health minister

U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has resigned a day after apologizing for breaching social distancing rules with an aide with whom he was allegedly having an affair

At least 21 people are dead and hundreds more are hurt after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck about 20 miles northwest of Albania’s capital Tirana. Rescue teams were still searching for people trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Rescue crews with excavators searched for survivors trapped in toppled apartment buildings and hotels Tuesday as the death toll from a powerful pre-dawn earthquake in Albania climbed to 21, with more than 600 people injured. The magnitude-6.4 quake was felt across the southern Balkans and was followed by multiple aftershocks, with several above magnitude 5. In nearby Bosnia, another temblor...

A bus collided with a truck in Slovakia on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people and injuring at least 17 more, officials said. Online news site tvnoviny.sk reported that the bus was carrying high school students. Health Minister Andrea Kalavska, who was at the site, said four of the people killed were children, but did not release their ages.

Sakshi Chauhan has not left her house in a quiet inner-city slum in the Indian capital for the past six days on her doctor’s orders. The 22-year-old call center operator is recovering from a severe throat infection and the thick smog now blanketing New Delhi has made even breathing dangerous. “The moment I step outside, I can’t breathe properly,” she...

Even ice cream, Italian gelato or Popsicles couldn’t help this time. Temperature records that had stood for decades or even just hours fell minute by minute Thursday afternoon and Europeans and tourists alike jumped into fountains, lakes, rivers or the sea to escape a suffocating heat wave rising up from the Sahara. On a day that no one on the...

The deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo is now an international health emergency, the World Health Organization announced Wednesday after the virus spread this week to a city of 2 million people. A WHO expert committee had declined on three previous occasions to advise the United Nations health agency to make the declaration for this outbreak, which other experts say has...

The Trump administration and Canada’s government imposed sanctions Friday on some Nicaraguan officials, tying them to a tough crackdown on street demonstrations that began in the Central American country in April 2018. The U.S. said it was sanctioning four officials: National Assembly President Gustavo Porras, telecommunications institute director Orlando José Castillo, Health Minister Sonia Castro and Transportation Minister Oscar Mojica....

The Trump administration and Canada’s government imposed sanctions Friday on some Nicaraguan officials, tying them to a tough crackdown on street demonstrations that began in the Central American country in April 2018. The U.S. said it was sanctioning four officials: National Assembly President Gustavo Porras, telecommunications institute director Orlando José Castillo, Health Minister Sonia Castro and Transportation Minister Oscar Mojica....

Several well-trodden paths crisscross this lush area where people walk between Congo and Uganda to visit nearby family and friends and go to the busy markets. The problem is that the pedestrians may unknowingly be carrying the deadly Ebola virus, and hindering efforts to control the current outbreak in eastern Congo, which has killed more than 1,400 people. The busy...

The isolation ward for Ebola patients is a tent erected in the garden of the local hospital. Gloves are given out sparingly to health workers. And when the second person in this Uganda border town died after the virus outbreak spread from neighboring Congo , the hospital for several hours couldn’t find a vehicle to take away the body. “We...

The isolation ward for Ebola patients is a tent erected in the garden of the local hospital. Gloves are given out sparingly to health workers. And when the second person in this Uganda border town died after the virus outbreak spread from neighboring Congo , the hospital for several hours couldn’t find a vehicle to take away the body. “We...

At least 150 people have died and about 200 people have been hospitalized after drinking tainted liquor in two separate incidents in India’s remote northeast, authorities said Sunday. The victims of one of the most deadly bootleg liquor-related incidents in India were mostly tea plantation workers in Golaghat and Jorhat districts in Assam state, said Himanta Biswa Sharma, the state’s...

Search crews in Russia pulled more bodies Wednesday from a huge pile of rubble where part of an apartment building collapsed, bringing the known death toll to 33 and the number of missing residents down to eight as the grim recovery work continued for a third night. A 3-year-old girl was among the latest victims of the collapse in the...

Russian authorities in Crimea were searching Thursday for a possible accomplice of the student whose shooting-and-bomb attack on his vocational school killed 20 people and wounded more than 50 others, a top official said. The 18-year-old student, who authorities said later killed himself in the school’s library, was initially believed to be the only person involved in the carnage Wednesday...

Another person has died in Congo of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities to 12, said the country’s health ministry. The new death happened in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province, said the health ministry statement released Sunday. There are also four new suspected cases in the province, said the statement. Congo now has...

Congo’s Ebola outbreak has spread to a crossroads city of more than 1 million people in a troubling turn that marks the first time the vast, impoverished country has encountered the lethal virus in an urban area. “This is a major, major game-changer in the outbreak,” Dr. Peter Salama, the World Health Organization’s deputy director-general of emergency preparedness and response,...

With the fire alarms silent and staff reportedly nowhere to be seen, a fire at a shopping mall packed with children and their parents on the first weekend of the school recess killed 64 people in Russia’s Siberia. The fire at the Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo, a city about 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) east of Moscow, was extinguished by...

The Vatican secretary of state acknowledged Tuesday that there were problems at “the pope’s hospital” for children in the past, but said the new administration is making a “serious effort to resolve them.” Cardinal Pietro Parolin said some of the problems identified by current and former Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital staff in 2014 were “truly unfounded.” But for problems that...

At least 53 people have died after a train overloaded with passengers derailed along the route that links Cameroon’s two major cities, the country’s transport minister said late Friday.
At least 300 others were injured in the accident in Eseka, about 75 miles west of the capital, Yaounde, said Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo’o, who was at the scene.