Month: January 2021

Hundreds of members of Serbia's military lined up on Tuesday in their camouflage uniforms at an exhibition hall in Belgrade where nurses injected them with a Chinese-made vaccine against COVID-19. Last week Serbia received one million doses of Chinese Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the first…

California has become the first U.S state to post more than 3 million total coronavirus cases.  As of Tuesday, the western state, home to 40 million residents, has 3,015,644 confirmed infections, including 33,724 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. According to the Associated…

Australia has said it could keep its external borders closed for the rest of 2021 because of the coronavirus. 28,721 coronavirus cases have been reported in Australia since the pandemic began. 909 people have died, according to the Health Department.Australia closed its international borders to foreign…

Mexico expects to receive its last Pfizer--BioNTech vaccines against COVID-19 Tuesday for the next three weeks as it supports a United Nations' proposal to limit purchases in order to make vaccines available to poor countries. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico will get 200,000 doses of the Pfizer- vaccine on Tuesday before its shipments are temporarily suspended. The Mexican leader says the temporary suspension of Pfizer…

A powerful 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit San Juan Province in Argentina late Monday night, according to early reports from the U.S. Geological Survey.   The quake, which was felt as far away as Santiago, Chile, sent items flying off store shelves, damaged buildings and caused cracks in a highway in San Juan, based on videos posted on twitter.  There were also reports of power outages, but no immediate confirmation…

The head of the World Health Organization says the world is “on the brink of a moral catastrophic failure” for its unequal sharing of COVID-19 vaccinations. Addressing a WHO executive board meeting in Geneva on Monday, Executive Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is “not right…

Oil and gas companies are not doing enough to decrease the release of methane gases, a main source of planet-heating emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new report released Monday.  In 2020, the fuel industries emitted about 5% of all global energy-related…

Coronavirus deaths are rising in nearly two-thirds of American states as a winter surge pushes the overall toll toward 400,000 amid warnings that a new, highly contagious variant is taking hold.  As Americans observed a national holiday Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pleaded with…

Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has introduced new lockdown measures to contain a jump in confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19.  The restrictions include school closures, a night-time curfew, and no gatherings over 50 people.   The measure comes five days after Chakwera declared a state…

After almost a year of staring at each other’s living rooms or other spaces in virtual meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic, members of a Swiss startup have come up with a new idea: sending holographic emissaries to a virtual meeting space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi…

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warns the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines between rich and poor countries will prolong the global pandemic.  Tedros delivered this stark warning Monday at the opening of a week-long meeting of the WHO Executive…

The head of the World Health Organization is calling for greater global equity in COVID-19 vaccinations, saying rich countries need to share vaccines with poor countries.   Addressing a WHO executive board meeting in Geneva Monday, executive director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is…

After almost a year of staring at each other’s living rooms or other spaces in virtual meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic, members of a Swiss startup have come up with a new idea: sending holographic emissaries to a virtual meeting space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi…

Jordan has become one of the world's first countries to start coronavirus vaccinations for United Nations-registered refugees, according to the U.N. refugee agency and the royal palace. As part of the kingdom’s national vaccination drive that began last week, anyone living there, including refugees and…

John Hopkins University reported early Sunday there are 94.5 million global COVID-19 cases. The United States leads the world in the number of cases with 23.7 million infections, followed by India with 10.5 million and Brazil with 8.4 million.Los Angeles County in California has become…

China on Saturday finished building a 1,500-room hospital for COVID-19 patients to fight a surge in infections the government said are harder to contain and that it blamed on infected people or goods from abroad.The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500…

The Australian Open will go ahead as planned, despite the discovery of three coronavirus cases that have put 47 players into quarantine for two weeks, the tennis tournament’s director, Craig Tiley, said Saturday.Australia’s international borders are closed, but there are exceptions.For the international tennis tournament,…

All four engines of the core stage of NASA's deep space exploration rocket built by Boeing were ignited for the first time Saturday, but only briefly.Mounted in a test facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the Space Launch System’s (SLS) 212-foot-tall core stage roared…

Two years ago, in January 2019, the World Health Organization said vaccine hesitancy was among the top 10 threats to global health. That was before COVID-19 spread around the globe. VOA's Carol Pearson tells us how doctors are working to overcome that hesitancy. ...

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday, elevating the post to Cabinet-level status for first time.Lander, a Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped lead the Human Genome…

World Health Organization officials said Friday that they would like to see vaccination programs under way in every country in the world within the next 100 days, with frontline health workers and high-risk groups prioritized.Speaking at the agency’s regular briefing at its headquarters in Geneva,…

The numbers for the coronavirus pandemic continue upward, with more than 93 million global infections and nearly 2 million worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains at the top of the list with the most cases and deaths. Johns…

The European Space Agency previews a big 2021 starting with a new boss.  Data show last year’s temperatures tied the hottest on record, and French wines return to Earth after a year aboard the International Space Station.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space. Producer: Arash…

The World Health Organization's (WHO) European chief says 95% of the 23.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered around the world so far have been given out in just 10 countries. At a Copenhagen news briefing Thursday, WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge…

The numbers for the coronavirus pandemic continue upward, with more than 93 million global infections and nearly 2 million worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains at the top of the list with the most cases and deaths. Johns…