Japan will withdraw from the International Whaling Commission and resume commercial whaling in July. Wednesday’s announcement was met with opposition from animal rights groups, who say that Tokyo is violating international law. Japan says whaling will only be in its …
Female circumcision — a practice that opponents call female genital mutilation — has been a coming-of-age ritual among the Maasai tribe of Kenya for generations. But it is becoming less common, in part because of one man who is trying …
Although space travel exposes astronauts to forms of radiation that are uncommon on Earth, and that are linked to cancers and heart problems, a U.S. study suggests this doesn’t significantly shorten their lives. Researchers compared nearly 60 years of data on U.S. male astronauts …
Israel’s Parliament has unanimously approved a law to permit exports of medical marijuana, allowing Israel to tap the lucrative global market. Israel will become the third country, after the Netherlands and Canada, to take its medical cannabis global. The Israeli …
A Russian cosmonaut who explored a mysterious hole in a capsule docked to the International Space Station says Russian law enforcement agencies are investigating what caused the opening. Sergei Prokopyev said Monday investigators were looking at samples he and crewmate …
South Africa has the world’s largest antiretroviral therapy program with over 4 million people receiving treatment. But the ARV drug therapy, regarded by many as a panacea for HIV, is complicated and comes with its a number of side effects, …
One of the most common birth defects in the world is a cleft lip. It’s essentially a gap in the upper lip where the skin didn’t grow together. Babies with cleft lips may also have a cleft palates, where the …
Residents of a high-end neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro woke up to the unpleasant smell of 13 tons of rotting dead fish floating in the city’s Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon. Biologists believe the extreme heat caused by El Nino killed …
The world’s only known albino orangutan climbed trees, foraged for food and began building a nest after being released into a remote Borneo jungle more than a year after conservation officials found her starving and dehydrated in an Indonesian village. …
Pregnant women have been systematically overlooked in the development and deployment of new vaccines, undermining their health and their communities’ safety, according to guidelines released this month by an international team of researchers, scientists and health care providers. The report, …
A congressional report on prescription pill dumping in West Virginia blames U.S. prescription drug distributors and the Drug Enforcement Administration for not doing enough to help mitigate the nation’s opioid addiction and overdose crisis. The 324-page report released Wednesday by …
Motor vehicles and firearms kill young Americans more than any other cause, like disease, which has significantly declined, according to a new study. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that less than 2 percent (or 20,360) of all U.S. deaths …
Attorneys general from nine U.S. states sued the Trump administration on Thursday to stop future seismic tests for oil and gas deposits off the East Coast, joining a lawsuit from environmentalists concerned that the tests harm whales and dolphins. Seismic testing uses air gun …
Italian paleontologists say the largest and oldest meat-eating dinosaur ever to have been found was from what is now the northern area of Lombardy. In the scientific journal PerrJ, the Italians recently published their study on the fossils discovered years ago …
A bridge over a busy interstate highway — not for cars or pedestrians, but for wildlife — is under construction in Washington state. The aim is to keep the animals off the road while reconnecting their forest habitat. VOA’s Steve …
An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday narrowly recommended prescribing the opioid overdose reversal drug, naloxone, along with addictive painkillers. The panel voted 12-11 in favor of labeling changes for opioids that recommend co-prescribing the …
Plastic knives just won’t cut it any longer, if the European Union has its way. The 28-nation bloc moved closer to banning single-use straws, plates, cutlery and cotton swabs, after officials from EU member states and the European Parliament on …
One of the most common birth defects in the world is a cleft lip. It’s essentially a gap in the upper lip where the skin didn’t grow together. Babies with cleft lips may also have a cleft palates, where the …
Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they …
Sue, the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever unearthed, gets to show off its new lair this week at the Field Museum in Chicago. The museum on Friday will unveil the 40-1/2-foot-long (12.3-meter) Sue, one of the world’s …
Elon Musk’s SpaceX halted Tuesday’s launch of a long-delayed navigation satellite for the U.S. military, postponing for at least a day the space transportation company’s first designated national security mission for the United States. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a …
If you want to understand why U.S. life expectancy is declining, West Virginia is a good place to start. The state is a bellwether of bad health, portending major problems years before they became severe nationally. “It seems that the …
The government’s top doctor is taking aim at the best-selling electronic cigarette brand in the U.S., urging swift action to prevent Juul and similar vaping brands from addicting millions of teenagers. In an advisory Tuesday, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said …
A microscopic examination of fossils from China has revealed that the fur-like body covering of pterosaurs, the remarkable flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs, was actually made up of rudimentary feathers. The surprising discovery described by scientists on Monday means …