Stories by Associated Press

An influential federal advisory panel has overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give Pfizer booster shots against COVID-19 to most Americans, but it endorsed the extra shots for those who are 65 or older or run a high risk of severe disease.

Though it is unclear how big the rally will be, the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department are fully activating in an effort to avoid a repeat of the pre-inauguration attack.

Research suggests vision problems increased among Chinese schoolchildren during pandemic restrictions and online learning, and eye specialists think the same may have happened in U.S. kids. 

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday signed into law a pledge to eliminate the state’s climate-damaging carbon emissions within a quarter-century, including money to keep clean-power nuclear plants running while shuttering coal-fired plants.

Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and a man who accused him of child sexual abuse reached a tentative out-of-court settlement Wednesday over Hastert’s refusal to pay the man $1.8 million — the outstanding balance in hush money that the Illinois Republican agreed to pay the man in 2010. 

Influential government advisers will debate Friday if there’s enough proof that a booster dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective — the first step toward deciding which Americans need one and when.

The Biden administration on Wednesday began notifying governors and state refugee coordinators across the country about how many Afghan evacuees from among the first group of nearly 37,000 arrivals are slated to be resettled in their states.

Prosecutors, nearing the end of their case at the sex trafficking trial of R. Kelly, played recordings for a New York City jury Wednesday they say back up allegations the R&B singer abused women and girls.

Massive government relief passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic moved millions of Americans out of poverty last year, even as the official poverty rate increased slightly, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

The author of the best-selling “The House on Mango Street” is back with her first work of fiction in almost a decade, a story of memory and friendship, but also about the experiences young women endure as immigrants worldwide.

Four former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights pleaded not guilty Tuesday in a federal hearing that included arguments on several pretrial motions, including requests to hold separate trials. 

Pension systems for state government workers across the U.S. are in their best shape since the Great Recession began more than a dozen years ago, according to a study released Tuesday.

Prosecutors want a New York City jury at the R. Kelly sex-trafficking trial to hear profane video and audio recordings they say demonstrate how he threatened his victims with violence.

COVID-19 deaths and cases in the U.S. have climbed back to where they were over the winter, wiping out months of progress and potentially bolstering President Joe Biden’s argument for his sweeping new vaccination requirements. 

The leader of an Illinois anti-government militia group who authorities say masterminded the 2017 bombing of a Minnesota mosque was sentenced Monday to 53 years in prison on several civil rights and hate crimes for the attack, which left a community terrified.

Yes, but studies indicate they’re less likely than adults to be affected by symptoms that persist, recur or begin a month or more after infection.

The average person doesn’t need a COVID-19 booster yet, an international group of scientists — including two top U.S. regulators — wrote Monday in a scientific journal.

The risk of catching or passing a virus that has infected more than 40 million people in the United States will depend on where the stadium is and whether the game is outdoors, among other factors. 

The documentary is an intimate portrait of a longtime public servant whose notoriety has risen dramatically — and with that, brought heaps of far-right scorn on the veteran of seven White House administrations.

The Taliban raised their flag over the Afghan presidential palace Saturday, a spokesman said, as the U.S. and the world marked the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The document released Saturday, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, is the first investigative record to be disclosed since President Joe Biden ordered a declassification review of materials that for years have remained out of public view. 

Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton all gathered at the site where the World Trade Center towers fell two decades ago. 

Nearly 10,000 Afghan evacuees are staying at the base while they undergo medical and security checks before being resettled in the United States. 

The ceremony at ground zero in New York began exactly two decades after the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil started with the first of four hijacked planes crashing into one of the World Trade Center’s twin towers.

This 9/11 comes little more than two weeks after a suicide bomber in Kabul killed 13 U.S. service members as the military concluded its withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

The U.S. has halted all U.S.-bound flights of Afghan evacuees from two main bases overseas after discovering a limited measles outbreak among Afghans arriving in the United States, a hitch that American officials warned will have a severe impact on an often-troubled U.S.-run evacuation.