AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

‘Vote them out!’: Hundreds of thousands demand gun control

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a historic groundswell of youth activism, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied across the U.S. against gun violence Saturday, vowing to transform fear and grief into a “vote-them-out” movement and tougher laws against weapons and ammo.

They took to the streets of the nation’s capital and such cities as Boston, New York, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Oakland, California, in the kind of numbers seen during the Vietnam era, sweeping up activists long frustrated by stalemate in the gun debate and bringing in lots of new, young voices.

They were called to action by a brand-new corps of leaders: student survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead Feb. 14.

“If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking,” Parkland survivor David Hogg said to roars from the protesters packing Pennsylvania Avenue from the stage near the Capitol many blocks back toward the White House. “We’re going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. We’re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run, not as politicians but as Americans.

“Because this,” he said, pointing behind him to the Capitol dome, “this is not cutting it.”

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Survivor marks 6 minutes of strength and silence at rally

Chin high and tears streaming, Florida school shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez stood silent in front of thousands gathered for the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington, D.C.

She continued to stand silently as a few crowd members shouted out support. She remained silent as tentative chants broke out. Her silence continued as those attending also fell quiet, many weeping.

The gripping moment stretched for 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the amount of time Gonzalez said it took a shooter to kill 17 people and wound 15 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month.

“Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands,” Gonzalez told the hushed crowd, describing the long hours spent waiting for authorities to identify their slain classmates, the horror of discovering many of them had breathed their last breaths before many students even knew a “code red” alert — designed to warn staffers and students of a potential threat — had been called.

“Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15 and my friend Carmen (Schentrup) would never complain to me about piano practice,” she said, her voice strong but her throat momentarily catching. “Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine.’ Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan.”

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Stars affected by violence join students’ gun-reform rallies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Paul McCartney, Common, Miley Cyrus, Amy Schumer and other stars played supporting roles at nationwide gun-reform rallies dominated by teenage survivors’ emotional speeches.

Still, the protests were deeply personal for some of the celebrities involved.

Jennifer Hudson, who performed “The Times They Are A Changin'” to cap Saturday’s March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., alluded to the shooting deaths of her mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew in 2008.

“We’ve all lost somebody. … We’ve all got a purpose. And we want what? We want change,” she said, encouraging the vast crowd to join her in song.

McCartney said his decision to take part in the New York City rally was prompted by the 1980 Manhattan shooting death of John Lennon, his former Beatles bandmate.

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‘He fell a hero:” French praise policeman in hostage swap

TREBES, France (AP) — The French police officer who swapped places with a female supermarket employee being held hostage had already received a lifetime of accolades by the time he walked unarmed into the store under attack by an extremist gunman.

Known for his courage and sang-froid, Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame was acclaimed by neighbours, colleagues and French authorities as a hero Saturday after his death from wounds the day before. President Emmanuel Macron announced plans for a national ceremony to formally honour him.

After agreeing to the hostage swap, Beltrame surrendered his weapon — but kept his cellphone on, allowing authorities outside the Super U market in the southern French town of Trebes to hear what was happening inside.

Thanks to Beltrame’s quick thinking, special police units heard gunshots inside the store Friday and stormed the building immediately, killing the attacker.

“Beyond his job, he gave his life for someone else, for a stranger,” his brother, Cedric, told RTL radio in France. “He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing … if we don’t describe him as a hero, I don’t know what you need to do to be a hero.”

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Final Four bound: No. 11 Loyola beats Kansas State 78-62

ATLANTA (AP) — Porter Moser stood in front of the scarf-clad Loyola cheering section, a bit dazed but beaming from ear to ear.

“Are you kidding me! Are you kidding me,” the Ramblers coach screamed over and over.

No kidding.

Loyola is headed to the Final Four .

An improbable NCAA Tournament took its craziest turn yet Saturday night, when Ben Richardson scored a career-high 23 points and the 11th-seeded Ramblers romped to a 78-62 victory over Kansas State to cap off a stunning run through the bracket-busting South Regional.

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Will GOP accomplishments in Congress be enough for voters?

WASHINGTON (AP) — With passage of an enormous budget bill, the GOP-controlled Congress all but wrapped up its legislating for the year. But will it be enough to convince voters to give Republicans another term at the helm?

In two big ways, Republicans have done what they promised. They passed a long sought tax overhaul bill that slashed tax rates. They’ve rolled back regulations, in ways they claim are boosting the economy. In the Senate, they confirmed a justice to the Supreme Court.

But there are signs Americans wanted more: immigration reforms, gun control legislation, even an infrastructure plan that President Donald Trump promised voters. Tax cuts, for now, will have to do.

“It’s very clear that tax reform was going to be the biggest legislative crown jewel of this Congress,” said Matt Gorman, the spokesman for the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee. “That is a massive centerpiece of our campaign.”

But polls swing wildly these days, strategists said. Voters are rarely focused for too long on single issues that can make or break campaigns, as when Republicans seized control of the House in 2010 amid the economic downturn or Democrats pushed to the majority in 2006 over opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and congressional ethics scandals.

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Why Trump’s latest steps heighten risk of a global trade war

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Ronald Reagan once likened trade wars to the pie fights in old Hollywood comedies. One pie in the face leads to another. And then another.

Pretty soon, Reagan said in a 1986 radio address, “everything and everybody just gets messier and messier. The difference here is that it’s not funny. It’s tragic. Protectionism becomes destructionism. It costs jobs.”

Suddenly, the world’s financial markets are gripped by fear that an escalating trade rift between the United States and China — the two mightiest economies — could smear the world with a lot of splattered cream and broken crust. If it doesn’t prove tragic, as Reagan warned, it may still inflict far-reaching pain.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost a combined nearly 1,150 points Thursday and Friday after President Donald Trump set his administration on a path to restrict Chinese investment in the United States and impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese products.

“We should be very worried,” said Bryan Riley, director of the conservative National Taxpayer Union’s Free Trade Initiative. “It’s very possible this could escalate into something that neither country intends.”

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AP Explains: Trump’s policy on transgender troops

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump has issued an order supporting his push to ban most transgender troops from serving in the U.S. military except under “limited circumstances.” But the decision is expected to be the subject of an ongoing legal fight in the months ahead.

The White House announced the decision late Friday, shortly after the president arrived at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, completing a process that followed Trump’s surprise announcement on Twitter last year that he would reverse an Obama administration plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly.

In a memo to the president, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis pointed to “substantial risks” with allowing military personnel who seek to undertake a treatment to change their gender or who question their gender identity.

Mattis also said exempting those in the military from “well-established mental health, physical health and sex-based standards” applying to all service members could hurt “military effectiveness and lethality.” But the policy includes narrow exemptions allowing some transgender members to serve.

The Pentagon has not released data on the number of transgender people serving, but a Rand Corp. study previously estimated between 1,320 and 6,630, out of 1.3 million active-duty troops.

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GOP’s congressional stronghold is Democrats’ source of hope

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A longtime congressional stronghold for Republicans, Pennsylvania is emerging in dramatic fashion as a source of hope for Democrats in their quest to take control of the U.S. House in November’s mid-term elections.

This week cemented Democratic victories in two key battles: Republicans dropped talk of legal challenges to Democrat Conor Lamb’s improbable victory in a special election in southwestern Pennsylvania and federal courts rejected two GOP lawsuits seeking to block a state court-drawn map of more competitive districts.

For years, Pennsylvania has hosted one of the nation’s biggest Republican congressional delegations. Now, what had been a 13-to-5 Republican advantage in Pennsylvania’s 18-member delegation could get wiped out.

It’s been seven head-spinning months.

First, five Republican congressmen decided not to run again, including one — suburban Pittsburgh’s Tim Murphy — who resigned last October amid a sex scandal. Those openings created opportunities for Democrats.

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Can Facebook restore public trust after privacy scandal?

CHICAGO (AP) — It’s a scandal of privacy, politics and an essential ingredient of business success — public trust.

Facebook is confronting a costly, embarrassing public relations debacle after revelations that Cambridge Analytica may have misused data from some 50 million users to try to influence elections. Among its marquee clients: President Donald Trump’s general election campaign.

Now a company known as much for reminders of a long-lost friend’s birthday and documentation of acquaintances’ every whim is grappling with outrage— and the possible loss of confidence — from users around the globe that have made the social media site a part of their daily routine.

“I trust somebody until they give me a reason not to trust them,” said Joseph Holt, who teaches business ethics at the University of Notre Dame. “And Facebook has increasingly given me reasons not to trust them.”

Losing that would be a disaster, not just for Facebook, but for any Silicon Valley company that relies on users to open up their private lives.