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The World Health Organization urges continued vigilance to prevent flareups of the deadly Ebola virus as the epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo moves closer to being officially declared over.The last Ebola patient was discharged from a treatment center in the northeastern town of Beni in the DRC on Tuesday. If no more cases are confirmed during two incubation periods or 42 days, the WHO will officially declare the Ebola epidemic in the country at an end on April 12.But WHO Assistant Director-General - Emergency Response Ibrahima Soce-Fall says this is not yet a time of celebration because the outbreak is not over. He said everyone must remain vigilant as the risk of other cases emerging during that period is very high.He said health teams must remain active and…

Conservation International says an estimated eight million metric tons of plastics go into the ocean every year. And that's not even counting the amount that ends up in landfills or by the side of the road. But slowly, environmentally conscious entrepreneurs are creating alternatives to plastic products. VOA's Unshin Lee reports. ...

India is bracing for a potential explosion of coronavirus cases as authorities rush to trace, test and quarantine contacts of 31 people confirmed to have the disease.      It is screening international travelers at 30 airports and has already tested more than 3,500 samples. The Indian army is preparing at least five large-scale quarantine centers.      For weeks, India watched as cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, multiplied in neighboring China and other countries as its own caseload remained static, three students evacuated from Wuhan, the disease epicenter, who were quarantined and returned to health in the southern state of Kerala.      Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government said last week that community transmission is now taking place. India has shut schools, stopped exporting key…

Confused about all the terminology surrounding the coronavirus? These terms and definitions can help.  Coronavirus: Starting with the most obvious, this word refers to a family of hundreds of similarly shaped viruses. Under a microscope, they look like round blobs surrounded by spikes, much like the corona, or crown, surrounding the sun. There are seven coronaviruses that can affect people. The common cold is one, as are its more virulent cousins: SARS, severe acute respiratory virus, and MERS, Middle East respiratory virus.  COVID-19: This is the disease caused by the coronavirus. The first four letters are taken from the word coronavirus  and then the "d" from disease. The number 19 indicates it started in 2019. The disease is officially named SARS-CoV-2, because it is a respiratory virus, but you will…

Portugal's flag carrier TAP cancelled around 1,000 flights scheduled in March and April on Thursday after concerns about the coronavirus epidemic led to a fall in demand and said it envisaged an unspecified impact on revenues.Separately, organizers of the Lisbon Travel Market, an annual gathering that brings more than 1,000 tourism sector firms from over 40 countries to the Portuguese capital and is visited by tens of thousands of people, announced next week's event would be postponed until May 27-30.TAP, which is 50% state-owned, said in a statement that the cancellations would mainly affect destinations in Italy, France and Spain, but also some intercontinental flights, and account for 4% of its capacity in March and 6% in April."The drop in demand naturally means lower revenues, therefore TAP has decided to…

The Carnival period in Venice usually marks the start of peak season in one of the world's most visited cities, with hordes of tourists piling onto vaporettos to cruise the Grand Canal, strolling through cobblestone streets and lingering in picturesque cafes.      Venice in the time of coronavirus, though, is a shell of itself, with empty piazzas, shuttered basilicas and gondoliers idling their days away. The cholera epidemic that raged quietly through Venice in Thomas Mann's fictional “Death in Venice” has been replaced by a real life fear of COVID-19.      Venice, a UNESCO world heritage site, had already been brought to its knees last year, when near-record high tides flooded a lagoon city which is used to frequent spells of “aqua alta.” Officials had hoped that tourists…

Anna Alexander, a property manager in Virginia Beach, Virginia, started the day Monday thinking that she might avoid shaking hands because of the coronavirus outbreak. Then somebody stuck out a hand to shake. She took it. "I'm a business person,'' Alexander, 65, explained. "But if somebody else does it next time, I might try to be careful because of the coronavirus." As the viral infections spread across the globe, everybody has to make a decision: How worried should I be about getting infected, and what should I do about it? Those decisions can have wide impacts. "Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS!" tweeted U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams on Feb. 29. He explained masks aren't effective in protecting the general public "but if healthcare providers can't get them…

After nearly three decades of war, many Somalis carry invisible scars from exposure to violence.According to the World Health Organization, FILE - A man walks past a body and destroyed buildings at the scene of a blast in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia, Oct 14, 2017.‘A nation that needs healing’Working with political leaders, aid organizations and civil society groups, Olad holds training events to educate the public about the problem and its treatments.“Most of my work relates to how I can tell the international community and people who work in the humanitarian sector and development and Somali government to understand this is a nation that needs healing,” she said. “This is a nation that has experienced more than what a human mental capacity can take.”Olad also believes progress on issues like…

A young mother painstakingly applies disinfectant cloths to clean meticulously the baby rattles for her gurgling blue-eyed infant bouncing happily on her lap.This is normally a wet and cold season in Lazio, but this year there have been many days of blue skies and warm temperatures. Unless you are a farmer praying for more seasonal rain, all should feel right with the world.But it doesn’t.We are the only ones sitting outside a usually bustling piazza bar on the outskirts of Rome sipping mid-morning coffees — and, in my case, nibbling on a ciambella cake.Journalist and author Beppe Severgnini wrote this week a column for The New York Times, noting that most young and middle-aged Italians have no firsthand experience of war or epidemics, unlike their elders, who suffered greatly during…

Scientists say they have used the gene editing tool CRISPR inside someone’s body for the first time, a new frontier for efforts to operate on DNA, the chemical code of life, to treat diseases.A patient recently had it done at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland for an inherited form of blindness, the companies that make the treatment announced Wednesday. They would not give details on the patient or when the surgery occurred.It may take up to a month to see if it worked to restore vision. If the first few attempts seem safe, doctors plan to test it on 18 children and adults.“We literally have the potential to take people who are essentially blind and make them see,” said Charles Albright, chief scientific…

Its doomed maiden voyage happened more than a century ago, but the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 remains the stuff of popular culture and the object of deep-sea salvage.  A firm has recovered more than 5,000 of its artifacts, but as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, time may be running out to raise the ship’s Holy Grail. ...

Every year, around 12 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans – polluting the water, killing wildlife, and creating microplastics that enter the food chain. Now a group of fishermen in Barcelona, Spain has begun an innovative new project in which they are given financial support to catch plastic. Henry Ridgwell reports ...

A scathing new report reveals that dozens of HIV-positive women were forced or coerced into sterilization after giving birth at public hospitals in South Africa.The Commission for Gender Equality's report this week says it investigated complaints by at least 48 women of "cruel, torturous or inhumane and degrading treatment" at the hospitals. At times it occurred when women were in labor.      In many cases, "the hospitals' staff had threatened not to assist them in giving birth" if they didn't sign the consent forms for sterilization, the report says. The commission is a statutory body that operates as an independent watchdog.      The forced sterilizations at 15 public hospitals in South Africa between 2002 and 2005 have sparked public outrage. Some of the hospitals are in some of…

President Donald Trump sought Tuesday to minimize fears about coronavirus spreading rampantly throughout the U.S., saying the situation is “very well under control in our country.”     At the same time, the Trump administration on Monday asked Congress for an additional $2.5 billion to prepare in case of a widespread outbreak and to assist other nations.     “We have very few people with it,” the president said at a news conference in India near the close of a two-day visit.     Trump referenced a group of 14 Americans who tested positive for coronavirus and were among hundreds of U.S. citizens recently evacuated from a cruise ship off the Japanese coast and brought to U.S. facilities.     Trump said those individuals were placed into quarantine and "we…

The World Health Organization is urgently appealing for $40 million to salvage its operation to bring the Ebola epidemic to an end in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Ebola operation in eastern DR Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces is on financial life-support.  The World Health Organization reports its coffers will be empty at the end of this month.  It is urging donors to step up immediately and contribute the money needed to tackle this virulent disease.  WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says failure to support this operation would be tragic as good progress is being made in containing the Ebola virus.  Over the past two months, he says between three and 15 cases of Ebola have been reported each week.   This is compared to 120 reported cases of Ebola…

Several states have begun picking up the tab for family planning services at clinics run by Planned Parenthood, which last year quit a $260 million federal funding program over a Trump administration rule prohibiting clinics from referring women for abortions.      States including New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii already are providing new funding, and Democratic governors in Connecticut and Pennsylvania have proposed carving out money in state budgets to counter the effects of the national provider's fallout with the Republican presidential administration.      The proposals have stirred political debates over abortion at the state level, with some opponents claiming it's a government endorsement of abortion and an inappropriate use of taxpayer money.      Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont earmarked $1.2 million for Planned Parenthood in his new budget…

Italian officials ordered schools, public buildings, restaurants and coffee shops closed in a tiny town in northern Italy Friday after six people tested positive for the new virus, including some who had not been to China or the source of the global health emergency.      The new cases represented the first infections in Italy acquired through secondary contagion and tripled the country's total to nine. The first to fall ill met with someone in early February who had returned from China on Jan. 21 without presenting any symptoms of the new virus, health authorities said.      Authorities think that person passed the virus onto the 38-year-old Italian, who went to a hospital in the town of Codogno with flu-like symptoms on Feb. 18 but was sent home. He…

Lebanon confirmed its first coronavirus case Friday, a 45-year-old woman who had arrived from Iran and was being quarantined in a hospital."We confirmed the first case today," Lebanese health minister Hassan Hamad told a news conference, adding that two other suspected cases are being investigated.The woman arrived Thursday on a flight from the city of Qom in Iran. The woman and two other suspected victims were quarantined at the Rafik Hariri government hospital in Beirut.Meanwhile, Iranian health authorities Friday reported two more deaths from the new coronavirus.Lebanese Health Minister Hassan Hamad speaks during a news conference, in Beirut, Lebanon, Feb. 21, 2020.The spokesman of Iran's health ministry, Kianoush Jahanpour said the newly detected cases are all linked with Qom, where the first two elderly patients died Wednesday. So far, 18…

Iranian health authorities on Friday reported two more deaths from the new virus that emerged in China and said the fatalities were from among 13 new confirmed cases of the virus in Iran.      The report by the semiofficial Mehr news agency came as Iranians voted in nationwide parliamentary elections. After authorities reported two earlier deaths this week, the death toll from COVID-19, the illness caused by virus, stands at four in Iran.      So far, 18 cases have been confirmed in Iran, including the four who died.      The spokesman of the health ministry, Kianoush Jahanpour, said the newly detected cases are all linked with city of Qom where the first two elderly patients died on Wednesday.      Jahanpour said the new cases were either…

A procedure one might expect to see only on an episode of popular television show Grey’s Anatomy actually occurred at a London hospital recently as a patient played the violin while undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor. Dagmar Turner, 53, has had a passion for playing the violin since she was 10, and she is currently a member of the Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra. So losing the ability to play because of a brain tumor was an especially frightening scenario for her. During a symphony performance in 2013, Turner suffered a seizure that brought to light the slow-growing brain tumor. Located on the right frontal lobe of her brain, it threatened to damage her left hand’s fine motor skills — the hand that controls the notes being played on the violin. According to King’s College Hospital, where Turner was treated, her first course of treatment was…