A British historian, an Italian archaeologist and an American preschool teacher have never met in person, but they share a prominent pandemic bond. Plagued by eerily similar symptoms, the three women are credited with describing, naming and helping bring long …
China said Monday it would scrap mandatory quarantine on arrival, further unwinding years of strict virus controls as the country battles a surge in cases. Having mostly cut itself off from the rest of the world during the pandemic, China …
China’s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily COVID-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said Sunday. Despite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported …
Three years ago, scientists in Wuhan, China first reported infections from a novel coronavirus. Since then, the world has developed and delivered 13 billion shots against COVID-19. It is an unprecedented achievement, but it has been tarnished by unequal access. …
World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a grim assessment of the many health challenges and threats people around the world have faced this year. Topping the list was the COVID-19 pandemic that has sickened and killed millions of …
An arctic blast has brought extreme cold, heavy snow and intense wind across much of the U.S. — just in time for the holidays. The weather system, dubbed a “bomb cyclone,” is disrupting travel and causing hazardous winter conditions. Where …
Hong Kong is forecast to grow economically next year after the city’s leader announced the removal of nearly all COVID-19 restrictions on international arrivals and said it would reopen its border with China. But experts say the coronavirus pandemic and …
Shanghai authorities urged residents to stay at home this weekend, seeking a toned-down Christmas in the nation’s most populous city as COVID-19 rages nationwide after tough curbs were lifted. A branch of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission on Saturday urged …
Half a million people in a single Chinese city are being infected with COVID-19 every day, a senior health official has said, in a rare and quickly censored acknowledgement that the country’s wave of infections is not being reflected in …
The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and high levels of opioid overdose deaths drove life expectancy in the United States down for the second consecutive year in 2021, with a child born in that year expected to live 76.4 years, …
Canada’s Western Hudson Bay polar bear population has fallen 27% in just five years, according to a government report released this week, suggesting climate change is affecting the animals. Every autumn, the bears living along the western edge of the …
City officials and outreach workers across the United States were rushing to get people off the streets this week, turning sites such as libraries and arenas into shelters to mitigate a humanitarian crisis caused by freezing weather and an influx …
The highly contagious omicron subvariant XBB has surged to more than 50% of COVID-19 cases in the northeastern United States and risks spreading fast as millions of Americans began holiday travel on Friday. It’s estimated that at week’s end, XBB …
One of the world’s largest marine citizen science projects has surveyed its 500th section of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef since the effort began in 2020. This year’s Great Reef Census, which runs from September to December, has revealed severe damage …
Russia’s space agency said it is considering a plan to send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring home three crew members ahead of schedule, after their Soyuz capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to …
A former judge of the Supreme People’s Court, the highest court in China, is calling for the suspension or revocation of cases against some 80 people found guilty of violating “zero-COVID” policy regulations since the advent of omicron, a less …
Uganda on Thursday received two more potential vaccines for a trial against the Sudan strain of the deadly Ebola virus. Uganda has recorded 142 confirmed cases and 55 deaths since the September outbreak but has had no new cases since …
As farmers in the United States are coping with rising input costs, some are turning to environmentally beneficial methods to curb expenses and make money while sequestering a driver of climate change. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Glasgow, Illinois. …
The World Health Organization is concerned about a spike in COVID-19 infections in China and is supporting the government to focus its efforts on vaccinating people at the highest risk across the country, the head of the U.N. agency said …
It could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA’s InSight lander, which has fallen silent after four years on Mars. The lander’s power levels have been dwindling for months because of all the dust coating its solar …
Scientists have uncovered new clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles. Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the …
Negotiators reached a historic deal at a U.N. biodiversity conference early Monday that would represent the most significant effort to protect the world’s lands and oceans and provide critical financing to save biodiversity in the developing world. The global framework …
Hollywood Cat is no longer. The Los Angeles area’s most famous mountain lion, an aged wild male feline sighted around the city’s Griffith Park, was euthanized Saturday, wildlife officials said. For years, it was known to prowl around the hillside …
Uganda on Saturday lifted a two-month lockdown on two districts at the epicenter of the country’s Ebola epidemic, amid cautious hope that the outbreak could end soon. Since authorities declared an Ebola outbreak Sept. 20, the East African nation has …