The strikes came amid simmering tensions over Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program and appeared certain to trigger a reprisal. Hours later, Israel’s military said it had begun intercepting Iranian drones launched in retaliation.

The U.S. is shifting military resources in the Middle East in response to Israel strikes and possible Iran retaliation, officials say.

What to know

Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear sites:��Israeli Prime Minister����said that Israel targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz and the country’s ballistic missile program.

General Hossein Salami was killed:����was confirmed dead, Iranian state television reported, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said other top military officials and scientists were also killed.

Both sites have been the focus of �հ��ܳ���’s nuclear deal negotiations:����that he warned Netanyahu against launching an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities while diplomatic efforts were underway. On Friday, he again urged Iran to reach a nuclear deal with US, warning attacks ‘will only get worse!’

The attack pushes the region into a new and uncertain phase:��The deaths of top Iranian officials also marks a significant blow to Tehran’s governing theocracy and an immediate��.

Oil prices are leaping and stocks are falling after Israel’s attack on Iran

Markets are worried that Israel’s attack could escalate further and damage the flow of crude around the world, along with the global economy.

The S&P 500 was down 0.7% in early trading Friday and on track for its worst day in more than two weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 423 points, or 1%, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.8%.

The price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude jumped 7.3%. Iran is one of the world’s major producers of oil.

Turkey suspends flights to Iran, Iraq, Syria and Jordan

Turkish Airlines and other local airline operators suspended flights to those countries until Monday due to security concerns, the country’s transportation minister, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, announced on X.

Iraq complains to UN about Israel using its airspace to attack Iran

Early Friday morning, many in Iraq reported hearing warplanes and sounds of explosions that were believed to be the firing of missiles from Iraqi airspace.

The government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq — which has a close relationship with the United States — also issued a statement condemning Israel’s strikes on Iran.

Egyptian and German foreign ministers warn against regional escalation

Speaking to reporters in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty condemned the “dangerous and unjustified” escalation in light of Israel’s attacks on Iran, warning it could plunge the region into chaos.

Meanwhile, his German counterpart Johann Wadephul expressed concern over Israel’s military strikes and Iran’s retaliatory launch of hundreds of drones toward Israel, calling the developments deeply worrying.

Abdelatty affirmed that nuclear non-proliferation is among top Egyptian policy priorities. Wadenphul, meanwhile, raised concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu calls allied leaders in Germany, India and France

A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said “The leaders expressed understanding for Israel’s defense needs against the threat of Iranian annihilation.”

He was expected to speak with Trump, Putin and Starmer later in the day. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gidon Saar was also reaching out to European leaders throughout the day.

Israeli intelligence had ‘absolutely exceptional’ knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program, expert says

The strikes showed Israel knew the private addresses of key military leaders and combined that with the ability to hit targets “with precision,” delivering “a tremendous amount of damage” to the nuclear program, said Fabian Hinz, a defense and nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Hinz suggested there are two main ways Iran could respond — by using Hezbollah and air attacks — but indicated both options are limited.

Hezbollah, he said, “is no longer in a position” to fulfill its role as Iran’s forward deterrence after repeated attacks from Israel. There are also questions about the effectiveness of Iran’s missiles, which were largely intercepted during attacks on Israel last year, he said.

Iran calls for emergency Security Council meeting

Iran’s U.N. Mission said it has asked for an emergency meeting of the Security Council following the Israeli attacks.

The emergency session is likely to take place Friday afternoon, the mission said.

Turkey’s Erdogan calls Israeli strikes a blatant provocation

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called Israel’s strikes on Iran a “blatant provocation” that violates international law.

In a statement posted on X, Erdogan suggested that the attack was an attempt to divert attention away from Israel’s ongoing actions in Gaza.

“The attacks by (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and his network of massacre that are igniting our entire region must be prevented,” Erdogan wrote.

Israel told Trump administration of attacks ahead of time

Israel told the Trump administration that large-scale attacks were coming and expected Iranian retaliation would be severe, U.S. officials said, leading the United States to order the evacuations of some nonessential embassy staffers and authorize the voluntary departure of military dependents in the region.

The officials were speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic discussions.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff still plans to go to Oman this weekend for talks on Tehran’s nuclear program, but it’s not clear if the Iranians would participate, officials said.

Macron calls for all parties to be restrained

French President Emmanuel Macron has called on ” all parties to exercise the utmost restraint and de-escalate” in order “not to jeopardize the stability of the entire region” in a post on X.

Macron, who held an emergency security meeting on Friday morning following Israel’s strikes on Iran, said France is taking all necessary measures to protect its nationals, diplomatic sites and military bases in the region.

Macron said he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump as well as leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Germany and Britain about the latest developments.

Hamas expresses solidarity with Iran

“We declare our solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran in the face of the brutal Zionist aggression, which primarily stems from Iran’s support for the Palestinian people and its significant backing of their honorable resistance fighters,” said Abu Ubaida, spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing.

He also mourned the deaths of senior Iranian leaders and others killed in the strike, condemning the attack as “cowardly.”

Trump: ‘Second chance’ for Iran

In a further post on the Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump added: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’”

“They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!” he wrote Friday.

Trump calls Israeli strikes on Iran ‘excellent’ and says ‘more to come’

In an interview with ABC News, U.S. President Donald Trump called the Israeli strikes on Iran “excellent” and previewed more attacks.

“I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it,” Trump told ABC on Friday morning. “They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come, a lot more.”

This is a developing story, check back for updates

Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane went down in a populated area near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.

Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Many charred bodies lay on the ground and one was carried away on a stretcher by first responders.

“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.

Some police patrolled the streets on horseback while others with riot gear lined up behind Guard troops deployed to protect federal facilities including a detention center where some immigrants were taken in recent days. Police declared an unlawful assembly, and by early evening many people had left.

But protesters who remained grabbed chairs from a nearby public park to form a makeshift barrier, throwing objects at police on the other side. Others standing above the closed southbound 101 Freeway threw chunks of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at California Highway Patrol officers and their vehicles that were parked on the highway. Officers ran under an overpass to take cover.

It was the third day of demonstrations against �հ��ܳ���’s immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of around 300 federal troops spurred anger and fear among some residents. Sunday’s protests in Los Angeles, a city of 4 million people, were centered in several blocks of downtown.

Starting in the morning, National Guard troops stood shoulder to shoulder, carrying long guns and riot shields outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Protesters shouted “shame” and “go home.” After some closely approached the guard members, another set of uniformed officers advanced on the group, shooting smoke-filled canisters into the street.

Minutes later, the Los Angeles Police Department fired rounds of crowd-control munitions to disperse the protesters, who they said were assembled unlawfully. Much of the group then moved to block traffic on the 101 freeway until state patrol officers cleared them from the roadway by late afternoon, while southbound lanes remained shut down.

Nearby, at least four self-driving Waymo cars were set on fire, sending large plumes of black smoke into the sky and exploding intermittently as the electric vehicles burned. By evening, police had issued an unlawful assembly order shutting down several blocks of downtown Los Angeles.

Flash bangs echoed out every few seconds into the evening.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom requested Trump remove the guard members in a����Sunday afternoon, calling their deployment a “serious breach of state sovereignty.” He was in Los Angeles meeting with local law enforcement and officials. It wasn’t clear if he’d spoken to Trump since Friday.

Their deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the������ڴڴǰ��ٲ�.

Mayor Karen Bass echoed Newsom’s comments.

“What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration,” she said in an afternoon press conference. “This is about another agenda, this isn’t about public safety.”

Their admonishments did not deter the administration.

“It’s a bald-faced lie for Newsom to claim there was no problem in Los Angeles before President Trump got involved,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement in response.

Deployment follows days of protest

The arrival of the National Guard followed two days of protests that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and��.

Federal agents arrested immigrants in LA’s fashion district, in a Home Depot parking lot and at several other locations on Friday. The next day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which drew out protesters who suspected another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot.

Demonstrators attempted to block Border Patrol vehicles by hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, agents in riot gear unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.

The weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the LA area climbed above 100, federal authorities said. Many more were arrested while protesting, including a prominent union leader who was accused of impeding law enforcement.

The protests did not reach the size of past demonstrations that brought the National Guard to Los Angeles, including the�������Ի�����and the 2020 protests against police violence, in which Newsom requested the assistance of federal troops.

The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Trump says there will be ‘very strong law and order’

In a����Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal service members when there is ”a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

He said he had authorized the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard.

Trump told reporters as he prepared to board Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey, Sunday that there were “violent people” in Los Angeles “and they’re not gonna get away with it.”

Asked if he��, Trump replied: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.” He didn’t elaborate.

About 500 Marines stationed at Twentynine Palms, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of Los Angeles were in a “prepared to deploy status” Sunday afternoon, according to the U.S. Northern Command.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lives in Los Angeles, said the immigration arrests and Guard deployment were designed as part of a “cruel, calculated agenda to spread panic and division.”

She said she supports those “standing up to protect our most fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Offenhartz reported from New York. Associated Press writer Michelle Price contributed to this report from Bridgewater, New Jersey.

��prompted Israeli missions to beef up their security and lower their flags to half-staff. It came as Israel has launched another major offensive in the Gaza Strip in a war with Hamas that has����and as antisemitic acts are on the rise.

The two people killed were a young couple about to be engaged, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said. He added that the man had purchased a ring this week with the intent to propose next week in Jerusalem.

They were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum when the suspect, who had been seen pacing outside the museum, approached a group of four people and opened fire, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said��.

The man, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago, then walked into the museum, was detained by event security and began chanting, “Free, free Palestine,” Smith said.

Israeli officials identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli citizen, and Sarah Milgrim, an American. Lischinsky was a research assistant, and Milgrim organized visits and missions to Israel.

“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” President Donald Trump posted on social media early Thursday. “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”

Israel’s reaction

Israeli Prime Minister����’s office said Thursday he was shocked.

“We are witnessing the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel,” he said in a statement.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, led by former judge Jeanine Pirro, will prosecute the case.

It was not immediately clear whether Rodriguez had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. A telephone number listed in public records rang unanswered.

Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, wrote in a post on social media that “early indicators are that this is an act of targeted violence.”

Israel’s campaign in Gaza

The influential pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera aired on a loop what appeared to be mobile phone footage of the gunman, wearing a suit jacket and slacks, being pulled away after the shooting, his hands behind his back.

The war, ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in the abduction of some 250 hostages, has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced most of its population.

Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, whose count doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians. An Israeli blockade has caused����and prompted fears of famine.

‘In cold blood’

��the American Jewish Committee’s annual Young Diplomats reception at the museum.

“This is a shocking act of violence and our community is holding each other tighter tonight,” Ted Deutch, American Jewish Committee’s chief executive, said in a statement early Thursday. “At this painful moment, we mourn with the victims’ families, loved ones, and all of Israel. May their memories be for a blessing.”

Yoni Kalin and Katie Kalisher were inside the museum when they heard gunshots and a man came inside looking distressed. Kalin said people came to his aid and brought him water, thinking he needed help, without realizing he was the suspect. When police arrived, he pulled out a red keffiyeh, the Palestinian headscarf, and repeatedly yelled, “Free Palestine,’” Kalin said.

“This event was about humanitarian aid,” Kalin said. “How can we actually help both the people in Gaza and the people in Israel? How can we bring together Muslims and Jews and Christians to work together to actually help innocent people? And then here he is just murdering two people in cold blood.”

Last week, the Capital Jewish Museum was one of the local nonprofits in Washington awarded funding from a $500,000 grant program to increase its security. The museum’s leaders����and due to its new LGBTQ exhibit, according to��.

“We recognize that there are threats associated with this as well,” Executive Director Beatrice Gurwitz told the TV station. “And again, we want to ensure that our space is as welcoming and secure for everybody who comes here while we are exploring these stories.”

In response to the shooting, the museum said in a statement that they are “deeply saddened and horrified by the senseless violence outside the Museum this evening.”

Israeli diplomats have a history of being targeted by violence, both by state-backed assailants and Palestinian militants over the decades of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict that grew out of the founding of Israel in 1948. The Palestinians seek Gaza and the West Bank for a future state, with east Jerusalem as its capital — lands Israel captured in the 1967 war. However, the peace process between the sides has been stalled for years.

The story has been updated to correct the suspect’s age to 31 from 30, based on updated information from law enforcement.

Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer, Hallie Golden, Jon Gambrell, Stefanie Dazio and Natalie Melzer contributed.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols also convicted Taylor Taranto of recording himself making a hoax threat to bomb a government building in Maryland. The judge decided the case without a jury after a bench trial that started last week in Washington, D.C.

Taranto was arrested in Obama’s neighborhood on the same day in June 2023 that Trump posted on social media what he claimed was the former president’s address. Investigators said they found two guns, roughly 500 rounds of ammunition, and a machete in Taranto’s van.

Taranto was livestreaming video on YouTube in which he said he was looking for “entrance points” to underground tunnels and wanted to get a “good angle on a shot,”��. He reposted �հ��ܳ���’s message about Obama’s home address and wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” He was referring to��, who chaired����2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

Taranto wasn’t charged with threatening Obama or Podesta. But the judge convicted him of making a hoax bomb threat directed at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Taranto’s lawyers said he didn’t have any bomb-making material and wasn’t near the institute when he made those statements on a livestreamed video. During the trial’s opening statements, defense attorney Pleasant Brodnax said the video shows Taranto was merely joking in an “avant-garde” manner.

“He believes he is a journalist and, to some extent, a comedian,” Broadnax said.

But the judge concluded that a reasonable, objective observer might have believed Taranto’s statements on the video. While some viewers may have thought his words were of a “madcap nature,” others could have interpreted them as coming from “an unbalanced narrator willing to follow through on outlandish claims,” Nichols said.

Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn’t immediately schedule a sentencing hearing for Taranto. He has been jailed for nearly two years since his arrest because a����that he poses a danger to the public.

After reading his verdict from the bench, the judge said he would entertain a request by defense attorney Carmen Hernandez to release Taranto from custody until his sentencing. Nichols said he intends to rule on that request later this week.

Taranto, a Navy veteran from Pasco, Washington, is one of only a few people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol who remained jailed after President����‘s sweeping act on clemency in January. Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes��.

Before �հ��ܳ���’s pardons, Taranto also was charged with four misdemeanors related to the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors said he joined the crush of rioters who breached the building. He was captured on video at the entrance of the Speaker’s Lobby around the time that a rioter,��, was shot and killed by an officer while she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door.

Biden was seen by doctors last week after urinary symptoms and a prostate nodule were found. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

Prostate cancers are given a score called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.

When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasized cancer is much harder to treat than localized cancer because it can be hard for drugs to reach all the tumors and completely root out the disease.

However, when prostate cancers need hormones to grow, as in Biden’s case, they can be susceptible to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones.

The health of Biden, 82, was a dominant concern among voters during his time as president. After a calamitous debate performance in June while seeking reelection, Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee and lost to Republican Donald Trump, who returned to the White House after a four-year hiatus.

But in recent days, Biden rejected concerns about his age despite reporting in the new book “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aides had shielded the public from the extent of his decline while serving as president.

In February 2023, Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.

In 2022, Biden made a “cancer moonshot” one of his administration’s priorities with the goal of halving the cancer death rate over the next 25 years. The initiative was a continuation of his work as vice president to address a disease that had killed his older son, Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.

His father, when announcing the goal to halve the cancer death rate, said this could be an “American moment to prove to ourselves and, quite frankly, the world that we can do really big things.”

Details of the settlement over����were not disclosed in a court filing Monday.

Barnett, a longtime Boeing employee, shared his safety concerns with journalists after he retired in 2017. He said he once saw discarded metal shavings near wiring for the flight controls that could have cut the wiring and caused a catastrophe. He also noted problems with up to a quarter of the oxygen systems on Boeing’s 787 planes.

Family settles lawsuit over Boeing whistleblower’s suicide

Barnett shared his concerns with his supervisors and others before leaving Boeing, but according to the lawsuit they responded by ignoring him and then harassing him.

, 62, shot himself on March 9, 2024, in Charleston after answering questions from attorneys for several days. He lived in Louisiana.

The document announcing the settlement and closing the case in federal court in South Carolina was one page and the only detail was that either side can reopen the lawsuit if the settlement is not finalized in 60 days.

Boeing did not answer the lawsuit in court papers before the settlement.

“We are saddened by John Barnett’s death and extend our condolences to his family. Boeing took actions several years ago to review and address the issues that Mr. Barnett raised,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.

Waltz came under searing scrutiny in March after revelations that he����on the encrypted messaging app Signal, which was used to discuss planning for a sensitive March 15 military operation against Houthi militants in Yemen. A far-right ally of the president, Laura Loomer, has also targeted Waltz, telling Trump in a recent Oval Office conversation that he needs to purge aides who she believes are insufficiently loyal to the “Make America Great Again” agenda.

Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, is also expected to depart, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel move not yet made public. The National Security Council did not respond do a request for comment.

Waltz, who served in the House representing Florida for three terms before his elevation to the White House, is the most prominent senior administration official to depart since Trump returned to the White House. In his second term, the Republican president had been looking to avoid the tumult of his first four years in office, during which he cycled through four national security advisers, four White House chiefs of staff and two secretaries of state.

��also showed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop. Waltz had previously taken “full responsibility” for building the message chain and administration officials described the episode as a “mistake” but one that caused Americans no harm. Waltz maintained that he was not sure how Goldberg ended up in the messaging chain, and insisted he did not know the journalist.

Trump and the White House — which insisted that no classified information was shared on the text chain — have stood by Waltz publicly throughout the episode. But the embattled national security adviser was also under siege from personalities such as Loomer, who had been complaining to administration officials that she had been excluded from the vetting process for National Security Council aides. In her view, Waltz relied too much on “neocons” — referring to hawkish neoconservatives within the Republican Party — as well as others who Loomer argued were “not-MAGA-enough” types.

Waltz was on television as late as Thursday morning, promoting the administration’s agreement with Kyiv that would allow the U.S. to access Ukraine’s critical minerals and other natural resources. As reports began to circulate that Waltz could be leaving the administration, Loomer appeared to take credit in a post on the social media site X, writing: “SCALP.”

“Hopefully, the rest of the people who were set to be fired but were given promotions at the NSC under Waltz also depart,” Loomer wrote in another post.

Loomer had taken����when several other NSC officials were dismissed last month one day after she met with Trump. Those firings included Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs; and David Feith, a senior director for technology and national security, as well as other lower-ranking aides.

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