As fears mount globally about mpox, apparently simple questions such as the danger it poses and differences between variants do not have clear and simple answers.

The Gaza Strip's first recorded polio case in 25 years has health workers and aid agencies grappling with the steep obstacles to conducting mass vaccination in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Rights groups on Thursday expressed renewed concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza after Israel’s latest evacuation orders in parts of the overcrowded central city of Deir al-Balah.

The polio virus has been circulating in the battered Palestinian enclave for the first time in 25 years, relief organization the International Rescue Committee said in a statement. It said the spread resulted from the destruction of hospitals and water infrastructure, along with overcrowded living conditions.

The mpox outbreak is not another Covid-19, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, because much is already known about the virus and the means to control it.

Gaza has recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian health ministry said, after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called for pauses in the Israel-Hamas war to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children.

U.N. agencies on Friday called for two seven-day breaks in the fighting in Gaza to vaccinate more than 640,000 children against polio, which has been detected in the wastewater.

Swimming has been off-limits in the long-polluted Seine River in Paris for more than a century. So with Olympic swimming events on tap for the river, the city poured in $1.5 billion (1.4 billion euros) to try to clean it up.

With the Paris Games underway, officials are keeping a close eye on water quality. Athletes could feel health effects from swimming in a river with higher-than-accepted levels of E. coli or other bacteria.

A steady stream of miserable children and worried parents flowed into the dermatology office at Nasser Hospital in central Gaza.

A toddler with a blue hair bow sobbed as her mother showed how the red and white spots covering her face have spread to her neck and chest. Another woman lifted her little boy's clothes to reveal the rashes on his back, butt, thighs and stomach. On his wrists, he had open sores from scratching. A father stood his daughter on the desk so the doctor could examine the lesions on her calves.

Wildfire smoke may be worse for brain health than other types of air pollution, according to new research linking it to an increased risk of dementia.

The findings, reported Monday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Philadelphia, come as millions spent the weekend under air quality warnings from wildfires spewing smoke across the western U.S.

Lawmakers in the West African nation of The Gambia have rejected a highly controversial push to try overturn a ban on female genital mutilation.

Gambia in 2015 banned the ritual forced on millions of girls in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, but it remains widespread.