Russia’s state statistics service reported nearly 50,000 coronavirus deaths in the country in August, taking the toll since the beginning of the pandemic to over 400,000, nearly double the official government figure. Rosstat released its figures late Friday, reporting that 49,389 people died from COVID-19 in August, a figure much …

Firefighters and numerous studies credit intensive forest thinning projects with helping save communities like those recently threatened near Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada, but dissent from some environmental advocacy groups is roiling the scientific community.  States in the U.S. West and the federal government each year thin thousands of …

A case of Ebola has been confirmed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to an internal report on Friday from the national biomedical laboratory, five months after the end of the most recent outbreak there.  Congo’s health minister declined to confirm the information but said a statement would be …

A Russian film crew blasts into space on a moviemaking history mission, an American actor known for playing a space explorer gets the chance to see the real deal, and more. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more on the Week in Space. …

The announcement of the first-ever malaria vaccine not only inspires hope in the battle against one of the planet’s most pernicious diseases but also underscores the need to attack this scourge on multiple fronts, says the head of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, which this week rolled out an ambitious …

German officials unveiled this week what they said is the world’s first commercial plant for making synthetic kerosene. It’s seen as a climate-friendly way to produce jet fuel and could potentially be game-changing. More with VOA’s Mariama Diallo. …

The U.N. secretary-general and the head of the World Health Organization launched an ambitious strategy Thursday to have 40% of the world’s population vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of this year, and 70% by mid-2022. “With vaccine production now at nearly 1.5 billion doses per month, we can reach …

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said Thursday the nation has vaccinated millions more people than previously thought, thanks to some unreported vaccination numbers discovered by the Robert Koch Institute for Disease Control. The institute says nearly 80% of adults in Germany are fully vaccinated, and about 84% have received at …

Americans are being warned to beware of potentially deadly fake prescription pills that are laced with the powerful opioid fentanyl and the highly addictive stimulant methamphetamine. The counterfeit tablets are linked to a wave of drug overdoses killing unsuspecting users. In its first warning in six years, the Drug Enforcement Administration …

The World Health Organization recommended Wednesday that children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions on the continent with moderate-to-high malaria transmission receive a malaria vaccine. The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, proved effective in a pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800,000 children since 2019.  …

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Wednesday awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to two scientists for their work – independently – in developing a new way of building molecules, a process with applications throughout industry. Speaking in Stockholm, academy Secretary General Goran Hansson said chemists Benjamin List of …

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Tuesday announced the Nobel prize in physics goes to three scientists for their work in helping to understand complex physical systems, work that has proved valuable in quantifying and predicting climate.   At a Stockholm news conference, the academy’s Secretary General Goran K. Hansson and …

The pandemic is changing how many of us access health care. In the United States and elsewhere, studies show that virtual medical appointments are effective, help patients manage their care and keep people out of hospitals. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson. …

A new study reveals the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is 90% effective at keeping someone from being hospitalized from the virus up to six months after receiving the second dose.    Researchers from Pfizer and U.S.-based health care consortium Kaiser Permanente observed the records of about 3.4 …

Workers continue to clean up a massive oil spill off the coast of California as divers try to learn why an underwater pipeline started leaking late last week. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles.  …

The U.N. Children’s Fund says children are likely to suffer most from the monthslong COVID-related restrictions, school closures, and separation from family and friends. The latest estimates show more than one in seven adolescents aged 10 to 19 suffer from mental health disorders globally, while nearly 46,000 adolescents commit suicide …

Officials investigating one of California’s biggest oil spills were trying to determine whether the undersea pipeline that spewed 572,807 liters (126,000 gallons) of heavy crude into the Pacific Ocean had been damaged by a ship’s anchor.  The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the two busiest container ports …

The Biden administration on Monday reversed a ban on abortion referrals by family planning clinics, lifting a Trump-era restriction as political and legal battles over abortion grow sharper from Texas to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Department of Health and Human Services said its new regulation will restore the federal …

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, the jury said. “The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses …

 A British company says it has developed an easy-to-administer, saliva-based test that can detect whether a person is infectious enough to pass along the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The company, Vatic, said in a statement that its test is “extremely accurate” and has not returned a single false positive result …

“The pandemic has destabilized societies, economies, and governments. It has shown that there is no global security without global health security,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a recent address to ambassadors and representatives to the European Union’s political and security committee. “The fastest and best way …

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.  The BepiColombo mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11:34 p.m. GMT Friday, using the planet’s gravity …

In a normal year, the smokehouses and drying racks that Alaska Natives use to prepare salmon to tide them through the winter would be heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer spent fishing on the Yukon River like generations before them.  This year, there are no fish. For …

Delegates heading to the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow agreed they must deliver on the $100 billion per year pledge to help most vulnerable nations tackle climate change, COP26 president Alok Sharma said on Saturday.   Speaking after days of meetings at the pre-COP26 climate event in Italy, Sharma …

The abortion rights battle takes to the streets across America Saturday, with hundreds of demonstrations planned as part of a new “Women’s March” aimed at countering an unprecedented conservative offensive to restrict the termination of pregnancies.   The fight has become even more intense since Texas adopted a law on …