Stories by Associated Press

Wealthy Americans have long sought to use charitable contributions to reduce their tax burdens. But the “Pandora Papers” report  revealed how world leaders, billionaires and others have stashed trillions of dollars out of the reach of governments by using shell companies and offshore accounts, which are considered legal.

Parental protests over COVID-19-related mask mandates, gender-neutral bathrooms, and teachings about racial history, sexuality and social-emotional learning are being leveraged into full-fledged board takeover campaigns that will get their first widespread test in just a few weeks.

A one-page order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued late Friday reinstated the nation’s strictest abortion law, which bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. It makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

President Joe Biden will not block a tranche of documents sought by a House committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, setting up a showdown with former President Donald Trump.

Google is cracking down on digital ads promoting false climate change claims or being used to make money from such content, hoping to limit revenue for climate change deniers and stop the spread of misinformation on its platforms.

When COVID-19 vaccines were first rolling out in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended waiting 14 days between the shots and other immunizations as a precaution. But the agency has since revised its guidelines and says the wait is unnecessary.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate fell sharply to 4.8% from 5.2% in August. Last month’s job gains fell shy of even the modest 336,000 that the economy had added in August and were the fewest since December, when employers actually cut jobs.

The Senate has dodged a U.S. debt disaster, voting to extend the government’s borrowing authority into December and temporarily avert an unprecedented federal default that experts warned would devastate the economy and harm millions of Americans.

President Joe Biden on Thursday championed COVID-19 vaccination requirements, determined that the roughly 67 million unvaccinated American adults must get the shot even as he acknowledged that mandates weren’t his “first instinct.”

Donald Trump intends to assert executive privilege in a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, a move that could prevent the testimony of onetime aides, according to a letter sent by lawyers for the former president.

Pfizer asked the U.S. government Thursday to allow use of its COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 – and if regulators agree, shots could begin within a matter of weeks.

The order Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges.

Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy has changed his mind and made Justin Fields the Chicago Bears’ starting quarterback going forward.

Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure, said in a blog post that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp going dark was “caused not by malicious activity, but an error of our own making.”

A Chicago woman convicted of assisting her boyfriend in her mother’s murder and stuffing the body in a suitcase on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali in 2014 is being released early from a 10-year sentence, a prison official confirmed Wednesday.

The latest legal challenge came as the Biden administration waited for a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to rule on a request to halt the law known as Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions in Texas once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. 

Calling opponents of his plans “complicit in America’s decline,” President Joe Biden made the case Tuesday that his ambitious social spending proposal is key to America’s global competitiveness — even as he acknowledged the current $3.5 trillion price tag will shrink.

The six-hour outage was a headache for many casual users but far more serious for the millions of people worldwide who rely on the social media sites to run their businesses or communicate with relatives, parents, teachers or neighbors.

An Illinois man who shot three people during a protest over police brutality in Wisconsin last year was justified because the men confronted him and two of them tried to wrestle his gun away, a use-of-force expert called by the defense testified at a pretrial hearing Tuesday.

Frances Haugen, testifying to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, also offered thoughtful ideas about how Facebook’s social media platforms could be made safer.

Attorney General Merrick Garland directed authorities to hold strategy sessions with law enforcement to address the increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other employees in the nation’s public schools.

Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms are back online after a massive global outage plunged the services and the businesses and people who rely on them into chaos for hours Monday.

The future of abortion rights is in the hands of a conservative Supreme Court that is beginning a new term Monday that also includes major cases on gun rights and religion.

The president's criticism comes as Congress faces an Oct 18 deadline to allow for more borrowing to keep the government operating after having accrued a total public debt of $28.4 trillion.

The Biden administration on Monday reversed a ban on abortion referrals by family planning clinics, lifting a Trump-era restriction as political and legal battles over abortion grow sharper from Texas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A data scientist who was revealed Sunday as the Facebook whistleblower says that whenever there was a conflict between the public good and what benefited the company, the social media giant would choose its own interests.