St. Petersburg, Florida, is like that kid you think will never shake an awful nickname. Then she comes to school one year and she’s suddenly cool. Nobody calls St. Pete “God’s waiting room” anymore.

I started making chicken roll-ups on those nights when I would get home from work, look in the refrigerator and discover I had chicken breasts and a little of this and a little of that.

You’ve seen him before, that handsome chef gazing at swirling ribbons of molten chocolate. He stares lustily from your TV screen and from the aisles of the CVS, where his visage appears on cardboard displays of colorfully wrapped truffles that crop up in the weeks ahead of Valentine’s Day.

When I was a girl in the 1980s, my parents took me to visit Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott’s home in Concord, Massachusetts. This trip inspired me as a young writer. Through her autobiographical novel “Little Women,” Alcott showed what it was like to be a professional author with her “geni…

Q: I see pressure cooker recipes claiming things like a “30-minute meal” with a 25-minute cook at high pressure, but my experience is that when my Instant Pot is fairly full, the time to get up to pressure ends up being almost as long as the cooking time. (So that “30-minute meal” is more th…

WASHINGTON — To reach the Supreme Court cafeteria, you have to pass through a metal detector, walk down a marble corridor and stroll by a portrait of the late Justice Antonin Scalia hanging right next to the lunchroom. The painting depicts Scalia, the first Italian American to sit on the hig…

I’ve rarely met a packaged energy bar I’ve liked.

DES MOINES, Iowa

On a recent trip to Girona, in the Catalonia region of Spain, I was bombarded with signs and symbols related to the community’s independence campaign. Locals draped Catalan flags over balconies to signal their support for separatism and tied yellow ribbons on street signs to protest the jail…

Open a jar of salsa and you’ve just completed most of the work needed to get a crowd-pleasing party snack on the table. (You also have to tear into a bag of chips, sigh, but that’s usually an even easier task.) Such convenience might explain the popularity of salsa, which famously dethroned …

Back in 2014, my favorite movie of the year was “Birdman,” a chaotic comedy about a Broadway show gone wrong. The Academy agreed with me, awarding it the Oscar for Best Picture. The film took a unique approach to storytelling, making several weeks’ worth of action appear to take place in one…

LOUISVILLE -- Kentucky had nearly 19,000 child abuse cases in 2015, or 19 for every 1,000 children, which is more than double the national average, according to Norton Children's Hospital.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Pope has endorsed Donald Trump for president.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- On a personal quest to settle Mars, SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet well within the next century, "Battlestar Galactica" style.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government Friday banned more than a dozen chemicals long-used in antibacterial soaps, saying manufacturers failed to show they are safe and kill germs.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tempers are rising in America, along with the temperatures.

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) -- At first, the woman tried to hide her painkiller problem. She told the doctor that she still had pain from her past pregnancy, and that she just wanted a refill on her pain medication.

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- The number of trees in California's Sierra Nevada forests killed by drought, a bark beetle epidemic and warmer temperatures has dramatically increased since last year, raising fears they will fuel catastrophic wildfires and endanger people's lives, officials said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It was just a tiny, almost imperceptible "chirp," but it simultaneously opened humanity's ears to the music of the cosmos and proved Einstein right again.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- The number of grizzly bear deaths or removals in the Yellowstone region climbed to an all-time high in 2015, but biologists say they're not worried about the animal's long-term survival in the area.

Our cars, our homes, our appliances and even our toys: Things around us are going to keep getting smarter. In 2016, we'll entrust even more of our lives and their intimate details to machines - not to mention the companies that run them.

DENVER (AP) -- Snoop Dogg has his own line of marijuana. So does Willie Nelson. Melissa Etheridge has a marijuana-infused wine.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday conditionally approved an experimental Genentech drug for patients with a certain type of lung cancer who have few other options.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Life expectancy in the United States has stalled for three straight years, the government announced Wednesday.

LE BOURGET, France (AP) -- Negotiators released a new, shorter draft of an international accord to fight global warming Wednesday - and it leaves key issues unresolved just two days before the high-stakes talks in Paris are scheduled to end.

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis pushed open the great bronze doors of St. Peter's Basilica on Tuesday to launch his Holy Year of Mercy, declaring that mercy trumps moralizing in his Catholic Church.

DENVER (AP) -- Bulletproof glass and armed security are nothing new at medical clinics that provide abortions. But in the wake of a deadly shooting last week at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, clinics nationwide are redoubling security efforts, checking surveillance cameras and revi…

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A tool to edit human genes is nowhere near ready to use for pregnancy - but altering early embryos as part of careful laboratory research should be allowed as scientists and society continue to grapple with the ethical questions surrounding this revolutionary technology, o…

The nation's biggest pharmacy benefits manager is muscling back into the debate over soaring drug costs by promoting a less-expensive alternative to a life-saving medicine with a list price of $750 per pill.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Online fraud spikes during the holiday shopping season, as people searching for the perfect gifts take to cyberspace and head to traditional stores armed with their smartphones.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- While the global push to eradicate HIV may have saved over a million babies, AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African teenagers and the second most common killer for adolescents across the globe, the United Nations' agency for children said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of the key technologies that could help wean the globe off fossil fuel is probably at your fingertips or in your pocket right now: the battery.

BELMONT, Calif. (AP) -- This is the new look of high school sex ed: A roomful of teens, 14-year-olds mostly, is told that a girl and boy meet at a school dance. The boy drives her home. They kiss. What happens next, over the girl's protests, leaves him confused and her crying, no longer a virgin.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attention, international business travelers: The U.S. government will stop providing extra pages for visas and stamps when your passports fill up.

CHICAGO (AP) -- The American Medical Association on Tuesday called for a ban on direct-to-consumer ads for prescription drugs and implantable medical devices, saying they contribute to rising costs and patients' demands for inappropriate treatment.

LOD, Israel (AP) -- Israel's antiquities authority on Monday unveiled a 1,700-year-old mosaic floor that archaeologists found last year while building a visitors' center meant to display another mosaic, discovered two decades earlier at the same location.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Medicare spending on breakthrough medications for hepatitis C will nearly double this year, passing $9 billion, according to new government figures. That's raising insurance costs for all beneficiaries, whether or not they have the liver-wasting viral disease.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Many cancer treatments have a dark side — they can damage the heart. New research suggests this risk might be lowered in women with breast tumors if they take a heart drug as a preventive measure during their cancer care.

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Climate change could push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 by disrupting agriculture and fueling the spread of malaria and other diseases, the World Bank said in a report Sunday.