Stories by Associated Press

When U.S. law enforcement officials need to cast a wide net for information, they’re increasingly turning to the vast digital ponds of personal data created by Big Tech companies via the devices and online services that have hooked billions of people around the world.

The U.S. government is stepping up efforts to get younger Americans vaccinated for COVID-19 as concerns grow about the spread of a new variant that threatens to set the country back in the months ahead.

A Chicago man robbed two Iowa gas station employees at gunpoint and confined them in a cooler before he fired 10 shots at a sheriff’s deputy who responded to the crime, seriously wounding him, prosecutors said Tuesday.

In the eyes of the law, pets are property when it comes to divorce, but new ways of working out custody of the dog, cat or parrot have sprung up with special mediators and “petnups” to avoid courtroom disputes.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday the NCAA can’t limit education-related benefits that colleges can offer their sports stars, a victory for athletes that could help open the door to further easing in the decades-old fight over paying student-athletes.

Chicago’s police superintendent said Monday that his decision to strip an officer’s police powers was tied in part to the officer’s ownership of a house on the city’s South Side where gunmen killed five people and injured three others. 

The decision comes as opposition among Japanese to holding the Games in July remains high, though may be softening, and as new infections in Tokyo have begun to subside.

The dog was one of 34 animals — 33 dogs and one cat — imported by an animal rescue organization from Azerbaijan to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on June 10. 

The short answer: It’s likely safe and effective, but researchers are still gathering data to be sure.

Parades, picnics and lessons in history were offered Saturday to commemorate Juneteenth in the U.S., a day that carried even more significance after Congress and President Joe Biden created a federal holiday to observe the end of slavery.

Hundreds of top companies had already pledged last year to observe Juneteenth in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and the national reckoning on racism that followed.

After a year of protests over police brutality, some Republican-controlled states have ignored or blocked police-reform proposals, moving instead in the other direction by granting greater powers to officers, making it harder to discipline them and expanding their authority to crack down on demonstrations.

This year alone, legislation to make Juneteenth a paid state holiday died in Florida and South Dakota and is stalled in Ohio, all states controlled by Republicans. But even in Maryland, where Democrats control the Legislature, a Juneteenth bill passed one chamber only to die in the other.

President Biden hasn’t said whether he’d back a bill introduced by fellow Democrats to strike the death penalty from U.S. statutes. He also hasn’t rescinded Trump-era protocols enabling federal executions to resume and allowing prisons to use firing squads if necessary, something many thought he’d do on day one.

U.S. regulators cleared the way for Max jets to resume flying late last year after Boeing made changes, including overhauling flight-control software that played a role in the crashes. This spring, about 100 new Max jets were idled for several weeks because of an unrelated problem with electrical grounding of cockpit instruments.

President Joe Biden signed a bill Thursday that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. Here’s a look at the holiday and its history.

“The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land,” President Joe Biden, said, celebrating the ruling. The justices, by a 7-2 vote, left the entire Affordable Care Act intact in ruling that Texas, other GOP-led states and two individuals had no right to bring their lawsuit in federal court. 

The Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it may act sooner than previously planned to start dialing back the low-interest-rate policies that have helped fuel a swift rebound from the pandemic recession but have also coincided with rising inflation. 

As cases tumble and states reopen, the potential final stage in the U.S. campaign to vanquish COVID-19 is turning into a slog, with a worrisome variant gaining a bigger foothold and lotteries and other prizes failing to persuade some Americans to get vaccinated.

Five people standing outside on Chicago’s West Side were shot in a violent end to a day that began with a mass shooting on the city’s South Side that left four people dead and four more injured, police said.

A new analysis of blood samples from 24,000 Americans taken early last year is the latest and largest study to suggest that the new coronavirus popped up in the U.S. in December 2019 — weeks before cases were first recognized by health officials. 

Considered one of Latin music’s most iconic bands, the group will start its three-concert tour in Los Angeles on Aug. 27, followed by a performance in Chicago’s Soldier Field on Sept. 4 and a final night on Sept. 15th at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

An explosion at a northern Illinois chemical plant Monday morning sparked massive fires that sent flames and huge plumes of thick black smoke high into the air and debris raining onto the ground, prompting evacuations.

The move by Florida’s state Board of Education was widely expected as a national debate intensifies about how race should be used as a lens in classrooms to examine the country’s tumultuous history.

The approaching 600,000 mark, as tracked by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Baltimore or Milwaukee. It is about equal to the number of Americans who died of cancer in 2019. And as bad as that is, the true toll is believed to be significantly higher.

The Novavax vaccine, which is easy to store and transport, is expected to play an important role in boosting vaccine supplies in the developing world.