A federal judge is expected to rule soon on the fate of a pill that leads to a medication abortion. The drug in question, mifepristone, has been on the market for 20 years, but opponents of abortion rights say it is unsafe. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains. …
Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera is appealing for additional humanitarian assistance for thousands of Malawians displaced by Cyclone Freddy, which has killed more than 500 people in the country. Chakwera made the urgent request to Malawi’s parliament on Wednesday, when he was presenting an assessment of the impact of the cyclone, which also hit Mozambique. Though the country is receiving a lot of local and international assistance for the victims, he said, more aid is needed. “So many have responded positively to our appeal, and I have personally committed to acknowledge …
China has approved its first domestically developed mRNA vaccine against COVID-19, CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd 1093.HK said on Wednesday, a major achievement in a country that has declined to use Western COVID shots to support domestic research. China, whose home-grown vaccines are seen as less effective than the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA shots, has been racing to develop vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology since early 2020. The long-awaited approval comes as infections have fallen sharply across China since it suddenly dropped its strict “zero-COVID” curbs in December, making the …
The U.N. secretary-general called for significant commitments and investment Wednesday to avert a growing global water crisis at the start of a major conference on the issue. “Water is a human right — and a common development denominator to shape a better future,” Antonio Guterres told a packed General Assembly hall. “But water is in deep trouble.” The three-day conference, which kicked off on World Water Day, is the first of its kind in 46 years. Activists and experts say the ongoing water crisis is a threat to …
Tanzania’s Ministry of Health has confirmed five people died in a first-ever Marburg virus outbreak near the border with Uganda. The virus causes a severe hemorrhagic fever and is deadlier than the related Ebola virus, which was first suspected in the deaths. Tanzanian health officials say they are working to contain the Marburg outbreak. Tanzania’s health minister, Ummy Mwalimu, said the mysterious and deadly outbreak in its northwest Kagera region was caused by the Marburg virus. Mwalimu announced at a Tuesday evening press briefing the government was intensifying efforts to …
As part of World Water Day, March 22, the United Nations is holding its first conference devoted to water issues since 1977. For VOA, Matt Dibble introduces us to a Native American engineering student who will share at that conference her tribe’s successful campaign to remove harmful dams in the Western United States. …
U.S. President Joe Biden made an observation when conferring the National Medal of Arts on rocker Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday: “Bruce, some people are just born to run, man.” Springsteen and a host of actors, authors, singers and other artists joined Biden in the White House East Room where they received either a National Medal of Arts or National Humanities Medal for their contributions to American society. Comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose “Veep” show made light of the vice presidency — an office Biden once held — was also honored. “She …
Public screenings of a slasher film that features Winnie the Pooh were scrapped abruptly in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking discussions over increasing censorship in the city. Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that the release of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” on Thursday had been canceled with “great regret” in Hong Kong and neighboring Macao. In an email reply to The Associated Press, the distributor said it was notified by cinemas that it could not show the film as scheduled, but didn’t know why. The cinema …
TikTok went on a counteroffensive Tuesday amid increasing Western pressure over cybersecurity and misinformation concerns, rolling out updated rules and standards for content as its CEO warned against a possible U.S. ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to appear Thursday before U.S. congressional lawmakers, who will grill him about the company’s privacy and data-security practices and relationship with the Chinese government. Chew said in a TikTok video that the hearing “comes at a pivotal moment” for the company, after lawmakers introduced measures that would …
U.S. cases of a dangerous fungus tripled over just three years, and more than half of the country’s 50 states have now reported it, according to a new study. The COVID-19 pandemic likely drove part of the increase, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the paper published Monday by Annals of Internal Medicine. Hospital workers were strained by coronavirus patients and that likely shifted their focus away from disinfecting some other kinds of germs, they said. The fungus, Candida auris, is a form of yeast …
Ukraine is supporting artists painting murals in Europe and Africa to counter Russian disinformation about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Dubbed ”The Wall,” a nod to the album by British rock band Pink Floyd, the project was recently launched in Kenya’s capital and also employs local artists. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Kenya footage by Jimmy Makhulo. …
President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill Monday that directs the federal government to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of COVID-19 more than three years after the start of the pandemic. The legislation, which passed both the House and Senate without dissent, directs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. It cites “potential links” between the research that was done there and the outbreak of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic March …
Astronomers on Monday warned that the light pollution created by the soaring number of satellites orbiting Earth poses an “unprecedented global threat to nature.” The number of satellites in low Earth orbit has more than doubled since 2019, when U.S. company SpaceX launched the first “mega-constellation,” which comprise thousands of satellites. An armada of new internet constellations are planned to launch soon, adding thousands more satellites to the already congested area fewer than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) above Earth. Each new satellite increases the risk that it will smash into …
Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff Monday. The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the tech giant said it would lay off in January. The company’s workforce doubled during the pandemic, however, during a hiring surge across almost the entire tech sector. Tech companies have announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year. In the memo, Jassy said the second phase …
French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders has launched the first Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination drive for schoolgirls in Malawi. They aim to reduce cervical cancer in Malawi, which has the world’s second-highest death rate from the disease. Lameck Masina reports from Machinga district, Malawi. …
A host of comedic and entertainment royalty gathered at Washington’s Kennedy Center to present comedy icon Adam Sandler with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Among those scheduled to honor Sandler on Sunday night were Jennifer Aniston, Judd Apatow, Drew Barrymore, Steve Buscemi, Dana Carvey, Luis Guzmán, Conan O’Brien, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Ben Stiller. “Who has lasted this long and stayed this beloved?” Carvey said as he arrived on the Kennedy Center red carpet. “Nobody keeps this up for this long.” Buscemi, known largely for …
A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick. The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer. They were told that earlier military studies had found they were not at greater risk than the general U.S. population. In its yearlong study of almost 900,000 …
The white-colored humanoid “Garmi” does not look much different from a typical robot — it stands on a platform with wheels and is equipped with a black screen on which two blue circles acting as eyes are attached. But retired German doctor Guenter Steinebach, 78, said: “For me, this robot is a dream.” Not only is Garmi able to perform diagnostics on patients, it can also provide care and treatment for them. Or at least, that is the plan. Garmi is a product of a new sector called geriatronics, a …
The U.N.’s premiere global body fighting for gender equality on Saturday called for wide-ranging efforts to close the gap between men and women in today’s technology-driven world and urged zero tolerance for gender-based violence and harassment online. In a document approved by consensus after all-night negotiations at the end of a two-week meeting, the Commission on the Status of Women expressed grave concern at the interrelation between offline and online violence, harassment and discrimination against women and girls — and it condemned the increase in these acts. It called for …
Brazilian federal agents aboard three helicopters descended on an illegal mining site on Tuesday in the Amazon rainforest. They were met with gunfire, and the shooters escaped, leaving behind an increasingly familiar find for authorities: Starlink internet units. Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has almost 4,000 low-orbit satellites across the skies, connecting people in remote corners of the Amazon and providing a crucial advantage to Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. The lightweight, high-speed internet system has also proved a new and valuable tool for Brazil’s illegal miners, with …
Barbara Washington is a lifelong resident of Convent, Louisiana, a town of fewer than 500 residents along the Mississippi River that has been hit hard by cancer. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven … about eight,” she told VOA, counting the number of people on her street who have died from cancer in recent years. “And my sister died from lung cancer at just 57 years old. She didn’t smoke. She just worked at one of the chemical plants at night.” Convent is in the southeastern part of the …
The Vatican Museums officially reopened its African and American ethnographic collections Thursday by showcasing intricately restored Rwandan raffia screens that were sent by Catholic missionaries to the Vatican for a 1925 exhibit. The display at the Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum featured a scientific presentation of the restoration process as well as the research that preceded it, with consultations with Rwanda’s own ethnographic museum, a UCLA graduate student and Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa. It came as ethnographic museums in Europe and North America are grappling with demands from Indigenous …
Advisers to the World Health Organization urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic Saturday after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens. New sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as well as additional genomic data based on samples taken from a live animal market in Wuhan, China, in 2020 were briefly uploaded to the GISAID database by Chinese scientists earlier this year, allowing them to be viewed by researchers in other countries, according to the statement from the …
Burundi has declared a national public health emergency after polio was detected in a 4-year-old and two other children who had been in contact with the child. The polio outbreak is Burundi’s first in more than 30 years. The landlocked African country is preparing a vaccination campaign targeting eligible children, from newborns to 7-year-olds. It will be ready in a few weeks. In addition to the children, health officials found five polio samples in its surveillance of wastewater, confirming the presence of circulating poliovirus type 2. Early detection is critical …
The Southern Nevada Water Authority on Thursday voted to accept a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to fund cloud seeding in other Western states whose rivers feed the parched desert region. The weather modification method uses planes and ground-based cannons to shoot silver iodide crystals into clouds, attracting moisture to the particles that fall as additional snow and rain. The funding comes as key reservoirs on the Colorado River hit record lows and booming Western cities and industries fail to adjust their water use to increasingly …
The COVID-19 pandemic could settle down this year to a point where it poses a threat similar to flu, the World Health Organization said Friday. The WHO voiced confidence that it will be able to declare an end to the emergency sometime in 2023, saying it was increasingly hopeful about the pandemic phase of the virus coming to a close. Last weekend marked three years since the U.N. health agency first described the situation as a pandemic — though WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insists countries should have jolted into …