Stories by Associated Press

The Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates are trimming payroll while they await word on the fate of the Major League Baseball season.

Oprah Winfrey is giving grants to the cities she’s called home through her $12 million coronavirus relief fund. After speaking with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and other leaders, Winfrey decided to give $5 million to Live Healthy Chicago.

Facing the gravest U.S. economic crisis in decades, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered Congress contrasting views Tuesday of what the government’s most urgent priority should be.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the Fed’s lending programs for medium-sized businesses and state and local governments would begin operating by the end of this month.

Millions of shuttered businesses nationwide have turned to their insurers to help recoup their losses following state-mandated closures, which combined may exceed $300 billion a month. But insurers have widely rejected the claims.

President Donald Trump told reporters Monday he has been taking hydroxychloroquine and a zinc supplement daily “for about a week and a half now.” The drug not been shown to combat the new coronavirus.

The Illinois Supreme Court officially disbarred former Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Monday, two months after a state panel recommended that the disgraced politician lose his law license. 

Skin doctors suddenly are looking at a lot of toes — whether by emailed picture or video visit — as concern grows that for some people, a sign of COVID-19 may pop up in an unusual spot.

In an online commencement address Saturday, former President Barack Obama told college graduates that the pandemic shows many officials “aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

Michael McCaskey, who led the Chicago Bears for nearly three decades following the death of his grandfather George Halas, died Saturday after a lengthy battle with cancer, the team said. He was 76.

In Chicago and around the world, people are creating photographs, paintings, emails, journals and social media posts that will shape how the world remembers the coronavirus pandemic for years and centuries to come. 

Across the United States, masks have become more and more prevalent. And people with masks – as well as latex gloves – have found their way into more and more crime reports.

“In early 2020, I spent nine weeks traveling the country, talking to people about being well and staying focused. It was exhilarating. Then the pandemic hit and shook us all,” Oprah Winfrey said in a statement. “Now, it’s more important than ever to be and stay well and strong.”

The number of people seeking help from the Greater Chicago Food Depository and affiliated food pantries has surged 60% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down the nation's economy and thrown tens of millions of people out of work. 

Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright warned on Thursday that the U.S. lacks a plan to produce and fairly distribute a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available.

Advice from the top U.S. disease control experts on how to safely reopen businesses and institutions during the coronavirus pandemic was more detailed and restrictive than the plan released by the White House last month.

The U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert issued a blunt warning Tuesday that cities and states could “turn back the clock” if they lift coronavirus stay-at-home orders too fast. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin weighs in.

A new type of coronavirus test offers a cheaper, quicker way to screen for infections, moving the U.S. toward the kind of mass screening that experts say is essential to returning millions of Americans to school and work.

It’s not meant to be a trick question, but many filling out their 2020 U.S. census form struggle to answer: How many people were staying at your home on April 1?

As the pandemic persists in keeping families indoors or a safe social distance apart, online searches have increased for creative ways to still make moms feel special. 

Tens of millions of Americans live in multigenerational homes where one of the main strategies for avoiding infection — following social distancing protocols — can be near impossible. The problem reverberates deepest in communities of color.

The federal government is sending supplies of the first drug that appears to help speed the recovery of some COVID-19 patients to six states, where it will be distributed by health departments.

Just a few short months ago, President Donald Trump planned to campaign for reelection on the back of a robust economy. That’s a distant memory after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

The U.S. unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April, a level last seen during the Great Depression, as 20.5 million jobs vanished in the worst monthly loss on record — stark evidence of how the coronavirus has brought the economy to its knees.

The coronavirus pandemic put conventional campaigning on hold just as campaigns were ramping up, forcing candidates to scrap plans, rewrite budgets and find new ways to connect with voters and show they are the right person to lead in a crisis no one anticipated.

Nearly 3.2 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week as the business shutdowns caused by the viral outbreak deepened the worst U.S. economic catastrophe in decades.