Stories by Associated Press

A Texas jury on Friday ordered Infowars’ Alex Jones to pay $49.3 million in total damages to the parents of a first-grader killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which the conspiracy theorist falsely called a hoax orchestrated by the government in order to tighten U.S. gun laws.

A career development initiative has taken root on Chicago’s South Side for young people who want to improve the health of their community.

Pilsen’s famously vibrant mural culture inspired artist Mauricio Ramirez to raise his game when it came to this prominently-placed work.

Unemployment dropped another notch, from 3.6% to 3.5%, matching the more than 50-year low reached just before the pandemic took hold.

The proposed merger of freight rail giants Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern – which has faced a swell of opposition – wouldn’t have major environmental consequences, according to a draft environmental impact statement released Friday by the Surface Transportation Board.

Republicans on Friday unanimously chose Milwaukee in swing state Wisconsin to host the 2024 national convention, beating out Nashville in deep-red Tennessee.

Both Pfizer and Moderna are working on bivalent boosters: vaccines made up of both the old formula and a new one that targets the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the coronavirus. If the shots meet US Food and Drug Administration standards, they will probably be available as early as September, the FDA says.

The Southeast Side community is home to about 9,500 people, according to U.S. census data. Local hotspots include a nostalgic roller rink and a series of murals by local artists.

We’re live from Avalon Park. Monkeypox is now a national health emergency. Kids get hands-on environmental training in the Cook County Forest Preserve. And why certain communities get hit harder with viruses like COVID-19.

A husband and wife in Waukegan have transformed their grocery store to include a coffee shop, boutique and a gathering place for fellow entrepreneurs. 

Next week, Chicago will host the Interfaith Leadership Summit. For 23 years, the event has brought together students and educators from across the country to promote religious pluralism.

Viruses don’t discriminate, society does. That’s the argument made by Northwestern University journalism professor Steven Thrasher in his new book.

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was convicted Thursday in Russia of drug possession and sentenced to nine years in prison. U.S. President Joe Biden denounced the verdict and sentence as “unacceptable.”

The announcement will free up money and other resources to fight the virus, which may cause fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and pimple-like bumps on many parts of the body.

While federal legislation to create a modern-day Civilian Conservation Corps inches its way through Congress, the Cook County Forest Preserve is moving full steam ahead with programs that deploy crews of youth and adults to tackle restoration and maintenance projects across the district’s acreage.

Police have changed their description of the crash that killed Indiana Republican U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, saying Thursday that it was the SUV in which she was a passenger that crossed a state highway’s centerline and caused the head-on collision.

Major League Baseball announced Thursday that the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs will play a two-game series on June 24-25, 2023, at London Stadium. The NL Central rivals were supposed to play in London in 2020, but the games were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The coffee shop, located at Lincoln and Jersey avenues on the border of North Park and West Ridge, is located in the Lincoln Village shopping center. It’s now the sixth Chicago-area Starbucks to vote for unionization – and among more than 200 around the nation to unionize so far.

With more than half the state legislative primaries concluded, Republican incumbents this year have been losing at nearly twice the average rate of the past decade, according to data compiled for The Associated Press by the election tracking organization Ballotpedia.

The first major gun decision in more than a decade, the ruling could dramatically reshape gun laws in the U.S. even as a series of horrific mass shootings pushes the issue back into the headlines.

The Honoring Our PACT Act will make it so veterans who served in certain areas over a period from the ‘90s on, and who have conditions like certain cancers, will get the presumption it’s related to their service and burn pit exposure.

Chicago police officers are arresting thousands more Black drivers after traffic stops than they report, according to a recent analysis of police data from Block Club Chicago and Injustice Watch.

The Republican nominee for Illinois governor, Darren Bailey, is feeling the backlash from both sides of the aisle for comparing abortion to the Holocaust. Our politics team weighs in on that story and more.

The city’s newest concert venue, appropriately called the Salt Shed, which just celebrated its opening day Tuesday. The concert hall is on the site of the renovated Morton Salt shed. 

In an appearance on “Chicago Tonight,” CTA President Dorval Carter said the agency is working closely with the Chicago Police Department to deploy additional resources to address crime concerns. Recruitment efforts are also underway to help with a worker shortage. 

Speaking a day after the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the 2012 attack testified about the suffering, death threats and harassment they’ve endured because of what Alex Jones has trumpeted on his media platforms, the Infowars host told a Texas courtroom that he definitely thinks the attack happened.