Category: News

Sweeping new fuel rules aiming to cut pollution belching from ships and save lives are now just a couple of weeks away, but with no central policing agency and several countries still not signed up to them, compliance is a major concern.    From January 2020,…

A breed of rice genetically engineered to combat vitamin A deficiency has received approval from regulators in the Philippines.Supporters say "Golden Rice" could remedy a condition that kills up to 250,000 children each year worldwide and blinds twice that number, according to the World Health…

The World Health Organization projects that, for the first time, the number of men smoking around the world is dropping, indicating measures to end the global tobacco epidemic are paying off.WHO officials called it a major shift in the fight against tobacco, which every year…

Yemenis are facing a new battle: Dengue Fever, a potentially fatal illness that spreads in the unsanitary conditions and decimated infrastructure of their conflict-torn country. The World Health Organization says nearly 59,500 suspected cases, including 219 deaths, were recorded in the first 11 months of…

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that it had for the first time approved a "biosimilar" medicine — one derived from living sources rather than chemicals — to make breast cancer treatment affordable to women globally.The trastuzumab drug has shown "high efficacy" in curing…

Bryan Russell has Down syndrome and does daily speech exercises, putting pens and corks in his mouth to help build up low muscle tone there. He is also waging a long-shot bid to become a national Peruvian lawmaker, going door to door in Lima to…

India leads the world in pollution-linked deaths, followed by China and Nigeria, according to a report published Wednesday that estimated the global impact of contaminants in the air, water and workplace.    The report by the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) found pollution to…

Moscow registered the warmest December weather in over a century on Wednesday, as an unusually snowless month put winter activities on hold and confused plants into blooming.One weather station in northern Moscow registered a temperature of 5.4 degrees Celsius (41.7 degrees Fahrenheit), said the Fobos…

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest kinds of cancer there is because it's almost always found too late. This cancer is hard to detect, and symptoms only show up when the cancer is advanced. But, as VOA's Carol Pearson reports, researchers are beginning to…

India is planning to set up more than 100 bio-gas plants and provide thousands of farmers with machines to dispose of crop stubble in a bid to halt the choking crop-burning pollution that blights the country every winter.A major source of the smog that engulfs…

Donald Trump's administration unveiled a plan Wednesday to allow for importation of lower-price prescriptions from Canada and other countries, a cost-saving goal championed by both the US president and Democratic rivals on the 2020 campaign trail."No president in history has ever had an FDA willing…

France's warring trade unions on Wednesday defended their decision to cut power to thousands of homes, companies and even the Bank of France to force a weakened government to drop a wide-ranging pension reform.The power cuts added to a sense of chaos in the second…

A European spacecraft launched from South America Wednesday on a three-year mission to study planets in other solar systems.The Characterizing ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS) mission blasted off from Kourou, French Guiana at 0854 GMT (3:54 a.m. EST) atop a Russian Soyuz rocket. The launch came 24…

Gunmen in Pakistan shot and killed two policemen on Wednesday who were part of the most recent anti-polio drive in the country's rugged and volatile northwest, officials said.The gunmen opened fire as the policemen were heading on foot to the town of Lower Dir in…

Danish scientists have managed to extract a complete DNA sample from a piece of birch pitch more than 5,000 years old, used as a kind of chewing gum, a study revealed Tuesday.The Stone-Age sample yielded enough information to determine the source's sex, what she had…

People will get more time to sign up for "Obamacare" health insurance, the Trump administration announced Monday, following a spate of computer glitches over the weekend.The new HealthCare.gov deadline is 3 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in…

A new U.S. study has concluded that the use of e-cigarettes, called vaping, increases the risk of developing chronic lung diseases, but less so than smoking.The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, surveyed 32,000 American adults between 2013 and 2016 who had…

The United Nations' AIDS agency has fired two staffers for financial and sexual misconduct, including a whistleblower whose allegations of being sexually assaulted sparked months of turmoil at the organization. Last March, Martina Brostrom publicly accused a senior UNAIDS director of forcibly kissing her and…

With no end in sight to the Zimbabwe doctors' strike over salaries and poor working conditions, desperate patients have looked to church-run mission hospitals for much-needed healthcare. Karanda Mission Hospital, about 200 kilometers north of the capital Harare, is overwhelmed by patients seeking treatment. Columbus…

Rhino poaching in Namibia dropped to 41 individuals killed in all of 2019 so far, compared with nearly 72 during the same period last year, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism said Saturday.Namibia has the second-largest population of white rhinos in the world after South Africa…