German Health Minister Jens Spahn said Thursday the nation has vaccinated millions more people than previously thought, thanks to some unreported vaccination numbers discovered by the Robert Koch Institute for Disease Control. The institute says nearly 80% of adults in Germany are fully vaccinated, and about 84% have received at least one shot. Previous official…
read moreU.S. Senate leaders reached an agreement Thursday to extend the government’s borrowing authority through early December to avert what could have been the country’s first-ever default on its debts in less than two weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the pact on the Senate floor after negotiations with Republican leader Mitch McConnell. He proposed…
read moreMore than 260,000 African children under the age of five die from malaria each year, including more than 10,000 in Kenya, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO’s backing of a malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, for children in sub-Saharan Africa has raised hopes of preventing those deaths. The vaccine proved effective in a pilot program…
read moreGoogle plans to invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years to ensure access to fast and cheaper internet and will back startups to support the continent’s digital transformation, it said on Wednesday. The unit of U.S. tech company Alphabet Inc made the announcement at a virtual event where it launched an Africa…
read moreAmericans are being warned to beware of potentially deadly fake prescription pills that are laced with the powerful opioid fentanyl and the highly addictive stimulant methamphetamine. The counterfeit tablets are linked to a wave of drug overdoses killing unsuspecting users. In its first warning in six years, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said international and domestic…
read moreWhat do U.S. senators do when they want to delay a vote? They fillibuster. VOA explains how this delay tactic works. …
read moreAmazon.com Inc.’s livestreaming e-sports platform Twitch said Wednesday that it had been hit by a data breach. It gave no details. An anonymous hacker claimed to have leaked Twitch data, including information related to the company’s source code, clients and unreleased games, according to Video Games Chronicle, which first reported the news of the hack.…
read moreThe U.S. Senate appeared near to a temporary deal to avert a federal debt default in the next two weeks, after Democrats said Wednesday that they might accept a Republican proposal to defuse the partisan standoff that threatens the broader economy. Democrats called off an early-afternoon vote after the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, floated…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden is meeting Wednesday with some of America’s top business leaders to make the case that Congress must increase the government’s borrowing authority before October 18, when the U.S. expects to run out of money to pay its bills. The White House said before the meeting that the executives “understand firsthand that a default would be economically devastating” for the United…
read moreThe United States is taking new steps to make sure the country’s air and surface transportation sectors will not be crippled by ransomware or cyberattacks. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the measures Tuesday at a virtual cybersecurity conference, warning that recent incidents such as the SolarWinds hack and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack showed…
read moreThe World Health Organization recommended Wednesday that children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions on the continent with moderate-to-high malaria transmission receive a malaria vaccine. The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, proved effective in a pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800,000 children since 2019. The WHO said malaria is…
read moreThe Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Wednesday awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to two scientists for their work – independently – in developing a new way of building molecules, a process with applications throughout industry. Speaking in Stockholm, academy Secretary General Goran Hansson said chemists Benjamin List of Germany’s Max Planck Institute and…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden indicated Tuesday senators from his Democratic Party could bypass a supermajority voting rule in order to increase the nation’s debt limit without Republican votes. “It’s a real possibility,” Biden told reporters outside the White House. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the government will likely reach its borrowing limit by October 18 unless Congress acts. …
read morePresident Joe Biden traveled to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his legislative priorities on infrastructure and social spending. The two bills face a stalemate in Congress as members of Biden’s own Democratic Party wrangle over the size and scope of the package. Investing in infrastructure and expanding social welfare programs are two key issues…
read moreFacebook is in the hot seat again. A recent Wall Street Journal report cites internal knowledge of its harmful effects and the company’s reticence to act. A whistleblower, a former Facebook employee, came out in public this week to testify against the social media company, only adding to the scrutiny. Tina Trinh reports. Produced by:…
read moreKey U.S. lawmakers pilloried social media giant Facebook on Tuesday after Frances Haugen, an inside whistleblower who once worked at the company, alleged that Facebook’s products are harming young people, undermining democracy and helping to divide the country politically. Haugen, who worked as a Facebook project manager for less than two years, held Facebook Chief…
read moreThe crew of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft was welcomed aboard the International Space Station Tuesday, though a communications glitch during their final approach delayed their eventual boarding. The Soyuz spacecraft was launched Tuesday from the Russian spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The ship was carrying a history-making crew, as it included film director Klim Shipenko and…
read moreFacebook took another pounding in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday and a senator called on federal regulators to investigate accusations by a whistleblower that the company pushed for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety. In an opening statement to a Senate Commerce subcommittee, chair Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said that Facebook knew…
read moreThe Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Tuesday announced the Nobel prize in physics goes to three scientists for their work in helping to understand complex physical systems, work that has proved valuable in quantifying and predicting climate. At a Stockholm news conference, the academy’s Secretary General Goran K. Hansson and a panel of Nobel jurors…
read moreResearchers in Australia have shown a bacteria can sterilize and eradicate a disease-carrying mosquito that is responsible for spreading dengue, yellow fever and Zika. Three million male Aedes aegypti, or yellow fever mosquitoes, were released in the trial at three sites in Northern Queensland state. They were reared at James Cook University in Cairns and…
read moreA new study reveals the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is 90% effective at keeping someone from being hospitalized from the virus up to six months after receiving the second dose. Researchers from Pfizer and U.S.-based health care consortium Kaiser Permanente observed the records of about 3.4 million people who were members…
read moreWith time ticking down on his term as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Jerome Powell’s reappointment to the post looks less certain than it did just a few weeks ago, as left-leaning Democrats hammer away at a series of scandals involving senior Fed personnel. On Monday, Powell’s chief antagonist in Congress, Senator Elizabeth…
read more
