A study published in the December 2022 issue of the American Journal of Transplantation finds Canada leading the world in harvesting organs from those who received medical assistance in dying. The study found that in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, a total of 286 people who sought euthanasia provided organs to save the lives of 837 people. Almost half of those donors, 136, came from Canada. Patients who choose a medically assisted death due to suffering from cancer cannot be organ donors, due to the medications that are usually …

The warming of the waters off the East Coast has come at an invisible, but very steep cost — the loss of microscopic organisms that make up the base of the ocean’s food chain. The growing warmth and saltiness of the Gulf of Maine off New England is causing a dramatic decrease in the production of phytoplankton, according to Maine-based scientists who recently reported results of a yearslong, NASA-funded study. Phytoplankton, sometimes described as an “invisible forest,” are tiny plant-like organisms that serve as food for marine life. The scientists …

Brazil’s government has declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people in the Amazon who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria because of illegal mining. The decree, signed by Health Minister Nisia Trindade on Friday, has no expiration date and allows for hiring extra personnel. It determines that the team in charge has to publish reports regarding the Indigenous group’s health and general well-being. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also created a multiministerial committee to be coordinated by his chief of staff for an initial …

Tons of waste dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills or directly into the waterways that flow across three countries end up accumulating behind a trash barrier in the Drina River in eastern Bosnia during the wet weather of winter and early spring. This week, the barrier once again became the outer edge of a massive floating waste dump crammed with plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tires, household appliances, driftwood and other garbage picked up by the river from its tributaries. The river fencing installed by a Bosnian hydroelectric plant, a …

As damaging as it was for more than 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow to fall on California since Christmas, a worst-case global warming scenario could juice up similar future downpours by one-third by the middle of this century, a new study says. The strongest of California’s storms from atmospheric rivers, long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land, would probably get an overall 34% increase in total precipitation, or another 11 trillion gallons more than just fell. That’s …

Countless artists have taken inspiration from “The Starry Night” since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889. Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app. The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a “peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh” and they can churn out something …

The World Health Organization says there is no evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines increase the risk of strokes in older people. WHO officials say there is no basis to the recent concerns raised by the media and science communities about the safety of the mRNA booster shots. They say the concerns, which are related to one U.S. data system that monitors safety, presented misinformation about deaths related to COVID-19 infection. Kate O’Brien, WHO director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, said other U.S. and national vaccine safety monitoring systems have not …

South Korea on Friday announced an end to its indoor mask mandate, one of the country’s last major pandemic restrictions. Health authorities said as of Jan. 30, face coverings will no longer be required indoors, except in hospitals, pharmacies, and on public transportation. The move was made because a winter spike in COVID-19 cases is on the decline and the overall pandemic situation is under control, authorities said. “Of course, there may be some increase in cases after changing the mandatory mask rule, but given the current situation in Korea …

Every year, the night sky grows brighter, and the stars look dimmer. A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year. That’s a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data. The research, which includes data from 2011 to 2022, is published Thursday in the journal Science. “We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at the University …

As the coronavirus pandemic enters its fourth year, the United States is grappling with a new subvariant of COVID-19 called XBB.1.5, and China is reporting a spike in cases following the dismantling of its zero-COVID policy. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports. …

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is set to meet International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol in Davos on Thursday, organizers of a fringe round-table event at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting told Reuters. Thunberg is to meet Birol along with fellow campaigners Helena Gualinga, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, the organizers said in a statement. The IEA, which makes policy recommendations on global energy, had no immediate comment. Thunberg was released by police on Tuesday after being detained alongside other climate activists during protests in Germany. “Yesterday I was …

The impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine is being felt as far away as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists see the conflict as contributing to a shortage of migratory birds which make their way each winter from Europe to the wetlands of the Kashmir Valley. Every February, the wildlife protection department conducts a census of migratory birds in Kashmir. The department says that more than 1.1 million birds of 39 species visited the region in 2021. The census estimated 810,000 birds in 2020 and 950,000 in 2019. The department has not …

Campaigners have welcomed a decision to remove the skeleton of an 18th century man with gigantism from public display at a London museum. The remains of Charles Byrne, who was 2.31 meters (7ft 7in), had been on show at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in central London. But the museum has said the self-styled “Irish Giant” will not be part of the collection when it reopens in March after a five-year, £4.6-million ($5.7-million) refurbishment. Thomas Muinzer, a senior law lecturer at Aberdeen University in …

People in Somalia are highly traumatized due to political instability, prolonged violence and humanitarian crisis, a new health study said. The joint study by the United Nations, Somalia’s health ministry and the country’s national university found that mental disorder is prevalent across the country. It said that cases are about 77 percent higher than a previous study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that nearly 40% of the population in Somalia had a mental or psychological disorder. The study further said that the prevalence of mental disorders among …

There was visible excitement among students when schools reopened Tuesday in Malawi’s two biggest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre, after a two-week suspension caused by a cholera outbreak.  The bacterial illness has killed close to 800 people, more than 100 of them children, and affected more than 25,000.  Malawi’s government announced measures to prevent cholera from spreading in schools but warned it will shut down the schools again if needed.   To many students, especially those who are preparing to take national examinations this year, the closure doomed their hope of passing …

Nearly two thirds of the sharks and rays that live among the world’s corals are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Tuesday, with a warning this could further imperil precious reefs. Coral reefs, which harbor at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, are gravely menaced by an array of human threats, including overfishing, pollution and climate change. Shark and ray species — from apex predators to filter feeders — play an important role in these delicate ecosystems that “cannot be filled by other species”, said …

Jill Biden’ s advocacy for curing cancer didn’t start with her son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer. It began decades earlier, long before she came into the national spotlight, and could now be further energized by her own brush with a common form of skin cancer. The first lady often says the worst three words anyone will ever hear are, “You have cancer.” She heard a version of that phrase for herself this past week. A lesion that doctors had found above her right eye during a routine screening …