Stories by Associated Press

Pfizer asked the U.S. government Thursday to allow use of its COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 – and if regulators agree, shots could begin within a matter of weeks.

The recommended 2022 budget will keep the doors open and the lights on, but doesn’t make a dent in the district’s $64 million in unfunded maintenance, pension obligations or goal to acquire more land. For those resources, the district is pinning its hopes on an upcoming property tax referendum.

The order Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges.

It’s been 822,900 minutes since Broadway in Chicago closed its doors. Now nearly a year and a half later, they’re back with a story that’s giving us 525,600 reasons to love.

Who would have imagined that students and their parents would be upset about not enough testing in schools? But that’s the case in Chicago, where the district’s been slow to roll out COVID-19 testing.

The latest on COVID-19 testing in schools. Delving into Chicago’s remapping process. A decrease in the affordable housing market. A call for equity as bike lanes expand. And Broadway is back in the city.

Kim Foxx held a rare press conference Tuesday to respond to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, calling it “inappropriate” and “wrong” for the mayor to publicly push for criminal charges in last Friday's shooting “without the benefit of all of the evidence.”

Players from Minnie Miñoso to Luis Aparicio to Ozzie Guillén have been fan favorites on Chicago’s South Side for decades. Never has the Latino presence on the White Sox roster been more important than this year, when the Sox could have seven or more players of Latino heritage starting in the playoffs.

Renters are finding fewer affordable homes and apartments as the city sees a decline in units. A new study from DePaul University shows the city experienced a 5.2% decline in affordable rental units over the past decade.

The final map crafted by the Chicago Ward Advisory Redistricting Commission would increase the number of wards where Latinos make up a majority of residents by one to 14, while reducing the number of wards with a majority of Black voters by three to 15 wards. 

Cyclists of color in Chicago get a disproportionate number of tickets from police, according to reports by the Chicago Tribune. Bike advocates hope a new city initiative can help address the problem but say it’s not just about infrastructure.

Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy has changed his mind and made Justin Fields the Chicago Bears’ starting quarterback going forward.

Jack-o’-lanterns, thousands of runners, goat yoga and a powwow usher in the weekend. Here are 10 things to do in and around Chicago.

Michael Aguirre was held without bail during a court hearing Wednesday following his arrest this week on a charge of first-degree murder stemming from the killing of 14-year-old Savanah Quintero.

Conservationists are in a race against the clock to save a five-acre patch of rare Illinois prairie from being bulldozed as part of a 280-acre expansion of the Chicago Rockford International Airport's cargo operation.

Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure, said in a blog post that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp going dark was “caused not by malicious activity, but an error of our own making.”

Provisional data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, released early Wednesday, suggest the homicide rate for the United States rose 30% between 2019 and 2020. 

A Chicago woman convicted of assisting her boyfriend in her mother’s murder and stuffing the body in a suitcase on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali in 2014 is being released early from a 10-year sentence, a prison official confirmed Wednesday.

A new book gives an insider, blow-by-blow account of one of the most tumultuous and dangerous presidential transitions in American history, from the chaos of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to a secret six-point strategy to overturn the election results. 

The latest legal challenge came as the Biden administration waited for a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to rule on a request to halt the law known as Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions in Texas once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. 

The policy change, which applies to unvaccinated students and takes effect Saturday, comes after more than 15,500 students were forced to quarantine during the first four weeks of the school year, but only 1.6% tested positive for COVID-19 after being exposed to the virus, according to officials.

Calling opponents of his plans “complicit in America’s decline,” President Joe Biden made the case Tuesday that his ambitious social spending proposal is key to America’s global competitiveness — even as he acknowledged the current $3.5 trillion price tag will shrink.

The six-hour outage was a headache for many casual users but far more serious for the millions of people worldwide who rely on the social media sites to run their businesses or communicate with relatives, parents, teachers or neighbors.

Plans are underway to keep organic waste out of Chicago's landfills, officials said.

An Illinois man who shot three people during a protest over police brutality in Wisconsin last year was justified because the men confronted him and two of them tried to wrestle his gun away, a use-of-force expert called by the defense testified at a pretrial hearing Tuesday.

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