused an immediate acceleration of losses in markets worldwide. The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it would respond to the 34% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China by imposing a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.

Markets briefly recovered some of their losses after the release of Friday morning’s U.S. jobs report, which said employers accelerated their hiring by more last month than economists expected. It’s the latest signal that the U.S. job market has remained relatively solid through the start of 2025, and it’s been a linchpin keeping the U.S. economy out of a recession.

But that jobs data was backward-looking, and the fear hitting financial markets is about what’s to come.

“The world has changed, and the economic conditions have changed,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock.

The central question is: Will the trade war cause a global recession? If it does, stock prices will likely need to come down even more than they have already. The S&P 500 is down roughly 15% from its record set in February.

Much will depend on how long �հ��ܳ���’s tariffs stick and what kind of retaliations other countries deliver. Some of Wall Street is holding onto hope that Trump will lower the tariffs after prying out some “wins” from other countries following negotiations. Otherwise, many say a recession looks likely.

For his part, Trump has said Americans may feel����because of tariffs, but he has also said the long-term goals, including getting more manufacturing jobs back to the United States, are worth it. On Thursday, he��, where the U.S. economy is the patient.

“For investors looking at their portfolios, it could have felt like an operation performed without anesthesia,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.

But Jacobsen also said the next surprise for investors could be how quickly tariffs get negotiated down. “The speed of recovery will depend on how, and how quickly, officials negotiate,” he said.

Vietnam said its deputy prime minister would visit the U.S. for talks on trade, while the head of the European Commission has vowed to fight back. Others have said they were hoping to negotiate with the Trump administration for relief.

Trump criticized China’s retaliation on Friday, saying on his Truth Social platform that “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED – THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!”

On Wall Street, stocks of companies that do lots of business in China fell to some of the sharpest losses.

DuPont dropped 11.3% after China said its regulators are launching an anti-trust investigation into DuPont China group, a subsidiary of the chemical giant. It’s one of several measures targeting American companies and in retaliation for the U.S. tariffs.

GE Healthcare got 12.3% of its revenue last year from the China region, and it fell 13.3%.

In the bond market, Treasury yields continued their sharp drop as worries rise about the strength of the U.S. economy. The yield on the 10-year Treasury tumbled to 3.94% from 4.06% late Thursday and from roughly 4.80% early this year. That’s a major move for the bond market.

The Federal Reserve could cut its main interest rate to relax the pressure on the economy, as it was doing late last year before pausing in 2025. But it may have less freedom to move than it would like.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in written remarks being delivered in Arlington, Virginia that tariffs could also drive up expectations for inflation. That could be even more damaging than high inflation itself, because it can drive behavior that begins a vicious cycle that only worsens inflation. U.S.��they’re bracing for sharp increases to their bills.

“Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem,” Powell said.

That could indicate a hesitance to cut rates because lower rates can give inflation more fuel.

In stock markets abroad, Germany’s DAX lost 4.3%, France’s CAC 40 dropped 3.7% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 2.8%.

The Associated Press writers Jiang Junzhe, Huizhong Wu and Matt Ott contributed to this reporting

The double-digit drop is likely due to a combination of factors, including its aging lineup, competition from rivals and a��. It also is a warning that the company’s first-quarter earnings report later this month could disappoint investors.

Tesla reported deliveries of 336,681 globally in the January to March quarter. The figure was down from sales of 387,000 in the same period a year ago. The decline came despite deep discounts, zero financing and other incentives.

Analysts polled by FactSet expected much higher deliveries of 408,000.

Dan Ives of Wedbush said in a note to clients that Tesla is seeing soft demand in the United States and China, as well as facing pressure in Europe.

“The brand crisis issues are clearly having a negative impact on Tesla…there is no debate,” he said.

Ives said that Wall Street and analysts alike knew that the first-quarter figures were likely to be bad, but that it was even worse than expected.

“We are not going to look at these numbers with rose-colored glasses…they were a disaster on every metric,” he said.

Tesla’s stock has plunged by roughly half since hitting a mid-December record as expectations of a lighter regulatory touch and big profits with Donald Trump as president were replaced by fear that the boycott of Musk’s cars and other problems could hit the company hard.

Analysts are still not sure exactly how much the fall in sales is due to the����or other factors. Electric car sales have been sluggish in general, and Tesla in particular is suffering as car buyers hold off from buying its bestselling Model Y because of plans for an updated version later this year.

The Austin, Texas electric vehicle maker has also lost market share to rivals in recent months as their offerings improve, including those of BYD. The Chinese EV giant unveiled in March a technology that allows it cars to charge up in just a few minutes.

Shares of Tesla slipped nearly 6% in early trading on Wednesday.

AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman contributed to this report

Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, said in an email to The Associated Press. The New York Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday.

Val Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had recovered after a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies.

“I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed,” he says toward the end of��. “And I am blessed.”

Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School at the time he attended, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most. His break came in 1984’s spy spoof “Top Secret!” followed by the comedy “Real Genius” in 1985. Kilmer would later show his comedy chops again in films including “MacGruber” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”

His movie career hit its zenith in the early 1990s as he made a name for himself as a dashing leading man, starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in 1993’s “Tombstone,” as Elvis’ ghost in “True Romance” and as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Mann’s 1995 film “Heat” with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

“While working with Val on ‘Heat’ I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character,” director Michael Mann said in a statement Tuesday night.

Actor Josh Brolin, a friend of Kilmer, was among others��.

“You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker,”��. “There’s not a lot left of those.”

Kilmer — who took part in the Method branch of Suzuki arts training — threw himself into parts. When he played Doc Holliday in “Tombstone,” he filled his bed with ice for the final scene to mimic the feeling of dying from tuberculosis. To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time, asked castmates and crew to only refer to him as Jim Morrison and blasted The Doors for a year.

That intensity also gave Kilmer a reputation that he was difficult to work with, something he grudgingly agreed with later in life, but always defending himself by emphasizing art over commerce.

“In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio,” he wrote in his memoir, “I’m Your Huckleberry.”

One of his more iconic roles — hotshot pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise — almost didn’t happen. Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott for “Top Gun” but initially balked. “I didn’t want the part. I didn’t care about the film. The story didn’t interest me,” he wrote in his memoir. He agreed after being promised that his role would improve from the initial script. He would reprise the role in the film’s 2022 sequel, “.”

One career nadir was playing Batman in Joel Schumacher’s goofy, garish “Batman Forever” with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris O’Donnell‘s Robin — before George Clooney took up the mantle for 1997’s “Batman & Robin” and after Michael Keaton played the Dark Knight in 1989’s “Batman” and 1992’s “Batman Returns.”

Janet Maslin in the Times said Kilmer was “hamstrung by the straight-man aspects of the role,” while Roger Ebert deadpanned that he was a “completely acceptable” substitute for Keaton. Kilmer, who was one and done as Batman, blamed much of his performance on the suit.

“When you’re in it, you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down,” Kilmer said in “Val,” in lines spoken by his son Jack, who voiced the part of his father in the film because of his inability to speak. “You also can’t hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, it’s very isolating. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realized that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to.”

His next projects were the film version of the 1960s TV series “The Saint” — fussily putting on wigs, accents and glasses — and “The Island of Dr. Moreau” with Marlon Brando, which became one of the decade’s most infamously cursed productions.

David Gregory’s 2014 documentary “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau,” described a cursed set that included a hurricane, Kilmer bullying director Richard Stanley, the firing of Stanley via fax (who sneaked back on set as an extra with a mask on) and extensive rewrites by Kilmer and Brando. The older actor told the younger at one point: “‘It’s a job now, Val. A lark. We’ll get through it.’ I was as sad as I’ve ever been on a set,” Kilmer wrote in his memoir.

In 1996, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story about Kilmer titled ″The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate.″ The directors Schumacher and John Frankenheimer, who finished “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” said he was difficult. Frankenheimer said there were two things he would never do: ″Climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again.″

Other artists came to his defense, like D. J. Caruso, who directed Kilmer in ″The Salton Sea″ and said the actor simply liked to talk out scenes and enjoyed having a director’s attention.

″Val needs to immerse himself in a character. I think what happened with directors like Frankenheimer and Schumacher is that Val would ask a lot of questions, and a guy like Schumacher would say, ‘You’re Batman! Just go do it,’″ Caruso told the Times in 2002.

After “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” the movies were smaller, like David Mamet human-trafficking thriller “Spartan”; ″Joe the King″ in 1999, in which he played a paunchy, abusive alcoholic; and playing the doomed ’70s porn star John Holmes in 2003’s “Wonderland.” He also threw himself into his one-man stage show “Citizen Twain,” in which he played Mark Twain.

“I enjoy the depth and soul the piece has that Twain had for his fellow man and America,” he told Variety in 2018. “And the comedy that’s always so close to the surface, and how valuable his genius is for us today.”

Kilmer spent his formative years in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles. He attended Chatsworth High School alongside future Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and future Emmy winner Mare Winningham. At 17, he was the youngest drama student ever admitted at the Juilliard School in 1981.

Shortly after he left for Juilliard, his younger brother, 15-year-old Wesley, suffered an epileptic seizure in the family’s Jacuzzi and died on the way to the hospital. Wesley was an aspiring filmmaker when he died.

″I miss him and miss his things. I have his art up. I like to think about what he would have created. I’m still inspired by him,″ Kilmer told the Times.

While still at Juilliard, Kilmer co-wrote and appeared in the play “How It All Began” and later turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” for the Broadway play, “Slab Boys,” alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn.

Kilmer published two books of poetry (including “My Edens After Burns”) and was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for spoken word album for “The Mark of Zorro.” He was also a visual artist and a lifelong Christian Scientist.

He dated Cher, married and divorced actor Joanne Whalley. He is survived by their two children, Mercedes and Jack.

“I have no regrets,” Kilmer told the AP in 2021. “I’ve witnessed and experienced miracles.”

The 7.7 magnitude quake, with an epicenter near Mandalay,����‘s second largest city, struck at midday and was followed by a strong 6.4 magnitude aftershock.

The full extent of death, injury and destruction was not immediately clear — particularly in Myanmar, one of the world’s poorest countries. It is����and information is tightly controlled.

The head of Myanmar’s military government said in the televised speech on Friday evening that at least 144 people were killed and 730 others were injured.

“The death toll and injuries are expected to rise,” Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said.

Photos from the capital of Naypyidaw showed multiple buildings used to house civil servants destroyed by the quake, and rescue crews pulling victims from the rubble.

Myanmar’s government said blood was in high demand in the hardest-hit areas. Images of buckled and cracked roads in Mandalay and damaged highways as well as the collapse of a bridge and dam raised further concerns about how rescuers would even reach some areas in a country already enduring a widespread humanitarian crisis.

Near Bangkok’s popular Chatuchak market, a 33-story building under construction, with a crane on top, crumpled into a cloud of dust, and onlookers could be seen screaming and running in a video posted on social media.

The sound of sirens echoed����and vehicles filled the streets, leaving some of the city’s already congested streets gridlocked. The elevated rapid transit system and subway shut down.

While the area where the quake struck is prone to earthquakes, they are usually not so big and it is rare for them to be felt in the Thai capital, which sits on a river delta and is at moderate risk for quakes.

April Kanichawanakul, who works in an office building in Bangkok, initially didn’t even realize it was an earthquake, the first she’d ever experienced. “I just thought I was dizzy,” she said.

She and her colleagues ran downstairs from the 10th floor of their building and waited outside for a signal that it was safe to go back in.

Crane-topped building collapsed in a cloud of dust

In Bangkok, at least three people were killed in the building collapse and 90 were missing, according to Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai. He offered no more details about the ongoing rescue efforts but first responders said that seven people had been rescued so far from the area.

At least two of the dead were construction workers who were killed by falling rubble or debris, rescue worker Songwut Wangpon told reporters. The building was being built by the China Railway Construction Corporation for Thailand’s government auditor general.

Elsewhere, people in Bangkok evacuated from their buildings were cautioned to stay outside in case there were more aftershocks.

The U.S. Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ center for geosciences said the earthquake was a shallow 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), according to preliminary reports. Shallower earthquakes tend to cause more damage.

Screaming and panic as buildings swayed

Bangkok’s city hall declared the city a disaster area to facilitate the response. The greater metropolitan area is home to more than 17 million people, many of whom live in high-rise apartments.

“All of a sudden the whole building began to move. Immediately there was screaming and a lot of panic,” said Fraser Morton, a tourist from Scotland, who was in one of Bangkok’s many malls.

“I just started walking calmly at first but then the building started really moving, yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, people running the wrong way down the escalators.”

Like Morton, thousands of people poured into Benjasiri Park from nearby shopping malls, high rises and apartment buildings along Bangkok’s busy Sukhumvit Road.

Many were on phones trying to reach loved ones as others sought shade from the hot early afternoon sun.

Voranoot Thirawat, a lawyer working in central Bangkok, said her first indication that something was wrong came when she saw a light swinging back and forth. Then she heard the building creaking as it moved back and forth.

She and her colleagues ran down 12 flights of stairs. “In my lifetime, there was no earthquake like this in Bangkok,” she said.

Paul Vincent, a tourist visiting from England, was at a streetside bar when the quake struck.

As he came onto the street himself, he said he saw a high-rise building swaying and water falling from a rooftop pool.

“There was people crying in the streets and, you know, the panic was horrendous really,” he said.

Bridge and monastery collapse and dam bursts in Myanmar

In Mandalay, the earthquake reportedly brought down multiple buildings, including the Ma Soe Yane monastery, one of the largest in the city, and damaged the former royal palace. Meanwhile, Christian Aid said its partners and colleagues on the ground reported that a dam burst in the city, causing water levels to rise in the lowland areas in the area.

A video posted online showed robed monks in the street shooting video of the multistory monastery before it suddenly fell into the ground. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was harmed.

In the Sagaing region just southwest of the city, a 90-year-old bridge collapsed, and some sections of the highway connecting Mandalay and Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, were also damaged.

The military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, and is now involved in a bloody civil war with long-established militias and newly formed pro-democracy ones.

Government forces have lost control of much of Myanmar, and many places are incredibly dangerous to access or simply out of reach for aid groups. More than 3 million people have been displaced by the fighting and nearly 20 million are in need, according to the United Nations.

The Red Cross said downed power lines added to challenges for their teams trying to reach several hard-hit areas.

“This disaster will have left people devastated and in need of drinking water, food and shelter,” said Julie Mehigan, head of Asia, Middle East & Europe for Christian Aid. “Myanmar is one of the least developed countries in the world. Even before this heartbreaking earthquake, we know conflict and displacement has left countless people in real need.”

Myanmar’s government declared a state of emergency in six regions and states including the capital Naypyitaw and Mandalay. It was not clear what the declaration meant since the entire country has been under a state of emergency since 2021.

Residents in Yangon rushed out of their homes when the quake struck. In the capital Naypyitaw, the quake damaged some homes and religious shrines, sending parts toppling to the ground.

Injuries reported in China

To the northeast, the earthquake was felt in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China and caused damage to houses and injuries in the city of Ruili on the border with Myanmar, according to Chinese media reports.

Videos that one outlet said it had received from a person in Ruili showed building debris littering a street and a person being wheeled in a stretcher toward an ambulance.

The shaking in Mangshi, a Chinese city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Ruili, was so strong that people couldn’t stand, one resident told The Paper, an online media outlet.

Dozens of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property, said the activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence.

They attacked Hamdan Ballal, one of the documentary’s co-directors, leaving his head bleeding, the activists said. As he was being treated in an ambulance, soldiers detained him and a second Palestinian man, the group said. It said his whereabouts were now unknown.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the episode but did not immediately comment.

“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary,����by residents of Masafer Yatta to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. It has two Palestinian co-directors, Ballal and Basel Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The����has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach briefly proposed����of a movie theater that screened the documentary.

Woods and Vanessa Trump, who was married to Donald Trump Jr., had been seen at Torrey Pines in San Diego along with her daughter, Kai, when Woods arrived for the final round to hand out the trophy to the winner of the Genesis Invitational. He is the tournament host.

Kai Trump goes to the Benjamin School with Woods’ two children, Sam and Charlie. She and Charlie competed on an invitation at a high-profile junior golf tournament this week.

“Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side! We look forward to our journey through life together,” Woods said on X, where he has 6.4 million followers.

He added: “At this time we would appreciate privacy for all those close to our hearts.”

‘Love is in the air’

One photo shows Woods and Vanessa Trump posing together, another with them lying in a hammock with her arm draped across his chest as he gazes skyward.

Woods and Vanessa Trump had been featured in gossip outlets for the last several weeks. She was married to Donald Trump Jr. for 12 years. They had five children together.

Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side! We look forward to our journey through life together. At this time we would appreciate privacy for all those close to our hearts.

— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods)

Woods announced March 11 that he ruptured his left Achilles tendon, knocking him out of the Masters and likely for the rest of the year.

It was not clear what prompted Woods, who keeps his personal life fiercely private, to publish photos confirming the relationship.��.

Woods said at the time he and Vonn “wanted to limit the ‘stalkarazzi’ and all those sleazy websites that are out there following us,” saying it could lead to dangerous situations involving his children. He also said their photos would devalue anything the paparazzi had.

Woods has two children from his marriage to Elin Nordegren, who divorced him 2010 after he had been exposed for multiple extramarital affairs.

His only other public relationship was with Erica Herman, which lasted about seven years until he ended it in October 2022. It was a messy split, and����that owns his south Florida estate, where she had been living.

A full 20 years later in 1994, the 45-year-old Foreman became the oldest man to win the heavyweight championship, throwing one perfect combination to steal Michael Moorer’s title in an epic upset.

Few fighters ever had more big moments than Big George Foreman — and even after he finally left the ring, he was only getting started.

The fearsome heavyweight, who lost the “Rumble in the Jungle” to Ali before his inspiring second act as a surprising champion and a successful businessman, died Friday night. Foreman was 76.

Foreman’s family��, not saying how or where he died.

“A devout preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father and a proud grand- and great-grandfather, he lived a life marked by unwavering faith, humility and purpose,” his family wrote. “A humanitarian, an Olympian and two-time heavyweight champion of the world, he was deeply respected. A force for good, a man of discipline, conviction, and a protector of his legacy, fighting tirelessly to preserve his good name— for his family.”

A native Texan, Foreman began his boxing career as an Olympic gold medalist who inspired fear and awe as he climbed to the peak of the heavyweight division by stopping Joe Frazier in 1973. His formidable aura evaporated only a year later when Ali pulled off one of the most audacious victories in boxing history in Zaire, baiting and taunting Foreman into losing his belt.

Foreman left the sport a few years later, but returned after a 10-year absence and a self-described religious awakening.

The middle-aged fighter then pulled off one of the most spectacular knockouts in boxing history, flooring Moorer — 19 years his junior — with a surgical right hand and claiming Moorer’s two heavyweight belts. Foreman’s 20 years is easily the longest gap between heavyweight title reigns.

“His contribution to boxing and beyond will never be forgotten,” former heavyweight champion of the world, Mike Tyson, said on X, formerly Twitter, as he expressed his condolences.

Foreman’s transformation into an inspirational figure was complete, and he fought only four more times — finishing 76-5 with 68 knockouts — before moving onto his next career as a genial businessman, pitchman and occasional actor.

Outside the ring, he was best known as the face of the George Foreman Grill, which launched in the same year as his victory over Moorer. The simple cooking machine sold more than 100 million units and made him much wealthier than his sport ever did.

“George was a great friend to not only myself, but to my entire family,” Top Rank president Bob Arum said. “We’ve lost a family member and are absolutely devastated.”

In the first chapter of his boxing career, Foreman was nothing like the smiling grandfather who hawked his grills on television to great success.

Foreman dabbled in petty crime while growing up in Houston’s Fifth Ward, but changed his life through boxing. He made the U.S. Olympic team in 1968 and won gold in Mexico City as a teenager, stopping a 29-year-old opponent in a star-making performance.

Foreman rose to the pinnacle of the pro game over the next five years, but was also perceived as an aloof, unfriendly athlete, both through his demeanor and through the skewed racial lenses of the time.

Jim Lampley, the veteran boxing broadcaster who worked alongside Foreman for many years at HBO, told The Associated Press on Friday night that Foreman’s initial demeanor was an attempt by his camp to emulate Sonny Liston, the glowering heavyweight champ of the 1960s.

“At some point somewhere along the way, he realized that wasn’t him,” Lampley said.

Foreman stopped Frazier in an upset in Jamaica in January 1973 to win the belt, with his knockout inspiring Howard Cosell’s iconic call: “Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!”

Foreman defended his belt against Ken Norton before accepting the fight with Ali in the now-immortal bout staged in Africa by promoter Don King. Ali put on a tactical masterclass against Foreman, showing off the “rope-a-dope” strategy that frustrated and infuriated the champion. Foreman was eventually knocked down for the first time in his career, and the fight was stopped in the eighth round.

Foreman told the BBC in 2014 that he took the fight almost out of charity to Ali, who he suspected to be broke.

“I said I was going to go out there and kill him, and people said, ‘Please, don’t say you’re going to kill Muhammad,’” Foreman said. “So I said, ‘OK, I’ll just beat him down to the ground.’ That’s how easy I thought the fight would be.”

Exhausted and disillusioned, Foreman stopped fighting in 1977 and largely spent the next decade preaching and working with kids in Houston after his religious awakening. He returned to boxing in 1987 in his late 30s with a plan to defy time through frequent ring appearances, and he racked up a lengthy series of victories before losing to Evander Holyfield in a surprisingly competitive title fight in 1991.

Three years later, Foreman got in the ring with Moorer in Las Vegas, more for his celebrity than for his perceived ability to beat Moorer. The champion appeared to win the first nine rounds rather comfortably, with Foreman unable to land his slower punches. But Foreman came alive in the 10th, hurting Moorer before slipping in the short right hand that sent Moorer to the canvas in earth-shaking fashion.

Lampley, who was calling the fight, named his upcoming autobiography — which includes a prologue about Foreman — after his famous call of that moment: “It Happened!”

Foreman quit the ring for good in 1997, although he occasionally discussed a comeback. He settled into a life as a boxing analyst for HBO and as a pitchman for the grills that grew his fame and fortune. Much of the world soon knew Foreman as both a lovable friend and a ferocious fighter.

“He started performing as this pitchman, this product pitchman with the big, ever-present giant grin on his face,” Lampley recalled. “When I was working with him, people would say, ‘George is a big clown.’ And I would say, ‘Well, you can call him a clown, but he’s actually a genius. He may be the greatest genius I’ve ever met.’ And people would say, ‘Well, genius, what do you mean?’ I’d say, ‘Well, check the bank account. If that isn’t proof enough, I don’t know what is.’ So, he was a genius. He was a human genius.”

Foreman briefly starred in a sitcom called “George” in the 1990s, and he even appeared on the reality singing competition “The Masked Singer” in 2022. A biographical movie based on his life was released in 2023.

Foreman had 12 children, including five sons who are all famously named George Edward Foreman.

“Legendary boxing champion, life-changing preacher, husband, father, grand- and great-grandfather and the best friend you could have,” WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman wrote on social media. “His memory is now eternal, may Big George rest in peace.”

AP Sports Writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report.

Known as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, the manned jet will serve as quarterback to a fleet of future drone aircraft designed to be able to penetrate the air defenses of China and any other potential foes. The initial contract to proceed with production on a version for the Air Force version is worth an estimated $20 billion.

In a recent press release Boeing said the next-generation “Air Dominance Platform” will usher in a new generation of United States fighter jets.

“We recognize the importance of designing, building and delivering a 6th-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force. In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission,” said��Steve Parker, interim president and chief executive officer, Boeing Defense, Space & Security.

Trump announced the award at the White House with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth said the future fleet “sends a very clear, direct message to our allies that we’re not going anywhere.”

“This is good news for the defense side,” aviation analyst Scott Hamilton told ����Xվ Newsradio. “There’s still a lot of work that Boeing has to do to turn that unit around.”

Critics have questioned the cost and the necessity of the program as the Pentagon is still struggling to fully produce its current most advanced jet, the F-35, which is expected to cost taxpayers more than $1.7 trillion over its lifespan. In addition, the Pentagon’s future stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, will have many of the same cutting-edge technologies in advanced materials, AI, propulsion, and stealth.

More than 1,100 F-35s have already been built for the U.S. and multiple international partners.

A fleet of about 100 future����at an estimated total cost of at least $130 billion is also planned. The first B-21 aircraft are now in test flights.

With evolving drone and space warfare likely to be the center of any fight with China, Dan Grazier, a military procurement analyst, questions whether “another exquisite manned fighter jet really is the right platform going forward.” Grazier, director of the national security reform program at the Stimson Center, said $20 billion is “just seed money. The total costs coming down the road will be hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Few details of what the new NGAD fighter would look like have been public, although test versions are said to have been flown already. Renderings by both Lockheed Martin and Boeing have highlighted a flat, tail-less aircraft with a sharp nose.

A separate Navy contract for its version of the NGAD fighter is still under competition between Northrop Grumman and Boeing.

Last year, the Biden administration’s Air Force secretary, Frank Kendall, ordered a pause on the NGAD program to review if the aircraft was still needed or if the program, which was first designed in 2018, needed to be modified to reflect the past few years of warfighting advances.

That review by think tanks and academia examined what conflict with China would look like with NGAD and then without it — and determined that NGAD was still needed. Kendall then left the decision on which firm would build the fighter jet to the incoming Trump administration, a defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide details on the decision-making.

NGAD will bring “an entirely different level of low observability,” the official said. It will also have a much longer range than the F-35 or other current fighter jets, so it will require less refueling. A future unmanned version of NGAD also is planned as the Pentagon����the official said.

Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce legislation to achieve that, while Democrats have quickly lined up to oppose the idea.

The order says the education secretary will, “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”

It offers no detail on how that work will be carried out or where it will be targeted, though the White House said the agency will retain certain critical functions.

Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities,” preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities.

After President Trump signed the order, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal “The Trump Administration has made it no secret that one of their key priorities is to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.”

“What we are seeing in Washington, D.C. is a cruel chaos that has been intentionally designed to promote a school privatization agenda and undo a 60-year commitment to equity and civil rights that lies at the heart of our democratic system, Reykdal said. “In other states, that agenda has led to greater divides between student groups along socioeconomic and racial lines.”

The White House said earlier Thursday the department will continue to manage federal student loans, but the order appears to say the opposite. It says the Education Department doesn’t have the staff to oversee its $1.6 trillion loan portfolio and “must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.”

At a signing ceremony, Trump blamed the department for America’s lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job.

“It’s doing us no good,” he said.

Already, �հ��ܳ���’s Republican administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being��, and there have been����to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.