Stories by Associated Press

This is a clear sign that Tokyo Olympic planners and the International Olympic Committee are moving forward despite public opposition, warnings about the risks of the games becoming a spreader event, and Tokyo and other parts of Japan being under a state of emergency until June 20.

“I want to emphasize that the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home,” Vice President Kamala Harris said. “At the same time, I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come, do not come.”

The Spanish government hopes to welcome 14.5 million to 15.5 million visitors between July and September. That’s about 40% of the tourists in the same period of 2019 but twice as many as last summer, when only EU visitors could enter Spain.

Across the U.S., more children than ever before could be in classrooms for summer school this year to make up for lost learning during the outbreak, which caused monumental disruptions in education.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, cleared by an Archdiocese of Chicago investigation into claims that he sexually abused several boys decades ago, returned to the pulpit of his longtime church on Sunday for the first time in five months. 

The second baby for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is officially here: Meghan gave birth to a healthy girl on Friday. Her first name, Lilibet, is a nod to Her Majesty The Queen’s nickname.

The Justice Department said Saturday that it no longer will secretly obtain reporters’ records during leak investigations, a policy shift that abandons a practice decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.

Donald Trump on Saturday pushed Republicans to support candidates who are loyal to him in next year’s midterm elections as the former president launched a new more active phase of his post presidency.

The Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed Saturday to support a global minimum corporate tax of at least 15% to deter multinational companies from avoiding taxes by stashing profits in low-rate countries.

Massachusetts and the rest of New England — the most heavily vaccinated region in the U.S. — are giving the rest of the country a possible glimpse of the future if more Americans get their shots.

The escalating havoc caused by ransomware gangs raises an obvious question: Why has the United States, believed to have the world’s greatest cyber capabilities, looked so powerless to protect its citizens from these kind of criminals operating with near impunity out of Russia and allied countries?

President Joe Biden on Friday dismissed a fresh Republican infrastructure proposal that offered modestly more spending but fell short of “his objectives to grow the economy,” the White House said.

Facebook says it will suspend former President Donald Trump’s accounts for two years following its finding that he stoked violence ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.

Hiring in the United States picked up in May yet was slowed again by the struggles of many companies to find enough workers to keep up with the economy’s swift recovery from the pandemic recession.

The French government announced Friday that it is removing the need for coronavirus tests for vaccinated Europeans. It also is allowing vaccinated tourists from most of the rest of the world, if they have a negative test.

United Airlines aims to bring back supersonic travel before the decade is over with a plane that has yet to be built.

How long do vaccines last? That’s now a critical question as the Biden administration prepares to send tens of millions of unused COVID-19 doses abroad to help curb the pandemic. 

Oxygen levels have dropped in hundreds of lakes in the United States and Europe over the last four decades, a new study found. And the authors said declining oxygen could lead to increased fish kills, algal blooms and methane emissions.

Dangling everything from sports tickets to a free beer, President Joe Biden is looking for that extra something — anything — that will get people to roll up their sleeves for COVID-19 shots when the promise of a life-saving vaccine by itself hasn’t been enough. 

Tokyo is under a COVID-19 state of emergency, but International Olympic Committee Vice President John Coates has said the games will open on July 23 — state of emergency, or no state of emergency.

Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart, is making the change as states legalize cannabis or introduce laws banning employers from testing for it. 

The former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death made his initial appearance Tuesday on federal charges alleging he violated Floyd’s civil rights by pinning the Black man to the pavement with his knee.

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a $2 billion verdict in favor of women who claim they developed ovarian cancer from using Johnson & Johnson talc products.

U.S. history is filled with dark events — often involving racism and racial violence — that haven’t been made part of the national fabric. Many involved Black Americans, of which the Tulsa Race Massacre is considered among the most egregious in its absolute destruction.

Vietnam has discovered a new coronavirus variant that’s a hybrid of strains first found in India and the U.K., the Vietnamese health minister said Saturday.

More than 1.8 million people went through U.S. airports on Thursday, and the number was widely expected to cross the 2 million threshold over the long holiday weekend — that would be the highest mark since early March 2020.