National News

A shooter attacked a grocery store in an upscale Tennessee suburb on Thursday afternoon, killing one person and wounding 12 others before the shooter was subsequently found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at the store, authorities said...

The U.S. vaccination drive against COVID-19 stood on the verge of a major new phase as government advisers Thursday recommended booster doses of Pfizer's vaccine for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans -- despite doubts the extra shots will do much to slow the pandemic...

DEL RIO, Texas -- Haitian migrants milled around makeshift shelters held up with giant reeds, as wind blew dust through the camp littered with plastic bottles and overflowing trash bags. Some migrants sat on plastic paint cans or the ground while others hung clothes to dry on the bamboo-like carrizo cane...

NEW YORK -- Amid the Boy Scouts of America's complex bankruptcy case, there is worsening friction between the BSA and the major religious groups that help it run thousands of Scout units. At issue: the churches' fears an eventual settlement -- while protecting the BSA from future sex-abuse lawsuits -- could leave many churches unprotected...

WASHINGTON -- The White House and congressional Democrats have agreed to a framework of options to pay for their huge, emerging social and environment bill, top Democrats said Thursday. Now they face the daunting task of narrowing the menu to tax possibilities they can pass to fund President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion plan...

TODOQUE, Canary Islands -- The advance of lava from a volcanic eruption on one of Spain's Canary Islands has slowed significantly, raising fears Thursday the molten rock might fan out farther in coming days and wreak more destruction instead of just flowing out into the sea...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast. Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier...

LONDON -- The European Union announced plans Thursday to require the smartphone industry to adopt a uniform charging cord for mobile devices, a push that could eliminate the all-too-familiar experience of rummaging through a drawer full of tangled cables to find the right one...

Today is Friday, Sept. 24, the 267th day of 2021. There are 98 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 24, 2001, President George W. Bush ordered a freeze on the assets of 27 people and organizations with suspected links to terrorism, including Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, and urged other nations to do likewise...

Today is Thursday, Sept. 23, the 266th day of 2021. There are 99 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 23, 1955, a jury in Sumner, Mississippi, acquitted two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, of murdering Black teenager Emmett Till. (The two men later admitted to the crime in an interview with Look magazine.)...

CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico -- Mexico has begun busing and flying Haitian migrants away from the U.S. border, authorities said Tuesday, signaling a new level of support for the United States as a giant refugee camp in a small Texas border town presented President Joe Biden with a humanitarian and increasingly political challenge...

COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed to an average of more than 1,900 a day for the first time since early March, with experts saying the virus is preying largely on a distinct group: 71 million unvaccinated Americans. The increasingly lethal turn has filled hospitals, complicated the start of the school year, delayed the return to offices and demoralized health care workers...

LONDON -- Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday a booster of its one-shot coronavirus vaccine provides a stronger immune response months after people receive a first dose. J&J said in statement an extra dose -- given either two months or six months after the initial shot -- revved up protection. The results haven't been published or vetted by other scientists...

UNITED NATIONS -- President Joe Biden summoned the world's nations to forcefully address the festering global issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and human rights abuses in his first address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. He decried military conflict and insisted the U.S. is not seeking "a new Cold War" with China...

WASHINGTON -- The House voted Tuesday night to fund the government into early December, suspend the federal debt limit and provide disaster and refugee aid, setting up a high-stakes showdown with Republicans who oppose the package despite the prospects of a looming fiscal crisis...

TORONTO -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won his third straight election but failed to get the majority in Parliament he wanted, an outcome that threatened his Conservative rival with loss of his job after moving his party to the center and alienating its base...

WASHINGTON -- In a major easing of pandemic travel restrictions, the U.S. said Monday it will allow foreigners to fly into the country this fall if they have vaccination proof and a negative COVID-19 test -- changes replacing a hodgepodge of rules that had kept out many non-citizens and irritated allies in Europe and beyond where virus cases are lower...

Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and it will seek U.S. authorization for this age group soon -- a key step toward beginning vaccinations for youngsters. The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech already is available for anyone 12 and older. But with kids now back in school and the extra-contagious delta variant causing a huge jump in pediatric infections, many parents are anxiously awaiting vaccinations for their younger children...

COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did -- approximately 675,000. The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time...

NEW YORK -- President Joe Biden began his first visit to the U.N. General Assembly ready to make the case to world leaders that after closing the book on 20 years of war, the U.S. aims to rally allies and adversaries to work together on a slew of crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and trade and economics...

WASHINGTON -- Democratic congressional leaders backed by the White House announced Monday they would push ahead with a vote to fund the government and suspend the debt limit, all but daring Republicans who say they will vote against it despite the risk of a fiscal crisis...

DALLAS -- A San Antonio doctor who said he performed an abortion in defiance of a new Texas law all but dared supporters of the state's near-total ban on the procedure to try making an early example of him by filing a lawsuit -- and by Monday, two people obliged...

NORTH PORT, Fla. -- FBI agents and police Monday searched the home of the boyfriend wanted for questioning in the death of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, whose body was discovered over the weekend at a Wyoming national park months after the couple set out on a cross-country road trip...

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 21, the 264th day of 2021. There are 101 days left in the year. Today's Highlights in History: On Sept. 21, 1989, Hurricane Hugo crashed into Charleston, South Carolina (the storm was blamed for 56 deaths in the Caribbean and 29 in the United States). Twenty-one students in Alton, Texas, died when their school bus, hit by a soft-drink delivery truck, careened into a water-filled pit...

DEL RIO, Texas -- The U.S. flew Haitians camped in a Texas border town back to their homeland Sunday and tried blocking others from crossing the border from Mexico in a massive show of force signaling the beginning of what could be one of America's swiftest, large-scale expulsions of migrants or refugees in decades...

UNITED NATIONS -- Last year, no leaders came at all. This year will be quite different -- sort of. With the coronavirus pandemic still raging in many parts of the world, leaders from more than 100 nations are heading to New York this week for the United Nations' annual high-level gathering -- a COVID-inflected, semi-locked down affair taking place in one of the pandemic's hardest-hit cities of all. ...

Today is Sunday, Sept. 19, the 262nd day of 2021. There are 103 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 19, 1796, President George Washington's farewell address was published. In it, America's first chief executive advised, "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden's decision to form a strategic Indo-Pacific alliance with Australia and Britain to counter China is angering France and the European Union. They're feeling left out and seeing it as a return to the Trump era. The security initiative, unveiled this week, appears to have brought Biden's summer of love with Europe to an abrupt end. ...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Within his first week back at school after a year and a half, 7-year-old Ben Medlin was exposed to a classmate with COVID-19, and he was sent home, along with 7,000 other students in the district, for 14 days of quarantine. Not much learning went on in Ben's home...

Most Americans don't believe their personal information is secure online and aren't satisfied with the federal government's efforts to protect it, according to a poll. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk shows that 64% of Americans say their social media activity is not very or not at all secure. ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- SpaceX's first private flight streaked into orbit Wednesday night with two contest winners, a health care worker and their rich sponsor, the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism. It was the first time a spacecraft circled Earth with an all-amateur crew and no professional astronauts...

Today in History Today is Thursday, Sept. 16, the 259th day of 2021. There are 106 days left in the year. Today's Highlights in History: On Sept. 16, 1974, President Gerald R. Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam war deserters and draft-evaders...

COVID-19 deaths and cases in the U.S. have climbed back to levels not seen since the winter, erasing months of progress. The cases -- driven by the delta variant combined with resistance among some Americans to getting the vaccine -- are concentrated mostly in the South...

SURFSIDE BEACH, Texas -- Tropical Storm Nicholas weakened to a tropical depression early Tuesday evening after slowing to a crawl over southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana but still drenching the area with flooding rains. The downgrade came the same day Nicholas blew ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, knocking out power to a half-million homes and businesses and dumping more than a foot of rain along the same area swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017...

WASHINGTON -- Massive government relief passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic moved millions of Americans out of poverty last year, even as the official poverty rate increased slightly, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The official poverty measure rose 1 percentage point in 2020, with 11.4% of Americans living in poverty, or more than 37 million people. It was the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines...

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday sought to parry bipartisan congressional criticism of the Biden administration's Afghanistan withdrawal, as new intelligence estimates warned al-Qaida could soon again use Afghan soil to plot attacks on the United States...

The average person doesn't need a COVID-19 booster yet, an international group of scientists -- including two top U.S. regulators -- wrote Monday in a scientific journal. The experts reviewed studies of the vaccines' performance and concluded the shots are working well despite the extra-contagious delta variant, especially against severe disease...

HOUSTON -- Tropical Storm Nicholas gathered strength Monday and threatened to blow ashore in Texas as a hurricane that could bring up to 20 inches of rain to parts of the Gulf Coast, including the same area hit by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and storm-battered Louisiana...

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats unveiled a sweeping proposal Monday for tax hikes on big corporations and the wealthy to fund President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion rebuilding plan, as Congress speeds ahead to shape the far-reaching package touching almost all aspects of domestic life...

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed back Monday against harsh Republican criticism of the handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying the Biden administration inherited a deal with the Taliban to end the war, but no plan for carrying it out...

Cities and urban counties across the U.S. are raising concerns a recent rule from President Joe Biden's administration could preclude them from tapping into $350 billion of coronavirus relief aid to expand high-speed internet connections. Biden has set a goal of delivering fast, affordable internet to every American household. ...

WASHINGTON -- A declassified FBI document related to logistical support given to two of the Saudi hijackers in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks details contacts the men had with Saudi associates in the United States but does not provide proof senior kingdom officials were complicit in the plot...

Today is Monday, Sept. 13, the 256th day of 2021. There are 109 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 13, 1971, a four-day inmates' rebellion at the Attica Correctional Facility in western New York ended as police and guards stormed the prison; the ordeal and final assault claimed the lives of 32 inmates and 11 hostages...

In the ghastly rubble of Ground Zero's fallen towers 20 years ago, Hour Zero arrived, a chance to start anew. World affairs reordered abruptly on that morning of blue skies, black ash, fire and death. In Iran, chants of "death to America" quickly gave way to candlelight vigils to mourn the American dead. Vladimir Putin weighed in with substantive help as the U.S. prepared to go to war in Russia's region of influence...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In his most forceful pandemic actions and words, President Joe Biden ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans -- private-sector employees as well as health care workers and federal contractors -- in an all-out effort to curb the surging COVID-19 delta variant...

Today is Friday, Sept. 10, the 253rd day of 2021. There are 112 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 10, 1963, 20 Black students entered Alabama public schools following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace...

HOUMA, La. -- The death toll in Louisiana from Hurricane Ida rose to 26 Wednesday, after health officials reported 11 additional deaths in New Orleans, mostly older people who perished from the heat. The announcement was grim news amid signs the city was returning to normal with almost fully restored power and a lifted nighttime curfew...

BEIJING -- An avalanche of changes launched by China's ruling Communist Party has jolted everyone from tech billionaires to school kids. Behind them: President Xi Jinping's vision of making a more powerful, prosperous country by reviving revolutionary ideals, with more economic equality and tighter party control over society and entrepreneurs...

Today is Thursday, Sept. 9, the 252nd day of 2021. There are 113 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 9, 1850, California became the 31st state of the union. On this date: In 1776, the second Continental Congress made the term "United States" official, replacing "United Colonies."...

COVID-19 booster shots may be coming for at least some Americans but already the Biden administration is being forced to scale back expectations -- illustrating just how much important science still has to be worked out. The initial plan was to offer Pfizer or Moderna boosters starting Sept. ...