'MACK & RITA'

Rated PG-13 for some drug use, sexual references and language.

What it’s about: "Freaky Friday" meets "Old" — a young author with an old soul makes a wish to be her truest self and emerges as Diane Keaton.

The kid attractor factor: Teens might be drawn to the lighthearted comedy.

Good lessons/bad lessons: It's OK to be ...Read more

WILDWOOD CREST, N.J. — Paul and Alethea Pawloski aren’t kidding when they describe the side-by-side motels their respective families have run for decades in the Crest as family resorts.

From two motels — the Stefanide/Roy clan running things at the V.I.P. (Visitors in Paradise), the Pawlowskis in charge at the Compass — they created a ...Read more

When Sebastian Rios was a toddler, he hardly talked. “Don’t worry,” his pediatrician told Amparo and Victor Rios, Sebastian’s parents. Kids who grow up in households in which both Spanish and English are spoken are sometimes slower to develop language skills, she said.

Plus, Sebastian was developing well in other ways: When he was just ...Read more

MIAMI -- As Roman Zhenzhirov organized his apartment, Coldplay’s “Daddy” blasted from his playlist.

You’re so far away. Oh, you’re so far away.

Tears dripped down his face. Zhenzhirov, 30, couldn’t bring himself to eat lunch. He sobbed at the table beside his husband, Roman Shyshkin, 37.

But his tears didn’t stream from sadness...Read more

DETROIT — The New Kids on the Block were still new kids on the block, relatively speaking, when the teenage heartthrobs hit the Palace of Auburn Hills on Dec. 2, 1989, for not one but two sold-out concerts.

"Yeah we used to do matinees back then, too," says New Kid Donnie Wahlberg, who fondly recalls that chilly December day and meeting ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Emily Liu’s life is a series of balancing acts.

She speaks Chinese with her father and Spanish with her mother. Visiting her parents’ homelands takes her to Harbin in northern China and a small town in the Mexican state of Zacatecas.

Perhaps most of all, it’s how she’s perceived by others, as if she were a living ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Kai was 13 when his period arrived, crushing his spirit.

The middle schooler rushed home to shower and emerged from the bathroom distraught. Kai’s mother, Barbara, said she looked into his eyes and knew she needed to do something or her child, who identified as a male, would harm himself.

Within weeks, Kai began ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- More than 100 campers are set to step foot on the grounds of Camp Galil next week, all of whom will be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Requiring vaccination at the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, summer camp for Jewish students, which offers two 3.5-week overnight sessions, wasn’t a difficult decision for executive ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Cindy R. Escobedo's college years have been, in many ways, shaped by her mother's.

When Cindy completed an undergraduate degree in political science at UCLA in 2015, she followed her mother, Cecilia, who had earned her bachelor's degree at Azusa Pacific University a year earlier.

In 2016 Cindy graduated with a master's degree in...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- First-time mom Liz Lockerman prepped to breastfeed by taking classes, reading books and practicing different baby-holding positions. She even bought a freezer for the basement, in anticipation of building a stash of frozen breast milk for when she returned to work.

But nothing went as planned after the birth of her daughter, ...Read more

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE said their COVID-19 vaccine was highly effective and prompted a strong immune response in children under age 5, based on early results from a trial that is likely to pave the way for infants and toddlers to finally get immunized.

A three-dose regimen was 80.3% effective in a preliminary finding based on 10 infections...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- For Diana Granados, 29, the quest began with a callout on a popular Instagram page for new parents.

"Do you have any formula to spare?"

Granados didn't. But as she thought of the ongoing national formula shortage, and of babies like her 6-month-old son, Raul, going hungry, she wanted to offer what she could.

"Hello, I have ...Read more

The TV landscape tends to feel pretty dismal when “Saturday Night Live” is the only sketch comedy game in town. And often that’s the case. Over its four-plus decade run, it certainly has outlasted so many others — from “SCTV” to “In Living Color” to “MADtv” to “Key & Peele” and more — but that doesn’t make it the ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Karah Weiser was about to trudge on to yet another store in search of the specialty hypoallergenic baby formula her 4-month-old needs. But first she paused, took another look at the half-empty store display, and snapped a picture.

“Boothwyn Walmart,” the 32-year-old Drexel Hill mother wrote alongside the photo she uploaded ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Like most new moms, 26-year-old Veronica Gutierrez's life revolves around feeding her 3-month-old daughter, Alessandra.

For the first month, that meant mostly formula. But that formula was hard to find. She drove from store to store, so shaken by the empty shelves she began pumping her breast milk around the clock, in hopes she ...Read more