Conner Brown, a law student at Stanford University, spent the early days of the pandemic following his brother as he spotted and collected characters in the Pokemon Go mobile game.Then, Brown noticed the birds.”I thought, ‘Why don’t I take up birding?’ It’s like real-life Pokemon Go. It’s super addicting because you can start logging them and you get a little collection. It’s really cool,” said Brown, 25. He paused, then added, “They should really game-ify it.”  Brown, who’s living near Annapolis, Maryland, can now identify 30 different bird species. He …

The United Nations says torrential rains and flooding have affected nearly 150,000 people throughout Yemen, causing serious damage to vital infrastructure and exposing thousands to potentially life-threatening disease outbreaks.U.N. agencies say the rains, which have been ongoing since mid-April, have damaged houses and shelters, rendering thousands homeless. Flood waters have washed out roads and bridges, contaminated water supplies and knocked out electricity and other vital services.The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says conditions are particularly harsh for thousands of families already displaced by conflict, who have lost …

The U.N. Children’s Fund warns that COVID-19 mitigation measures are preventing the shipment of vaccines to dozens of developing countries, putting the lives of millions of children at risk.     Lockdowns and other measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus are causing a massive backlog in vaccine shipments.  UNICEF reports it had procured nearly 2.5 billion doses of vaccines last year, enough for 45% of all children under age 5 in 100 countries.   But the agency says that most of these vaccines are stuck in warehouses because …

The U.S. space agency NASA has announced a new high-pressure ventilator developed by its engineers and designed specifically to COVID-19 patients has been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The device, called VITAL — meaning “Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally” — was designed and built in 37 days by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the city of Pasadena, California. Its designers say it is intended to be used exclusively on COVID-19 patients, freeing up traditional ventilators, which are built for a broad range of medical uses, and the most severe coronavirus cases. In critical cases, the coronavirus damages healthy tissue in the lungs, making it hard for them to deliver oxygen to the blood. Ventilators …