People who have had a stroke appear to regain more hand and arm function if intensive rehabilitation starts two to three months after the injury to their brain.

A study of 72 stroke patients suggests this is a "critical period," when the brain has the greatest capacity to rewire, a team reports in this week's journal PNAS.

COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000.

The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time.

TRABZON, Turkey — They had reached the end of the road.

Sitting on a park bench in this small Turkish city on the Black Sea, Sayyid Ali Hussaini held his 9-year-old daughter as she slept. His wife Mahbube huddled next to him as the hours ticked past into the night. He had given all he had to the smugglers who shepherded him and his family out of Afghanistan and across the mountains in a grueling, monthlong journey through Iran to reach Turkey. Now, they weren't sure where they would sleep.

The world's largest tree recently got a blanket to help protect it from a raging wildfire. Photos of the sequoia named General Sherman — with a base measuring a massive 36 feet in diameter — set off a flurry of interest in why and how a blanket might work against flames.

As the Biden administration moves quickly to expel migrants camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, its plan depends on a controversial Trump-era policy put in place in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to speed up removals.

A tourist hot spot off the coast of Australia, Fraser Island, will once again be known as K'gari, its original Indigenous name, the Queensland government announced.

Stock markets from Hong Kong to New York were hit by a major sell-off on Monday as a massive Chinese real estate conglomerate called China Evergrande Group faces a potentially devastating debt default.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 614 points, its worst performance in about two months, after earlier falling more than 900 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also fell sharply, posting their worst daily percentage falls since mid-May.

Comedian and actor A.J. Johnson has died. Johnson was best known for Friday, Menace II Society and The Players Club.

Anthony "A.J." Johnson, who played Ezal, a homeless man with drug addiction, in Friday and E.Z.E. in House Party, died on Friday. His death was confirmed by a spokesperson. He was 55. No cause of death has been disclosed.

According to TMZ, Johnson "was found lifeless in a store earlier this month in Los Angeles and rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead."

Two students were wounded in a shooting at a Virginia high school Monday afternoon, police said.

A 17-year-old boy was shot in the face at Heritage High School and a 17-year-old girl was shot in the leg, Newport News police Chief Steve Drew said at a news conference. Both were taken to the hospital and neither injury was thought to be life-threatening, he said.