Becky Sullivan

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the top respiratory disease official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was among the first to warn the American public about how much the pandemic would change everyday life, is stepping down from the agency.

A new study estimates that the number of people who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. is more than 900,000, a number 57% higher than official figures.

Worldwide, the study's authors say, the COVID-19 death count is nearing 7 million, more than double the reported number of 3.24 million.

For most wine drinkers, a budget bottle from the grocery store is perfectly sufficient.

But for the adventurous wine connoisseur with a discerning palate — and a lot of money — there is a new frontier: space wine.

Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., a lifelong, unrepentant white supremacist who shot and killed three people outside a Jewish community center and retirement home in suburban Kansas City in 2014, has died in prison.

Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, dedicated his life to white supremacy. He spent decades writing and spreading racist and antisemitic messages and threatening and inflicting violence against liberals, Blacks and Jews.

Before she ran for governor of Georgia, before she registered 800,000 new voters with her organization Fair Fight, before she became a Democratic power broker with her name perennially in the mix for high-level political positions, Stacey Abrams wrote romance novels.

Now, her first three books, originally printed about 20 years ago under the nom de plume Selena Montgomery, will be reissued in 2022 by the publisher Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Family, friends and national civil rights advocates gathered Monday for the funeral of Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City, N.C., as the circumstances of his shooting death last month by sheriff's deputies remained unclear.

Good news: Prancer has been adopted.

The 2-year-old, 13-pound Chihuahua mutt not so charitably described as "a chucky doll in a dog's body" was listed for adoption this month in an unusually honest ad that charmed hundreds of thousands of people on social media.

One week ago, people celebrated in the streets of Minneapolis as a judge read the guilty verdicts in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murdering George Floyd.

The United States will release 60 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from drugmaker AstraZeneca to other countries over the next several months, the White House announced Monday.

The vaccine, which has not been authorized for use in the U.S., will be released once it clears safety reviews by the Food and Drug Administration. That could happen in the "coming weeks," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a press briefing.

Leaders of nine Southeast Asian countries on Saturday called for an immediate end to the violence in Myanmar, where the military government has cracked down violently on the enormous protests over its February coup.

At an emergency summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations held in Jakarta, Indonesia's president called the situation in Myanmar "unacceptable."

"The violence must be stopped and democracy, stability and peace in Myanmar must be restored," President Joko Widodo said.

Mourners gathered Thursday in Minneapolis for the funeral of Daunte Wright, just two days after a jury there convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of the murder of George Floyd.

The panel of 12 jurors weighing the case against the fired Minneapolis police officer charged with murdering George Floyd has resumed deliberations.

The jury, who are sequestered in a nearby hotel under the supervision of Hennepin County Sheriff's deputies, are considering three charges against former officer Derek Chauvin: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

A strange, tense springtime has come to the Twin Cities as residents and law enforcement alike brace for a verdict in the intensely watched trial of fired police officer Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd.

The Hennepin County courthouse in downtown Minneapolis, where the trial is taking place, has become a fortress, surrounded by tall fences topped with barbed wire.

Never has so much attention focused on these quiet, leafy eight square miles along the Mississippi River.

Brooklyn Center, Minn., a small inner-ring suburb of modest postwar houses and apartment buildings, is the latest community to feel the heat of the national spotlight in the days since the death of Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man shot during a traffic stop by a Brooklyn Center police officer who officials say mistook her handgun for her Taser.

All federal prison inmates will have the opportunity to receive a vaccine by mid-May, according to the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Michael Carvajal.

Vaccines have already been made available to all federal prison staff, he said, speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing Thursday.

More than 40,000 people incarcerated in federal prisons have received both doses of the vaccine, the bureau says, which is about a third of the people in BOP custody. Nearly 18,000 federal prison staff have been fully vaccinated.

The former Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer charged in the killing of Daunte Wright made her first appearance in court Thursday as members of the Wright family continued their call for consequences.

Police officials have said Kim Potter, a 48-year-old white woman, mistook her handgun for her Taser when she fatally shot Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, on Sunday. In body camera footage, Potter can be heard yelling "Taser!" just before shooting him.

Kim Potter, the former Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer who shot Daunte Wright, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, according to Minnesota authorities.

The Washington County Attorney's Office announced the charges Wednesday.

In their first public press conference, family members of Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man shot and killed by police in Brooklyn Center, Minn., expressed grief and anger, called for accountability and questioned why police felt the need to use any force on their son.

Kim Potter, the Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright, has resigned. Potter had served 26 years on the force before the fatal encounter Sunday where officials said she mistakenly fired her handgun instead of her Taser.

Police Chief Tim Gannon, who on Monday released the body camera footage and characterized the shooting as an "accidental discharge," has also stepped down.

Protests spread across the country Monday night after police officials in Brooklyn Center, Minn., said they believed that the officer who shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright had intended to use her Taser but accidentally fired her handgun instead.

Even as a cold drizzle fell in Minnesota, hundreds turned out for a memorial protest at the police department in Brooklyn Center, a few miles from the scene of Wright's death, despite a 7 p.m. curfew that had been called across much of the Twin Cities area.

The police officer said to have fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man killed in what started as a traffic stop, has been identified as Kim Potter.

Dozens of states are considering Republican-led bills that advocates say are harmful to transgender people. The recent spate of bills are "really challenging to see," says Dr. Rachel Levine, the nation's newly confirmed assistant secretary for health.

Under fire for differences in amenities for its men's and women's basketball tournaments, the NCAA revealed an upgraded weight room Saturday for players participating in the women's college basketball tournament in San Antonio.

What had been a single small rack of dumbbells has now been replaced with a larger space with more equipment, including a variety of bars, racks and stands.

The facilities were upgraded overnight after the organization was widely criticized by players, coaches and fans alike.

From Sacramento to Salt Lake City to Philadelphia, thousands gathered this weekend at vigils across the country with signs, candles, portraits and flowers grieving the eight victims of Tuesday's shootings in Atlanta and crying out against anti-Asian racism.

Calling it an "exceptional discovery," researchers at Pompeii have announced the uncovering of an intact ceremonial chariot from a villa near the famous Italian archaeological site.

The announcement Saturday called the chariot "an extraordinary find" that "has no parallel in Italy thus far."

A massive prison break in Haiti has resulted in the escape of hundreds of inmates and the deaths of at least 25 people, including the prison's director and a notorious Haitian gang leader named Arnel Joseph.

The equation for COVID-19 hot spots has been clear since the earliest days of the pandemic: Take facilities where people live in close quarters, then add conditions that make it hard to take preventive measures such as wearing personal protective equipment or keeping socially distant.

Major outbreaks in nursing homes this spring shocked the nation. Now, residents of those facilities are among the first in line for the vaccine.

At any hour of any day, somewhere on the radio dial, chances are you can find the voice of Stevie Nicks. This fall, decades after her 1970s breakthrough with Fleetwood Mac, she even became a chart sensation again, after a skateboarding TikTok star gave one of the band's classic songs a boost.