Month: February 2022

Facing growing pressure from impatient state governors, the Biden administration acknowledged for the first time that it is developing plans to guide the country away from the pandemic’s emergency phase toward a more relaxed national response, including ending the federal recommendation for wearing masks in…

French researcher Luc Montagnier, who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering HIV and more recently spread false claims about the coronavirus, has died at age 89, local government officials in France said.  Montagnier died Tuesday at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine,…

France will build at least six new nuclear reactors in the decades to come, President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, placing nuclear power at the heart of his country's drive for carbon neutrality by 2050. Macron said the new plants would be built and operated…

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Thursday issued a draft of revised guidelines for prescribing opioid painkillers, urging doctors to be flexible and individualize their use of the drugs to the needs of the patient.   The CDC's current guidelines were issued…

NASA captures a first-ever photo op from our solar system. Starlink suffers a storm-caused setback, and a dusty piece of space history gets the spa treatment. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

Cameroonian health authorities say at least 1,300 cholera cases have been detected, with nearly three dozen people dying as a result of the outbreak within the past two weeks. Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry says water shortages and poor hygiene have spread the bacterial disease throughout…

A new study says 1 in 10 Australian health care workers has had thoughts of suicide or self-harm during the pandemic. The authors of the Australian Frontline Health Workers survey believe it is the world’s largest study of suicidal thoughts among health care workers. It…

The COVID pandemic exposed stark vaccine inequities between high- and low-income nations and underscored Africa's dependence on outside countries for jabs. However, a new initiative in Senegal hopes to reduce that inequity Annika Hammerschlag reports from Dakar, Senegal. Camera: Annika Hammerschlag ...

Health care workers in Somalia suffer from high rates of anxiety, depression and stress because of their work with COVID-19 cases, a new study finds. The study was presented at a health research conference in the Somali town of Garowe last week. Initial findings recorded…

As if we didn't have enough to worry about: Some scientists are warning about the inevitable catastrophic effects on modern life from a super-sized solar storm.  These outbursts from the sun, which eject energy in the form of magnetic fields and billions of tons of…

SpaceX says a geomagnetic storm brought down 40 satellites launched last Thursday as part of its Starlink satellite internet service. In a release posted to the company’s website, the private space company said the satellites were among 49 Starlink satellites launched from the Kennedy Space…

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that even though she was encouraged by dropping COVID-19 hospitalizations and case rates, the pandemic was still not at the point at which the agency could recommend dropping nationwide indoor mask requirements.…

World Health Organization officials say insecurity and bureaucratic difficulties continue to prevent medical supplies and other crucial relief from reaching millions of beleaguered civilians in conflict-ridden northern Ethiopia. An estimated 9.4 million people in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions are in desperate need…

An international collaboration led by researchers in Canada and Brazil is applying innovative funding and testing methods to determine whether existing medications can provide cheaper and more effective treatments for COVID-19 and is encouraged by its initial results. Calling it the “TOGETHER Trial,” researchers predominantly…

The U.S. needs a nimble, multipronged strategy and Cabinet-level leadership to counter its festering overdose epidemic, a bipartisan congressional commission advises. With vastly powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl driving record overdose deaths, the scourge of opioids awaits after the COVID-19 pandemic finally recedes, a shift…

Paris — Plastic has infiltrated all parts of the ocean and is now found “in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale” wildlife group WWF said on Tuesday, calling for urgent efforts to create an international treaty on plastics. Tiny fragments of plastic have…

Millions of people around the world enjoy a daily cup of coffee; however, their daily caffeine fix could be under threat because climate change is killing coffee plants, putting farmers' livelihoods at risk. Inside the vast, steamy greenhouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew…

Pope Francis on Sunday decried the genital mutilation of millions of girls and the trafficking of women for sex, including openly on city streets, so others can make money off of them.  In remarks to the public in St. Peter's Square, the pope noted that…

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in an address on the nation’s Waitangi Day observance that the country has an obligation to make sure everyone has access to the health care they need, and that no one dies younger than everyone else in New…

In the two years since COVID-19 began ravaging the United States, virtually every aspect of the pandemic has been politicized, often to the detriment of efforts to bring the disease under control and to treat its victims. Now, though, members of Congress are taking the…

The oceans got even warmer last year than the year before, supercharging already extreme weather patterns worldwide, according to a recent report published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Twenty-three international scientists analyzed thousands of ocean temperature measurements. Since 2018, when the group first…

The Philippines has suspended a heavily criticized policy banning the unvaccinated from public transportation in Metro Manila as a COVID-19 surge, caused by omicron variant, has subsided. Daily cases in the Philippines rose from 400 in December to more than 39,000 in just a matter…