The white-colored humanoid “Garmi” does not look much different from a typical robot — it stands on a platform with wheels and is equipped with a black screen on which two blue circles acting as eyes are attached. But retired …
Month: March 2023
The U.N.’s premiere global body fighting for gender equality on Saturday called for wide-ranging efforts to close the gap between men and women in today’s technology-driven world and urged zero tolerance for gender-based violence and harassment online. In a document …
Brazilian federal agents aboard three helicopters descended on an illegal mining site on Tuesday in the Amazon rainforest. They were met with gunfire, and the shooters escaped, leaving behind an increasingly familiar find for authorities: Starlink internet units. Starlink, a …
Barbara Washington is a lifelong resident of Convent, Louisiana, a town of fewer than 500 residents along the Mississippi River that has been hit hard by cancer. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven … about eight,” she told VOA, …
The Vatican Museums officially reopened its African and American ethnographic collections Thursday by showcasing intricately restored Rwandan raffia screens that were sent by Catholic missionaries to the Vatican for a 1925 exhibit. The display at the Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum …
Advisers to the World Health Organization urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic Saturday after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens. New sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 …
Burundi has declared a national public health emergency after polio was detected in a 4-year-old and two other children who had been in contact with the child. The polio outbreak is Burundi’s first in more than 30 years. The landlocked …
The COVID-19 pandemic could settle down this year to a point where it poses a threat similar to flu, the World Health Organization said Friday. The WHO voiced confidence that it will be able to declare an end to the …
The Southern Nevada Water Authority on Thursday voted to accept a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to fund cloud seeding in other Western states whose rivers feed the parched desert region. The weather modification method uses …
U.S. former officials and experts are urging greater efforts to thwart Chinese espionage, which many believe has enabled Beijing to develop a range of advanced weaponry on the back of stolen American technology. James Anderson, a former acting undersecretary of …
The Biden administration has demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a possible U.S. ban, the company told Reuters this week. The move follows the introduction of a new U.S. legislation that …
Mozambique’s health minister said Friday a cholera outbreak in the area hit by Cyclone Freddy killed eight people this week and hospitalized 250 – part of 600 sickened since the record storm made landfall in February. Health Minister Armindo Tiago …
New Zealand said on Friday it would ban TikTok on devices with access to the country’s parliamentary network due to cybersecurity concerns, becoming the latest nation to limit the use of the video-sharing app on government-related devices. Concerns have mounted …
As tough as action film star Michelle Yeoh is, it still might have been hard for her to clinch the best actress Oscar and become the first Asian woman to win the coveted award in its 95-year history—if everything hadn’t …
Lack of access to clean drinking water is being exacerbated by climate change. In fact, less than 1% of the world’s water is fresh and accessible, according to Melissa Ho, senior vice president of freshwater and food at the World …
Time may be running out in the U.S. for Chinese-owned entertainment platform TikTok, with the White House on Thursday supporting proposed legislation that would effectively ban the app over concerns about the safety of the data of the 100 million …
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a number of improvements in access to mental health care on Thursday to reduce suicides in the military but held off on endorsing more controversial recommendations to restrict gun and ammunition purchases by young …
Deaths of pregnant women in the United States fell in 2022, dropping significantly from a six-decade high during the pandemic, new data suggests. More than 1,200 U.S. women died in 2021 during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth, according to a …
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 23. Lawmakers have questions about the app’s connections to China. For VOA, Deana Mitchell reports. …
Microsoft on Thursday trumpeted its latest plans to put artificial intelligence into the hands of more users, answering a spate of unveilings this week by its rival Google with upgrades to its own widely used office software. The company previewed …
Returning to the United States seven years ago, I was puzzled how the Bureau of Land Management had seemingly become involved with race politics. Then I deciphered that the hashtag #BLM had taken on a new meaning during my quarter …
Dany Bill is a Cameroon native and seven-time Muay Thai world champion. He was recently in Los Angeles, raising money for his foundation in Africa, which trains young people in the sport. Genia Dulot caught up with him there. …
TikTok confirmed Wednesday that U.S. officials have recommended the popular video-sharing app part ways with its Chinese parent ByteDance to avoid a national ban. Western powers, including the European Union and the United States, have been taking an increasingly tough …
For the first time, scientists have created baby mice from two males. This raises the distant possibility of using the same technique for people — although experts caution that very few mouse embryos developed into live mouse pups, and no …