In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, truck drivers, grocery clerks and other essential workers were hailed as heroes. “Now we are vilifying them … and this has long-term ramifications for our well-being,” said Manuela Tomei, International Labor Organization assistant director-general for governance, rights, and dialogue. “The work …

Every month, young girls in Ghana are forced to miss school days due to menstruation. But a schoolteacher is working to find a solution by providing reusable sanitary pads. Hamza Adams visited a school in Afari, Ghana, and has this story narrated by Salem Solomon. …

The Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death. NASA released the picture Tuesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. The observation was among the first made by Webb following its launch in late 2021. Its infrared …

Illegal fishing, a multibillion-dollar industry closely linked to organized crime, is set to pose a greater threat to global security as climate change warms the world’s oceans, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute, a research organization based in London, in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trust. …

Poorer countries are increasingly losing health care workers to wealthier ones as the latter seek to shore up their own staff losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes through active recruitment, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.  The trend for nurses and other staff to leave parts of Africa or …

Jiang Yanyong, a Chinese military doctor who revealed the full extent of the 2003 SARS outbreak and was later placed under house arrest for his political outspokenness, has died, a long-time acquaintance and a Hong Kong newspaper said Tuesday.   Jiang was 91 and died of pneumonia Saturday in Beijing, …

Pfizer Inc PFE.N struck a $43 billion deal for Seagen Inc SGEN.O to add innovative targeted therapies to its portfolio of cancer treatments as it braces for a steep fall in COVID-19 product sales and stiff competition for some top sellers. Monday’s deal, Pfizer’s biggest in a string of acquisitions …

Discovering the origins of COVID-19 is a moral imperative and all hypotheses must be explored, the head of the World Health Organization said, in the clearest indication yet that the U.N. body remains committed to finding how the virus arose. A U.S. agency was reported by The Wall Street Journal …

Researchers have found long-term evidence that actively monitoring localized prostate cancer is a safe alternative to immediate surgery or radiation. The results, released Saturday, are encouraging for men who want to avoid treatment-related sexual and incontinence problems, said Dr. Stacy Loeb, a prostate cancer specialist at NYU Langone Health who …

On the third anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus is still spreading, and the death toll is nearing 7 million worldwide. Yet most people have resumed their normal lives, thanks to a wall of immunity built from infections and vaccines. The virus appears here to stay, along with the …

A requirement that travelers to the U.S. from China present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their flights expired Friday after more than two months as cases in China have fallen. The restrictions were put in place December 28 and took effect January 5 amid a surge in infections in …

By launching an unmanned capsule into space, sending it around the moon and bringing it back to Earth in November, NASA demonstrated how it will once again transport astronauts to the lunar surface — a core goal of the Artemis program. What remains to be seen is who will crew …

The World Health Organization has called for Africa to step up the fight against cholera, which in the last year killed more than 3,000 people in 12 African countries, with more than half the victims dying in Malawi’s record outbreak. The global health body and the Africa Centers for Disease …

After three nasty years, the La Nina weather phenomenon that increases Atlantic hurricane activity and worsens Western drought is gone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Thursday. That’s usually good news for the United States and other parts of the world, including drought-stricken northeast Africa, scientists said. The …

All U.S. women getting mammograms will soon receive information about their breast density, which can sometimes make cancer harder to spot. The new requirements, finalized Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, are aimed at standardizing the information given to millions of women following scans to detect breast cancer. Regulators …

Sodium is essential for the smooth functioning of muscles and nerves and maintaining the proper balance of water and minerals. But too much sodium in the diet can kill. “Almost 2 million deaths each year are associated with excessive sodium intake,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health …

WeightWatchers, the 60-year-old diet firm, announced this week it would acquire a telehealth company whose providers prescribe anti-obesity drugs for growing numbers of eager online subscribers. The $132 million deal with Sequence is just the latest commercial push into the red-hot market for prescription drugs that promises significant weight loss. …

Plastics entering the world’s oceans have surged by an unprecedented amount since 2005 and could nearly triple by 2040 if no further action is taken, according to research published on Wednesday. An estimated 171 trillion plastic particles were afloat in the oceans by 2019, according to peer-reviewed research led by …

France has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu among red foxes northeast of Paris, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Tuesday, as the spread of the virus to mammals raised global concerns. After three foxes were found dead in a nature reserve in Meaux …

Many states have enacted or contemplated limits or outright bans on transgender medical treatment, with conservative U.S. lawmakers saying they are worried about young people later regretting irreversible body-altering treatment. But just how common is regret? And how many youth change their appearances with hormones or surgery only to later …

A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States.  The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said …

The Italian health minister’s proposals to extend a smoking ban include the outdoor areas of bars and parks, according to details reported by local media, drawing the ire of right-wing Cabinet colleagues who labeled him a “communist.”  Minister Orazio Schillaci, a technocrat with no party affiliation, said in January he …

Greenhouse gas emissions from the way humans produce and consume food could add nearly 1 degree of warming to the Earth’s climate by 2100, according to a new study. Continuing the dietary patterns of today will push the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) limit of warming …

The United Nations announced Monday that it had taken a significant step towards trying to fill a key gap in the fight against climate change: standardized, real-time tracking of greenhouse gases. The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization has come up with a new Global Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Infrastructure that aims to …

For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas — nearly half the planet’s surface — concluding two weeks of talks in New York. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before …