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PITTSBURGH (AP) — For the two weeks that the Hackneys' baby girl lay in a Pittsburgh hospital bed weak from dehydration, her parents rarely left her side, sometimes sleeping on the fold-out sofa in the room. They stayed with their daughter around the clock when she was moved to a rehab center to regain her strength. Finally, the 8-month-old stopped batting away her bottles and started putting on weight again. "She was doing well and we started to ask when can she go home," Lauren Hackney said. "And then from that moment on, at the time, they c...
With hundreds of new movies released each year, many of us depend on the expertise of film critics to help curate our own watching — a thoroughly communal yet deeply personal experience. To honor the supporting role that entertainment journalism can play in this beloved pastime, The Associated Press on Thursday unveiled its inaugural AP Top 25 Movies list. The AP Top 25 Movies ranking is a distinctive honor roll of films released in 2022, as determined by a truly representative panel of 26 of the U.S.' smartest movie experts working for A...
SEATTLE (AP) — After Bryan Kang's son was born in July, the occupational therapist and his wife, a teacher, started looking for child care in the Los Angeles area. The couple called eight day care centers: Some didn't have spots for months; others stopped taking their calls and some never answered at all. So with no viable options, Kang scrambled to find a new job that would allow him to work remotely. "I told my manager, 'Hey, by the end of the month, I have to transition out,'" Kang said. "They were very supportive and very understanding b...
The speeches may be scripted, but the U.N. General Assembly can sometimes be the only direct window into the regional challenges that command global concern. On Saturday, world leaders were speaking on behalf of some of the most unstable and unsettling current conflicts. That includes India's fight over the Kashmir region with bitter rival Pakistan, Haiti's domestic crises spilling into a migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border and questions about the Ethiopian government's role in reported starvation deaths in the Tigray region. Haiti Prime...
TOKYO (AP) — Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard finally got to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. It didn't last long, but it was significant. Hubbard couldn't complete any of her first three lifts on Monday night, ruling her out of medal contention in the women's over-87-kilogram division that ultimately was won by China's Li Wenwen. Hubbard made a heart gesture to the audience with her hands before leaving the competition arena. Even without completing a lift, she was a pioneer for transgender athletes. While the New Zealander isn't the o...
LEMOORE, CALIF. (AP) — Johanne Defay of France was devastated when the mega sponsor Roxy dropped her right before she became a pro surfer in 2014, shattering her confidence and threatening her career altogether. "They were just like 'Oh, you don't look this way, you know, for, like, pictures," Defay said. "And I just felt like I was never doing enough or I wasn't fitting in, in the way that they wanted for their brand." Now, Defay is headed to the Tokyo Olympics for surfing's debut at the Summer Games, buoyed by an upset win against reigning w...
LYNNWOOD, Wash. (AP) — On a warm summer night, two food trucks pulled onto a tree-lined street in a hilltop neighborhood outside Seattle. The smell of grilled meat filled the air, and neighbors slurped on boba tea drinks. Toddlers, teens, their parents and dogs sat in the grass, chatting behind masks, laughing and mimicking imaginary hugs to stay socially distant while they waited for their food orders. Long seen as an urban treasure, food trucks are now being saved by the suburbs during the coronavirus pandemic. No longer able to depend on bus...
NEW YORK (AP) — A single father in New Jersey is taking unpaid leave from his job as a baker because he has no one to look after his son. A university employee in New York realizes she may never return to the office after her autistic daughter's child care center closed for good. A new mother in Utah uses vacation time to take two hours off from work each day. The coronavirus pandemic has created a staggering child care crisis that threatens to undermine the reopening of the U.S. economy. More than one-third of families report that someone h...
The sale of the photo archive of Ebony and Jet magazines chronicling African American history is generating relief among some who worried the historic images may be lost. But it's also causing some to mourn since the images, including photos of Emmett Till in 1955 after he was killed and ones documenting the rise of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., won't fully be in the hands an African American-owned entity. Ebony and Jet, for more than half a century, stood as the epitome of a black-owned business. "You have to do what you have to do," Roy...
SEATTLE (AP) — Rachel Whalen remembers feeling gutted in high school when a former friend would mock her online postings, threaten to unfollow or unfriend her on social media and post inside jokes about her to others online. The cyberbullying was so distressing that Whalen said she contemplated suicide. Once she got help, she decided to limit her time on social media. It helps to take a break from it for perspective, said Whalen, now a 19-year-old college student in Utah. There's a rise in cyberbullying nationwide, with three times as many g...
KIRKLAND, Wash. (AP) — Bill and Melinda Gates are pushing back against a new wave of criticism about whether billionaire philanthropy is a force for good. The couple, whose foundation has the largest endowment in the world, say they are not fazed by recent blowback against wealthy giving. It's come in high-profile moments at the World Economic Forum, the shifting political conversation about taxes and socialism in the U.S., and best-selling book "Winners Take All," which calls the influence of high-dollar giving an "elite charade." "I'm not s...
SEATTLE (AP) — Alan Naiman was known for an unabashed thriftiness that veered into comical, but even those closest to him had no inkling of the fortune that he quietly amassed and the last act that he had long planned. The Washington state social worker died of cancer this year at age 63, leaving most of a surprising $11 million estate to children's charities that help the poor, sick, disabled and abandoned. The amount baffled the beneficiaries and his best friends, who are lauding Naiman as the anniversary of his death approaches in J...
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was not on the ballot in the Michigan governor's race, but her legacy loomed over the campaign in her home state, which has the country's highest concentration of for-profit charter schools. Republican Bill Schuette, a DeVos ally and the state's attorney general, ultimately lost to Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat and former state lawmaker who pledged on the campaign trail to "put an end to the DeVos agenda." She has promised to stop new for-profit schools from opening and to demand more accountability from charter...
SEATTLE (AP) — Prior to his death on Monday, billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen invested large sums in technology ventures, research projects and philanthropy, some of it eclectic and highly speculative. What happens to those commitments now? Outside of bland assurances from his investment company, no one seems quite sure. Allen died in Seattle from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, according to his company Vulcan Inc. He was 65. He never married and had no children, and details of his estate aren't known. Forbes recently e...
SEATTLE (AP) — Bill Gates is rallying behind school quality in developing nations with a push for more assessment data, a new initiative that links the Microsoft co-founder's signature U.S. education priorities with his more prominent global philanthropy work. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the world's largest philanthropy issued its latest "Goalkeepers" report on Tuesday, urging for more comparable student assessment data worldwide and help getting girls through their schooling. "The world, in education, focused a lot on access, w...
SEATTLE (AP) — A dire child care workforce crisis amid a booming U.S. economy is compelling many industry players to turn to business tactics more closely resembling Wall Street than "Sesame Street" — including noncompete clauses for child care workers and client families, college tuition incentives for the workers and non-refundable wait list fees for desperate parents seeking day care slots. Underlying the phenomenon is a shrinking pool of child care workers with employers still offering low pay while demand for high-quality child care pro...
SEATTLE (AP) — Marking another phase in his education agenda, Bill Gates is now taking a more targeted approach to help struggling U.S. schools. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now funding groups working directly with clusters of public schools in some of the most impoverished regions of the country. Many of those third-party groups already had relationships with the world's largest philanthropy, and some of the grants went straight to a school district and charter schools organization. The foundation on Tuesday announced the first r...
Prominent charter school supporters are dishing out campaign money, as key gubernatorial races in several states have now begun in earnest. June primary contests set up a number of state battles for governor in the midterm elections this November, with both Democratic and Republican candidates that could change how public resources flow into charter and private schools in the coming years. Last week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs donated $29,200 each — the maximum amount — to Democrat Gavin Newsom's cam...
Charter school supporters are deciding where to direct their considerable resources after pouring money into the California governor primary to support a longtime ally who failed to move on to November's election. The fallout may signal future uncertainty for the school choice movement in a state with some of the most robust charter school laws in the United States. The front-runner for governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, could hamper or threaten the progress of charters — privately run schools that use public money and have divided parents and p...
SEATTLE (AP) — Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates saw an opportunity with a new federal education law that has widespread repercussions for American classrooms. His nonprofit Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given about $44 million to outside groups over the past two years to help shape new state education plans required under the 2015 law, according to an Associated Press analysis of its grants. The spending paid for research aligned with Gates' interests, led to friendly media coverage and had a role in helping write one state's n...
SEATTLE (AP) — Tech moguls Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday they will team up to help develop new technologies for kids with trouble learning — an effort that will include dabbling into child brain science. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative intend to explore a number of potential pilot projects. They'll focus on math, writing and brain functions — key areas of classroom learning that they note are crucial for academic success. The effort is now seeking information and ideas from across secto...
SEATTLE (AP) — Bill Gates launched a new fight against systemic poverty in the U.S., with his private foundation on Thursday announcing millions of dollars toward initiatives ranging from data projects to funding for community activists. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said it will spend $158 million combating American poverty over the next four years. It comes as the foundation moves deeper into U.S. issues after largely focusing on global health and development. Critics have long challenged Gates to do more to help the poor at home i...
SEATTLE (AP) — With Olympic prodigies having just dazzled audiences worldwide, parents in the U.S. are reconciling the thrill of the gold with their fears from recent sexual abuse scandals in elite youth sports. Shannon Stabbert said her 6-year-old daughter wants to be a gymnast, but the Seattle mother decided to put her in a martial-arts program instead. "I have no doubt she will be quite amazing at gymnastics," Stabbert said. "I just don't feel like it's a mentally, physically, emotionally healthy sport for girls." High-profile cases of s...
KIRKLAND, Wash. (AP) — Bill and Melinda Gates, as the world's top philanthropists, are rethinking their work in America as they confront what they consider their unsatisfactory track record on schools, the country's growing inequity and a president they disagree with more than any other. In an interview with The Associated Press, the couple said they're concerned about President Donald Trump's "America first" worldview. They've made known their differences with the president and his party on issues including foreign aid, taxes and p...
When Megan Olson lands in South Korea for the Winter Olympics next week, she'll feel something that is both surreal and vivid. An intoxicating sense of belonging. A deep sense of loss. Pride, for the motherland she barely knows after being secretly adopted away. The 33-year-old social worker from Minnesota is joining dozens of fellow South Korean adoptees who are returning to their birth country for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang. Many endured cultural, racial and national identity issues stemming from an international adoption...
