NEW YORK (AP) — While dozens of New Yorkers lined up outside in the rain, shopping carts at the ready as they waited for free food, Sofia Moncayo led her team in prayer.
In 200 stories over this pandemic-ridden year, The Associated Press has celebrated selfless people who have given of themselves in trying times.
AVLONA, Greece (AP) — Setting up a television channel from scratch isn’t the most obvious or easiest thing for a math teacher to do — especially without prior technical knowledge and for use...
SINGAPORE (AP) — Chan Jit Yen loves Lunar New Year. It is as much about festivities as it is a homecoming for the 31-year-old Malaysian woman.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — It was the week after Christmas and coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations were soaring in Portland, Oregon.
At Oregon Health & Science University, the state’s...
BEIRUT (AP) — In the middle of the destroyed Beirut neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, a small team in masks and gloves were sanitizing and packing oxygen machines to be sent to those in need.
LONDON (AP) — The legacy of Capt. Tom Moore, the super fundraiser who died Tuesday of COVID-19, lives on in Imogen Papworth-Heidel — and many others.
Bonifaz Díaz biked through the sprawling city of Quetzaltenango, 7,640 feet (2,330 meters) above sea level among Guatemala’s volcanoes, to deliver a sociology book to the home of a local teacher....
Once a month, Magena Morris, Tyler Bone and Nic White bring racks loaded with clothes into Charlotte’s largest homeless encampment and invite residents to shop at no cost.
Traditional school stores might offer snacks and knickknacks, school gear and notebooks — but the one at Linda Tutt High School in Sanger, Texas, has a very different inventory and...
NUCSOARA, Romania (AP) — A gentle hero to many in Romania, Valeriu Nicolae says that, at heart, he is more like former NBA star Michael Jordan — highly competitive and eager to improve in what he...
Even before she sees the name on the return address, Nancy Sloane knows who sent the letter — the Snoopy sticker that seals the envelope is a dead giveaway.
Even as she fights cancer and struggles with a rare lung disease, Corinna Dewar thinks of helping others.
In past holiday seasons, she would bake cookies for some of her neighbors in a...
In the wake of a massive explosion that devastated Beirut, 93-year-old Yolande Labaki sought a way to help bring healing to the Lebanese capital.
When Marybeth Hearn was 10, she asked her parents if she could train a puppy to become a guide dog. It turned into a lifelong mission.
Over more than five decades, Hearn has raised 56 dogs...
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Two days before Thanksgiving, on the eve of a turkey giveaway for dozens of jobless residents in an impoverished Miami neighborhood, Sherina Jones got word that one of...
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Pipi already dines well.
The plump, black-and-white street cat lives near a night market in a neighborhood of Taiwan's capital where volunteers have fed and taken care...
Gary Schottle arrived in time to see the other kids in line hitting and jumping on his young son.
Nicknamed “Tank,” Derek towered over the pestering kids, yet lacked the confidence to stick...
AGIOS ATHANASIOS, Greece (AP) — What does a medical professional do when his wife and in-laws contract the disease at the center of a months-long pandemic?
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — As the coronavirus pandemic ravages Iran, home to the Mideast’s worst outbreak, a women’s group hopes to empower its members by helping them make and sell face masks.
In mid-March, as the coronavirus was ravaging communities and economies around the world, The Associated Press launched its “ One Good Thing ” series to highlight individuals whose actions offer...
HONG KONG (AP) — Most people who head to Woosung Street in Hong Kong’s old-school neighborhood of Jordan are visiting its popular restaurants serving everything from curries to seafood. Others may...
ALZANO LOMBARDO, Italy (AP) — Emotions are running high this holiday season at the Martino Zanchi Foundation nursing home in northern Italy near Bergamo after months of near-total isolation for...
SOMERS POINT, N.J. (AP) — Joseph Johnson was going about his life, getting ready for the holidays at the Jersey Shore, when he started to feel ill and wound up in a hospital. It turned out he had...
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Frank Pichel’s Christmas trees will probably never be chosen to light up New York’s Rockefeller Center. They look more like the droopy, pitiful tree made famous in the 1965...
Eileen Nagle sees her family in video chats and drive-by visits, but that hasn't made up for the lack of warm hugs in the nine months since the pandemic led her nursing home to shut its doors to...
DASANADODDI, India (AP) — Kalmane Kamegowda, a 72-year-old shepherd who lives in a nondescript village in southern India, has become something of a celebrity, winning national recognition from no...
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Zorik was never the tail-wagging or hand-licking type. But that didn't stop the free-spirited vagabond dog from winning many hearts.
A tin of cookies is left on the running board of an ambulance outside a nursing home with a note for the emergency workers who operate it: “You’re AMAZING! Yes, you!”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — On a tiny speck of a frozen runway on the north bank of the Yukon River, nearly a hundred miles northwest of Fairbanks, Christmas was delivered in a most unusual way....
The pandemic didn’t allow Debra Ferrell to gather with her whole family for her birthday. So instead, she celebrated the day by giving back — with 53 gifts from her heart.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Rani Nurwitawati never thought she would lose her job at an Indonesian market research company where she worked for 17 years.
CINCINNATI (AP) — For years, alumni of a Cincinnati-area high school have gathered to raise scholarship money in memory of three classmates killed in a crush of people at a 1979 concert by The...
CHICAGO (AP) — Hayley Orlinsky has made so many bracelets, looping colorful rubber bands over her thumb and index finger again and again, that she no longer must watch her hands.
John Urschel has found that a master’s degree in mathematics, his stature as an accomplished author and his pending doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology isn’t necessarily...
HONG KONG (AP) — Located smack in the middle of Hong Kong’s bustling Mong Kok neighborhood, Dignity Kitchen offers an array of mouthwatering Singaporean fare — from piping-hot laksa (noodles in a...
When Nanci Bramson's daughter tested positive for the coronavirus while far away at school in Michigan, it threw a fright into the Washington, D.C., resident.
MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) — It started out simply: A pop-up school on a sidewalk to teach reading, writing, math and art to Central American children living in a camp of asylum seekers stuck at...
NEW YORK (AP) — Painter Guy Stanley Philoche, a star in the New York art world, had wanted to treat himself to a fancy watch after a hugely successful gallery show. Then the pandemic hit, and he...
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — During his leisure time, Mahinda Dasanayaka packs his motorbike with books and rides his mobile library — across mostly muddy roads running through tea-growing mountain...
When Chip Matthews heard the mail truck arriving on his sixth birthday, he rushed out — not knowing that he’d come back with a treasure.
Outside the house, which was decorated with birthday...
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Andy Larsen is a sports writer, but with so many games scratched during the pandemic he has spent a lot of time digging into coronavirus data and its sobering implications....
BILBAO, Spain (AP) — The six migrants listen attentively to Mbaye Babacar Diouf, whose own journey across the Atlantic to a job nursing COVID-19 patients in Spain and giving back to the community...
WESTWOOD, Mass. (AP) — “Parting is such sweet sorrow” — especially for a theater troupe hoping to stage a live performance of “Romeo & Juliet” in the middle of a pandemic that has closed schools...
The garden that Sijo Zachariah and his father planted was a desperate measure in response to the pandemic.
But it became so much more: sustenance for a community, and a great inspiration...
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — In a bare room, students seated on the floor recite the alphabet. But these are not children. The students are refugee women in Malaysia, some in their late 50s, who...