The World Health Organization says more than 6,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 58 countries, with over 80% of the cases in Europe. The WHO was expected to determine whether to declare the outbreak a global health emergency, the highest level of alert, later this month, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference from Geneva Wednesday. “I continue to be concerned by the scale and spread of the virus across the world,” Tedros said, adding that because of a lack of testing, many cases are being unreported. The viral infection, which is endemic in Africa, is normally mild and similar to the flu, but can cause skin lesions. The current outbreak began in May. It is unclear what the fatality rate of the current strain is, but previous strains have been about 1%. Most cases of the virus have been in 21- to 40-year-old males, many …

Members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional bloc that includes Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, met Tuesday in Nairobi to discuss humanitarian, political, and security issues in the region. The humanitarian situation that has made more than 23 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia food insecure took center stage at IGAD’s 39th head of state and government meeting. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said the countries in the region need to combat the drought situation. “The drought, the worst in 40 years, has intensified food insecurity, dried up water resources and forced displacement of people, raising tensions that could trigger new conflicts,” said Kenyatta. “We urgently need to manage the drought before it becomes a threat multiplier.” Some parts of the region have had four consecutive seasons without rain, forcing millions to move in search of food, water and pasture. Sudan’s leader, Abdel …

A small new study published Tuesday by scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health suggests that the immune response triggered by coronavirus infections damages the brain’s blood vessels and could be responsible for long COVID symptoms. The paper, published in the journal Brain, was based on brain autopsies from nine people who died suddenly after contracting the virus. Rather than detecting evidence of COVID in the brain, the team found it was the people’s own antibodies that attacked the cells lining the brain’s blood vessels, causing inflammation and damage. This discovery could explain why some people have lingering effects from infection including headache, fatigue, loss of taste and smell, and inability to sleep as well as “brain fog” — and may also help devise new treatments for long COVID. NIH scientist Avindra Nath, the paper’s senior author, said in a statement: “Patients often develop neurological complications with COVID-19, but …

There is growing alarm among European and other environmentalists over what they say is governments’ failure to ensure healthy oceans, which are vital for food, jobs, biodiversity and clean air. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it an “ocean emergency.” “Global heating is pushing ocean temperature to record levels, creating fiercer and more frequent storms,” he said. “Sea levels are rising, low-lying island nations face inundation, and some 8 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year.” Those are just some of the threats facing the oceans, which cover 70% of the Earth’s surface. Overfishing, shipping and ocean wind turbines also pressure marine ecosystems. At an ocean conference in Lisbon last week, Guterres and others called for faster, stronger protection measures. But green groups claim the meeting failed to deliver real progress. Environmentalists hope for better results next month, when countries resume discussions on a global agreement to …

Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska on Tuesday became just the second woman to receive the prestigious Fields Medal, described as the Nobel Prize in mathematics. The 37-year-old Viazovska, received the medal during a ceremony in Helsinki, Finland, along with three other mathematicians: 36-year-old Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva, 39-year-old Korean-American June Huh of Princeton University, and 35-year-old British mathematician James Maynard of the University of Oxford. The International Mathematical Union, which administers the Fields Medal, cited Viazovska, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, for her 2016 discovery that equal-sized spheres can be stacked symmetrically in the eighth dimension and higher. Her discovery proved a theory first proposed by German astronomer and philosopher Johannes Kepler more than 400 years ago. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40 years old. The late Maryam Mirzakhani of Iran was the first woman to …

China placed 1.7 million people under lockdown in central Anhui province, where authorities reported nearly 300 new cases Monday in the latest of a string of outbreaks testing Beijing’s no-tolerance approach to COVID-19. The country is the last major economy wedded to a zero-COVID strategy, responding to all cases with strict isolation orders and tough testing campaigns. The outbreak in Anhui  — where officials first found hundreds of cases last week — comes as the Chinese economy begins to rebound from a months-long lockdown in Shanghai and disruptive COVID restrictions in the capital Beijing. Two counties in the province — Sixian and Lingbi — announced lockdowns last week, with more than 1.7 million residents only permitted to leave their homes if they are getting tested. Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed empty streets in Sixian over the weekend and people lining up for their sixth round of mass testing in recent days. …

At her home in Rockford, Illinois, Rita Davisson said the “one or two” mice she normally sees during the waning winter months “have turned into more like 10 or 15” in the last couple years, and scientists say the warmer weather might have something to do with it. The 66-year-old said the influx prompted her to contract a pest control service for the first time in the more than 30 years she’s lived in her house. “They’re sneaking around the basement, the garage, my backyard,” she said. “The one trap I have just hasn’t been enough lately.” Researchers say warming temperatures and milder winters have increased the population of the white-footed mouse, the most abundant small rodent found throughout much of the eastern U.S. and Canada, making more work for pest control experts. Above-average temperatures were recorded across most eastern and central U.S. states last winter. Since 1970, average winter …

Medical centers in Canada that perform abortions are preparing to receive patients from U.S. states that ban the procedure. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning a constitutional right to abortion in America is also being used as motivator to expand Canada’s abortion services and provide other forms of support to pregnant women. Canada’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in 1988, 15 years after America’s landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion across the United States.    Canada is the world’s second-largest land mass, and abortion services are not easily accessible for hundreds of kilometers in some rural areas, but most major urban areas have hospitals or medical centers where they are available.     Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the 13 U.S. states along the border with Canada are free to allow abortions, restrict them or ban them entirely.    Winnipeg is the capital of …

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Friday that setbacks for President Joe Biden’s climate efforts at home have “slowed the pace” of some of the commitments from other countries to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuels, but he insisted the U.S. would still achieve its own ambitious climate goals in time. Kerry spoke to The Associated Press after a major Supreme Court ruling Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s options for regulating climate pollution from power plants. The ruling raised the prospect the conservative-controlled court could go on to hinder other efforts by the executive branch to cut the country’s coal, oil and gas emissions. It came after Democrats failed in getting what was to be Biden’s signature climate legislation through the narrowly divided Senate. The Biden administration is striving now to show audiences at home and abroad that the U.S. can still make significant climate progress and strike deals with other …

World leaders must do more to protect the oceans, a major U.N. conference concluded Friday, setting its sights on a new treaty to protect the high seas.  “Greater ambition is required at all levels to address the dire state of the ocean,” the U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon said in its final declaration.  The meeting in the Portuguese capital — attended by government officials, experts and advocates from 140 countries — is not a negotiating forum. But it sets the agenda for final international negotiations in August on a treaty to protect the high seas — those international waters beyond national jurisdiction.  “Biodiversity loss, the decline of the ocean’s health, the way the climate crisis is going … it all has one common reason, which is … human behavior, our addiction to oil and gas, and all of them have to be addressed,” Peter Thomson, U.N. special envoy for the ocean, …

Scientists appear one step closer to predicting volcanic eruptions — a problem that has vexed volcanologists for decades. Research published last week in Nature Geoscience found that using satellite observations to calculate how quickly underground molten rock, or magma, accumulates beneath volcanoes could forecast certain eruptions weeks or months in advance.      “Any kind of information we can use to get at this forecasting thing is going to be important, because the more time you have to warn people that they can take some action, the more you can decrease the impacts of eruptions,” volcanologist Michael Poland of the United States Geological Survey told VOA. “That’s all we have, really, in terms of decreasing eruption impacts — to get out of the way.”      Most volcanoes don’t erupt without warning. They swell up, set off small earthquakes and let off gas leading up to an eruption — what …

Weeks after acknowledging its first coronavirus infections, North Korea appears to be blaming the outbreak on balloons sent by defector-activists in South Korea. North Korean officials said Friday they traced the outbreak to an inter-Korean border region, where an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old child came into contact with “alien things” in early April. The statement, published in the state-run Korean Central News Agency, did not specify what the objects were, but later warned residents to be on the lookout for balloons and other “alien things” in the area. North Korean officials have long warned the coronavirus could enter the country through novel means, including through migratory birds, snow, air pollution or anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets sent by South Korean activists. Earlier this week, South Korea-based defector Park Sang-hak said he launched 20 balloons with COVID-19 medical supplies, including masks, pain relievers and vitamin pills. North Korea, an authoritarian state that …