National News

It's supper time in the Whittier, California, home of Air Force Veteran Danyelle Clark-Gutierrez. Eagerly awaiting a bowl of kibble and canned dog food is Lisa, a three-year-old, yellow Labrador Retriever.

Lisa almost dances with excitement, her nails clicking on the kitchen floor. In this moment, she appears more like an exuberant puppy than an expensive, highly-trained service animal. But that's exactly what Lisa is, and she now helps Clark-Gutierrez manage her post-traumatic stress symptoms in the day-to-day.

Toward the end of Kendall Sanders' first year at Hollins University, a historically women's college in Roanoke, Va., the sociology major had a realization.

"My journey has been, 'Girlhood does not define me,' " Sanders says. "My womanness, my femininity does not define me."

Sanders, a senior now, is nonbinary and uses the pronouns they/them.

"I was like, I don't think I care about being a girl," they say. For someone who grew up in the Bible Belt region of Little Rock, Ark., that realization was a pretty big deal.

By every forecast and measure possible, this holiday shopping season is slated to be a record-breaker. In fact, this whole year's shopping spree is setting records that not even the Grinch could stop.

Stock markets around the world tumbled on Friday after scientists in South Africa identified a new, fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average recording its biggest single-day drop of the year.