Egypt is reopening churches for the first time in nearly four months, after a major decline in the number of recorded coronavirus cases in recent days. The number of new cases is also down in Sudan, while Libya, Tunisia and Algeria have been witnessing an increase.Worshippers gathered for the first church service in nearly four months in Egypt’s historic port city of Alexandria. Authorities reopened churches across the country on Monday.Those attending appeared to abide by strict safety rules regarding social distancing and the use of face masks.Mosques are open on weekdays but remain closed for Friday prayers and major holidays.Egypt’s Health Ministry indicated Sunday that there were just 167 new cases during the previous 24 hours and only 31 deaths. Figures for new cases have fallen dramatically in recent days, prompting the government to relax a number of restrictions.Neighboring Sudan has also witnessed a relative drop in the number …

Norway says it will stop all cruise ships with more than 100 people on board from disembarking at Norwegian ports after a coronavirus outbreak on a vessel left 41 people infected.  Health Minister Bent Hoie announced the ban Monday, saying the new rules will apply for the next 14 days. He said ships that have already departed will be able to offload passengers and crew at Norwegian ports but that no new journeys can take place.   “The pandemic is not over,” Hoie told a news conference. Norway’s Hurtigruten cruise line apologized Monday following the outbreak on one of its ships, the MS Roald Amundsen. “We have failed,” CEO Daniel Skjeldam told a news conference. “I apologize strongly on behalf of the company.” He said the company would suspend its cruises until further notice and that it is “now in the process of a full review of all procedures.” The cruise line was one of …

Egypt’s minister of international cooperation has extended an invitation to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after a Musk post on Twitter that the pyramids were built by extraterrestrial beings.  Musk tweeted Saturday: “Aliens built the pyramids obv.” Aliens built the pyramids obv— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) A camel in front of the Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, July 13, 2013. (A. Arabasadi/VOA)Egypt Today reports on its website that famed Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass also weighed in on the topic on social media, saying that Musk’s tweet was a “complete hallucination.” Hawass added that he had “found the tombs of the pyramids builders that tell everyone that the builders of the pyramids are Egyptians and they were not slaves.”  He said ancient Egypt’s pyramid building was “a national project of the whole nation.” Musk had an apparent change of mind and eventually provided a link on his Twitter account about the building of pyramids.  He tweeted: “This BBC article provides a sensible summary of how it was done.”  …

Two U.S. astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday, splashing safely into the Gulf of Mexico after a two-month mission to the International Space Station aboard the commercially developed SpaceX spacecraft Crew Dragon.Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley landed at midafternoon off the western coast of Florida, avoiding the dangers of Tropical Storm Isaias moving along the Atlantic Ocean coast of the southern state.The two men had lifted off to space from Florida in May, the first NASA astronaut launch from U.S. soil since 2011 and the first time a commercially developed spacecraft had carried humans into orbit.Hurley and Behnken, both married to astronauts, departed the International Space Station on Saturday night. They awoke to a recording of their young children urging them to “rise and shine” and “we can’t wait to see you.””Don’t worry, you can sleep in tomorrow,” said Behnken’s 6-year-old son, Theo, who was promised a puppy after …

Who gets to be first in line for a COVID-19 vaccine? U.S. health authorities hope by late next month to have some draft guidance on how to ration initial doses, but it’s a vexing decision.”Not everybody’s going to like the answer,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently told one of the advisory groups the government asked to help decide. “There will be many people who feel that they should have been at the top of the list.”Traditionally, first in line for a scarce vaccine are health workers and the people most vulnerable to the targeted infection.But Collins tossed new ideas into the mix: Consider geography and give priority to people where an outbreak is hitting hardest.And don’t forget volunteers in the final stage of vaccine testing who get dummy shots, the comparison group needed to tell if the real shots truly work.”We owe them … …

Connie Culp, the recipient of the first partial face transplant in the U.S., has died at 57, almost a dozen years after the groundbreaking operation.The Cleveland Clinic, where her surgery had been performed in 2008, said Saturday that Culp died Wednesday at the Ohio clinic of complications from an infection unrelated to her transplant.Dr. Frank Papay, chair of Cleveland Clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery institute and part of Culp’s surgical team, called her “an incredibly brave, vibrant woman and an inspiration to many.””Her strength was evident in the fact that she had been the longest-living face transplant patient to date,” Papay said in a statement. “She was a great pioneer and her decision to undergo a sometimes-daunting procedure is an enduring gift for all of humanity.”Culp’s husband shot her in the face in 2004 in a failed murder-suicide attempt for which he was imprisoned for seven years. The blast destroyed …

A pair of NASA astronauts face the final and most important part of their SpaceX test flight: returning to Earth with a rare splashdown.Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken took part in a farewell ceremony Saturday at the International Space Station, several hours ahead of their planned departure on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.  Despite approaching Hurricane Isaias, NASA said the weather looks favorable for a Sunday afternoon splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico near Panama City, Florida. It will be the first splashdown for astronauts in 45 years. The last time was following the joint U.S.-Soviet mission in 1975 known as Apollo-Soyuz.The astronauts’ homecoming will cap a two-month mission that ended a prolonged launch drought in the U.S., which has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station since the end of the shuttle era.  In launching Hurley and Behnken from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on May 30, …

There are more than 17.6 million worldwide COVID-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins statistics.  The U.S. continues to lead in the number of infections with more than 4.5 million, followed by Brazil with 2.6 million cases, and India with almost 1.7 million.Mexico has replaced Britain as the country with the third largest number of deaths from COVID-19. Johns Hopkins says Mexico now has reported 46,688 deaths.The U.S. leads the world in the number of deaths from the virus with more than 153,000, followed by Brazil with more than 92,000.Where Has the New Coronavirus Spread?New virus, denoted 2019-nCoV by the WHO, has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS in 2002-2003Russia is gearing up to launch a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus in September or October.  News media reports quote sources as saying the vaccine was developed at a state research facility.   Scientific data about the vaccine or test …

Amid the chaos of the pandemic’s early days, doctors who faced the first coronavirus onslaught reached across oceans and language barriers in an unprecedented effort to advise colleagues trying to save lives in the dark.With no playbook to follow and no time to wait for research, YouTube videos describing autopsy findings and X-rays swapped on Twitter and WhatsApp spontaneously filled the gap.When Stephen Donelson arrived at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in mid-March, Dr. Kristina Goff was among those who turned to what she called “the stories out of other places that were hit before.”Donelson’s family hadn’t left the house in two weeks after COVID-19 started spreading in Texas, hoping to shield the organ transplant recipient. Yet one night, his wife found him barely breathing, his skin turning blue, and called 911.In New York or Italy, where hospitals were overflowing, Goff thinks Donelson wouldn’t even have qualified for …

Woyni Tewelde opened Joule Wellness Pharmacy few years ago with the aim of helping local communities and Africans in the United States. The pharmacy has also been a great help for people who have gone back to Africa and still need prescriptions from their doctors in the United States. Radhia Adam has more. Camera: Omary Kaseko  Producer: Betty Ayoub …

The United States has passed the marker of 150,000 deaths from COVID-19, as some spots around the country continue to see rising case numbers. The political, economic and public health crises are a source of ongoing concern for lawmakers. But the nation’s top health experts did have some encouraging news Friday, telling a congressional panel that development of a vaccine for the virus is proceeding rapidly. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Washington. Produced by: Katherine Gypson …