newspaper
The COP28 climate summit gets underway Thursday in Dubai, as scientists warn the world is heading for irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change. 2023 is on course to be the
Read MoreU.S. life expectancy rose last year — by more than a year — but still isn’t close to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2022 rise was mainly
Read MoreThe North American wolverine will receive long-delayed federal protections under a Biden administration proposal released Wednesday in response to scientists warning that climate change will likely melt away the rare
Read MoreChildren made up nearly half of the people driven into hunger and malnutrition by extreme weather events in countries heavily impacted by the climate crisis in 2022, according to a
Read MoreDisease could pose a bigger threat to human life than bombings in Gaza, the World Health Organization said. Overcrowding and a lack of access to clean drinking water or sanitation
Read MoreWhen world leaders gather in Dubai beginning Thursday for COP28, this year’s U.N. climate summit, the heads of the world’s two largest economies will be notably absent. U.S. President Joe
Read MorePakistan launched a week-long nationwide polio vaccination campaign Monday, as the country remains one of only two around the world where the paralyzing virus still exists. This year, so far,
Read MoreNational and regional authorities in Spain signed an agreement Monday to invest 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in areas around the treasured national park of Donana in a bid to
Read MoreA surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a
Read MoreGrowing calls for the world to come to grips with the many ways that global warming affects human health have prompted the first day dedicated to the issue at crunch
Read MoreIn the Pacific Northwest, one U.S. state is trying a novel approach to combatting opioid abuse — decriminalizing small amounts of hard drugs. From Oregon, Deborah Bloom has our story.
Read MoreOn the cusp of the COP28 climate talks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited frozen but rapidly melting Antarctica and said that intense action must be taken at the conference where
Read MoreJapan detected the first case of highly pathogenic H5-type bird flu this season at a poultry farm in the south of the country, public broadcaster NHK reported Saturday. The local
Read MoreThe World Health Organization said it has confirmed sexual transmission of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time as the country experiences its biggest outbreak, a
Read MoreOn the eve of international climate talks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited globally important Antarctica, where ice that’s been frozen for millions of years is melting because of human-caused climate
Read MoreSouth Africa, Colombia and other countries that lost out in the global race for coronavirus vaccines are taking a more combative approach toward drugmakers and pushing back on policies that
Read MoreAuthorities in several West African countries are trying to manage their huge diphtheria outbreaks, including in Nigeria where a top health official said Thursday that millions are being vaccinated to
Read MoreChinese officials say they did not detect any “unusual or novel diseases” in the country, the World Health Organization said Thursday, following an official request by the U.N. health agency
Read MoreA 14-year-old Ethiopian-born American in the U.S. state of Virginia has won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, an annual science competition for U.S. students in grades five through eight. VOA’s
Read MoreFor most of her life, Claudia Stearns dreaded Thanksgiving. As a person who struggled with obesity since childhood, Stearns hated the annual turmoil of obsessing about what she ate —
Read MoreRising sea levels, extreme weather and rising temperatures are threatening coastal communities in South Africa. For VOA, Derick Mazarura has the story from Eastern Cape, South Africa. Camera — Buhle
Read MoreGrowing up in Lahore — Pakistan’s cultural capital — fall used to be the perfect time for Mariam to enjoy outdoor activities after months of scorching summer heat. Now, she
Read MoreInnovations in food production could alleviate hunger for millions of people, according to Britain, which hosted a global summit on food insecurity Monday, but critics say the focus on technology
Read MoreOregon’s first-in-the-nation law that decriminalized the possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine and other illicit drugs in favor of an emphasis on addiction treatment is facing strong headwinds in
Read MoreA federal judge in Nevada has dealt another legal setback to Native American tribes trying to halt construction of one of the biggest lithium mines in the world. U.S. District
Read MoreSpaceX’s uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, was presumed to have failed in space minutes after lifting off on Saturday in a second test
Read MoreU.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed earlier this week that Beijing will crack down on companies in China that produce precursor chemicals for fentanyl, an agreement
Read MoreBritain’s medicines regulator has authorized the world’s first gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease, in a move that could offer relief to thousands of people with the crippling disease
Read MoreThe U.S. flu season is under way, with at least seven states reporting high levels of illnesses and cases rising in other parts of the country, health officials say. The
Read MoreIn the Arctic, the impact of climate change is happening at an accelerated pace, with temperatures rising two to four times faster than the global average. “It’s called the polar
Read MoreAfter a barrage of earthquakes that herald an impending volcanic eruption, some evacuated residents of the Icelandic town of Grindavik wonder if they will ever return. “There are going to
Read MoreThe moon glowed in the predawn Mongolia sky as Agvaantogtokh and his family prepared for another big move. On horseback, he rode to a well with nearly a thousand sheep
Read MoreHundreds of previously unreported workplace injuries surface at a space industry titan. Plus, the European Space Agency chief’s warning on climate change, and we say goodbye to a space travel
Read MoreAdvances in childhood cancer are a success story in modern medicine. But in the past decade, those strides have stalled for Black and Hispanic youth, opening a gap in death
Read MoreHow was the air breathed by Caesar, the Prophet Mohammed or Christopher Columbus? A giant freezer in Copenhagen holds the answers, storing blocks of ice with atmospheric tales thousands of
Read MoreIt began as a familiar old story. In the early 2000s, multinational mining giant Rio Tinto came to the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to dig a nickel mine. Environmentalists
Read MoreA new report says heat-related deaths will increase 370 percent by 2050 if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, as predicted. The findings were part of
Read MoreRheumatology diseases were previously considered to be rare in Africa but that is changing, as the number of cases is on the rise. Health experts attribute the trend to changing
Read MoreAlmost two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, combat medics have started to perform blood transfusions in the trenches. To carry out this crucial task, the medics are undergoing
Read MoreFifty young innovators and leaders from 19 African countries attended a three-week leadership and professional development training program in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Sponsored by the U.S. government, the Young African
Read MoreEarlier this year, the doctor who leads the World Health Organization’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse traveled to Congo to address the biggest known sex scandal in the U.N. health
Read MoreThe Biden administration on Monday announced a White House initiative to improve how the federal government approaches and funds research into the health of women, who make up more than
Read MoreIn the Western United States, foresters are working to minimize threats from wildfires by thinning nearly 20 million hectares of forests. From the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, Shelley Schlender
Read MoreResidents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland left their homes Saturday after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency
Read MoreHundreds of environmental activists marched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Saturday demanding drastic curbs on plastic production, ahead of a meeting to negotiate a global plastics treaty. Representatives of more
Read MoreThe proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements has hit its highest level ever, 3%, U.S. health officials said Thursday. More parents are questioning routine childhood vaccinations that
Read More