AP Top News at 11:48 p.m. EDT

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol removed from office over declaration of martial law

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s Constitutional Court removed impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol from office on Friday, ending his tumultuous presidency and setting up an election to find a new leader, four months after he threw South Korean politics into turmoil with an ill-fated declaration of martial law. The unanimous verdict capped a dramatic fall for Yoon, a former star prosecutor who went from political novice to president in 2022, just a year after he entered politics. In a nationally televised verdict, the court’s acting chief Moon Hyung-bae said the eight-member bench upheld Yoon’s impeachment because his martial law decree seriously violated the constitution and other laws.

Asian stocks slid after Wall Street surrendered to a hit by Trump’s tariffs

HONG KONG (AP) — Asian markets retreated Friday after Wall Street shuddered with a level of shock unseen since the COVID-19 impact tore on Trump’s latest set of tariffs’ damage on the world’s economy. Futures for U.S. stocks and the oil prices declined. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 2.6% to 33,818.18, and Korea’s Kospi fell 0.8% to 2,467.14 after the two countries pivoted to negotiating lower tariffs with Trump’s administration. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1.9% to 7,713.60. Chinese markets were closed for a holiday. Trump announced a minimum tariff of 10% on imports, with the tax rate running much higher on products from certain countries like China and those from the European Union.

Trump’s tariff push is a race against time, and potential voter backlash

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s expansive new tariffs reverse a decades-long global trend of lower trade barriers and are likely, economists say, to raise prices for Americans by thousands of dollars each year while sharply slowing the U.S. economy. The White House is gambling that other countries will also suffer enough pain that they will open up their economies to more American exports, leading to negotiations that would reduce the tariffs imposed Wednesday. Or, the White House hopes, companies will reverse their moves toward global supply chains and bring more production to the United States to avoid higher import taxes.

Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced Thursday that he would review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to convey plans for a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen. The review will also look at other defense officials’ use of the publicly available encrypted app, which is not able to handle classified material and is not part of the Defense Department’s secure communications network. Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by national security adviser Mike Waltz.

Trump fires NSC officials a day after far-right activist raises concerns to him about staff loyalty

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that comes a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty. Trump downplayed Loomer’s influence on the firings. But Loomer during her Oval Office conversation with Trump urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner. “Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he made his way to Miami on Thursday afternoon.

Storms kill 7 in the South and Midwest as forecasters warn of catastrophic rains, floods this week

LAKE CITY, Ark. (AP) — Standing alongside the twisted steel tractors on his family farm in northeast Arkansas on Thursday, Danny Qualls looked on while friends and relatives helped him begin cleaning up. The home where he spent his childhood but no longer lives was flattened by one of many tornadoes that left behind destruction from Oklahoma to Indiana — the first in a round of storms expected to bring historic rains and life-threatening flash floods across the nation’s midsection in the coming days. “My husband has been extremely tearful and emotional, but he also knows that we have to do the work,” Rhonda Qualls said.

Republicans moving ahead with Trump’s ‘big’ bill of tax breaks and spending cuts amid tariff uproar

WASHINGTON (AP) — After a long wait, the Senate is launching action on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts at a risky moment for the U.S. and global economy. More than a month after House Republicans surprised Washington by advancing their framework for Trump’s $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts, Senate Republicans voted Thursday to start working on their version. The largely party-line vote, 52-48, sets the stage for a potential Senate all-nighter Friday spilling into the weekend. But work on the multitrillion-dollar package is coming as markets at home and abroad are on edge in the aftermath Trump’s vast tariffs scheme, complicating an already difficult political and procedural undertaking on what Republicans hope will become their signature domestic policy package.

Brown University to see half a billion in federal funding halted by Trump administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is planning to halt more than half a billion dollars in contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, adding to a list of Ivy League colleges that have had their federal money threatened as a result of their responses to antisemitism, a White House official said Thursday. Nearly $510 million in federal contracts and grants are on the line, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity. In an email Thursday to campus leaders, Brown Provost Frank Doyle said the university was aware of “troubling rumors” about government action on its research money.

Myanmar earthquake death toll rises to 3,145 as more bodies found

BANGKOK (AP) — The death toll from the earthquake that hit Myanmar nearly a week ago rose Thursday to 3,145 as search and rescue teams found more bodies, the military-led government said, and humanitarian aid groups scrambled to provide survivors medical care and shelter. Information Minister Maung Maung Ohn also announced at a meeting in the capital, Naypyitaw, that 4,589 people were injured and 221 others were missing, state television MRTV reported. The epicenter of the 7.7 magnitude quake on March 28 was near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city. It brought down thousands of buildings, buckled roads and destroyed bridges in multiple regions.

Once pariahs, now winners, Final Four coaches Pearl, Sampson a reflection of a changing game

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A decade ago, Bruce Pearl of Auburn and Kelvin Sampson of Houston were emerging from exile — two coaches who had been handed the harshest sanction imaginable by the NCAA and were looking to resurrect their once-successful careers. This week, they’re both coaching at the Final Four, the “show-cause” penalties that once stood as a scarlet letter in college sports now barely visible in their rearview mirrors. Their ascension from pariahs to the cusp of a championship — Auburn plays Florida in one semifinal Saturday, while Houston faces Duke in the other — look different, but no less impressive when viewed through the lens of the shifting priorities that have overtaken college sports over the last four years.