Stories by Associated Press

The latest alarming coronavirus variant is exploiting low global vaccination rates and a rush to ease pandemic restrictions, adding new urgency to the drive to get more shots in arms and slow its supercharged spread.

Calling Donald H. Rumsfeld energetic was like calling the Pacific wide. When others would rest, he would run. While others sat, he stood. But try as he might, at the pinnacle of his career as defense secretary he could not outmaneuver the ruinous politics of the Iraq war.

Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and opened the way for his immediate release from prison Wednesday, ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

A man who said he sprayed trees in a Naperville park to protect them after an anxious dog chewed off the bark has been ticketed by authorities.

Donald Trump’s company and his longtime finance chief are expected to be charged Thursday with tax-related crimes stemming from a New York investigation into the former president’s business dealings, people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

President Joe Biden declared there is an urgent need for a “generational investment” in the nation’s infrastructure, as he looked to sell voters Tuesday on the economic benefits of the $973 billion bipartisan package that still faces an uncertain future in Congress.

United said Tuesday that it will buy 200 Boeing Max jets and 70 planes from Europe’s Airbus so that it can replace many of its smallest planes and some of its oldest and have room to grow its fleet.

Talk about a heavy snack. For the first time, astronomers have witnessed a black hole swallowing a neutron star, the most dense object in the universe — all in a split-second gulp.

Congressional leaders and a media advocacy group are urging the Federal Communications Commission to examine how policy decisions and programs have disparately harmed Black Americans and other communities of color.

The slow work of sifting through the remnants of a collapsed Florida condo building stretched into a sixth day Tuesday, as families desperate for progress endured a wrenching wait for answers. 

President Joe Biden is hoping to get the bipartisan infrastructure deal on track by highlighting its expected economic benefits, stressing its $973 billion would include the largest investment in transportation in nearly a century and millions of jobs would be created.

The head of the World Health Organization said the COVID-19 delta variant, first seen in India, is “the most transmissible of the variants identified so far,” and warned it is now spreading in at least 85 countries.

Included in the bipartisan infrastructure deal reached with President Joe Biden last week is a plan to eliminate the country’s remaining lead pipes and service lines, which for decades have posed a risk for contaminated water in millions of homes and schools.

The Chicago Blackhawks have hired a former federal prosecutor to conduct an independent review of allegations that a former player was sexually assaulted by a then-assistant coach in 2010.

Families of the missing visited the scene of the Florida condo building collapse Sunday as rescuers kept digging through the mound of rubble and clinging to hope that someone could yet be alive somewhere under the broken concrete and twisted metal.

The Supreme Court has already issued big decisions on health care and religious freedom this month. And next term, the high court has agreed to take on cases about abortion and guns. The court could say as soon as Monday what it will do about these issues awaiting action.

As many as 50 people are missing after setting out on three-hour car trips this year between Mexico’s industrial hub of Monterrey and the border city of Nuevo Laredo on a well-traveled stretch of road local media have dubbed “the highway of death.”

Many working-age people assume that Medicare covers just about every kind of health care that an older person may need. It doesn’t.

Rescuers used infrared technology, water and foam to battle the blaze, whose source was unclear, and Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the smoke has been the biggest challenge. In a news conference, she described the blaze as “very deep” and said rescuers faced “incredible difficulties” because of the flames.

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $230 million to New York state to settle claims that the pharmaceutical giant helped fuel the opioid crisis, Attorney General Letitia James said on Saturday.

Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, whose dying gasps under Chauvin’s knee led to the biggest outcry against racial injustice in the U.S. in generations.

President Joe Biden announced new efforts Wednesday to stem a rising national tide of violent crime, declaring the federal government is “taking on the bad actors doing bad things to our communities.” But questions persist about how effective the efforts can be in what could be a turbulent summer.

President Joe Biden announced on Thursday a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pared-down infrastructure plan that would make a start on his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle. 

A beachfront condo building partially collapsed Thursday outside Miami, killing at least one person and trapping others in the tower that resembled a giant fractured dollhouse, with one side sheared away. Dozens of survivors were pulled out, and rescuers continued to look for more.

Despite a “June or bust” goal set by chief GOP negotiator Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate was expected to leave town for a two-week recess after Thursday’s session without a final compromise on police reform, according to three senators.

Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.