Poland’s environment minister has decided to stop the extensive logging in one of Europe’s oldest forests that has been declared illegal by a top European Union court, authorities said Tuesday. Environment Minister Henryk Kowalczyk has ordered the government’s 2017 permission …
California has become the first U.S. state to require solar installations on most new homes, by the year 2020. Mike O’Sullivan reports that the state is leading a national effort to reduce carbon emissions as Washington adopts less ambitious goals. …
For the first time, the World Health Organization is taking steps to eliminate a substance that leads to a non-communicable disease: heart disease. The World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced a plan Monday to eliminate trans fat …
A new look at old data is giving scientists a fresh reason to view Europa, a moon of Jupiter, as a leading candidate in the search for life beyond Earth, with evidence of water plumes shooting into space. A bend …
Congo has agreed to allow the World Health Organization to use an experimental Ebola vaccine to combat an outbreak announced last week, the WHO director-general said Monday. The aim is for health officials to start using the vaccine, once it’s …
Kenya’s government is pushing ahead with a plan to hire 100 Cuban doctors despite opposition from a doctors’ union that says the money could be used to employ local physicians instead. President Uhuru Kenyatta agreed the deal last year and …
A new global health plan is being rolled out by the World Health Organization, along with a health initiative called Resolve to Save Lives. The goal is to prevent half a million people a year from dying of heart disease. …
Imagine storing digital data in DNA, wearing a device that makes you smarter or creating new materials by manipulating the genes of microbes. These ideas may sound like science fiction, but scientists are working on technologies that combine what they …
Leaders of development agencies say the fight against poverty needs a more aggressive focus on the health and education of the young and vulnerable. NGO and development officials spoke at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles recently, where …
A koala hospital and new wildlife reserves are the focus of one of Australia’s boldest plans to protect the vulnerable marsupial. Almost 25,000 hectares of state forest will be set aside for koalas in New South Wales state, which will …
Scientists at Rockefeller University in New York discovered that the brains of songbirds use a similar process as humans do when learning to make sounds. And, as a result, VOA’s Deborah Block reports, the research could lead to treatments for …
NASA is planning to send a tiny autonomous helicopter to Mars on its next rover mission to the red planet. The space agency announced Friday that the helicopter will be carried aboard the Mars 2020 rover as a technology demonstration …
Aardvarks are not the most attractive animals. They have rabbitlike ears, a kangaroo tail and a nose like a pig. But they are mammals, and that means they feed their babies milk. At the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio, an aardvark …
Electric-powered ground transport is slowly but steadily taking over from one based on fossil fuels. Electric cars, buses, bikes, scooters, even electric skateboards are growing more common on streets around the world. The next step is electric aviation, and airplane …
America will not be “cheated” by foreign countries that “extort” unreasonably low drug prices from U.S. companies, declared President Donald Trump on Friday. Rolling out an ambitious blueprint to significantly cut the cost of prescription medication here and abroad, Trump …
An updated version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, tailored for eventual crewed missions into orbit, made its debut launch Friday from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying a communications satellite for Bangladesh. The newly minted Block-5 edition of the Falcon 9 …
On Yaji Mountain in southern China, they are checking in the sows a thousand head per floor in high-rise “hog hotels.” Privately owned agricultural company Guangxi Yangxiang Co Ltd is running two seven-floor sow breeding operations, and is putting up …
Before taking office, President Donald Trump railed against the pharmaceutical industry and accused it of “getting away with murder.” The populist rhetoric appears to be giving way to a more nuanced strategy focused on making the pharmaceutical market more open …
The World Health Organization said Friday it is preparing for “the worst case scenario” for an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. WHO said Thursday that between April 4 and May 5, twenty-seven cases of fever with hemorrhagic …
Advanced sensor technology can monitor a wide range of applications, from water quality to air pollution to energy use. Faith Lapidus tells us how a team of scientists at the University of Washington, with support from the National Science Foundation, …
Two weeks of climate talks organized by the United Nations ended Thursday as countries failed to resolve differences about implementing the Paris climate accord. The negotiations will resume in Bangkok in September, where an extra week’s meeting has now been …
Young men who smoke are more likely to have a stroke before age 50 than their peers who avoid tobacco, a small study suggests. Smoking has long been linked to an increased risk of stroke in older adults, but research …
There’s a budding industry that’s trying to solve the problem of the limp lettuce and tasteless tomatoes in America’s supermarkets. It’s full of technologists who grow crops in buildings instead of outdoors, short-cutting the need to prematurely harvest produce for …
The Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth, a magical water source supposedly capable of reversing the aging process. But scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, are working to extend human life span and …