Joe Hernandez

They say money doesn't grow on trees, but over the last year it did.

Lumber prices skyrocketed to historic highs during the coronavirus pandemic, fueled by a demand for new homes and a surge in renovations and DIY hobbyist projects by those of us on lockdown.

Now those record wood prices are finally starting to crack, and more builders across the U.S. are able to reach for their toolboxes.

Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, said some projects that have been in limbo because of the prohibitive cost of wood may begin to resume.

Authorities in Russia have charged a man with murder in the death of U.S. student Catherine Serou, who went missing last week and was later found dead.

A local court said suspect Alexander Popov gave Serou a ride before taking her to a wooded area where he beat and stabbed her during a "dispute," The Associated Press reported.

Murder hornets. They're back.

Authorities in Washington state have announced that they've confirmed the first U.S. report this year of an Asian giant hornet, or Vespa mandarinia, in a town north of Seattle.

"Basically the only information we have is that a slightly dried out, dead specimen was collected off of a lawn in Marysville," said Sven Spichiger, managing entomologist with the state agriculture department, during a press conference.

Memorial Day. Thanksgiving. Labor Day.

You may be used to seeing your calendar punctuated by the various holidays that occur throughout the year.

But on one New Jersey school district's calendar, each one of these days will be listed, simply, as "day off."

It all started when the school board in Randolph Township voted to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day. Some residents were outraged, so the board said that instead it would wipe holiday names from the school calendar altogether while still observing the days off.

The Israeli government has banned the sale of fur in the fashion industry, becoming the first country to outlaw the controversial clothing material that opponents say leads to the slaughter of millions of animals each year.

A new federal program created by the Biden administration to reverse years of economic discrimination against U.S. farmers of color has ground to a halt.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Wisconsin ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop forgiving loans on the basis of race under a novel effort included in the American Rescue Plan relief package.

Darnella Frazier, who was 17 when she recorded George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis last year, was awarded a special citation by the Pulitzer Board on Friday.

The video played a major role in igniting a global protest movement against police violence, and was used as evidence in the trial of Floyd's killer.

The president of El Salvador announced Wednesday that the country's state-run geothermal energy utility would begin using power derived from volcanoes for Bitcoin mining.

The announcement on social media came just hours after the Central American nation's congress voted to make the cryptocurrency an acceptable legal tender.

A retired California nun has agreed to plead guilty to stealing $835,339 from a Catholic elementary school where she was the principal — in part to fund her gambling habit.

Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, is charged with one count of money laundering and one count of wire fraud, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. It said she agreed to plead to both federal charges, which carry a maximum prison term of 40 years.

An annular solar eclipse occurred Thursday morning. Some viewers across the globe saw the moon pass directly in front of the sun, creating a "ring of fire" effect in the morning sky.

Observers living in other areas would have only seen a partial solar eclipse, which makes the sun look like a glowing orange crescent.

Nothing can ruin our joy in the aurora borealis, or northern lights, those ribbons of blue, green and violet light that cascade from the sky. Not even knowing for sure what causes them.

Physicists have long speculated about what gives rise to this very specific light phenomenon that occurs in the Earth's polar regions.

Now they're certain.

Early risers across the Northern Hemisphere may see what looks like a "ring of fire" in the sky Thursday morning as the moon passes between the Earth and the sun.

An international team of scientists is preparing to trap a dozen baleen whales off the coast of Norway and conduct hearing tests on them to gauge their sensitivity to human-made sounds such as sonar.

Researchers have tested the auditory faculties of smaller animals in captivity, but this would be the first time scientists have ever captured live whales in the wild to assess their hearing.

A London Metropolitan Police officer has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping Sarah Everard in March in a case that drew global attention and sparked a movement on social media of women sharing stories about the danger of being alone at night.

Police constable Wayne Couzens, 48, also took responsibility for Everard's death but did not enter a formal plea on a murder charge in the 33-year-old marketing executive's killing, according to media reports.

New Jersey will close its only prison for women after years of documented physical and sexual abuses of inmates by guards.

Gov. Phil Murphy announced in a press release Monday his intention to close the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women and move its nearly 400 inmates to a new facility or other existing facilities.

Executives at Fisher-Price ignored repeated safety warnings about the company's once popular Rock 'n Play sleeper, even after infants began to roll over and die in the now-recalled product, according to a new report.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Fisher-Price announced Friday that they were recalling two products for children after reports of at least four infant deaths.

Vanessa Bryant, widow of the late basketball great Kobe Bryant, says a shoe she designed for Nike to honor her deceased daughter has been made without her consent, and she wants to know why.

In an Instagram post, Bryant said that after she designed the MAMBACITA, a reference to a nickname for daughter Gianna, who also went by Gigi, she decided not to sell it and did not re-sign a contract with Nike.

Yet Bryant says she's seen photos of people in possession of the distinctive sneaker.

When SpaceX makes its 22nd resupply mission to the International Space Station on Thursday, it will be carrying two very special guest species: water bears and bobtail squid.

The animals are being launched into the cosmos in the name of science, as NASA researchers attempt to learn more about how the conditions of spaceflight can affect biological organisms and, by extension, future astronauts.

Water bears: basically indestructible

A Virginia elementary school teacher is suing the Loudoun County School Board after he was suspended following comments he made against a proposed new policy that would expand rights for transgender students.

Byron Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School in Leesburg, Va., said during a May 25 public meeting that recognizing a student's gender identity — if different from their sex assigned at birth — goes against his religious beliefs.

Military-grade autonomous drones can fly themselves to a specific location, pick their own targets and kill without the assistance of a remote human operator. Such weapons are known to be in development, but until recently there were no reported cases of autonomous drones killing fighters on the battlefield.

Now, a United Nations report about a March 2020 skirmish in the military conflict in Libya says such a drone, known as a lethal autonomous weapons system — or LAWS — has made its wartime debut. But the report does not say explicitly that the LAWS killed anyone.

A New York City art gallery featuring tributes to those who were killed in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was vandalized with white paint in what owners have described as hate speech.

A flight attendant on a Southwest Airlines plane lost two teeth over the weekend after allegedly being punched by a passenger who had "repeatedly ignored standard inflight instructions," according to an airline spokesman.

A dog is found murdered at the hunting club in Cone City, a fictional locale on the central California coast, under the light of a full moon. Then the club's Swedish cook is killed. More deaths follow.

New in town, cub reporter "Egg" Waters narrates the story of a series of brutal murders that appear to be the work of a werewolf; an amateur sleuth on the case develops a theory of crime-solving based on the detective fiction he's read.