Hoping to witness the launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 rocket to the moon is – so far – an exercise in frustration for Mark Franko. “I was hoping to feel the noise and the power and the sound – it would have been pretty interesting to see, I think,” Franko told VOA as he and…
read moreAs temperatures reach record highs worldwide, air conditioning is becoming more of a necessity. From Somerville, Massachusetts, Matt Dibble has this story of a company hoping to make AC units more efficient. …
read moreIn an executive order signed Monday, President Joe Biden announced steps by his administration to bolster the “bioeconomy” in the United States, a classification that covers research and development across a broad swath of products, including medical supplies, sustainable new fuels and food, as well as technologies meant to help fight climate change. The order…
read morePresident Joe Biden on Monday urged Americans to come together for a new “national purpose” — his administration’s effort to end cancer “as we know it.” At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Biden channeled JFK’s famed moonshot speech 60 years ago, likening the space race to his own effort and hoping it,…
read moreThe European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Monday recommended a COVID-19 booster designed to combat the currently circulating Omicron BA.4/5 subvariants, days after endorsing a pair of boosters tailored to target the older BA.1 Omicron variant. The latest recommendation is for a so-called bivalent vaccine developed by Pfizer PFE.N and BioNTech 22UAy.DE, which targets BA.4/5 as…
read moreJeff Bezos’ rocket company suffered its first launch failure Monday. No one was aboard, only science experiments. The Blue Origin rocket veered off course over West Texas about a minute after liftoff. The capsule’s launch abort system immediately kicked in, lifting the craft off the top. Several minutes later, the capsule parachuted onto the remote…
read moreWhen Emmanuel Obeng-Dankwa is worried about making rent on his New York City apartment, he sometimes holds off on filling his blood pressure medication. “If there’s no money, I prefer to skip the medication to being homeless,” said Obeng-Dankwa, a 58-year-old security guard. He is among a majority of adults in the U.S. who say…
read moreNew York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a disaster emergency Friday in a bid to accelerate efforts to vaccinate residents against polio after the virus was detected in wastewater samples taken in four counties. Hochul’s executive order followed the discovery of the virus last month in samples from Long Island’s Nassau County, bordering the New York…
read moreNASA’s moon mission suffers another setback, this time delaying a test launch for at least a few weeks. Plus, a look back at the first color images of Mars, and we wish a very happy birthday to a TV space pioneer. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …
read moreThe introduction of a nationwide mental health hotline has increased the numbers of people calling for help in the United States and the need for more counselors to answer their calls. For VOA, Svitlana Prystynska has this story from the Western state of Colorado. Camera – Vladimir Petruniv. …
read moreThe World Health Organization is warning of a resurgence of deadly meningitis in Africa because COVID-19 has disrupted lifesaving vaccination campaigns. The near elimination of the deadly form of meningitis type A in Africa is one of the continent’s biggest health success stories. Over the last 12 years, about 350 million Africans have received a…
read moreA new malaria vaccine developed by Britain’s University of Oxford is 80% effective in preventing infection, according to trial results published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal. Scientists say it represents a huge breakthrough that has the potential to save millions of lives and eventually eradicate the disease. The vaccine, named R21/Matrix-M, had already shown…
read moreA panel of federal health advisers voted Wednesday to recommend approval for an experimental drug to treat Lou Gehrig’s disease, a remarkable turnaround for the much-debated medication that was previously rejected by the same group earlier this year. The Food and Drug Administration advisers voted 7-2 that data from Amylyx Pharma warranted approval, despite hours…
read moreAs the world grapples with multiple climate-related disasters on different continents, a watchdog group in Washington is pressing the Biden administration to take more aggressive action to reduce emissions in the United States. A report, issued by the liberal-leaning Revolving Door Project, outlines a wide number of actions that the group believes President Joe Biden…
read moreElectronic cigarette maker Juul Labs has agreed to pay nearly $440 million to settle a two-year investigation by 33 U.S. states into the marketing of its high-nicotine vaping products, which have long been blamed for sparking a national surge in teen vaping. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the deal Tuesday on behalf of the…
read moreZimbabwe is struggling to contain a measles outbreak that has killed nearly 700 people, most of them children and young people. Zimbabwe’s government said Tuesday thousands of people have been infected with measles since an April outbreak and 698 people have died, most of them children. Zimbabwe’s health ministry blames some religious sects for the…
read moreThe death toll from a measles outbreak in Zimbabwe has risen to almost 700 children, the country’s health ministry has said. Some are calling for the enactment of legislation to make vaccination mandatory in a country where anti-modern medicine religious sects hold sway on large swathes of the population of 15 million people. The southern…
read moreArgentine health officials said Saturday that four people in a clinic in northwestern Tucuman province had died of Legionnaires’ disease, a relatively rare bacterial infection of the lungs. Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters that Legionnaires’ had been identified as the underlying cause of double pneumonia in the four, who had suffered high fevers, body…
read moreThe U.K. will begin its autumn COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the coming weeks after authorizing booster shots made by Pfizer and Moderna that have been modified to target both the original virus and the widely circulating omicron variant. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said Saturday that it had approved the Pfizer vaccine for…
read moreA protest by a group of HIV-positive people in New Delhi, demanding a regular supply of life-saving antiretroviral therapy drugs across the country, ended this week, after 42 days, as the government has reportedly resumed the interrupted supply of the drugs. Around 2.3 million people are infected with HIV in India. Since 2004, the government…
read moreThe World Health Organization is monitoring a cluster of 10 cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause in an outbreak in Argentina that so far has included three deaths. The cases are linked to a single private clinic in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, located in the northwest part of the country, according…
read moreA new hormone treatment improved the cognitive function of six men with Down syndrome by 10% to 30%, scientists said this week, adding the “promising” results may raise hopes of improving patients’ quality of life. However, the scientists emphasized the small study did not point toward a cure for the cognitive disorders of people with…
read more