Millions of hungry Americans turn to food banks for 1st time

The deadly pandemic that tore through the nation’s heartland struck just as Aaron Crawford was in a moment of crisis. He was looking for work, his wife needed surgery, then the virus began eating away at her work hours and her paycheck.

The Crawfords had no savings, mounting bills and a growing dread: What if they ran out of food? The couple had two boys, 5 and 10, and boxes of macaroni and cheese from the dollar store could go only so far.

A 37-year-old Navy vet, Crawford saw himself as self-reliant. Asking for food made him uncomfortable. “I felt like I was a failure,” he says. “It’s this whole stigma ... this mindset that you’re this guy who can’t provide for his family, that you’re a deadbeat."

Hunger is a harsh reality in the richest country in the world. Even during times of prosperity, schools hand out millions of hot meals a day to children, and desperate elderly Americans are sometimes forced to choose between medicine and food.

Now, in the pandemic of 2020, with illness, job loss and business closures, millions more Americans are worried about empty refrigerators and barren cupboards. Food banks are doling out meals at a rapid pace and an Associated Press data analysis found a sharp rise in the amount of food distributed compared with last year. Meanwhile, some folks are skipping meals so their children can eat and others are depending on cheap food that lacks nutrition.

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Years of research laid groundwork for speedy COVID-19 shots

How could scientists race out COVID-19 vaccines so fast without cutting corners? A head start helped -- over a decade of behind-the-scenes research that had new vaccine technology poised for a challenge just as the coronavirus erupted.

“The speed is a reflection of years of work that went before,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press. “That’s what the public has to understand.”

Creating vaccines and having results from rigorous studies less than a year after the world discovered a never-before-seen disease is incredible, cutting years off normal development. But the two U.S. frontrunners are made in a way that promises speedier development may become the norm -- especially if they prove to work long-term as well as early testing suggests.

“Abject giddiness,” is how Dr. C. Buddy Creech, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert, described scientists’ reactions when separate studies showed the two candidates were about 95% effective.

“I think we enter into a golden age of vaccinology by having these types of new technologies,” Creech said at a briefing of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

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US schools go back and forth on in-person learning

New York City reopened classrooms to many of its youngest students Monday in what has become a frustrating, stop-and-start process in many school systems around the U.S. because of the alarming surge in the coronavirus.

The nation's largest school district, with 1 million students, had shut down in-person learning just two weeks ago but decided to bring back preschoolers and elementary school children after parents pushed for it and the mayor concluded it was safe to do so with beefed-up testing.

In contrast, school systems in Detroit, Boston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia and suburban Minneapolis in recent weeks abandoned in-person classes or dropped plans to bring students back because of soaring infections.

The retreat in some places and the push forward in others are happening as the virus comes back with a vengeance across much of the U.S., with deaths per day averaging over 2,200 — about the same level seen during the very deadliest stretch of the outbreak, last spring in the New York City area.

Newly cases are averaging close to 200,000 a day, the highest level on record, and the number of Americans now in the hospital has reached all-time highs at over 100,000.

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Get lost 2020: Some things to leave behind, with caveats

NEW YORK (AP) — Zoom, Zoom and Zoom. Masks, masks and masks. Sourdough starter and short-order cooking. In these “troubled times,” in our sweat pants and the isolation we endure “out of an abundance of caution,” there isn't much not to be over as 2020 comes to a longed for halt.

With the election behind us, along with its deluge of texts and cries of fake news, the year was a mess of common horrors and inconveniences driven by political divisions, racial injustice and the deadly and persistent pandemic, with chronic language to match.

But not all things 2020 need to be left behind. More white people have realized racism is real and present. Quppies (as in quarantine puppies) and Quittens (the feline equivalent) have enriched millions of lives. Family dinner is back on the table and coronavirus pods have turned friends into family.

Here's a few more things we're over as we lurch into 2021, and a few things we may just remember fondly:

DISTANCE LEARNING

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Does Trump have power to pardon himself? It's complicated

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has declared that he has “absolute power” to issue a pardon to himself. Yet the law is much murkier than his confidence suggests.

No president has attempted to pardon himself while in office, so if Trump tries to do so in the next six weeks, he will be venturing into legally untested territory without clear guidance from the Constitution or from judges.

Legal experts are divided on an inherently ambiguous question that was left vague by the Founding Fathers and has never had to be definitively resolved in court.

“It's impossible to anticipate every factual scenario that could come up under a legal provision. This is why we have the courts," said University of Baltimore law professor Kimberly Wehle.

Talk of a potential pardon comes with Trump facing a swirl of investigations as he prepares to leave office, including New York State inquiries into whether he misled tax authorities, banks or business partners.

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As virus spreads, Kansas hospital runs out of staff

The radiology technician slept in an RV in the parking lot of his rural Kansas hospital for more than a week because his co-workers were out sick with COVID-19 and no one else was available to take X-rays.

A doctor and physician assistant tested positive on the same day in November, briefly leaving the hospital without anyone who could write prescriptions or oversee patient care. The hospital is full, but diverting patients isn’t an option because surrounding medical centers are overwhelmed.

The situation at Rush County Memorial Hospital in La Crosse illustrates the depths of the COVID-19 crisis in rural America at a time when the virus is killing more than 2,000 people a day and inundating hospitals.

The virus is sidelining nurses, doctors and medical staff nationwide, but the problem is particularly dire in rural communities like La Crosse because they don’t have much of a bullpen - or many places to send patients with regional hospitals full.

The staff shortages have forced people like Eric Lewallen, a Gulf War veteran and alfalfa farmer who moonlights as a radiology technician, to mount a last line of defense. To keep the hospital open, he had no choice but to start living in his RV in the parking lot because he needed to be on site as the only remaining healthy staffer to perform X-rays.

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Biden picks Xavier Becerra to lead HHS, coronavirus response

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration's coronavirus response.

Separately, Biden picked a Harvard infectious disease expert, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And he announced a new advisory role for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.

If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1 trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans.

Becerra, a former senior House Democrat, said that in Congress he helped pass the Affordable Care Act and as California’s attorney general he has defended it. “As Secretary of Health and Human Services, I will build on our progress and ensure every American has access to quality, affordable health care — through this pandemic and beyond,” he tweeted on Monday.

Biden's selection of Becerra and Walensky was announced early Monday in a press release from the transition office. People familiar with the decision had confirmed the picks to The Associated Press on Sunday night. Biden also announced other top members of his health care team, though some posts remain unfilled.

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UK's Johnson to head to Brussels amid Brexit talks deadlock

BRUSSELS (AP) — More than four years after helping set Britain’s course out of the European Union, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is headed to EU headquarters to try to finish the job.

With less than a month until the U.K.’s economic rupture with the European Union and talks on a new trade deal at a standstill on three crucial issues, Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed Monday to meet in person “in the coming days” to see whether they can find common ground.

Brussels is dangerous territory for Brexit-backing British leaders. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, came time and again to negotiate a Brexit deal, only to see it repeatedly rejected by her own Parliament, ending her top-level career. Johnson will be hoping for a quick in-and-out that leaves his reputation intact and his country on course for a free trade deal with its biggest economic partner.

Johnson and von der Leyen spoke by phone Monday for the second time in 48 hours, as their negotiators were stuck in gridlocked trade talks. They said after the call that that “significant differences” remained on three key issues — fishing rights, fair-competition rules and the governance of future disputes — and “the conditions for finalizing an agreement are not there.”

The two leaders said in a joint statement they planned to discuss the remaining differences "in a physical meeting in Brussels in the coming days."

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The Dylan catalog, a 60-year rock 'n' roll odyssey, is sold

NEW YORK (AP) — To many music lovers, Bob Dylan's songbook is priceless. Well, now he's put a price on it.

The Nobel Prize-winning songwriter has sold publishing rights to his catalog of more than 600 songs, one of the greatest treasures in popular music, to the Universal Music Publishing Group, it was announced on Monday.

His collection includes modern standards like “Blowin' in the Wind,” “Tangled Up in Blue" and “Like a Rolling Stone” through to this year's 17-minute opus on the Kennedy assassination, “Murder Most Foul.” The body of work may only be matched for its breadth and influence by the Beatles, whose songs were re-acquired by Paul McCartney in 2017.

The price was not disclosed, but industry experts have suggested the sale is in the range of $300 million to a half-billion dollars.

The sale gives Universal the right, in perpetuity, to lease use of Dylan's compositions to advertisers and movie, television or video game producers, or anyone who thinks his words and melodies could enhance their product.

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Why are some scientists turning away from brain scans?

NEW YORK (AP) — Brain scans offer a tantalizing glimpse into the mind’s mysteries, promising an almost X-ray-like vision into how we feel pain, interpret faces and wiggle fingers.

Studies of brain images have suggested that Republicans and Democrats have visibly different thinking, that overweight adults have stronger responses to pictures of food and that it’s possible to predict a sober person’s likelihood of relapse.

But such buzzy findings are coming under growing scrutiny as scientists grapple with the fact that some brain scan research doesn’t seem to hold up.

Such studies have been criticized for relying on too few subjects and for incorrectly analyzing or interpreting data. Researchers have also realized a person’s brain scan results can differ from day to day — even under identical conditions — casting a doubt on how to document consistent patterns.

With so many questions being raised, some researchers are acknowledging the scans’ limitations and working to overcome them or simply turning to other tests.