Avie Schneider

There has been a perception that Black Americans are more hesitant than whites to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. But roughly equal proportions of Black and white respondents in a recent poll said they plan to get vaccinated.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said Friday that he will not seek reelection for a fourth term that would begin next January. He has been investigating former President Donald Trump's finances, and the Supreme Court last month cleared the way for the prosecutor's office to receive Trump's tax returns and other financial records.

"Representing the People of New York during this pivotal era for our city and our justice system has been the privilege of a lifetime," the 66-year-old Vance said.

In the midst of a pandemic that is taxing medical workers like never before, a doctor in a Los Angeles hospital turned a camera toward his colleagues.

Dr. Scott Kobner is the chief emergency room resident at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. He's also an amateur photographer. His black-and-white photos show the suffering, anxiety and chaos unfolding in overrun COVID-19 units.

It was a couple months into the pandemic that Kobner started taking pictures of scenes from his own hospital.

Texas is slowly coming out of a historic deep freeze that left millions of residents without power and water for several days.

Just before voting Saturday to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, the Senate seemed to reverse course, with a decision not to call witnesses.

Del. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the U.S. Virgin Islands who was one of the House impeachment managers, is defending the agreement between House managers and Trump's attorneys not to call witnesses after all.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET

The United States and Iran remain at odds over what comes next in their standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran's supreme leader said Sunday that all U.S. sanctions must be lifted before Tehran will return to its commitment under the 2015 nuclear deal. And, in an interview airing Sunday, President Biden said the United States won't lift sanctions first.

Days after a coup and the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected leaders, the military in Myanmar is moving to strangle free speech by blocking access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The Internet clampdown came as protests grew Saturday on the streets of Yangon, the country's commercial capital, where thousands turned out to demand the return of the legitimately elected government led by Suu Kyi.

Updated at 4:32 p.m. ET

The GameStop stock-market roller coaster continued Friday as the video game retailer's shares shot up, the online broker Robinhood struggled for cash and securities regulators issued a stern warning for anyone trying to game the market.

Catapulted by seemingly unrelenting enthusiasm on Reddit, GameStop stock soared nearly 68%.

Updated at 4:51 p.m. ET

What the deal with GameStop?

There's a good chance you have heard that question many times in the past few days.

The Biden administration says the federal government needs to do a better job of acknowledging the ways that communities of color are blocked from fair and equal access to housing.

"Today the average Black family has just one-tenth the wealth of the average white family, while the gap between white and Black in home ownership is now larger than it was in 1960," Susan Rice, head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a news briefing Tuesday.

New Zealand has kept its community spread of the coronavirus low by keeping tight border controls, but on Sunday the country of 5 million reported its first suspected community case since November. And officials say it might involve a more transmissible variant of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says letting the science speak on the pandemic got him "into a little bit of trouble" during the Trump administration.

Jaime Harrison is a former U.S. Senate candidate who lost to Republican Lindsey Graham in November, but not before shattering fundraising records. Now Harrison is the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, selected by President Biden.

Clues may come soon as to what caused the crash Saturday of an Indonesian airliner with 62 people on board. Authorities said Sunday that they know the location of the so-called black boxes of the Boeing 737-500 that went down in the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta, the nation's capital.

Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations, the fourth such pact in recent months between Israel and Arab countries in the Middle East and Africa.

In announcing the latest agreement on Thursday, President Trump tweeted: "Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!"

The Minneapolis City Council has voted to shift almost $8 million in police funding to expand other services, including violence prevention and mental health crisis response teams. But, in the face of a veto threat from the mayor, the council also voted to keep its police staffed at current levels, reversing earlier plans to cut officers from the force.

Updated at 8:07 p.m. ET

A company that started as a single air mattress for rent in a San Francisco apartment is now worth $100 billion.

Airbnb made its long-awaited stock market debut on Thursday and more than doubled its offering price.

From afar, it may have appeared as a peculiar time for a lodging company to go public, as the coronavirus continues to devastate the travel and hospitality industry. Wall Street, however, has a different story to tell.

Boeing's 737 Max is making a comeback after two crashes that killed a total of 346 people in late 2018 and early last year. Ireland's Ryanair, a major European carrier, has ordered 75 of the planes, which had been grounded since March 2019, the two companies announced on Thursday.

Here's a stunning stat: Women are leaving the workforce at four times the rate as men.

The burden of parenting and running a household while also working a job during the pandemic has created a pressure cooker environment in many households, and women are bearing the brunt of it.

Updated at 4:14 p.m. ET

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 509 points Monday following a report that large global banks were involved in transactions flagged as possible money laundering.

And hopes for another relief measure from Congress flagged as lawmakers focused on the fight over a Supreme Court nomination following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Updated at 1:16 p.m. ET

Apple has hit $2 trillion in market value, the first publicly traded U.S. company to do so.

The iPhone maker first crossed the $1 trillion milestone just two years ago.

This week, Apple and a handful of other tech giants propelled the S&P 500 index to a new record. Apple's stock is up nearly 60% this year.

The U.S. stock market has come a long way in a short time.

The S&P 500 index closed at a record high Tuesday, nearly six months after coronavirus lockdowns that shut down much of the economy sent the markets plunging.

The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are set to testify before a House antitrust subcommittee Wednesday about whether their companies have too much power.

For Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, it will be his first appearance before Congress. He begins his prepared remarks with a personal story, as he often does in public appearances:

Updated at 11:34 a.m. ET

New claims for unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time in four months — since March 28 — as states began reimposing lockdown restrictions in an effort to reverse a surge of coronavirus cases.

More than 1.4 million new claims were filed during the week ending July 18, an increase of more than 100,000 over the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Updated at 12:45 p.m. ET

The dramatic collapse of the U.S. economy from the coronavirus is pummeling America's largest banks, raising new concerns about how much growth is slowing.

Updated at 10:21 a.m. ET

Another 1.5 million people filed for unemployment benefits for the first time last week, a decline of 58,000.

But the number who are continuing to seek the payments is continuing to fall as workers return to their jobs. The Labor Department said continued claims dipped by 62,000 to 20.5 million.

In the past 13 weeks, since the early days of the coronavirus crisis, new claims have totaled a staggering 45.7 million. New weekly filings peaked at nearly 6.9 million in March and have been dropping ever since.

Updated at 3:36 p.m. ET

The Justice Department is proposing legislation to curtail online platforms' legal protections for the content they carry.

The proposal comes nearly three weeks after President Trump signed an executive order to limit protections for social media companies after Twitter began adding fact checks to some of his tweets.

Updated at 4:05 p.m. ET

U.S. stock markets surged Tuesday after reports that retail sales rebounded strongly in May and that the Trump administration is preparing an infrastructure plan to boost the economy, which has been battered by the coronavirus crisis.

Updated at 4:59 p.m. ET

After opening sharply lower, U.S. stock indexes climbed Monday after the Federal Reserve announced it will begin buying corporate bonds. It was the central bank's latest step to help an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 157 points, or nearly 0.6%, and the broader S&P 500 index rose 0.8%. The Dow was down nearly 600 points shortly after the opening.

Updated at 4:05 p.m. ET

Stock prices rebounded Friday, one day after a punishing drop triggered by fears that the coronavirus cases are increasing in the Sunbelt.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 477 points, a gain of 1.9%. The broader S&P 500 index climbed 1.3%.

A day earlier, the Dow lost 1,861 points, or about 7%, and the S&P 500 dove nearly 6%.