Polar bears and other iconic animals could be extinct by the end of the century if ocean temperatures continue to rise at the current rate, marine biologists warned Monday. Warming temperatures caused by climate-changing emissions may result in a catastrophic loss of marine wildlife and drastic changes to ocean food …

Hawaii’s Kilauea is not your typical blow-the-top-off kind of volcano. It’s been simmering and bubbling for about 35 years, sending superhot lava spewing up through cracks in the ground. This month’s eruptions are more of the same, except the lava is destroying houses miles from the summit. Scientists on Monday …

Dogs can be trained to sniff out drugs and explosives, so Mark Ruefenacht wondered if their exquisite sense of smell could be used to detect changes in a diabetic’s blood sugar level. A near fatal episode prompted the forensic scientist, who’s had diabetes for most of his adult life, to …

Diabetics who use insulin to control their blood sugars can sometimes end up with very low readings that, if left untreated, can lead to death. While modern blood sugar monitoring systems can warn patients when their blood sugar levels are dangerously low, there is another, more “user-friendly” way to do …

The first vaccine campaign against cholera in Yemen has started, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, a year and a half after an epidemic was triggered by war and a health and sanitation crisis. There have since been more than one million suspected cases of cholera in Yemen, …

A senior Cambodian health official says 14 villagers whose sudden deaths were thought to have been caused by polluted water actually died from drinking rice wine containing methanol. Health Ministry spokesman Ly Sovann also said Monday that 214 people had fallen ill from drinking water that was contaminated with human …

Globally, more cases of cancer are reported in men than in women. A recent study in India reveals that the reverse is true there. Published in the medical journal Lancet, the study reports that Indian women not only have a higher rate of cancer, they are also afflicted by it …

The Kilauea volcano sent more lava into Hawaii communities Friday, a day after forcing more than 1,500 people to flee from their mountainside homes, and authorities detected high levels of sulfur gas that could threaten the elderly and people with breathing problems. After a week of earthquakes and warnings, the …

Adults and children should consume a maximum of 10 percent of their daily calories in the form of saturated fat such as meat and butter and one percent from trans fats to reduce the risk of heart disease, the World Health Organization said Friday. The draft recommendations, the first since …

NASA’s next Mars explorer is going to have company all the way to the red planet: a couple of puny yet groundbreaking sidekicks. Named after the characters in the 2008 animated movie, the small satellites WALL-E and EVE are hitching a ride on the Atlas V rocket set to launch …

Each morning, in a small Bangladeshi kitchen on the edge of the world’s largest refugee camp, a group of cooks stir rice, lentils, spices, and vitamin powder in steaming cauldrons to serve to thousands of hungry Rohingya refugees. More than 700,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims arrived in Bangladesh last year from …

Dr. Paul Offit is an infectious disease specialist and an expert in vaccines. He’s been at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia since 1992. Since then he says not a year has gone by when he has not seen a child die from a vaccine-preventable disease. It’s largely, he says, because the …

Vaccines can prevent 23 viruses and two types of cancer, and more vaccines are in the works, including one for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Yet, despite these advances, many people choose to avoid getting these vaccinations for themselves and for their children. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more. …

Six critically endangered black rhinos are being transported from South Africa to Chad, restoring the species to the country in north-central Africa nearly half a century after it was wiped out there. African Parks, a Johannesburg-based conservation group, said Thursday that the rhinos will travel by air to Zakouma National …

The European Space Agency has released an updated catalogue of more than 1.7 billion stars in our galaxy, as well as other celestial bodies, such as exoplanets, asteroids and quasars. The new data gives astronomers an unprecedented three-dimensional map for studying the origin of the universe and searching for habitable …

Weeks after his death, physicist Stephen Hawking has delivered his last thoughts about the nature of the cosmos, and he says it may be simpler than often believed. Well, simpler if you understand theoretical physics, anyway. It remains incomprehensible for the rest of us. A paper that outlines his view, …

As teacher Tanya Mathiason flicked through a slideshow to display diagrams of male and female genitalia to primary school children in northwest London, no one flinched or giggled. Instead, the students eagerly discussed the meaning of the words: female, genital and mutilation. “Break those words down: What does female mean? …

For decades America’s air was getting cleaner as levels of a key smog ingredient steadily dropped. That changed about seven years ago when pollution reductions leveled off, a new study found. This means when tighter federal air quality standards go into effect later this year, many more cities may find …

Pakistan’s environmental protection agency is installing air quality monitors and warning factories to add pollution filters after a panel of the country’s top judges ordered the government to detail its efforts to control worsening air pollution. The court ruling earlier this month followed a lawsuit by a Karachi man challenging …

Britain and the United States launched a $25 million project on Monday to study the risks of a collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica that is already shrinking and nudging up global sea levels. The five-year research, involving 100 scientists, would be the two nations’ biggest joint scientific project …

The U.N. agency that fights AIDS says that it’s reopening a sexual harassment investigation against a top official, saying additional allegations have emerged against him. UNAIDS says it was reopening the investigation into a case against deputy executive director Luiz Loures that centers on a complaint from a lower-level employee …

It’s another busy day for Tony Price, who has a list of around two dozen restaurants and other seafood businesses to visit, to pick up discarded oyster shells.  Fast and energetic, he moves barrels of smelly shells from restaurants’ back storage areas to his truck. “We do seven pickups a …

Facing a rising death toll from drug overdoses, state lawmakers across the United States are testing a strategy to boost treatment for opioid addicts: Force drug manufacturers and their distributors to pay for it. Bills introduced in at least 15 states would impose taxes or fees on prescription painkillers. Several …

The 4-year-old Cote d’Ivoire boy couldn’t walk, speak or feed himself. He was so unlike most other kids that his grandparents hesitated to accept him. The slightly older Kenyan boy was so restless that his primary-school teachers beat him, until they discovered he was a star pupil. The two children …

Thousands of years of sediment carried by the Mississippi River created 25,000 square kilometers of land, marsh and wetlands along Louisiana’s coast. But engineering projects stopped the flow of sediment and rising seas thanks to climate change have made the Mississippi Delta the fastest-disappearing land on earth. Louisiana State University …