In early November, after news organizations called the Presidential race for Joe Biden, throngs of revelers poured into the streets, where they cheered not only for the new President-elect, but for the United States Postal Service (USPS), which had overcome enormous obstacles to deliver mail-in ballots largely on time amidst a raging global pandemic. Shouts of "USPS" erupted in New York City and a child dressed as a USPS mailbox danced in the streets of Oakland, California.

Welcome to COVID Questions, TIME’s advice column. We’re trying to make living through the pandemic a little easier, with expert-backed answers to your toughest coronavirus-related dilemmas. While we can’t and don’t offer medical or legal advice—those questions should go to your doctor or lawyer—we hope this column will help you sort through this stressful and confusing time. Got a question? Write to us at [email protected].

More than 40 women are now a part of a consolidated class action lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Dr. Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist accused of performing unnecessary or unwanted medical procedures, including hysterectomies, on women detained at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia.

The class action lawsuit was filed Monday evening in the U.S.

Six years into his career as a linguist at the National Security Agency in 1980, Jamie Shoemaker was called into the office of the Agency’s security apparatus.

“They read me my rights,” he recalls, “and they said ‘we understand you're leading a gay lifestyle.’ And I remember saying, ‘well, I didn't think I was leading it, but yes, I'm gay.

Meik Wiking knows how to find joy in the little things. On a recent evening, the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen settles into his favorite chair and pauses to explain why he loves it so much: "It's the chair in the corner," he says, "where I can observe the entire room so no Vikings can sneak up on me."

Channeling a similar sense of playfulness is just one of the many things we can do to try to boost our moods this winter.

The number of journalists killed in retaliation for their work more than doubled in 2020, a year when more news people than ever were jailed by authoritarian governments, according to new figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Twenty-one journalists were murdered because of their work—up from 10 the previous year, and the nonprofit advocacy group said it was investigating the circumstances of 15 other deaths. All told, between Jan. 1 and Dec.

The first locally transmitted case of Covid-19 in eight months was reported in Taiwan, ending what was the world’s longest stretch without a domestic infection and providing a reminder of the virus’s ability to outfox even the most successful efforts to contain it.

An unidentified patient was confirmed to have caught Covid-19 in Taiwan, according to an official from Taiwan Centers for Disease Control.

This month, two men's college basketball coaches finally had gumption to publicly address a question on many of our minds: why are unpaid athletes risking their health and safety to play games during a pandemic, especially as COVID-cases, and deaths, rise across the country? At the outset of the pandemic in March, college basketball shut down its postseason to protect athletes.

In recent weeks, the daily U.S. COVID-19 case and death counts have been hitting all-time highs, while fresh lockdowns and restrictions have been enacted across the country in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. In response to the economic pain brought on by those measures, Congress is expected to pass a $900 billion economic relief package on Dec. 21.

OLIVE BRANCH, Miss. — Workers on Sunday began packaging shipments of the second COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the U.S., a desperately needed boost to efforts to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.

Employees at a factory in the Memphis area were boxing up the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health. The much-needed shots are expected to be given starting Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized their emergency rollout.