LONDON One in three breast cancer patients identified in public screening programs may be treated unnecessarily, a new study says. Karsten Jorgensen and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen analyzed breast cancer trends at least seven years before and after government-run screening programs for breast cancer started in parts of Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden.

WASHINGTON The share of Americans who see science as the nation's greatest achievement is down sharply, even as the public continues to hold scientists in high regard. A new Pew Research Center poll indicates that 27 percent of Americans say the nation's greatest achievements are in science, medicine and technology, more than any category other than don't know.

Arthritis supplements bought by millions of pet owners for their dogs, cats and horses sometimes skimp on the ingredients the makers claim can help aching paws and aging joints, and some contain high amounts of lead, an independent laboratory found.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA is sailing through the countdown for Saturday's launch of space shuttle Endeavour, with weather the lone concern.

WASHINGTON A form of ebola virus has been detected in pigs for the first time, raising concerns it could mutate and threaten humans, scientists report.

LOS ANGELES Scientists have detected a spike in underground rumblings on a section of California's San Andreas Fault that produced a magnitude-7.8 earthquake in 1857.

WASHINGTON Eat less, live longer? It seems to work for monkeys: A 20-year study found cutting calories by almost a third slowed their aging and fended off death. This is not about a quick diet to shed a few pounds. Scientists have long known they could increase the lifespan of mice and more primitive creatures - worms, flies - with deep, long-term cuts from normal consumption.

WASHINGTON U.S. swine flu vaccinations could begin in October with children among the first in line - at their local schools - the Obama administration said Thursday as the president and his Cabinet urged states to figure out now how they'll tackle the virus' all-but-certain resurgence.

WASHINGTON El Nino is back.

LONDON The World Health Organization has approved a second cervical cancer vaccine, this one made by GlaxoSmithKline, meaning U.N. agencies and partners can now officially buy millions of doses of the vaccine for poor countries worldwide.

NEW YORK An experimental drug helped monkeys and rabbits survive anthrax in a series of studies, suggesting it could be useful in case of another anthrax attack.

Roughly a fourth of American women getting early abortions last year did so with drugs rather than surgery, statistics show, as a new study reported improved safety in using the so-called "abortion pill."

WASHINGTON A drug used to prevent the rejection of organ transplants was found to significantly increase the life span of older mice, researchers report. The National Institute on Aging is testing compounds that may extend the life span of mice. The drug rapamycin is the first to work for both male and female mice, according to a study published online in the journal Nature.

WASHINGTON Astronomers have spotted the most distant and oldest star explosions yet in the universe.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA began another countdown Wednesday for space shuttle Endeavour, but stormy weather could stall the weekend launch.

LONDON British scientists claimed Wednesday to have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells for the first time, an accomplishment they say may someday help infertile men father children.

ATLANTA U.S. health officials are stepping up testing of swine flu cases for Tamiflu resistance, now that an American has come down with a resistant strain.

WASHINGTON New NASA satellite measurements show that sea ice in the Arctic is more than just shrinking in area, it is dramatically thinning.

BALTIMORE A transplant surgeon who completed an unprecedented eight-way kidney swap this week said Tuesday he believes such intricate, multistate exchanges can drastically reduce the number of patients waiting for eligible donors.

WASHINGTON The government is letting the painkillers Darvocet, Darvon and their generic cousins stay on the market but ordered stronger warnings against deadly overdoses on Tuesday.

CHICAGO A Food and Drug Administration panel has recommended limits on Tylenol and other drugs containing acetaminophen because of risks for liver failure. Maximum recommended doses for over-the-counter Tylenol would be reduced. Percocet and Vicodin, two narcotic prescription drugs containing acetaminophen, would be banned.

CHICAGO Proposed limits on Tylenol, a painkiller as common as pain itself, have left many consumers fearful, confused and wondering where to turn for relief. The potential government crackdown on acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient, would affect everyone from occasional pill poppers to chronic pain sufferers who rely on daily doses to make their lives more bearable.

WASHINGTON The White House is trying to make Americans' food safer after recent recalls of popular products like peanut butter and cookie dough.

WASHINGTON The government issued final rules Monday expanding taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells, easing scientists' fears that some of the oldest batches might not qualify and promising a master list of all that do.

WASHINGTON For all the concern about identity theft, researchers say there's a surprisingly easy way for the technology-savvy to figure out the precious nine digits of Americans' Social Security numbers.

CHICAGO Sleepless people sometimes use the Internet to get through the night. Now a small study shows promising results for insomniacs with nine weeks of Internet-based therapy.

JERUSALEM Israeli archaeologists have uncovered an ancient quarry where they believe King Herod extracted stones for the construction of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday. The archaeologists believe the 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) quarry was part of a much larger network of quarries used by Herod in the city.

PITTSBURGH Baby Riley Matthews wheezed noisily on the exam table. "He's belly-breathing," the emergency-room doctor said worriedly - Riley's little abdomen was markedly rising and falling with each breath, a sign of respiratory distress.

GENEVA The United Nations may need more than $1 billion this year to help poor countries fight the global swine flu epidemic, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. The butterfly decals on the front bumper, flowers in the dashboard vase and lime-green paint job only confirmed Dennis Slice's perception of a Volkswagen Beetle parked in a lot at Florida State University.

SYDNEY A 265-pound (120-kilogram), big-eared and long-nosed bundle of joy was welcomed in Australia as an important step in helping to save the endangered Asian elephant.

LONDON As President Barack Obama pushes to overhaul the American health care system, the role of government is at the heart of the debate. In Europe, free, state-run health care is a given.

CANBERRA, Australia Scientists have confirmed for the first time that Australia was once home to a dinosaur that was big, fast and terrifying, and they've named it like something from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Meet the Australovenator.

DENVER A former surgery technician may have exposed thousands of Colorado patients to hepatitis C when she swapped her own dirty syringes for ones filled with a powerful narcotic, federal authorities said Thursday.

CHICAGO When carpenter Greg Douglas crashed his pickup truck, his toolbox hit him and smashed his ribs and collarbone. After a month in the hospital, the medical bills hit him even harder, totaling $165,000.

WASHINGTON With swine flu continuing to spread around the world, researchers say they have found the reason it is - so far - more a series of local blazes than a wide-raging wildfire. The new virus, H1N1, has a protein on its surface that is not very efficient at binding with receptors in people's respiratory tracts, researchers at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

WASHINGTON Attorney General Eric Holder had emergency oral surgery Thursday to remove a cracked tooth.

ATLANTA The number of U.S. swine flu cases has reached nearly 34,000, and deaths have risen 34 percent in the past week to 170, federal health officials reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON El Nino may have a split personality.

WASHINGTON Like the wool sweater that emerges from the dryer a size too small, global warming seems to be shrinking sheep.

A federal investigation has found that heart attack survivors enrolled in a study of a controversial alternative medicine treatment were not told enough about potential dangers from the drug being tested, including death.

GENEVA Governments are failing to stem a rapid decline in biodiversity that is now threatening extinction for almost half the world's coral reef species, a third of amphibians and a quarter of mammals, a leading environmental group warned Thursday.

ATLANTA The percentage of Americans with private health insurance has hit its lowest mark in 50 years, according to two new government reports.

You don't have to be Michael Jackson to have this problem: The odds of surviving cardiac arrest after getting CPR in a hospital are slim and have not improved in more than a decade, a big Medicare study concludes.

ATLANTA In a perverse twist of medical fate, Farrah Fawcett has become the poster girl for anal cancer, a rare disease often linked to a sexually transmitted virus.

When Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest, rescuers took him to a place known for bringing the dead back to life. A world-renowned surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center has pioneered a way to revive people that most doctors would have long written off, including a woman whose heart had stopped for 2 1/2 hours.

WASHINGTON A handful of typos in a mysterious region of the human genetic code are connected to a slightly higher risk of schizophrenia, new studies show.

BANGKOK, Thailand Fossils recently discovered in Myanmar could prove that the common ancestors of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, rather than Africa, researchers contend in a study released Wednesday.

CHICAGO An 84-year-old University of Chicago researcher has won a half-million-dollar genetics prize for her pioneering work in showing that cancer is a genetic disease.

WASHINGTON Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.