U.S. health officials are concerned about the increasing number of American teenagers smoking electronic cigarettes, a practice commonly known as vaping. So many teenagers are taking up the habit that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is worried that it’s become an epidemic. Nina Vishneva reports from New York in …

China launched a groundbreaking mission Saturday to land a spacecraft on the largely unexplored far side of the moon, demonstrating its growing ambitions as a space power to rival Russia, the European Union and the U.S.    A Long March 3B rocket carrying a lunar probe blasted off at 2:23 …

NASA’s new Mars lander has captured the first sounds of the “really unworldly” Martian wind. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory released audio clips of the alien wind Friday. The low-frequency rumblings were collected by the InSight lander during its first week of operations at Mars. The wind is estimated to be …

Gorillas at a zoo in England have demonstrated a distinctly human trait while attempting to solve a puzzle: cheating. …

The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for urgent action to put a brake on road traffic crashes that kill 1.35 million people every year, mostly in poor developing countries. In Geneva, the U.N. agency launched its global status report on road safety 2018. The report found road traffic injuries …

Divisions deepened at the U.N. climate talks Thursday, pitting rich nations against poor ones, oil exporters against vulnerable island nations, and those governments prepared to act on global warming against those who want to wait and see. The stakes were raised by a scientific report that warned achieving the most …

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rolling back a regulation for coal plants that would allow new plants a lower standard on carbon emissions. The EPA made the announcement Thursday regarding the Obama-era ruling requiring new coal plants to produce no more than 1,400 pounds of carbon per megawatt-hour. …

Many car companies are looking at adding sensors to monitor your vital signs while you drive. The University of Southern California’s Center for Body Computing, which is focused on digital health and innovation, brings together experts to look at the benefits and dangers of this next step in automotive design …

For experts in the field of ocean mapping, it is no small irony that we know more about the surfaces of the moon and Mars than we do about our planet’s sea floor. “Can you imagine operating on the land without a map, or doing anything without a map?” asked …

Emissions of planet-warming gases will hit an all-time high this year, according to a new report. The figures are the latest indication of how far the world is from meeting the goal set out in Paris in 2015 to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. The report comes as …

“I’m not going to put the country out of business trying to maintain certain standards that probably don’t matter,” President Donald Trump told VOA when asked about the economic impacts of climate change. When not denying its existence, the Trump administration’s approach to climate change essentially comes down to three …

Gorillas at a zoo in England have demonstrated a distinctly human trait while attempting to solve a puzzle: cheating.    The gorillas were presented with a wall-mounted puzzle that requires the user to guide a peanut through a series of obstacles by poking a stick through various holes. Eventually, the peanut reaches …

The devastation caused by powerful storms is a growing threat to both poor and rich nations, propelling Caribbean islands to the top of a global index of countries most severely affected by weather disasters last year, researchers said Tuesday.    The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico was ranked as the …

When winter arrives in the Western Balkans, it is not unusual for dense smog to envelop its cities, making it hard to breathe and impairing visibility. But this year, pollution levels are among the highest in the world and public anger is on the rise. In recent days, the Bosnian, …

The U.N. secretary-general on Tuesday urged world leaders to use a climate change summit he will host in 2019 to explain how they plan to ratchet up their efforts to reverse worsening global warming that is leading to a “very dramatic situation.” Antonio Guterres said the gathering at the United …

Cameroon is the recipient of a new public health emergency center constructed with the support of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The facility, which provides training for hospital staff and helps to detect disease outbreaks, was inaugurated Monday by Cameroon’s prime minister, with the U.S. ambassador on hand. Prime …

“Nature sometimes isn’t pretty,” said University of Maryland environmental scientist Peter May, grabbing a clump of slimy green-brown gunk. That gunk lines the bottom of what’s called an algal turf scrubber at the Port of Baltimore. The meter-wide, shallow channel runs the length of a football field alongside one of …

The first global award recognizing the achievements of women with disabilities aims to break through stereotypes to show their skills as leaders and problem solvers, its founder said Monday. A filmmaker, a political campaigner and a public health expert were named the first winners of the Her Ability awards, which …

After a two-year chase, a NASA spacecraft arrived Monday at the ancient asteroid Bennu, its first visitor in billions of years.   The robotic explorer Osiris-Rex pulled within 12 miles (19 kilometers) of the diamond-shaped space rock. It will get even closer in the days ahead and go into orbit …

World leaders have gathered in the heart of Poland’s coal-mining industry to discuss what can be done about global climate change. The two-week-long meeting in Katowice comes amid a series of reports from various sources and parts of the world saying that climate change processes are in full swing and …

Pakistan is registering approximately 20,000 new HIV infections annually, the highest rate of increase among all countries in the region, warns the World Health Organization (WHO). The international body says mortality among Pakistanis living with the virus, which causes the deadly AIDS disease, is also rising, in spite of the …

Negotiators from around the world began two weeks of talks on curbing climate change Sunday, three years after sealing a landmark deal in Paris that set a goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).   Envoys from almost 200 nations gathered in Poland’s southern …

Teacher Rishi Rawat has one student who is not human, but a machine. Lessons take place at a lab inside the University of Southern California’s (USC) Clinical Science Center in Los Angeles, where Rawat teaches artificial intelligence, or AI. To help the machine learn, Rawat feeds the computer samples of …

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There’s been a lot of progress in the fight against AIDS over the past 30 years, but as the 30th World AIDS Day is observed on Dec. 1 — people still die from the disease. And others are newly infected every day even though the tools are available to end …