Category: News

Malawi has embarked on trials of genetically modified maize aimed to curb recurrent hunger and pests like fall armyworms and caterpillars. The trials come amid concerns about the possible effects genetically modified organisms have on health and the environment. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe. ...

Washington — A polio survivor known as the "man in the iron lung" has died aged 78, according to his family and a fundraising website. Paul Alexander of Dallas, Texas contracted polio at the age of six, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and reliant on a mechanical respirator to breathe for much of the time. Though often confined to his submarine-like cylinder, he excelled in his studies, earned a law degree, worked in the legal field and wrote a book. "With a heavy heart I need to say my brother passed last night," Philip Alexander posted on Facebook early Wednesday. "It was an honor to be part of someone's life who was as admired as he was." Christopher Ulmer, a disability advocate running a fundraiser for Alexander, also confirmed…

UNITED NATIONS — The number of children worldwide who died before age 5 reached a record low in 2022, the United Nations said in a report published Tuesday, as for the first time fewer than 5 million died. According to the estimate, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2022, a 51% decrease since 2000 and a 62% drop since 1990, according to the report, which still warned such progress is "precarious" and unequal. "There is a lot of good news, and the major one is that we have come to a historic level of under-five mortality, which ... reached under 5 million for the first time, so it is 4.9 million per year," Helga Fogstad, director of health at the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, told AFP. According to…

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Four astronauts from four countries caught a lift back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to end a half-year mission at the International Space Station. Their capsule streaked across the U.S. in the predawn darkness and splashed into the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Panhandle. NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli, a Marine helicopter pilot, led the returning crew of Denmark's Andreas Mogensen, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Konstantin Borisov. They moved into the space station last August. Their replacements arrived last week in their own SpaceX capsule. "We left you some peanut butter and tortillas," Moghbeli radioed after departing the orbiting complex on Monday. Replied NASA's Loral O'Hara: "I miss you guys already and thanks for that very generous gift." O'Hara has another few weeks at the space…

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The United Nations says at least 20 children in Gaza have died of starvation and doctors say many more are increasingly suffering from grave physical and mental illnesses. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Istanbul with Nedal Hamdouna and Amjed Tantesh in Rafah, Gaza. Camera: Ihab Abu Riyash, Yan Beochat. ...

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea will start deploying military physicians and doctors from public health centers to strike-hit hospitals on Monday to help care for patients affected by the walkout of nearly 12,000 trainee doctors from 100 hospitals over government reform plans. Twenty military surgeons along with 138 public health doctors will be assigned to 20 hospitals for four weeks, Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said at a meeting on Sunday. The number of military physicians called on to help so far was only a small fraction of the roughly 2,400 military doctors, according to a defense ministry briefing. The government has denied the walkout which started on Feb. 20 has caused a full-blown health crisis, but some hospitals have had to turn away patients and delay medical procedures. As of…

In Malawi, 35,000 backstreet abortions were carried out in 2022 and 2023, according to its Ministry of Health. These unsafe procedures are just one reason support for abortion rights has increased in recent years. Chimwemwe Padatha has more from Lilongwe. ...

Zambia has received the first shipment of a new medicine to prevent HIV infection. The delivery makes Zambia only the second country in the world after the United States to offer the injectable preventative outside of a research setting. Kathy Short reports from Lusaka, Zambia. Camera and video editing by Richard Kille. ...

Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday for the first time that he backed new end-of-life legislation that would allow what he called "help to die" and wanted his government to put forward a draft bill to parliament in May. France's neighbors Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands have adopted laws that allow medically assisted dying in some cases. But France has resisted that step, in part under pressure from the Catholic Church. The Claeys-Leonetti law on the end of life, adopted in 2016, authorizes deep sedation but only for people whose prognosis is threatened in the short-term. In an interview with Liberation newspaper, Macron said he did not want to call the new legislation euthanasia or assisted suicide, but rather "help to die." "It does not, strictly speaking, create a…

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washington — A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades.  The study from the Defense Department's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it.  "All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," said the report, which was…

Washington — A U.N. report released Friday about the prevalence of female genital mutilation around the globe is drawing attention to the practice among the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Muslim minority sect based in India. India is not on the UNICEF list of 31 countries released Friday. But the extent of FGM in India, although small relative to its population and long shrouded in secrecy, is coming into the open. The ritual is mostly practiced by the Dawoodi Bohras, a subsect of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam with an estimated 1 to 2 million followers around the globe. Recent surveys show that as many as 80% of Bohra girls undergo genital mutilation as a religious right of passage. “We are still significant, even if our numbers are few,” said Aarefa…