The all-amateur crew of the SpaceX Dragon capsule makes it home, but not before a string of first time-ever events. Plus, cosmonauts vote from space, and a film crew readies for a trip to the International Space Station. Buckle up, as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports on this historic Week in Space. …
Jets of red hot lava shot into the sky on Spain’s La Palma on Thursday as a huge cloud of toxic ash drifted from the Cumbre Vieja volcano toward the mainland and jeopardized the island’s economically crucial banana crops. Walls of lava, which turn black when exposed to the air, have advanced slowly westward since Sunday, engulfing everything in their path, including houses, schools and some banana plantations. Farmers near the town of Todoque raced to save as much as possible of their crop, piling their trucks high …
As more businesses, universities, and federal and local governments demand proof of inoculation against COVID-19, the black market for fake vaccine cards appears to be booming. U.S. Customs officials in Cincinnati, Ohio, intercepted five shipments containing 1,683 counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards and 2,034 fake Pfizer inoculation stickers since August 16. The shipments from China were headed to private homes and apartments in the states o Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New York and Texas. In August, a Chicago pharmacist was arrested after being accused of selling dozens of authentic Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay. In July, a naturopathic …
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni are set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday. Access to COVID-19 vaccines has been one of the major topics of the annual meeting in New York and is likely to be one of the most discussed again Thursday as leaders from African nations make up a large portion of the day’s list of speakers. While some countries such as the United States have had vaccine doses widely available to their populations for months, …
The southeastern U.S. state of Florida says parents or legal guardians can decide whether or not to quarantine their children if they have been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Dr. Joseph Lapado, the state’s newly appointed surgeon general, signed new guidelines Thursday that will allow students to continue attending in-person classes “without restrictions or disparate treatment” as long as they have no symptoms of the virus. The parent or legal guardian can decide to keep their child at home for seven days from the date of last …
This week, Pfizer released promising news in the effort to end the coronavirus pandemic, saying its COVID-19 vaccine works for young children. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more on this development. …
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those 65 and older and some high-risk Americans, paving the way for a quick rollout of the shots. The booster dose is to be administered at least six months after completion of the second dose, and the authorization would include people most susceptible to severe disease and those in jobs that put them at risk, the FDA said. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel could vote Thursday on …
Melvin Van Peebles, the groundbreaking filmmaker, playwright and musician whose work ushered in the “blaxploitation” wave of the 1970s and influenced filmmakers long afterward, has died. He was 89. In a statement, his family said Van Peebles, father of the actor-director Mario Van Peebles, died Tuesday evening at his home in Manhattan. “Dad knew that Black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth?” Mario Van Peebles said in a statement Wednesday. “We want to be the success we see, thus we need …