Category: News

Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX was set to launch early Monday the International Space Station's next long-duration team into orbit, with an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates and a Russian cosmonaut joining two NASA crewmates for the flight. The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, was set for liftoff at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The four-member crew should reach the International Space Station (ISS) about 25 hours later, Tuesday morning, to begin a six-month mission in microgravity aboard the orbiting laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth. Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since…

A man in Spain who was suspected of having the deadly Marburg disease tested negative Saturday and does not have the virus, the health ministry said. Health authorities in Valencia earlier said they had detected the country's first suspected case of the infectious disease that has led to the quarantining of more than 200 people in Equatorial Guinea. The 34-year-old man, who had recently been in Equatorial Guinea, had been given the all-clear but would be tested again in the coming weeks, officials said. He had been transferred from a private hospital to an isolation unit at the Hospital La Fe in Valencia while tests were being conducted, the Valencian regional health authorities said. Three health staff who are treating the man were also isolated as a precautionary measure, authorities…

Spain has identified its first suspected case of Marburg disease.  The Spanish patient is a 34-year-old man who had recently traveled to the Central African nation of Equatorial Guinea.  He was in a private hospital but has been transferred to an isolation unit at Hospital La Fe in Valencia for further tests, regional medical officials said. Marburg virus disease, or MVD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever which affects both people and non-human primates … Primates [including people] can become infected with Marburg virus, and may develop serious disease with high mortality.”  Spanish health officials said Saturday that more than 200 people in Equatorial Guinea have recently been quarantined because of Marburg disease.   Earlier this month, two suspected cases of…

Uber Technologies Inc. said on Friday plans by the local government in India's Delhi city to only allow electric vehicles to function as bike taxis would risk "finishing off the sector" and impact the mobility needs of millions. Delhi's plans, part of a new policy to regulate vehicles used by ride-hailing companies like Uber and rival Ola, are being finalized and will be rolled out soon, the Economic Times reported earlier this week. Reuters could not immediately confirm those plans. If implemented, this would mark an aggressive step towards the country's ambitions to ramp up the transition to vehicles that run on clean energy to reduce oil imports and curb pollution. Uber, in a blogpost, said any such move would put at risk the livelihood of over 100,000 drivers in…

The Biden administration is preparing for a worst-case scenario if a conservative federal judge rules in favor of a lawsuit seeking to restrict access to one of the two drugs typically used to induce a medicated abortion. Two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, can be taken by women at home and are used for just over half of U.S. abortions. But that could be quickly changed by a lawsuit filed by an anti-abortion group in Texas that claims the Food and Drug Administration wrongly approved mifepristone for use more than 23 years ago. The case is before a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump. A ruling in favor of the abortion opponents could immediately shut down the sale of the drug, but women would still have access to medicated…

The trickle-down effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine are still being felt on food prices in vulnerable places, nearly one year after Moscow invaded the neighboring country. ...

Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday announced a proposal to classify one of two dwindling California spotted owl populations as endangered after a lawsuit by conservation groups required the government to reassess a Trump administration decision not to protect the brown and white birds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls that have their habitats in coastal and Southern California be protected under the Endangered Species Act. That population "does not have a strong ability to withstand normal variations in environmental conditions, persist through catastrophic events, or adapt to new environmental conditions throughout its range," which led the agency to propose listing it as endangered, wildlife officials said. The other California spotted owl population, which lives in Sierra Nevada forests in California and western Nevada, would be…

A new report by four leading United Nations agencies and the World Bank estimates every two minutes, one woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, mostly from preventable causes. The report, “Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020,” was produced by WHO, UNICEF, and the UNFPA, along with the World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division. Health officials say the data presented in the report should be a wakeup call for world leaders to take action to end maternal deaths by investing in health care systems and closing the widening social and economic inequities that contribute to these deaths. “While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,…

Zimbabweans living on the border with Zambia are increasingly taking advantage of their neighbor's superior health care. But Zambian officials say they are also draining resources as nearly one-third of patients in some clinics and hospitals are Zimbabweans. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Lusaka, Zambia. VOA footage by Blessing Chigwenhembe. ...

Overdose deaths from the drug fentanyl have communities across the United States scrambling to respond. In Washington state, librarians are becoming unlikely first responders in this latest wave of the US opioid crisis. Natasha Mozgovaya has our story ...

To address the relatively high cost of health care in Africa, a Kenyan mobile application lets users pay for medical services by selling their personal data through blockchain technology. Officials say Snark Health's Hippocratic Coins have attracted more than 300 doctors and 4,000 users.  Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo. ...

An organization that trains young people for conservation jobs is recycling dead trees and replacing them with new ones, salvaging valuable lumber in the process. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Long Beach, California. ...

A controversial Chinese biophysicist, who had been imprisoned after creating the world’s first gene-edited babies, had his Hong Kong work visa revoked after immigration officials suspected he lied on an application form for a talent scheme. He Jiankui, who sparked an international scientific and ethical debate in 2018 when he revealed he had created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies resistant to HIV, said at the time at an international conference in Hong Kong that he had modified two embryos before they were placed in their mother’s womb. The scientist said he used a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls before birth. He said he had targeted a gene known as CCR5 and edited it in a way he believed would protect the girls from…

Researchers in Kenya say they've detected an invasive mosquito that can transmit malaria in different climates, threatening progress to fight the parasitic disease. Kenya’s Medical Research Institute this week urged the public to use mosquito nets and clean up areas where mosquitos can breed. Kenya has detected the presence of a new malaria carrier, which was first discovered in the region in Djibouti in 2012. The new carrier, the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, transmits plasmodium vivax, the parasite the causes the deadliest type of malaria. Bernhards Ogutu is a chief researcher at Kenya Medical Research Institute. He says it was only a matter of time before the mosquito was discovered in the country after it appeared in Ethiopia and South Sudan. “We’ve not been able to pick plasmodium vivax which is…

Decades of violence and humanitarian crises have left many Somali people traumatized, according to a health study by the U.N. and Somali organizations. Harun Maruf reported from Washington and Abdulkadir Zubeyr in Mogadishu spoke to mental health doctors and patients in the country. They have this report narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera: Abdulkadir Zubeyr. Video editor Betty Ayoub. ...

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Ghenya Grondin of Waltham, Massachusetts, was a postpartum doula - a person charged with helping young couples navigate the first weeks of their newborn child's life at home. Grondin, now aged 44, was infected with SARS-CoV-2 in mid-March of that year - before there were tests, before social distancing or masks, and many months before the medical community recognized long COVID as a complication of COVID-19. She is part of a community of first-wave long-haulers who faced a new disease without a roadmap or support from the medical establishment. Three years later, at least 65 million people worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, according to an evidence review published last month in Nature Reviews Microbiology. More than 200 symptoms have been linked to the…

The U.N. in Malawi has launched an urgent appeal for aid to deal with the impact of a record cholera outbreak that has so far killed nearly 1,450 people and infected 45,000.   Local health experts say if urgent action isn't taken to scale up the response, the number of cases could double in the next few months. The U.N. says the flash appeal seeks to raise $45.3 million to provide life-saving aid to thousands of people in Malawi devastated by the outbreak. In a statement released Monday, the U.N. said the appeal aims to assist four million people in Malawi, including 56,000 refugees and asylum seekers who are at the highest risk in the outbreak. The current outbreak started in March last year and has spread to all 29 districts…

Two 16th-century sculptures, jewels of French Renaissance art, have been on display since 1908 at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. But thanks to modern technology and an unusual agreement, precise 3D copies will be made and installed in the French castle where the originals long resided. The facsimiles plan is the fruit of a rare partnership between the Met, as the New York museum is known, and the Dordogne department in southwestern France. The statues, both from the early 1500s and by an anonymous sculptor, represent Biblical scenes entitled "Entombment of Christ" and "Pieta With Donors." A tourism promotion agency in the Dordogne, Semitour, will be working with the Atelier of Fac-Similes Perigord (AFSP) to make the replicas over the coming months. For nearly 400 years, the originals graced…