Oprah Winfrey is taking her motivational spirit on the road early next year with an arena tour to promote a healthier lifestyle.The talk-show host and chief of OWN television network said Wednesday that she will launch the “Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus” tour starting Jan. 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She is working with Weight Watchers Reimagined to offer a full-day of wellness conversations during the nine-city tour.   It’s her first speaking tour in five years.   Winfrey says she wants to empower audiences to “support a stronger, healthier, abundant life.” She will be joined by high-profile guests. The names will be released at a later date.   Winfrey’s previous speaking tours include “Oprah’s Life Class” and “Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend” in 2014. …

A U.S. judge on Tuesday rejected efforts by drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies to dismiss claims that they caused the nation’s opioid crisis, clearing the way for a scheduled  landmark trial even as he pushes for a nationwide settlement.U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who oversees roughly 2,000 opioid lawsuits by state and local governments, said the plaintiffs could try to prove that drugmakers’ deceptive marketing of the painkillers caused a harmful, massive increase in supply that distributors and pharmacies did not do enough to stop.”A factfinder could reasonably infer that these failures were a substantial factor in producing the alleged harm suffered by plaintiffs,” the Cleveland-based judge wrote.The ruling was among seven decisions and orders totaling 80 pages issued by Polster ahead of a scheduled Oct. 21 trial by two Ohio counties against Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin maker accused of fueling the epidemic, and several other defendants.Polster also refused to dismiss …

US officials on Tuesday declared New York’s worst measles epidemic in nearly 30 years officially over after months of emergency measures that included mandatory vaccinations.About 654 people, many in areas with large Orthodox Jewish communities, were infected since October last year but there have been no new cases since mid-July, the city government said.The official end of the outbreak, 42 days since the last reported case, comes before the start of the US financial capital’s new school year Thursday.Schools and nurseries were the focal points of government efforts to stop the spread of the disease.”To keep our children and communities safe, I urge all New Yorkers to get vaccinated. It’s the best defense we have,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.Authorities declared measles eliminated in the United States in 2000 but there have been 1,234 cases of the potentially deadly disease reported in the country this year, the …

The European Space Agency says it has performed an evasive maneuver with one of its satellites after rival SpaceX said it wouldn’t move its own spacecraft out of the way, risking a potentially catastrophic collision.ESA said Tuesday that it “reached out early to SpaceX and was informed that no maneuver was planned for the Starlink satellite before the close approach.”The agency said the manual maneuver Monday didn’t affect operations of the Aeolus satellite, which was launched in August 2018 to measure global wind speeds and directions, thereby improving weather forecasts.ESA says the advent of so-called mega constellations like Starlink, consisting of hundreds or thousands of satellites, means collision avoidance maneuvers will need to be automated in future.SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. …

The eco-minded Prince Harry announced a massive travel sustainability initiative Tuesday in partnership with key service providers that’s aimed at bettering the practices of the global industry amid an ever-increasing number of travelers.    The Duke of Sussex unveiled Travalyst at a news conference in Amsterdam, a city hit hard by over-tourism. He was joined by representatives of his partners, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Visa, China’s largest travel company, Ctrip, and the Ctrip-owned fare aggregator Skyscanner.The long-term initiative is focused on tackling the travel industry’s impact on climate change, improving wildlife conservation and protecting the environment in top tourist spots. It will also look at ways to better serve local communities through tourism dollars. …

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged donors to honor the pledges they have made to combat Ebola as he visited the Democratic Republic of Congo to offer support in fighting the outbreak.Guterres told reporters Monday in Kinshasa that the United Nations has received only 15% of what it needs to fight the Ebola epidemic for the remainder of the year. He said further delays in receiving donor funding could mean ”we lose the war against Ebola.”The U.N. head later met with DRC President Felix Tshisekedi. On Sunday, Guterres traveled to the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak, visiting a treatment center in the eastern city of Beni. “I could not go to the DRC without coming to meet the brave inhabitants of this beautiful territory,” he said.The current Ebola outbreak has killed more than 2,000 people and infected 1,000 others.In another development Monday, Congo’s former health minister, Oly Ilunga, was questioned by police …

Almost every day 20-year-old Rizaldian Syahputra puts on his blue uniform, laces up his high boots and leaves his wooden house on stilts for a job many nature-lovers would envy.But by next year, he may no longer be employed.Syahputra works as a wildlife guide at Komodo National Park on the eastern Indonesian island of Komodo, taking visitors around the park on foot to get up close to the leathery Komodo dragons, the world’s largest living lizard species.The Indonesian government plans to close the island to the public from January next year in a bid to conserve the rare reptiles.The scheme also involves moving about 2,000 villagers off the island. Authorities are holding talks with community leaders on how to relocate the residents, Josef Nae Soi, deputy governor of the province of East Nusa Tenggara, told Reuters recently.It is hoped that closing the island to tourists will cut the risk of …

India’s ambitious mission to the moon has crossed a crucial milestone and is on course to place a probe on the south pole of the lunar surface later this week.Space officials say the landing module detached from the main spacecraft successfully Monday afternoon and is now about 100 kilometers from the moon’s surface. It is scheduled to touchdown on the moon on Saturday deploying a 27-kilogram robotic rover on the South Pole.   All eyes will now be on that landing. If it takes place successfully, India will become the fourth country in the world to make a controlled landing on the moon after the United States, Russia and China. Space officials say the maneuver is extremely complex.   “All systems of the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter and lander are healthy,” said a statement by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after the separation of the lander. Chandrayaan, which means “moon …

Far from just playing backgammon or shuffleboard, today’s senior citizens may want to renew their gym memberships.  A new, small-sample study says that older adults benefit from the types of exercise just years ago thought too risky for their bodies. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi stretches and warms up for this story. …

Joyce Sasser was born in 1970 with no bones in her thumbs. Her doctors blamed thalidomide, a drug used to treat pregnant women experiencing morning sickness, until it was found to cause congenital abnormalities. Sasser said her mother swore up and down she’d never taken thalidomide; the two risks she felt she’d taken were much, much milder. “She said ‘if two aspirin or half a glass of champagne could have done it, I am responsible, but I didn’t take thalidomide,’” Sasser said.  Sasser says despite that denial, doctors continued to believe their theory and implemented treatments accordingly – including one that permanently stunted her arms.It wasn’t until Sasser was 20 and pregnant with her first daughter that doctors found the real reason for her abnormalities: Diamond-Blackfan anemia, a congenital issue in which the bone marrow fails to make enough red blood cells. As her mother had insisted for years, it had …

A new floating laboratory onboard a boat on the Potomac River is keeping tabs on the water quality that flows through the nation’s capital and surrounding area. A local environmental group, the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, is collecting water samples at several sites to measure the amount of bacteria that cause pollution. As VOA’s Deborah Block reports, the data will be used to help clean up polluted areas in the future and is already informing the public when it is safe to swim in the river.   …