Here’s the latest news about a global outbreak of H5N1 bird flu that started in 2020, and recently spread among cattle in U.S. states and marine mammals across the world, which has health officials closely monitoring it and experts concerned the virus could mutate and eventually spread to humans, where it has proven rare but deadly.

In her three decades of working with elephant seals, Dr. Marcela Uhart had never seen anything like the scene on the beaches of Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula last October.

It was peak breeding season; the beach should have been teeming with harems of fertile females and enormous males battling one another for dominance. Instead, it was “just carcass upon carcass upon carcass,” recalled Dr. Uhart, who directs the Latin American wildlife health program at the University of California, Davis.

Four years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries, including Britain. Pandemics aren’t a one-off event.

I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.

On March 10, 2020, before any government prompting, Harvard declared that it would “suspend in-person classes and shift to online learning.” Across the country, universities, schools, and state governments followed Harvard’s lead.

The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has left the health sector in the besieged coastal enclave in a state of unprecedented, near-total collapse, according to an investigation by +972 Magazine and The Intercept. The dire conditions were prompted by Israel’s intensive bombardment, sometimes targeting hospitals and surrounding areas, along with power cuts, shortages of fuel and medical supplies, and an exponential increase in injuries.

As Israel steps up its air raids and ground assault in its ongoing war against Hamas, the medical situation in Gaza is growing more and more dire, with the north’s major remaining hospitals warning they’ll soon run out of fuel and supplies. Once they do, a humanitarian crisis that’s already untenable is only expected to get worse.

Dr. Richard King was driving home from the Central Maine Medical Center on Wednesday night when he received an urgent call from a fellow trauma surgeon alerting him that victims of a mass casualty event were flooding the hospital.

King, the trauma medical director, immediately turned around and sped through Lewiston's streets with his hazard lights flashing, arriving to discover what he later described in an interview as a nightmarish scene. The emergency room was overflowing with wounded and bleeding patients, casualties of the latest mass shooting to hit an American city.

A manhunt continued Thursday for the suspect in the mass shootings that killed 18 people and injured 13 in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday. 

Authorities are attempting to locate 40-year-old Robert Card, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told reporters during a news conference Thursday. Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous. Hundreds of police and about 80 FBI agents, as well as federal marshals and other agencies, are involved in the search.

At least 22 people are dead, and 30 people are injured following a shooting in a Maine city that spanned three locations on Wednesday night, Fox News has confirmed.

On Wednesday night, the Lewiston Police Department identified Robert Card as a person of interest. 

Authorities said that he should be considered, "armed and dangerous."

The Lewiston Police Department confirmed that the active shooting incidents occurred at two locations— Schemengees Bar and Grille Restaurant and Sparetime Recreation.

Police in Lewiston, Maine, have ordered people and businesses to shelter in place after shootings at multiple locations left 22 people dead, according to CNBC.

CNBC reported Wednesday that between 50 and 60 people had been hurt in two businesses in "active shooter events."