Stories by Associated Press

More than 5 million children ages 5 to 11 have gotten a first dose since early November, and government safety monitoring has not uncovered any surprise problems. 

Worried that a new COVID-19 wave could overwhelm understaffed U.S. hospitals, federal officials on Thursday loosened rules that call on health care workers to stay out of work for 10 days if they test positive.

Former President Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol led by his supporters.

The Food and Drug Administration announcement on Merck’s molnupiravir comes one day after the agency cleared a competing drug from Pfizer. 

The Supreme Court says it will hold a special session in just over two weeks to weigh challenges to two Biden administration policies covering vaccine requirements for millions of workers, policies that affect large employers and health care workers.

The long-awaited milestone comes as U.S. cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all rising and health officials warn of a tsunami of new infections from the omicron variant that could overwhelm hospitals.

The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In remarks Tuesday at the White House, President Biden detailed major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the arrival of the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are yet not fully understood by scientists.

A heightened sense of anxiety has begun to erode the willingness of some people and businesses to carry on as usual in the face of the extraordinarily contagious omicron variant, which has fast become the dominant version of the virus in the U.S.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in omicron’s share of infections in only one week.

Moderna said lab tests showed the half-dose booster shot increased by 37 times the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies able to fight omicron. 

At least 45 tornadoes have been preliminarily confirmed in the Dec. 15 storms that crossed the Great Plains and Midwest amid unseasonably warm temperatures.

Manchin told “Fox News Sunday” that after five-and-half months of negotiations among Democrats in which he was his party’s chief obstacle to passage, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.”

For more than a year antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly have been the go-to treatments for early COVID-19, thanks to their ability to head off severe disease and keep patients out of the hospital.

Vicente Fernández was known for hits such as “El Rey,” and “Lástima que seas ajena,” his command of the ranchera genre and his dark and elegant mariachi suits with their matching wide-brimmed sombreros.

Even if the United States isn’t currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or kept millions of Americans from filling their gas tanks, the problem hasn't disappeared. In fact, an attack on Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school was part of a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to more firmly embrace the approach, already used by many school districts, after research of such policies in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas found COVID-19 infections did not increase when using the approach.

Most Americans should be given the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines instead of the Johnson & Johnson shot that can cause rare but serious blood clots, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

Dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, otters, hyenas and white-tailed deer are among the animals that have tested positive, in most cases after contracting it from infected people.

“During my tenure as CEO, I failed at times to uphold McDonald’s values and fulfill certain of my responsibilities as a leader of the company,” Steve Easterbrook said in a prepared statement issued Thursday by McDonald’s. 

The confidential settlement was announced after the sides met Wednesday with a mediator for the first time. 

The findings released Tuesday are preliminary and have not been peer-reviewed — the gold standard in scientific research — but they line up with other early data about omicron's behavior, including that it seems to be more easily transmitted.

The White House on Wednesday insisted there is no need for a lockdown because vaccines are widely available and appear to offer protection against the worst consequences of the virus. 

Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights, averting a trial but likely extending the time he is already spending behind bars on a state conviction.

Capping a marathon day, the House gave final approval to the legislation early Wednesday morning on a near-party-line 221-209 vote, defusing a volatile issue until after the 2022 midterm elections. 

The near-party-line 222-208 vote is the second time the special committee has sought to punish a witness for defying a subpoena.