American Airlines on Tuesday said it plans to no longer offer plastic straws and stir sticks in its lounges and onboard its flights, amid a broader global push to abandon one-time use plastics. Starting this month, American said drinks in its airport lounges will no longer come with plastic utensils …

Most people think the world is more dangerous today than it was two years ago as concerns rise over politically motivated violence and weapons of mass destruction, according to a survey released Tuesday. Six out of 10 respondents to the survey, commissioned by the Global Challenges Foundation, said the dangers …

An Israeli nonprofit group plans to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon in February in the first landing of its kind since 2013. The craft, which is shaped like a round table with four carbon fiber legs, is set to blast off in December from Florida’s Cape Canaveral aboard …

A Russian cargo ship delivered a fresh load of fuel, food, and other supplies for the International Space Station on Tuesday, making it in record time. The Progress MS-09 lifted off as scheduled at 3:51 a.m. (2151 GMT; 5:51 p.m. EDT Monday) from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The …

You would never think there could be a dispute about breastfeeding, especially since decades of research show that breast milk is better for babies than formula. But after The New York Times reported the Trump administration opposed a U.N. resolution calling for countries to encourage this practice, health officials the …

World health officials were stunned when the U.S. opposed a resolution for countries to encourage breastfeeding, especially when decades of research have shown its benefits for both mothers and babies. VOA’s Carol Pearson spoke with two prominent doctors who fully support the U.N. resolution based on scientific studies and explain …

There’s a glimmer of hope in the fight against the deadly HIV virus that causes AIDS. A new vaccine has produced a favorable immune system response during a trial on nearly 400 people. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo has details from the recent study published in the Lancet medical journal. …

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is almost out of fuel and has been forced to take a nap.   Flight controllers placed the planet-hunting spacecraft into hibernation last week to save energy. It will remain asleep until early August, when controllers attempt to send down the data collected before observations were …

Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra’s government is planning to create an ocean reserve in the first quarter to protect feeding and breeding grounds for humpback whales and other marine species, the environment minister said Monday. The reserve would span more than 400 square miles (1,040 square km) and overlap with four …

The United States is disputing a newspaper report that it bullied and threatened nations in an effort to water down a World Health Assembly resolution supporting breastfeeding. A State Department official said, “Reports suggesting the United States threatened a partner nation related to a World Health Assembly resolution are false.” …

A recent study demonstrates that India can grow more nutritious food and decrease water use simply by switching the cereals farmers produce. Currently, 7.3 billion people live on Earth, and the world population is expected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050. Technological innovations have helped keep up with population …

Bradford Smith, a NASA astronomer who acted as planetary tour guide to the public with his interpretations of stunning images beamed back from Voyager missions, has died. Smith’s wife, Diane McGregor, said he died Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of complications from myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune …

A report in a prominent U.S. newspaper Sunday said the United States bullied and threatened nations in an effort to water down a World Health Assembly resolution supporting breastfeeding. The New York Times said the U.S. delegation at the assembly in Geneva this spring embraced “the interest of infant formula …

Researchers from half a dozen states in West Africa have joined together in a battle against what one expert calls a root crop “Ebola” — a viral disease that could wreck the region’s staple food and condemn millions to hunger. Their enemy: cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), a virus that strikes …

Dressed in heavy cotton, a helmet and respirator, Jessica Ball worked the night shift monitoring “fissure 8,” which has been spewing fountains of lava as high as a 15-story building from a slope on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. The lava poured into a channel oozing toward the Pacific Ocean several miles …

The Trump administration said Saturday it’s freezing payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses, a move expected to add to premium increases next year. At stake are billions in payments to insurers with sicker customers. In a weekend announcement, the Centers for Medicare …

Since the 1800s, scientists have marveled at how spiders can take flight using their webbing. Charles Darwin remarked on the behavior when tiny spiders landed on the HMS Beagle, trailing lines of silk. He thought the arachnids might be using heat-generated updrafts to take to the sky, but new research …

An international team of scientists have announced a breakthrough aimed at saving the northern white rhino from extinction. The first-ever hybrid rhino embryo has been successfully created at a lab for biotechnology research in Italy.  Conservationists now plan to use the technology by replicating the procedure with genes from a …

Weak infrastructure and a national shortage have made water costly all over India, but Sushila Devi paid a higher price than most. It took the deaths of her husband and son to force authorities to supply it to the slum she calls home. “They died because of the water problem, …

Uganda’s government has called the country’s doctors unprofessional, selfish, unpatriotic and enemies of the people, after they called for a sit-down strike in 2017 demanding better pay and improved working conditions. Halima Athumani spent a night at an Ugandan hospital and shows us the challenges doctors face. …

When Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, died in March, hopes for a revival of the sub-species were crushed. But as Sadie Witkowski explains, the magnificent creatures might not go the way of the dodo. …

Tropical Storm Beryl is strengthening over the tropical Atlantic and could become a hurricane by Friday or Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Thursday. Beryl is about 1,295 miles (2,080 km) east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea and contains maximum sustained winds of 50 miles …

A woman traveling from Iraq to a Detroit-area airport was found to be carrying seeds infested with an invasive beetle.   U.S. Customs and Border Protection says in a release Thursday that agriculture specialists discovered the Khapra beetles November 23 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus. They were in a …

Scientists have developed a way to harvest water from dry desert air and the only power the device needs is sunlight. It could be useful in an increasingly water-stressed world. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more. …

Scientists say they’re several steps closer to perfecting a method for saving the northern white rhino from extinction.  Writing in the journal Nature Communications, researchers said Wednesday that they had succeeded in creating embryos using frozen northern white rhino sperm and eggs from a southern white rhino. It’s the first …