As much of the world settles into a new routine of social distancing, couples are likely to have a lot more free time at home to snuggle together.

At first blush, you might think couples with some extra time on their hands would do things that could lead to a stork visiting nine months from now.
Yet with US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin warning of dire scenarios and a possible 20% unemployment rate, couples whose jobs are vulnerable in this economy are likely to think again about kicking off their parenting journeys this spring.

Then there's the possibility of more couples splitting up. One marriage registry official in China said he saw a quarantine-related spike in divorces, showing that more time in closed quarters may be doing some couples more harm than good.

But for couples weathering this storm together, is this a time when many will choose to add to their brood?

The political science class was called “Forced Migration and Refugees.” Students read accounts of migrants fleeing broken economies and seeking better futures, of life plans drastically altered and the political forces that made it all seem necessary.

Then suddenly, the subject matter became personal: Haverford College shut down and evicted most students from the dormitories as the coronavirus spread through Pennsylvania.

Like many college courses around the country, the class soldiered on. The syllabus was revised. The students reconvened on a videoconferencing app.

But as each logged in, not everyone’s new reality looked the same.

One student sat at a vacation home on the coast of Maine. Another struggled to keep her mother’s Puerto Rican food truck running while meat vanished from Florida grocery shelves. As one young woman’s father, a private equity executive, urged the family to decamp to a country where infections were falling, another student’s mother in Russia couldn’t afford the plane ticket to bring her daughter home.

San Francisco, which once championed reusable shopping bags to reduce plastic waste, has banned the environmentally friendly totes in an effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

An amendment to the city’s Department of Health’s social-distancing protocols requires that stores restrict customers from bringing their own bags, mugs or other reusable items from home.

How the ban affects city's prohibition on plastic bags is not clear — the ordinance did not address that regulation. In 2007, San Francisco became the first major city in the nation to outlaw single-use plastic bags.

A majority of Americans are hunkering down and say they will continue to social distance or stay at home even if lockdown orders are lifted, according to a new poll.

While 87% of the American public is staying home — regardless of whether or not it’s mandated by state or local municipalities — most plan on continuing to do so for all of April, according to the poll taken by the Huffington Post/YouGov survey.

For parasitic worms of the genus Anisakis, life typically goes like this: after floating through the ocean in an egg, they hatch as wriggling larvae with a peculiar desire—to be eaten. Small crustaceans like krill gobble up the larvae, and those infested krill are then eaten by squid or small fish, which are devoured by bigger fish until they finally earn their nickname, whale worms, and end up in the bellies of whales or dolphins where they complete their life cycle by laying eggs that are subsequently ejected in the hosts’ feces.

But sometimes, those big fish full of the worms—like salmon or herring—get intercepted by fishers and end up in markets. Although fish suppliers and sushi chefs diligently remove parasite-infected fish from their wares, occasionally one of those little buggers may wind up in your sushi roll.

Now, new research finds the global population of those parasitic worms, commonly found in sushi and other kinds of uncooked fish, has exploded in recent decades. The worms are 283-times more common than they were roughly 40 years ago, according to a new paper published in Global Change Biology.

In a televised address, Duterte said it was vital everyone cooperates and follows home quarantine measures, as authorities try to slow the coronavirus contagion and spare the country's fragile health system from being overwhelmed.

The Philippines has recorded 96 coronavirus deaths and 2,311 confirmed cases, all but three in the past three weeks, with infections now being reported in the hundreds every day.

"It is getting worse. So once again I'm telling you the seriousness of the problem and that you must listen," Duterte said late on Wednesday.

"My orders to the police and military ... if there is trouble and there's an occasion that they fight back and your lives are in danger, shoot them dead."

"Is that understood? Dead. Instead of causing trouble, I will bury you."

Malaysian authorities have advised women to wear make-up and avoid nagging their husbands during the coronavirus lockdown, sparking accusations of sexism.

The south-east Asian nation has ordered its 32million people to stay at home to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 2,700 people there.

One showed a picture of a couple hanging up clothes together next to a caption that advised women to 'avoid nagging' their husbands.

Another post said women should imitate the squeaky voice of Doraemon, a cartoon robot cat from Japan that is popular across Asia.

It’s hard to sit in a room alone and not really know which way you’re going to go.

And you don’t have any of your social support. My family actually quarantined upstate, because they live there mostly full-time this year. I was able to FaceTime, which is something probably a lot of elderly people can’t do. My kids, who are 2 and 4, don’t know. They think I was at work. I wore a mask, so they couldn’t really see the whole high-flow setup.

For my wife, her mother died of lung cancer when she was 13, so, this was acutely traumatic for her. She’s isolating upstate and she’s taking care of two kids while she’s really pregnant. I still don’t know how she’s dealing with it. Probably not well.

I managed my own high flow. After six days in the hospital, I was able to get down off the high flow for a long time. The hospital was full, and I was like — you know, I’m just feeling OK enough to manage at home. The hospital is such a sick, ill environment right now, I didn’t want to spend any more time there than I absolutely needed to. I definitely think I have a long way to recover, and certainly my lungs have taken a bit of a hit. It’s going to be a bit of time before I feel like I’m not at risk for regular infections, like pneumonia.

The virus is impacting a subset of people who are infected, but the aftershocks of this are going to be felt in a lot of different areas. The sort of emotional, psychological toll on health care workers will probably lead to people leaving medicine. This idea that — I can’t really adequately say it — that people are dispensable. The government thinks that we can go to work without proper PPE and put our lives at risk. That’s something you can’t really get over — this kind of callousness for human life. I think they should have been trying harder months ago. And there are going to be people who miss their mammograms and get breast cancer. Or they have chest pain and they don’t want to go to the hospital, because they don’t want to get COVID.

A clever health food aficionado has shared her foolproof trick for keeping avocados fresh for months, and you'll only need a freezer and some hot water.

Bethany Ugarte, who is based in California, uploaded an Instagram video showing exactly what she did to keep her Hass avocado ripe and ready to eat after four months in the freezer.

Notorious for being ill-timed in their ripening, Bethany was determined to use her avocado for cooking after freezing it in time 121 days ago.

A Tallahassee, Florida, worker says she was fired from her job after she asked to work from home amid coronavirus concerns.

Katherine Webster, 25, has an autoimmune illness called interstitial cystitis, and her 9-year-old son has diabetes and asthma.

As health authorities advise social distancing and local schools close through March, the local mom was afraid of potentially getting the virus from the office and bringing it home to her already-ill son.

She's a project engineer for Tower Construction Management, which is contracted by Robert Finvarb Companies to build the interior of the AC Hotel by Marriott being constructed as part of the Cascades Project, a $158 million mixed-use development in downtown Tallahassee.

No one has jumped on the “from necessity comes creativity” train sparked by the coronavirus outbreak in a more wonderfully weird way than Portland, Oregon, strip club owner Shon Boulden.

As government mandates have brought businesses like Boulden’s to a screeching halt, he has come up with a way to raise spirits in the community and ensure his employees maintain some income: having dancers make food deliveries from the bar’s kitchen.

And it all started as a joke one night at Lucky Devil Lounge, one of his two clubs.

“We were cracking jokes like we do every night, coming up with funny alternate Uber names,” Boulden told HuffPost on the phone Monday, referring to the popular ride-hailing service. “Things like Doober for weed delivery, Luber to deliver lube. Then I was like, ‘Boober, when a topless girl picks you up and takes you to a strip club.’”

When Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) ordered the closure of bars and restaurants save for takeout and delivery on March 16 in order to hopefully stop the spread of COVID-19 in the state, Boulden took an adapted version of that joke to Twitter.

As various celebrities step up in the wake of the new coronavirus pandemic, Rihanna has donated $5 Million to fight COVID-19 via her Clara Lionel Foundation, the organization announced on its official website. "When we first began this year, never could we have imagined how COVID-19 would so dramatically alter our lives," read the statement. "It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, this pandemic will affect us all. And for the world's most vulnerable, the worst may be yet to come."

Countries around the world have witnessed unprecedented panic buying at supermarkets and pharmacies due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Aisles have been stripped bare every day as many try to get enough food to last them through a two week self-isolation.

However, there have been some people who have been greedier than others.

As a result, loads of shoppers have been left to get whatever is left and, in some cases, leave nearly empty handed with no idea how they'll get their groceries.

That was highlighted in a heartbreaking picture of an elderly woman in Australia standing in front of cleared out shelves that used to hold canned foods.

Channel 9's Seb Costello shared the picture on social media of the devastating reality that is facing many people across Australia and the world.

He reported the woman was left in tears at the bare aisles.

NEW YORK (AP) — Most Americans who rent their home, many of whom have lost their jobs in the sudden economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak, will not be eligible for eviction protections, despite what President Donald Trump said this week.

Under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s plan released Wednesday, foreclosures and evictions would stop for 60 days on single-family homes with loans through the Federal Housing Administration. That would apply to roughly 8 million units, according to HUD. Only FHA homes lived in for at least a year can be rented out.

That’s compared with the roughly 43 million households who rented in 2019, according to the U.S. Census. Roughly half of renters rent their home from an individual investor, while the other half rent from a business or multi-unit property owner. The ones renting from a business will not receive any protections according to HUD’s proposal.

"That’s the problem with (HUD's proposal). It only impacts a very small amount of people. We need big-scale solutions," said Andrea Shapiro of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a New York-based housing advocacy organization.

Lines at Trader Joe's.