Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Capitol Hill last year. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) Two House Democrats are calling on Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to resign amid concerns about her health and ability to serve in Congress. Feinstein, 89, who has been absent from the Senate for more than a month while recovering from shingles, plans to retire … Read more
Photo illustration: Quinn Lemmers/Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images What does it take to be considered the world’s happiest country? For the sixth year in a row, Finland has earned that accolade, winning the top spot yet again in the annual World Happiness Report, which makes this determination by measuring things like healthy life expectancy, GDP … Read more
Getty Images It’s been a busy week — from lab leak theories at a COVID-19 origins hearing to the Supreme Court’s eagerly anticipated decision on access to the abortion pill mifepristone. But that’s not all that’s going on in the health space. Here are some interesting updates you may have missed, as reported by Yahoo … Read more
A Black woman palpates her breast to check for signs of breast cancer. (Getty Images) Breast cancer is the second-most-common cancer among women and the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Even though it’s slightly less prevalent among Black than white women in the U.S., Black women are more likely to … Read more
WASHINGTON — Congressional hearings are frequently acrimonious, but they rarely descend into the kind of personal attack that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., waged against teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten at a House hearing last week on pandemic-related school closures, an issue that continues to excite strong passions. Those passions were expressed in a “very … Read more
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, testifies before a House subcommittee hearing on COVID-19 school closures on April 26. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo) WASHINGTON — Long gone are the days when American children started their school day with a laptop at the kitchen table. Since the Omicron surge of early 2022, schools across … Read more
3D illustration of a fetus in a womb. (iStockphoto/Getty Images) In a first-of-its-kind procedure, physicians performed a successful in utero surgery to repair a rare and potentially deadly prenatal condition in a fetus. In utero surgery has been used for other conditions, but this is the first time it has been attempted to treat “vein … Read more
Dr. Joseph Varon comforts a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit on Thanksgiving at the United Memorial Medical Center on Nov. 26, 2020 in Houston. (Go Nakamura/Getty Images) Friday’s declaration by the World Health Organization that the coronavirus emergency was “over” marked the end of a three-year journey that saw the world transformed by … Read more
A raccoon dog in Miyagi prefecture, Japan. (Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images) The raccoon dog did it: That was the explosive takeaway of a genomic analysis conducted in March by a trio of scientists who had scrutinized data from a market in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic was thought to have begun. Until then, evidence for that … Read more
A person wearing a mask walks out of a store past a “wear a face mask” sign in New York City in 2022. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters) On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will allow the federal public health emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic to expire, but not everyone sees it as … Read more