Month: November 2022

Avian flu has wiped out 50.54 million birds in the United States this year, making it the country’s deadliest outbreak in history, U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed on Thursday.  The deaths of chickens, turkeys and other birds represent the worst U.S. animal-health disaster to date, topping the previous record of 50.5 million birds that…

Delegates at a global summit on trade in endangered species were scheduled to decide Thursday whether to approve a proposal to protect sharks, a move that could drastically reduce the lucrative and often cruel shark fin trade. The proposal would place dozens of species of the requiem shark and the hammerhead shark families on Appendix…

Abbas Hashem fixed his worried gaze on the horizon — the day was almost gone and still, there was no sign of the last of his water buffaloes. He knows that when his animals don’t come back from roaming the marshes of this part of Iraq, they must be dead. The dry earth is cracked…

Every few minutes, 14-month-old Awa coughs, the phlegm rising from deep within her chest. Her mother, Meta Ba, says Awa’s been coughing that way for as long as she can remember. Ba, who suffers from chronic migraines, works as an artisanal gold miner in Senegal’s far eastern region of Kedougou, near the borders of Mali…

China’s daily COVID cases have climbed to the highest since the pandemic began, official data showed Thursday, despite the government persisting with a zero-tolerance approach involving grueling lockdowns and travel restrictions. The numbers are relatively small when compared with China’s vast population of 1.4 billion and the caseloads seen in Western countries at the height…

More than 40 million children missed getting vaccinated against measles last year, prompting a significant setback in global efforts to eradicate the highly contagious disease worldwide, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint report Wednesday. Vaccination campaigns were disrupted in several countries because of COVID-19…

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake left more than 260 dead and hundreds injured as buildings crumbled and terrified residents ran for their lives on Indonesia’s main island of Java. Bodies continued to be pulled from the debris on Tuesday morning in the hardest-hit city of Cianjur, located in the country’s most densely populated province of West…

The White House brought out two of the nation’s top doctors Tuesday to urge all Americans to update their COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations in the next six weeks as the holiday season approaches. The nearly $500 million effort will focus on reaching older Americans and communities hardest hit by the virus, which has killed more…

A few weeks ago, Lebanon detected its first cases of cholera in 30 years. The highly contagious disease has since spread and officials in the cash-strapped country fear there is a high risk of it becoming endemic if they are unable to tackle the root causes of the outbreak. Jacob Russell reports from the town…

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. health official celebrated and vilified as the face of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response, used his final White House briefing on Tuesday to denounce division and promote vaccines. Fauci, who plans to retire soon as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and top U.S. infectious disease official, has dealt with…

Botswana has approved the use of injectable anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to improve adherence to HIV treatment. Minister of Health Edwin Dikoloti says the injections, given every two months, are more convenient than daily pills, which patients sometimes skip.  Health Minister Edwin Dikoloti said the use of injectable ARV medication will start next year, after the…

Five months after Thailand became the first country in Asia to legalize cannabis, boosters of the hot-button herb are fighting to keep it that way amid mounting calls to re-list the plant as a narcotic. Cannabis sellers, growers and smokers rallied outside the national government’s headquarters in the capital, Bangkok, Tuesday to discourage authorities from…

Bacterial infections are the second leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for one in eight of all deaths in 2019, the first global study of their lethality revealed on Tuesday. The massive new study, published in The Lancet journal, looked at deaths from 33 common bacterial pathogens and 11 types of infection across 204 countries…

The World Health Organization said Monday it was thrashing out a new list of priority pathogens that risk sparking pandemics or outbreaks and should be kept under close observation.  The WHO said the aim was to update a list used to guide global research and development (R&D) and investment, especially in vaccines, tests and treatments. …

NASA’s Orion capsule reached the moon Monday, whipping around the back side and passing within 80 miles (128 kilometers) on its way to a record-breaking lunar orbit.  The close approach occurred as the crew capsule and its three test dummies were on the far side of the moon. Because of the half-hour communication blackout, flight…

Beijing’s most populous district urged residents to stay at home Monday, extending a request from the weekend as the city’s COVID-19 case numbers rose, with many businesses shut and schools in the area shifting classes online. Nationally, new case numbers held steady on Sunday near April peaks as China battles outbreaks in cities across the…

U.S. Army veteran Matt Schermerhorn couldn’t give blood for years because he was stationed in Europe during a deadly mad cow disease scare there. Now, he’s proud to be back in the donor’s chair. Schermerhorn, 58, is among thousands of people, including current and former military members, who have returned to blood donation centers across…

Negotiators early Sunday approved a historic deal that would create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries’ carbon pollution, but an overall larger agreement still was up in the air because of a fight over emission reduction efforts. After the decision on the fund was approved,…

What is bigger: A ronna or a quetta? Scientists meeting outside of Paris on Friday — who have expanded the world’s measuring unit systems for the first time this century as the global population surges past 8 billion — have the answer. Rapid scientific advances and vast worldwide data storage on the web, in smartphones…