Stories by Associated Press

His speech before a politically divided Congress comes as the nation struggles to make sense of confounding cross-currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, a wearying war in Ukraine, growing tensions with China among them — and warily sizes up Biden’s fitness for a likely reelection bid.

Crews released toxic chemicals into the air from five derailed tanker cars that were in danger of exploding  and began burning it after warning residents near the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line to leave immediately or face the possibility of death.

Authorities feared the death toll would climb as rescuers searched through tangles of metal and concrete for survivors in a region beset by more than a decade of Syria’s civil war and a refugee crisis.

The federal government’s standards haven’t been changed since 1997, two decades after they were created as part of an effort to collect consistent race and ethnicity data across federal agencies when handling censuses, federal surveys and application forms for government benefits.

The plan also seeks to significantly decrease sodium in the meals served to the nation’s schoolkids by 2029, while making the rules for foods made with whole grains more flexible.

For months, the Fed has been warily watching the U.S. economy’s robust job gains out of concern that employers, desperate to hire, will keep boosting pay and, in turn, keep inflation elevated. But January’s blowout job growth coincided with an actual slowdown in wage growth.

U.S. prosecutors in Chicago said Girardi, his attorney son-in-law and their firm’s chief financial officer took funds for five clients who reached settlements with Boeing, the makers of the 737 Max operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air that crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, 2018 and killed 189 people.

The Illinois student spirit group “Orange Krush” had its order for 200 tickets to the men’s basketball game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Saturday canceled Wednesday after Iowa discovered the person who made the purchase falsely claimed the tickets were for a Boys and Girls Club in Champaign.

The search, the third of a Biden site in less than two months, follows the 13-hour, Jan. 20 top-to-bottom check of his Wilmington, Delaware, home, where agents located documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes.

Pay and benefits for America’s workers grew at a healthy but more gradual pace in the final three months of 2022, a third straight slowdown, which could help reassure the Federal Reserve that wage gains won’t fuel higher inflation.

The Chicago Blackhawks and the NHL Alumni Association announced the death of the two-time NHL MVP on Monday. There were no further details provided by either organization.

The move to end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations would formally restructure the federal coronavirus response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through agencies’ normal authorities.

Nichols’ family members and their lawyers said the footage shows officers savagely beating the 29-year-old FedEx worker for three minutes in an assault that the legal team likened to the infamous 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday announced draft guidelines that would do away with the current three-month abstinence requirement for donations from men who have sex with men. Instead, all potential donors would be screened with a new questionnaire that evaluates their individual risks for HIV.

Will Keeps was a 15-year-old member of a Chicago gang when he witnessed rival members kill his friend. He escaped the streets and moved to Iowa to help other young people from troubled backgrounds.

A federal jury in Chicago in September convicted Ji Chaoqun, 31, of conspiracy to act as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security without notifying the U.S. attorney general, acting as a spy in the U.S., and lying on a government form about his contacts with foreign agencies.

Tyler W. Massengill, 32, of Chillicothe, is accused of malicious use of fire and an explosive to damage, and attempt to damage the clinic in Peoria, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Southwest canceled about 16,700 flights over the last 10 days of December. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating whether the airline deceived customers by knowingly scheduling more flights than it realistically could handle.

The powerful NRA joined a parade of gun-rights activists seeking to toss out the newly minted prohibition on dozens of rapid-fire pistols and long guns, as well as large-capacity magazines or attachments.

Chicago White Sox pitcher Mike Clevinger is being investigated by Major League Baseball following an allegation of domestic violence, the team announced in a statement.

The records “appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former vice president at the end of the last administration,” Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote in the letter shared with The Associated Press.

“We are really closer to that doomsday,” former Mongolian president Elbegdorj Tsakhia said Tuesday at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists annual announcement rating how close humanity is from doing itself in.

In a span of less than 12 months, nearly all of the biggest cryptocurrency equivalent of a banks have failed spectacularly. Last week, Genesis filed Chapter 11, joining Voyager Digital, Celsius and BlockFi on the list of companies that have either filed for bankruptcy protection or gone out of business.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday proposed a simplified approach for future vaccination efforts, allowing most adults and children to get a once-a-year shot to protect against the mutating virus.

The suspect, Huu Can Tran, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Sunday, had visited police in his town of Hemet twice this month to allege he was the victim of fraud, theft and poisoning by family members between 10 and 20 years ago in the LA area, spokesman Alan Reyes told The Associated Press.

It’s a public relations challenge that could determine whether the country meets President Joe Biden’s ambitious goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.