Joe Hernandez

Rarely does practice, in fact, make perfect.

But on Thursday, Chinese athlete Quan Hongchan performed two dives that received perfect 10 scores by all seven judges on her way to winning gold in the women's 10-meter platform final.

TOKYO — Sprinters, hurdlers and other runners at the Tokyo Olympics have been crushing their previous times and in many cases setting new records for their events.

Records, as they say, are made to be broken. But are these athletes getting a boost from the track itself?

"I would say it's a pretty fast track," said American hurdler Sydney McLaughlin, minutes after she smashed her world record.

New York City will require workers and patrons at indoor businesses to show proof of vaccination starting on Sept. 13, becoming the first major U.S. city to take such action amid a surge of new cases nationwide driven by the highly transmissible delta variant.

The new mandate announced Tuesday, dubbed the "Key to NYC Pass," will apply to indoor dining, gyms and entertainment venues.

Elaine Thompson-Herah just became the first woman to win a "double-double" in Olympic track and field's fastest races.

First lady Jill Biden is recovering after undergoing a successful procedure to "flush out debris" from a puncture wound on her left foot, according to her press secretary, Michael LaRosa.

Biden reportedly stepped on an object on a beach in Hawaii last weekend ahead of two official events there. She was in Hawaii after attending the start of the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

According to the White House, President Biden joined her for the procedure Thursday at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Terrence Clarke might have been celebrating today.

Earlier this year, the promising basketball guard was preparing for the NBA draft after completing his freshman year at the University of Kentucky.

But his career was tragically cut short in April when he died in a single-car crash in Los Angeles at age 19.

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson &Johnson marketed its talcum-based powder products specifically to Black women despite evidence showing the products cause cancer, a new lawsuit alleges.

The complaint, filed by the National Council of Negro Women, asserts that the New Jersey-based drug company made Black women a "central part" of its business strategy but failed to warn them about the potential dangers of the powder products it was selling.

Employees at the video game studio Activision Blizzard walked off the job Wednesday following an explosive lawsuit that detailed rampant sexual harassment and gender discrimination inside the California company.

Lawmakers in a Michigan county are vowing to return $65,000 in bonuses they gave themselves using federal coronavirus relief funds.

Superstar gymnast Simone Biles says she is feeling the pressure of competition after the U.S. women's gymnastics team posted lower-than-expected scores during qualifiers on Sunday.

"[I]t wasn't an easy day or my best but I got through it. I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times," Biles said on Instagram.

The video game studio behind the hit franchises Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush is facing a civil lawsuit in California over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and potential violations of the state's equal pay law.

ESPN host Maria Taylor has announced she is leaving the sports network just weeks after remarks by a colleague suggesting that Taylor was promoted because she is Black became public.

Taylor and ESPN announced the departure in a statement Wednesday, saying "that after much discussion, an agreement on a contract extension could not be reached."

According to ESPN, Taylor's final appearance for the network was Tuesday night's NBA Finals telecast.

When it comes to climate change, male consumers may get a bit more of the blame than their female counterparts. Men spend their money on greenhouse gas-emitting goods and services, such as meat and fuel, at a much higher rate than women, a new Swedish study found.

When Nashville Predators prospect Luke Prokop came out this week, it was the first time an active player under contract to an NHL team had ever publicly acknowledged they were gay.

Nashville Predators prospect Luke Prokop has come out as gay, becoming the first active player under contract to an NHL team to do so.

"It has been quite the journey to get to this point in my life, but I could not be happier with my decision to come out," Prokop, 19, said in an Instagram post.

It was another summer night in 1981. Hundreds of people gathered for a "tea dance" at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Kansas City, Mo., on July 17.

Among them were Karen Jeter, 37, and her husband, Eugene, 48, who had just gotten married a couple of weeks earlier.

"She was a really good dancer. Loved to dance, loved music. She's the one that taught me how to dance," said Karen's son, Brent Wright. "They were really wonderful people."

A federal agency is suing Amazon in an attempt to force the retail giant to recall hundreds of thousands of potentially hazardous products — from hair dryers to children's sleepwear — that the agency says pose a risk of serious injury or death.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said the online retailer had to "accept responsibility" for the products listed on its platform and recall them.

Recovery crews at the site of the condo collapse in Surfside, Fla., continue to find and identify the bodies of those who died in the June 24 tragedy.

There is also another objective for those sifting through the rubble: collecting the property of the victims.

"Baseballs, pictures, keepsakes, rings, safes, cash, wine bottles not destroyed," Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said as he recounted some of the items discovered in the pile of concrete and other debris.

Jovenel Moïse, Haiti's embattled president who thrust the country into deeper political turmoil during his tumultuous one term in office, was assassinated overnight at his private residence, according to the country's acting prime minister.

Prime Minister Claude Joseph said a group of people attacked the president's private residence and killed him, calling it an "odious, barbaric" act.

Crews searching the building collapse site in Surfside, Fla., have discovered four more victims since Tuesday morning, bringing the death toll to 36, according to local officials at an afternoon press conference.

U.S. track and field star Sha'Carri Richardson will be suspended for one month after testing positive for THC, the main psychoactive component of marijuana.

The result means she cannot compete in the 100-meter race at the Tokyo Olympics. She was seen as the best U.S. contender for a gold medal in the event.

"Don't judge me, because I am human," Richardson said in an interview Friday with NBC's Today show. "I'm you. I just happen to run a little faster."

Comedian Bill Cosby has been released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday vacated the indecent assault conviction against him.

The court's decision upends the long-running legal battle against the once-beloved actor, whose conviction marked a major milestone in the #MeToo movement after he was accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women stretching back decades.

The closely-watched New York City mayoral primary election tumbled into chaos this week as the NYC Board of Elections announced it had released incorrect preliminary results on Tuesday.

City officials admitted they failed to remove 135,000 test ballots from the election management system before starting to count the real votes from Election Day and early voting, skewing the results.

In the pre-dawn hours of June 24, part of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla., suddenly collapsed.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the prison sentence handed down Friday to Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd was a "moment of real accountability" in the ongoing national reckoning over policing.

"It's difficult to see anyone lose their freedom, but seeing somebody lose their life through torture over 9 1/2 minutes is incomparably worse," Ellison said.

Derek Chauvin, wearing a gray suit and tie, spoke briefly in court Friday ahead of his sentencing for George Floyd's murder last year.

Chauvin said he could not give a full formal statement due to some "additional legal matters at hand," possibly a reference to pending federal criminal charges he is also facing in Floyd's death.

"Very briefly though, I do want to give my condolences to the Floyd family," Chauvin said, turning to where some of Floyd's relatives were seated in the courtroom.

Through tears, Philonise Floyd told the court during his victim impact statement that he started having nightmares and losing sleep after his brother George's murder last year.

"For an entire year, I had to relive George being tortured to death every hour of the day, only taking naps and not knowing what a good night's sleep is anymore," he said.

Philonise Floyd, who asked the judge to impose the maximum prison penalty on former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, said his family would be affected for the rest of their lives by the death of his brother.

A new report on U.S. military deaths contains a stark statistic: An estimated 7,057 service members have died during military operations since 9/11, while suicides among active duty personnel and veterans of those conflicts have reached 30,177 — that's more than four times as many.

The data highlights the divide between the dangers posed by war and the persistent mental health crisis in not only the military but the country at large.