San Bernardino is one the poorest cities in California. A group of Muslim doctors has established Al-Shifa, a medical clinic to provide health-related services to poor residents of the city. The medical facility has been providing free of charge services to people in need for more than a decade. Mohammad …

Improving soil health in farmlands could capture extra carbon equivalent to the planet-warming emissions generated by the transport sector, one of the world’s most polluting industries, experts said Tuesday. Soil naturally absorbs carbon from the atmosphere through a process known as sequestration, which not only reduces harmful greenhouse gases but …

Syria has formally joined the 2015 Paris deal aimed at slowing climate change, the United Nations said on Tuesday, leaving the United States as the only country opposed to the pact. Syria, racked by civil war, and Nicaragua were the only two nations outside the 195-nation pact when it was …

Astronauts got a mouth-watering haul with Tuesday’s Earth-to-space delivery — pizza and ice cream. A commercial supply ship arrived at the International Space Station two days after launching from Virginia. Besides NASA equipment and experiments, the Orbital ATK capsule holds chocolate and vanilla ice cream for the six station astronauts, …

An increase in suicide rates among U.S. teens occurred at the same time social media use surged and a new analysis suggests there may be a link. Suicide rates for teens rose between 2010 and 2015 after they had declined for nearly two decades, according to data from the federal …

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first drug in the United States with a digital ingestion tracking system, in an unprecedented move to ensure that patients with mental illness take the medicine prescribed for them.   The drug Abilify MyCite was developed by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The …

The naked mole rat is a unique animal, and to most people one ugly little creature. These rodents live most of their life underground and are nearly blind. But what makes them really attractive to scientists is they are cancer free. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Hundreds of volunteers are patrolling beaches on the West Coast of the United States to monitor the number of dead birds that wash ashore. The multi-state monitoring program helps tell a larger story about seabird deaths and the health of coastal environments. Faith Lapidus reports …

The chances of a hurricane flooding parts of Texas, like Harvey did, have soared sixfold in just 25 years because of global warming and will likely triple once again before the end of the century, a new study says.   Study author Kerry Emanuel, a meteorology professor and hurricane expert …

Oenophiles take note: 5980 BC was a very good year for wine. Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of the oldest-known evidence for winemaking, detecting telltale chemical signs of the fermented alcoholic beverage made from grapes in fragments of nearly 8,000-year-old earthenware jars at two sites about 30 miles (50 …

The number of people living with diabetes has tripled since 2000, pushing the global cost of the disease to $850 billion a year, medical experts said Tuesday. The majority of those affected have type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and lack of exercise, and the epidemic is spreading …

Protesters drowned out speeches by White House advisers and business representatives Monday at an event the U.S. government sponsored at the U.N. climate talks in Germany promoting the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.   About 200 protesters stood up 10 minutes into the event and began singing an …

New medical guidelines lower the threshold for high blood pressure, adding 30 million Americans to those who have the condition. That means now nearly half of U.S. adults have it. High pressure has long meant a top reading of at least 140 or a bottom one of 90. That drops …

U.S. researchers have used nanotechnology plus the powerful CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool to turn off a key cholesterol-related gene in mouse liver cells, an advance that could lead to new ways to correct genes that cause high cholesterol and other liver diseases. Nanotechnology is the design and manipulation of materials thousands …

The United States is participating in the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement it will be leaving the Paris Climate Accords. The State Department says a U.S. delegation is participating in the conference in Bonn, Germany. A …

Afghanistan and Pakistan officially are now the only two nations across the globe to have reported wild polio virus cases so far this year, though the numbers of cases have declined to historic lows. Armed conflicts, deadly attacks on polio vaccinators and instances such as lack of administrative oversight while …

While climate change is being discussed this week in Germany, it’s being felt by farmers and ranchers around the world. But it’s hitting subsistence farmers in places like Uganda particularly hard. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Standing in a stately Mayo Clinic library, Lilly Ross reached out and touched the face of a stranger, prodding the rosy cheeks and eyeing the hairless gap in a chin she once had known so well. “That’s why he always grew it so long, so he could try to mesh …

Thanks to a new law, California residents who do not identify as either male or female can choose a third option on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. VOA’s Genia Dulot spoke with a Berkeley resident who is that third option, known as non-binary. …

Disneyland has shut down and decontaminated two cooling towers following an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that sickened 12 people, nine of them guests or employees at the theme park in Anaheim, county health officials said Saturday. One of the three cases of the respiratory illness not linked to Disneyland was …

An outbreak of cholera in Tanzania has left 18 dead in two months, the Health Ministry said Saturday, warning that the situation could worsen as the rainy season continues. The ministry said the outbreak had left “18 dead out of 570 cases recorded” between September 1 and October 30, and …

Pneumonic plague continues to decline in Madagascar, according to the World Health Organization, whose latest figures put the number of suspected cases at 1,947, including 143 deaths. The latest reported cases of pneumonic plague, based on the number of people hospitalized and on district reporting in Madagascar, is good news, …

Pacific islanders may be among the first people in the world forced to migrate as a clear result of climate change, but thorny legal obstacles stand in the way of that happening successfully, researchers warned Thursday. Addressing those now, and putting in place a regional plan to deal with migration …

A large long-term study on the use of the big-selling weedkiller glyphosate by agricultural workers in the United States has found no firm link between exposure to the pesticide and cancer, scientists said Thursday. Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), the study found there was “no …

How’s this for awkward? The United States has a delegation at international climate talks in Bonn that will be telling other nations what they should do on a treaty that the president wants no part of. President Donald Trump has promised to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate …