Month: February 2025

Measles is making a comeback in the United States.  Fifty-eight cases of the highly contagious disease were reported Tuesday by health officials in rural West Texas, while eight cases were confirmed in neighboring eastern New Mexico.   Texas officials say the outbreak there, the largest…

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to study how to expand access to in vitro fertilization and make it more affordable.  The order calls for policy recommendations to "protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health…

KAMPALA — Uganda discharged on Tuesday the last eight patients who recovered from Ebola, health authorities reported, and there were no other positive cases in the outbreak declared last month.  World Health Organization described the recoveries as a milestone that "reflects the power of Uganda's quick…

Los Angeles — On a recent Sunday, Tracy Quinn drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to assess damage wrought upon the coastline by the Palisades Fire. The water line was darkened by ash. Burnt remnants of washing machines and dryers and metal appliances were strewn about…

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Chad health officials have sealed several dozen schools, sent thousands of children and their teachers home, and restricted movements to and from the Bologo district — 400 kilometers south of the capital, N'djamena — to contain a measles epidemic. Officials blame vaccine hesitancy…

U.S. health officials have banned Red Dye No. 3 from American foods, decades after the synthetic coloring was banned in Europe. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, studies have linked the bright red color additive to cancer in male laboratory rats. ...

BALTIMORE — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's recent executive order aimed at restricting gender-affirming health care for transgender people under age 19. The judge's ruling came after a lawsuit was filed earlier this month on behalf of families with transgender or…

NEW YORK — A new study shows that bird flu has silently spread from animals to some veterinarians. The study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoes two smaller ones that detected evidence of infection in previously undiagnosed farmworkers. In those studies,…

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump's health secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the…

LONDON — Work to give 21st-century London yet another skyscraper has uncovered traces — in fact chunks — of the city's origins almost 2,000 years ago.  Archaeologists exploring the site of a planned 32-story office tower announced Thursday that they have unearthed the remains of a…

The New York State Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed its first case of the new mpox strain, adding to the global concerns over the spread of the little-known variant. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were three confirmed cases…

FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA — Scientists have long suspected that Mexican long-nosed bats migrate through southeastern Arizona, but without capturing and measuring the night-flying creatures, proof has been elusive.  Researchers say they now have a way to tell the endangered species apart from other bats by analyzing saliva…

Fifteen measles cases — mostly in school-aged children — have been confirmed in a small county in West Texas with one of the highest rates of vaccine exemptions in the state. South Plains Public Health District Director Zach Holbrooks said Monday that his department was…

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Europe's Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday. The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards.   A light-year is 5.8…