Several doctors groups and advocacy groups set guidelines for cancer screening, and they update that advice periodically as new information emerges. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't. Last year, a number of groups got together and issued consensus guidelines for colon cancer.

ATLANTA Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu, health officials said Friday. The cases reported at Duke University Medical Center over six weeks make up the biggest cluster seen so far in the U.S.

LINCOLN, Neb. The University of Nebraska's governing board on Friday voted down a proposal to restrict the school's rules governing embryonic stem-cell research beyond what the federal government allows.

WASHINGTON Suitably opaque, Section 2006 takes up only a few dozen lines in a sweeping health care bill that runs to 2,074 pages and mentions neither Sen. Mary Landrieu nor her state of Louisiana.

WASHINGTON In a Nov. 17 story about drug interactions between heartburn medications and the blood thinner Plavix, The Associated Press misidentified Johnson & Johnson's Mylanta as part of the H-2 blocker drug family. Mylanta is an antacid.

WASHINGTON The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

A space shuttle is no tinker toy. But is it the most complex machine ever built?

HANOI, Vietnam Babies squirmed and wailed as needles plunged into their chubby thighs at a public health clinic on the outskirts of Hanoi on Friday. Like little ones everywhere, the reaction to the sting was never pretty.

WASHINGTON First mammograms. Now - in an apparent coincidence - Pap smears.

BEIJING China's health ministry said it will punish officials who underreport cases of swine flu after a doctor famous for exposing the extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic said he believes the true number of swine flu deaths is being covered up.

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. Two days before shipping off to war, Marine Pfc. Jesse Sheets sat inside a trailer in the Mojave Desert, his gaze fixed on a computer that flashed a rhythmic pulse of contrasting images.

MELBOURNE, Australia Formerly conjoined Bangladeshi twins separated this week in a marathon surgery will remain in the care of a humanitarian group for at least two years, the organization's CEO said Friday.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Atlantis' astronauts anxiously awaited word on the birth of one crewman's daughter Friday, as they moved more supplies into the International Space Station and geared up for another spacewalk.

ATLANTA When the nation's swine flu vaccination program began in early October, health officials predicted it was going to be "messy." They were right.

WASHINGTON Federal health experts on Thursday brushed off lingering safety questions about a popular inhaler drug and suggested it carry bolder benefit claims.

MARIETTA, Pa. In a Nov. 18 story about the vaccine industry, The Associated Press misspelled the surname of a government official quoted in the story. The director of the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is Robin Robinson, not Robertson.

ATLANTA The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia. High rates of obesity and diabetes were reported in more than 80 percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WASHINGTON A 20-foot-long crocodile with three sets of fangs - like wild boar tusks - roamed parts of northern Africa millions of years ago, researchers reported Thursday. While this fearsome creature hunted meat, not far away another newly found type of croc with a wide, flat snout like a pancake was fishing for food.

LONDON Health experts say extraordinary measures against swine flu - most notably quarantines imposed by China, where entire planeloads of passengers were isolated if one traveler had symptoms - have failed to contain the disease.

HAVANA China's health minister said Wednesday his country is vaccinating 1.5 million people a day against swine flu, part of a mammoth effort to reach nearly 7 percent of inhabitants of the world's most populous country by year's end.

BETHESDA, Md. Federal health experts said Wednesday an updated version of Pfizer's best-selling anti-infection vaccine is safe and effective for infants and toddlers, despite company studies that failed to meet certain goals.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A pair of spacewalking astronauts, one of them a surgeon, hustled through antenna and cable work Thursday outside the International Space Station.

WASHINGTON A member of the independent panel whose new mammogram recommendations have led to confusion defended the task force's report, saying Thursday that it was based on the most up-to-date, accurate information available.

ORLANDO, Fla. A CT scan - a kind of super X-ray - provides a faster, cheaper way to diagnose a heart attack when someone goes to the emergency room with chest pains, a new study suggests.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. First Lady Michelle Obama received a few gardening tips from students Wednesday as she toured a Virginia elementary school's vegetable garden.

LONDON The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday.

SPRING LAKE, N.J. Former Kiss drummer Peter Criss is speaking out about his recent bout with breast cancer.

SPRING LAKE, N.J. Lying in bed one night in 2007, Peter Criss felt something strange: a small lump on his left breast.

BANGKOK Conservationists searching for one of the world's most endangered crocodile species say they have found dozens of the reptiles lounging in plain sight - at a wildlife rescue center in Cambodia.

NEW DELHI Thousands of stargazers across Asia stayed awake overnight to catch a glimpse of what was advertised as an intense Leonid meteor shower, but the show fizzled rather than sizzled for many because of cloudy conditions.

MELBOURNE, Australia A Bangladeshi toddler separated this week from her conjoined twin sister was talking and behaving normally Thursday after waking from a medically induced coma, the head of the surgery team said.

ORLANDO, Fla. You can't blame this one on McDonald's: Researchers have found signs of heart disease in 3,500-year-old mummies.

MARIETTA, Pa. Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer's disease. AIDS. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler's diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.

WASHINGTON Pollution typically declines during a recession. Not this time. Despite a global economic slump, worldwide carbon dioxide pollution jumped 2 percent last year, most of the increase coming from China, according to a study published online Tuesday.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Space shuttle Atlantis arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday for a weeklong stay, delivering a load of spare parts needed to keep the outpost running for another decade.

The Sept. 19, 2008, failure of the Large Hadron Collider is costing 40 million Swiss francs ($40 million) to fix and it set back experiments for more than a year. But the world's largest atom smasher has lesser hiccups to contend with:

WASHINGTON Federal health officials said Tuesday a popular variety of heartburn medications can interfere with the blood thinner Plavix, a drug taken by millions of Americans to reduce risks of heart attack and stroke.

GENEVA Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the machine that was launched with great fanfare last year before its spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection, a spokesman said Tuesday.

ORLANDO, Fla. For the first time, a miniature heart pump shows the potential to become a widely used, permanent treatment for many older people with severe heart failure. But can we afford it?

BEIJING President Barack Obama, with China's leader at his side, lifted his sights Tuesday for a broad interim accord at next month's climate conference that he said will lead to immediate action and "rally the world" toward a solution on global warming.

MELBOURNE, Australia Formerly conjoined Bangladeshi twins spent their first night in separate beds and were in serious but stable condition Wednesday following a marathon surgery to separate the toddlers, who were born joined at their heads.

NEW YORK For many women, getting a mammogram is already one of life's more stressful experiences.

CHICAGO Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.

WASHINGTON Tom Dougherty jokes that he takes "get-lost walks." To his wife, Cleo, it's a constant fear: When will his Alzheimer's get bad enough that she has to end his 4-mile daily strolls?

WASHINGTON Federal health officials on Monday questioned whether to approve an updated version of Pfizer's best-selling anti-infection vaccine for children, despite company studies that failed to meet certain goals.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts scoured their ship Tuesday for any signs of launch damage while pursuing the International Space Station.

ATLANTA Sexually spread diseases continue to rise, with reported chlamydia cases setting yet another record in 2008, government health officials said Monday.

MELBOURNE, Australia A team of Australian surgeons were working Monday on a delicate and complicated surgery to separate twin sisters who are joined at the top of the head.

BRUSSELS Environmentalists on Monday said an international deal to reduce catches of Atlantic bluefin tuna didn't go far enough to protect the species from extinction.

MELBOURNE, Australia Twin Bangladeshi girls joined at the top of their heads were in good condition Tuesday but were not yet separated after 24 hours of complicated surgery, hospital officials said.