Month: April 2022

The first-ever married couple to fly on a commercial spacecraft speaks with VOA. Plus, an all-amateur flight crew prepares for a trip to the International Space Station, and a milestone in space-based racial equality. Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

Lithium is a key component in electric vehicle batteries and energy storage systems, and California officials hope their state will become a major producer. Governor Gavin Newsom has said he wants California to become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium." But residents of one community want some assurances first. Mike O'Sullivan reports from Lithium Valley in the California desert. Camera: Mike O'Sullivan, Roy Kim ...

The World Health Organization ((WHO)) says, following a surge of new cases in early March, the number of new worldwide COVID-19 cases and deaths has fallen for a second consecutive week. In its weekly update released late Tuesday, the WHO reports the number of new cases overall fell by 16 percent during the week ending April 3, compared to the previous week. As of 3 April 2022, just over 489 million cases and over 6 million deaths had been reported globally. The agency said global deaths from COVID-19 fell sharply - by 43 percent – in the past week. The WHO attributed a sharp rise in death numbers the previous week to a change in the way deaths were counted and the addition of death numbers not previously reported in…

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced plans to expand access to health care by proposing changes to the Affordable Care Act to allow millions of additional families to purchase health insurance and obtain tax credits to offset the cost. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports. ...

Zoos across North America are moving their birds indoors and away from people and wildlife as they try to protect them from the highly contagious and potentially deadly avian influenza.  Penguins may be the only birds that visitors to many zoos can see right now, because they already are kept inside and usually protected behind glass in their exhibits, making it harder for the bird flu to reach them.  Nearly 23 million chickens and turkeys have already been killed across the United States to limit the spread of the virus, and zoos are working hard to prevent any of their birds from meeting the same fate. It would be especially upsetting for zoos to have to kill any of the endangered or threatened species in their care.  "It would be…

The Oklahoma House gave final legislative approval on Tuesday to a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.  With little discussion and no debate, the Republican-controlled House voted 70-14 to send the bill to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has previously said he'd sign any anti-abortion bill that comes to his desk.  The bill is one of several anti-abortion measures still alive in Oklahoma's Legislature this year, part of a trend of GOP-led states passing aggressive anti-abortion legislation as the conservative U.S. Supreme Court is considering ratcheting back abortion rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years.  The Oklahoma bill, which passed the Senate last year, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life…

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced plans to expand access to health care by proposing changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to allow millions of additional American families to purchase health insurance plans and obtain tax credits to offset the cost. "When today's proposed rule is finalized, starting next year, working families will get the help they need to afford full family coverage — everyone in the family," Biden said in remarks at the White House ahead of signing an executive order to improve access to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. Biden was accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama, who in March 2010 signed the ACA, the sweeping health care law known as Obamacare. This was Obama's first return visit to the…

Amazon on Tuesday announced deals for scores of launches to deploy a "constellation" of satellites in low orbit around the Earth to provide internet service to people below. Amazon said that its contracts with Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) are the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history. The overall cost and timing of launches booked to make Amazon's Project Kuiper a reality were not disclosed. "We still have lots of work ahead, but the team has continued to hit milestone after milestone across every aspect of our satellite system," Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp said in a statement. "Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world." U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, head…

Cases of a parasitic disease called Leishmaniasis are increasing at an alarming pace in a town in northeastern Syria called Tel Tamr. VOA's Zana Omer has more in this story narrated by Sirwan Kajjo. Camera: Zana Omer ...

Climate scientists warn the world is courting disaster if it fails to swiftly do what’s required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The International Panel on Climate Change released a report on mitigating climate change. After two previous reports on the physical science behind climate change and on its potential impacts, the United Nation’s top climate body says changes are now causing huge disruptions in the natural world and in human well-being.  Over the last decade, the report says average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history.     However, the co-chair of the panel’s third working group, Jim Skea, says the rate of growth has slowed in the last two years along with increasing evidence of many countries taking climate action. …

The United Nations' top climate body says drastic measures, including significant cuts in fossil fuel use, are necessary to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.  Monday's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that the world is "on a fast track to climate disaster" and that governments and organizations have engaged in "a litany of broken climate promises," said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world," he said in a video message released alongside the report. Guterres said the world's current trajectory is global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree limit agreed at climate talks in Paris in 2015. To keep the 1.5-degree limit within reach,…

The World Health Organization reports 13 million people die every year from environmental causes, including more than seven million who are killed each year from exposure to air pollution. New data released by the World Health Organization confirms that practically the whole world is breathing in unhealthy air. The WHO is calling for urgent action to curb the use of fossil fuels to reduce air pollution levels. This, it says threatens the health of billions of people, leading to the preventable deaths of millions. Sophie Gumy is technical officer in WHO’s department of environment, climate change and health. She says the data show air quality is poorest notably in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asian, and African regions. "Most of the seven million deaths, they come from low and middle-income countries,…

Cameroon observed World Autism Awareness Day Saturday with rights groups advocating for autistic children to be given an education. Supporters say autistic children often can’t go to school because autism is falsely believed to be a result of witchcraft. The Timely Performance Care Center, a school for disabled children in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, organized a campaign for parents and communities to stop the stigma that autistic kids often are subject to. The center has an enrollment of 70 autistic children. The school’s manager, Betty Nancy Fonyuy, said autistic children are frequently kept at home because of stigma. She said many communities and parents abuse the rights of autistic children by refusing to educate them or give them the freedom to socialize with other children. "We want parents to accept the…

Britain is experiencing a record number of COVID-19 cases, with almost 5 million people, or 1 person in every 13 infected, according to official data. The news of the spike in infections came on the same day that Britain stopped giving free rapid COVID tests to most of its population, as part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “living with COVID” plan. Under Johnson’s plan, people who do not have conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19 must pay for tests to find out if they have been infected. The uptick is blamed on the highly contagious omicron variant BA.2, which is also causing an increase in hospitalization and death rates. However, the number of infections is expected to start decreasing this month and next month, officials say. “Any infection that…

Irina, her husband and 4-year-old son hid in the cellar of their house in Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, for three weeks as intense fighting, including a tank battle, raged around them. “At first my son seemed to be coping okay,” she says. “But then with unrelenting stress, shelling and blasts, there was a deterioration — the boy started to become withdrawn. He became nervous. He started to stutter,” she says. Their escape from Chernihiv wasn’t gentle either. “We had to drive along a road, which we knew was mined. And we saw a lot of burned-out cars with people, families, scorched inside. We tried to ignore it all and just continue because we had our kid and just wanted to save him,” she says. She doesn’t know what her son…

The future of abortion rights is in flux in the U.S. as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the issue in June. Since September, Texas has banned abortions after six weeks. Amy, a spoken-word poet, recently had an abortion. And it was no easy task. The divorced mother of a 3-year-old said she barely had time to think once she realized she was pregnant — because she is in Texas. "If I would have had a little bit more time, lowered my blood pressure a little bit — maybe I would have made a different decision. We'll never know," she said. In September, the state enacted the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. Amy, who declined to give her last name, knew she had just days…

The future of abortion rights is in flux in the U.S. as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the issue in June. Since September, Texas has banned abortions after six weeks. For women seeking an abortion, many are in a race against time. Deana Mitchell has the story.  Camera: Deana Mitchell Produced by: Deana Mitchell ...

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters a second month, social media and television continue to constantly broadcast disturbing images and news about the conflict. That's raising some concerns about the effect it might be having on children’s mental health. Video: Artyom Kokhan ...

Cameroon is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has sickened 6,000 people with the bacteria and killed nearly 100 since February. Authorities have dispatched the ministers of health and water to affected areas and have begun quarantining cholera patients to prevent it from spreading. Cameroon's Public Health Ministry said the number of cholera patients received in hospitals was growing by the day.   In the seaside city of Limbe in the past week alone, 200 of 300 patients were treated and discharged from the government hospital.  Filbert Eko, the highest-ranking official in Cameroon's Southwest region where Limbe is located, said the region was the worst hit by cholera, with more than 800 cases since February, forcing the the quarantining of patients to prevent the disease from spreading. "The treatment center…

Golden butterflies adorn the walls of the Netherland's only euthanasia expertise center, put up in remembrance of thousands of patients who have chosen to die with dignity over the past two decades. Situated in a leafy upmarket suburb of The Hague, the Euthanasia Expertise Center is the only one of its kind, giving information, assisting medical doctors and providing euthanasia as end-of-life care, which was legalized in a world first in the Netherlands on April 1, 2002. Belgium soon followed later that year and Spain last year became the sixth country to adopt euthanasia — the act of intentionally ending a life to relieve a person's suffering, for instance through a lethal injection given by a doctor. The number of people seeking euthanasia is growing in the Netherlands, with some…

When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures. Winding down those policies could begin as early as the summer. That could force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients to find new sources of coverage, require congressional action to preserve broad telehealth access for Medicare enrollees, and scramble special COVID-19 rules and payment policies for hospitals, doctors and insurers. There are also questions about how emergency use approvals for COVID-19 treatments will be handled. The array of issues is tied to the coronavirus public health emergency first declared more than two years ago and periodically renewed since then. It’s set to end April 16 and…

Laura Purdy is a U.S. doctor on Ukraine's front lines. In her case, that's a computer screen in Tennessee. "Patients that I have talked to from some of the larger cities in Ukraine are fearful of leaving their homes because of air raid sirens or offshore attacks," said Purdy, a surgeon who, until 2016, served in the U.S. Army's units that provide health care to civilians worldwide. "They need/want to speak to a physician but are fearful to venture out to do so." Purdy now cares for patients in Kyiv and other cities under Russian attack through Starlink, an internet constellation of some 2,000 satellites operated by billionaire Elon Musk's private firm SpaceX. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and as of March 30, 1,189 Ukrainians had been killed and…

The U.K. will ban conversion therapy for gay or bisexual people in England and Wales, but not for transgender people, ITV reported Thursday. Hours earlier, the government had confirmed an ITV report that it would drop a plan to introduce legislation to ban LGBT conversion therapy and would instead review how existing law could be utilized more effectively to prevent it. That prompted an angry response from LGBT groups and some lawmakers. "The Prime Minister has changed his mind off the back of the reaction to our report and he WILL now ban conversion therapy after all," ITV political reporter Paul Brand tweeted. "Senior Govt source absolutely assures me it'll be in Queen's Speech (of planned legislation). But only gay conversion therapy, not trans," he said. A Downing Street spokesperson…