The goal is to help the family get on a strong footing so there’s less chance they will backslide once they leave. “We’re teaching moms to be independent,” said Maureen Kornowa, executive director of Home of Hope. “We’re going to teach you how to navigate life.” (Home of Hope and Jeremiah Program serve only mothers and children; some other two-generation programs work with fathers as well.)With the help of her case manager, Pritchett is working on saving her money and budgeting so she will have a down payment on a house or a security deposit and rent for an apartment when she moves... Read More

The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked... Read More

In a year when Covid-19 shattered the pleas of so many who prayed for miracles, a Georgia man with two new lungs is among the fortunate.Mark Buchanan, of Roopville, received a double-lung transplant in October, nearly three months after Covid-19 left him hospitalized and sedated, first on a ventilator and then on the last-resort treatment known as ECMO.“They said that it had ruined my lungs,” said Buchanan, 53, who was a burly power company lineman when he fell ill. “The vent and the covid ruined ’em completely.”Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreakAt the time, only a handful of U.S.... Read More

LONDON — Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not attend Saturday’s funeral for Prince Philip to allow as many members of the royal family as possible to be present amid coronavirus restrictions, his office said in a statement Saturday.“Only 30 people can attend the funeral of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” the statement said. “The prime minister has throughout wanted to act in accordance with what is best for the royal household, and so to allow for as many family members as possible will not be attending the funeral on Saturday.”A message of condolence on... Read More

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for waging another “arduous march” to fight severe economic difficulties, for the first time comparing them to a 1990s famine that killed hundreds of thousands.Kim had previously said his country faces the “worst-ever” situation due to several factors, including the coronavirus pandemic, U.S.-led sanctions and natural disasters last summer. But it’s the first time he publicly drew parallel with the deadly famine.North Korea monitoring groups haven’t detected any signs of mass starvation or a humanitarian disaster. But Kim’s comments still... Read More

SAN ANTONIO — Tara VanDerveer hugged each of her Stanford players as they climbed the ladder to cut down the nets, capping a taxing whirlwind journey and ending an exhaustive championship drought for the Cardinal.It took 29 years, that included 10 weeks on the road this season because of the coronavirus, for VanDerveer and the Cardinal to be crowned NCAA women’s basketball champions again.“We had some special karma going for us,” VanDerveer said. “Had the comeback against Louisville, dodge a bullet against South Carolina, dodge bullet against Arizona. Sometimes you have to be lucky.... Read More

LOS ANGELES — Researchers at Stanford University said Saturday that they had found at least one case of a new coronavirus variant first detected in India in Northern California.The new variant has two mutations, including one found in the California strain, in the spiky protein that the virus latches onto, according to Stanford Health Care spokesperson Lisa Kim. The variant was found in a patient from the San Francisco Bay Area by the school’s Clinical Virology Laboratory.”We believe this is the first described case with this variant in the United States,” she said in an emailed... Read More

The coronavirus is likely to have emerged in bats and spread to another animal before it jumped into the human population, according to a study from the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists that is scheduled to be released Tuesday.The 123-page report, which NBC News obtained ahead of its release, also found that it’s “extremely unlikely” that the virus leaked from a lab, a theory that has flourished among China skeptics even though it is based largely on circumstantial evidence.The findings are the result of a joint study by Chinese scientists and a WHO-led team that... Read More

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is likely at least 60% higher than the confirmed number, putting it in excess of 300,000, according to government data.Updated figures here on excess mortality in a table published by Mexico’s Health Ministry showed that by the end of the sixth week of this year, 294,287 fatalities “associated with COVID-19” had been registered on death certificates in Mexico.That was 61.4% higher than the confirmed death toll of 182,301 given as a comparison in the same table.That figure did not coincide precisely with a specific... Read More

CARACAS, Venezuela — Chef Carlos Páez has a long and tough road ahead after a serious case of COVID-19 that required a constant supply of oxygen. He is showing improvement, but his health is still fragile.Páez, however, didn’t receive treatment at one of Venezuela’s hospitals despite appallingly low oxygen saturation levels. He was treated at his home in the capital, Caracas, because it is not easy to find a bed at a public hospital these days — the outcome of a recent increase in coronavirus cases and chronic understaffing — and he was priced out of a private facility despite having... Read More