It took a blaze that nearly destroyed Paris’ most famous cathedral to reveal a gap in global safety regulations for lead, a toxic building material found across many historic cities.After the Notre Dame fire in April spewed dozens of tons of toxic lead-dust into the atmosphere in just a few hours, Paris authorities discovered a problem with the city’s public safety regulations: There was no threshold for them to gauge how dangerous the potentially-deadly pollution was from the dust that settled on the ground.Since then, The Associated Press has found …

Boeing’s new Starliner capsule went off course after launch Friday and won’t dock with the International Space Station during its first test flight. It was supposed to be a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.The blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, went flawlessly as the Atlas V rocket lifted off with the Starliner capsule. But a half-hour into the flight, Boeing reported that the capsule didn’t get into the right orbit to reach the space station. The capsule is still in space and will be brought back to …

Boeing’s new Starliner capsule rocketed toward the International Space Station on its first test flight Friday, a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.The Starliner carried Christmas treats and presents for the six space station residents, hundreds of tree seeds similar to those that flew to the moon on Apollo 14, the original air travel ID card belonging to Boeing’s founder and a mannequin named Rosie in the commander’s seat.The test dummy — named after the bicep-flexing riveter of World War II — wore a red polka …

Ethiopia has launched its first satellite.The satellite was launched into space Friday from at a space station in China. Ethiopian and Chinese officials and scientists, however, watched a live broadcast of the Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite launch at the Entoto Observatory and Research Center, north of the East African country’s capital, Addis Ababa.  “This will be a foundation for our historic journey to prosperity,” Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen said in a speech at the event. “The technology is an important even if it’s delayed.” Solomon Belay, the director general of the …

Canada’s minister of health, Patty Hajdu, on Thursday proposed banning promotion and advertising of vaping products in public spaces, convenience stores and online, in an effort to curb youth use of e-cigarettes.Hajdu also announced new mandatory health warnings on vaping product packaging.The proposed regulations come amid growing fears surrounding vaping’s safety and mounting evidence that youth vaping is on the rise both among people who once smoked and those who had not.FILE – Canada’s Minister of Health Patty Hajdu speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, …

Sweeping new fuel rules aiming to cut pollution belching from ships and save lives are now just a couple of weeks away, but with no central policing agency and several countries still not signed up to them, compliance is a major concern.    From January 2020, ships must use fuel with a sulfur content of 0.5%, down from 3.5%, or install devices, known as scrubbers, that strip out the toxic pollutant.    As a result, refiners and shipping companies will spend billions of dollars in the years ahead on ensuring fuel and …

The World Health Organization projects that, for the first time, the number of men smoking around the world is dropping, indicating measures to end the global tobacco epidemic are paying off.WHO officials called it a major shift in the fight against tobacco, which every year kills more than eight million people prematurely.Data from 143 countries shows that tobacco use among men has stopped growing, following a steady rise in the use of this deadly product during the past two decades.During this period, WHO reports 60 million of the world’s nearly …

Yemenis are facing a new battle: Dengue Fever, a potentially fatal illness that spreads in the unsanitary conditions and decimated infrastructure of their conflict-torn country. The World Health Organization says nearly 59,500 suspected cases, including 219 deaths, were recorded in the first 11 months of 2019. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on this new challenge for a country that has endured five years of war that have killed thousands and pushed millions to the brink of famine. …

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that it had for the first time approved a “biosimilar” medicine — one derived from living sources rather than chemicals — to make breast cancer treatment affordable to women globally.The trastuzumab drug has shown “high efficacy” in curing early-stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, WHO said in a statement.But the annual cost of the original drug is an average of $20,000, “a price that puts it out of reach of many women and healthcare systems in …

Moscow registered the warmest December weather in over a century on Wednesday, as an unusually snowless month put winter activities on hold and confused plants into blooming.One weather station in northern Moscow registered a temperature of 5.4 degrees Celsius (41.7 degrees Fahrenheit), said the Fobos weather center.”This is a new record of maximum air temperature for 18 December,” surpassing a previous record of 5.3 degrees set in 1886, it said.The Russian capital, normally covered with a blanket of snow by mid-December, thus far has had a snowless and cloudy winter, …

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest kinds of cancer there is because it’s almost always found too late. This cancer is hard to detect, and symptoms only show up when the cancer is advanced. But, as VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, researchers are beginning to make inroads in this most difficult to diagnose disease. …

France’s warring trade unions on Wednesday defended their decision to cut power to thousands of homes, companies and even the Bank of France to force a weakened government to drop a wide-ranging pension reform.The power cuts added to a sense of chaos in the second week of nationwide strikes that have crippled transport, shut schools and brought more than half a million people onto the street against President Emmanuel Macron’s reform.Asked on French radio whether the power cuts, illegal under French law, weren’t a step too far, Philippe Martinez, the …

A European spacecraft launched from South America Wednesday on a three-year mission to study planets in other solar systems.The Characterizing ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS) mission blasted off from Kourou, French Guiana at 0854 GMT (3:54 a.m. EST) atop a Russian Soyuz rocket. The launch came 24 hours after a first attempt was delayed shortly before liftoff because of a software problem in the upper stage of the rocket.The European Space Agency says the satellite is the first mission dedicated to studying bright nearby stars that are already known to have planets, …