Britain will next week formally apply to join a trans-Pacific trading bloc of 11 countries, with negotiations set to start later this year, the government has said.Since leaving the European Union, Britain has made clear its desire to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which removes most tariffs between Australia, Brunei,…
read moreWhen she was growing up, Sophie Corroon struggled to get through a ballet class or soccer tryout without having an anxiety attack.The idea of going to sleepovers or being home alone left her feeling panicked. Corroon’s anxiety grew even more during high school in Salt Lake City in the U.S. state of Utah when the…
read moreA team of World Health Organization scientists investigating the source of the coronavirus visited a wet market Sunday in Wuhan, China.A cluster of cases was linked to the Huanan Seafood Market when the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019. Since then, the coronavirus has infected more than 102 million people worldwide and killed…
read moreFormer President Donald Trump has parted ways with his lead impeachment lawyers little more than a week before his trial, two people familiar with the situation said Saturday.FILE – Attorney Deborah Barbier speaks to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Charleston, S.C., April 29, 2016.The change injected fresh uncertainty into the makeup and strategy of…
read moreScientists with the World Health Organization’s team investigating the source of the coronavirus that has infected more than 102 million people worldwide and killed more than 2.2 million have visited one of the hospitals in Wuhan, China, that treated some of the first patients.Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said on Twitter that the stories she’d heard…
read moreClimate isn’t the only thing changing. What comes next in the nation’s struggle to combat global warming will probably transform how Americans drive, where they get their power and other bits of day-to-day life, both quietly and obviously, experts say. So far, the greening of America has been subtle, driven by market forces, technology and voluntary actions.…
read moreIn the first large-scale, controlled data outside clinical trials, the two-dose Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is showing 92 percent effectiveness, according to Israeli health officials. It’s good news for Pfizer, which says the vaccine also appears to work against the British mutation of COVID-19. The Maccabi Health Fund studied 163,000 Israelis who had received two doses of…
read moreSocial media company Reddit was experiencing problems on its website on Saturday, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector.com. Customers reported trouble logging in and sending messages on its website. The outage affected regions such as New York, Boston and Washington in United States and Toronto in Canada, according to an outage map on Downdetector’s…
read moreThe European Union introduced tighter rules Friday on exports of COVID-19 vaccines that could hit shipments to nations like Great Britain, deepening a dispute with London over scarce supplies of potentially lifesaving shots.But amid an outcry in Northern Ireland and Britain, the European Commission made clear the new measure will not trigger controls on vaccines…
read moreU.S. pharmaceutical and medical device maker Johnson & Johnson says after a global trial, the COVID-19 vaccine it has developed is 66% effective in preventing infection. The one-dose vaccine, which was developed by the company’s Belgian subsidiary Janssen, appears to be 85% effective in preventing serious illness, even against the South African variant. Of the 44,000 people…
read moreAmerican Muslims are welcoming President Joe Biden’s executive order lifting travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries, restrictions often referred to as the travel ban or Muslim ban. VOA’s Yuni Salim spoke to American Muslims in this report narrated by Nova Poerwadi. …
read moreEuropean Union regulators on Friday approved the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the third vaccine approved for use on the European continent. Amid criticism the bloc is not moving fast enough to vaccinate its population, the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) expert committee unanimously recommended the vaccine for adults, despite concerns of inadequate data proving its effectiveness for…
read moreFederal officials at a California military base last year who met with the first American evacuees from Wuhan, China, the place where the coronavirus emerged, were not prepared for their mission, according to The Washington Post. They did not wear masks and had “no virus prevention plan or infection-control training” when they met with the evacuees,…
read moreGermany’s health minister said Friday he expects the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for emergency use later in the day but possibly only for restricted use. Speaking at a Berlin news briefing, German Health Minster Jens Spahn said Europe’s drug regulator, the Europe Medicines Agency (EMA) could approve the new vaccine with restrictions because…
read moreFederal officials at a California military base last year who met with the first American evacuees from Wuhan, China, the place where the coronavirus emerged, were not prepared for their mission, according to The Washington Post.They did not wear masks and had “no virus prevention plan or infection-control training” when they met with the evacuees,…
read morePresident Joe Biden reversed several Trump administration health care policies Thursday, including one that restricted access to abortion both inside and outside the United States. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story on what Biden’s actions may mean for women’s reproductive rights around the world. Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov …
read moreNovavax Inc. said Thursday that its COVID-19 vaccine appears 89% effective based on early findings from a British study and that it also seems to work — though not as well — against new mutated versions of the virus circulating in that country and South Africa.The announcement comes amid worry about whether a variety of…
read moreRose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuary in Whittier, California, may be the biggest cemetery in North America, but the 1,400-acre park is struggling to cope with the number of bodies awaiting funeral services because of an increase in COVID-19 deaths.Despite the numerous facilities at Rose Hills, there is about a month’s delay before families can…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden signed two orders expanding health care on Thursday, saying they would “undo the damage” of policies favored by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Biden restored U.S. funding for foreign nongovernmental groups that give information to women about abortions, and also opened a special three-month enrollment period for uninsured Americans who now…
read more2020 saw a wave of protests in the U.S. denouncing police brutality and demanding social justice during the final year of the Trump administration. Esha Sarai spoke with activists, protesters and organizers across the country about the future of the movement with a Democrat in the White House.Producer: Esha Sarai. Cameras: Natasha Mozgovaya, Esha Sarai. …
read moreFacebook’s quasi-independent oversight board has ruled the social media company must restore four of five posts that it had taken down.The cases involved Facebook’s policy regarding adult nudity, hate speech and “dangerous individuals.”The oversight board ordered images of female nipples displayed by a Brazilian user on Instagram to raise awareness about breast cancer to be…
read moreProtesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, late Wednesday and more demonstrations were scheduled for Thursday after the government implemented a court ruling that placed a near-total ban on abortions.The ruling, which was made October 22 but came into force Wednesday, permits abortions only in cases of rape and incest, and when the mother’s…
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