No Brain Injuries Among ‘Havana Syndrome’ Patients, New Study Finds

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Washington — An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U.S. diplomats and other government employees who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed "Havana syndrome, " researchers reported Monday. The National Institutes of Health's nearly five-year study offers no explanation for symptoms including headaches, balance problems and difficulties with thinking and sleep that were first reported in Cuba in 2016 and later by hundreds of American personnel in multiple countries. But it did contradict some earlier findings that raised the specter of brain injuries in people experiencing what the State Department now calls "anomalous health incidents." "These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time," said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH's chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. "They can be quite…
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Extermination Planned for Island Mice Breeding Out of Control, Eating Birds

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.” Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island's 297 square kilometers (115 square miles) to ensure success. If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing. The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the…
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What Makes People Happy? California Lawmakers Want to Find Out

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Assemblyman Anthony Rendon likes to spend his spare time away from the Capitol in Sacramento with his 4-year-old daughter at home near Los Angeles. Last weekend, he took her ice skating and afterward to an indoor playground, then let her get a donut after she agreed to ride her scooter on the way there.    “Those are the types of things that make me happy,” he said this week in an interview outside the state Assembly chambers, where he's served as a lawmaker for a dozen years.    Now Rendon, a Democrat who was one of the longest-serving Assembly speakers in California history, is spending his last year in office trying to make happiness more central to policymaking. He created a first-in-the-nation group to study the issue,…
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Kenyan Doctors Strike; Patients Left Unattended or Turned Away

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NAIROBI, Kenya — Doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals began a nationwide strike Thursday, accusing the government of failing to implement a raft of promises from a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 after a 100-day strike that saw people dying from lack of care. The Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union said they went on strike to demand comprehensive medical cover for the doctors and because the government has yet to post 1,200 medical interns. Davji Bhimji, secretary-general of KMPDU, said 4,000 doctors took part in the strike despite a labor court order asking the union to put the strike on hold to allow talks with the government. And Dennis Miskellah, deputy secretary general of the union, said they would disregard the court order the same way the government had…
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Namibia to Begin HPV Vaccine Rollout in April

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Windhoek, Namibia — A top Namibian health official tells VOA the southern Africa country is set to begin distribution of the HPV vaccine to adolescent girls in April as a preventative measure in the fight against cervical cancer. Namibia has a population of about 1 million women ages 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer. Each year, about 375 women in Namibia are diagnosed with the disease, and the fatality rate is over 50%. The Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, known as HPV, has been proven to greatly lessen the chance of getting cervical cancer. Ben Nangombe, executive director at Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services, says health workers will begin vaccinating about 183,000 girls between the ages of nine and 14 next month. He says the…
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‘Man in Iron Lung’ Dead at 78

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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…
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UN: Childhood Deaths at Record Low, but Progress ‘Precarious’

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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…
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Four Astronauts From Four Countries Return to Earth After Six Months in Orbit

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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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South Korea Deploys Military, Public Doctors to Strike-hit Hospitals

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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…
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Zambia Rolls Out New HIV Prevention Medicine

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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. ...
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France’s Macron Backs ‘End of Life’ Bill, Debate Expected by May

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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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Pentagon Study Finds No Sign of Alien Life in Reported UFO Sightings

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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…
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Activists See India as New Front in Fight Against Female Genital Mutilation

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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…
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US-China Science, Tech Pact Is Renewed for Another Six Months

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State Department — The United States and China have agreed to extend a science and technology agreement for another six months, the U.S. State Department said Thursday. “The Department of State on behalf of the U.S. government is negotiating to amend, extend and strengthen protections within the U.S.-PRC Science and Technology Agreement (STA). In February 2024, the United States and PRC agreed to an additional short-term six-month extension of the U.S.-PRC STA,” a spokesperson told VOA. “The short-term six-month extension keeps the agreement in force while we continue negotiations,” the spokesperson added. U.S. officials have said the STA provides consistent standards for government-to-government scientific cooperation between the U.S. and China. While the agreement supports scientific collaboration in areas that benefit the United States, U.S. officials acknowledge the challenges posed by China's…
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