BROCKTON, Mass. A Massachusetts woman has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the prescription drug overdose of her 4-year-old daughter.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Endeavour's astronauts inspected their ship early Tuesday for any launch damage as they raced toward a 200-mile-high rendezvous with the International Space Station.

WASHINGTON A critical safety net for babies - that heelprick of blood taken from every newborn in the U.S. - is facing an ethics attack.

WASHINGTON A critical safety net for babies - that heelprick of blood taken from every newborn - is facing an ethics attack.

LONDON You know an election is coming when British politicians suddenly promise sweeping improvements to the National Health Service, a simultaneous source of national pride and worry.

WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

CHICAGO A woman's chance of having a child with autism increase substantially as she ages, but the risk may be less for older dads than previously suggested, a new study analyzing more than 5 million births found.

High rates of the most effective type of malaria-fighting drugs sold in three African countries are poor quality - including nearly half the pills sampled in Senegal - raising fears of increased drug resistance that could wipe out the last weapon left to battle a disease that kills 1 million people each year, according to a U.S. report released Monday.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The crew aboard space shuttle Endeavour includes an accomplished musician whose latest exploits are with the cello and steel guitar, an engineer who helped launch shuttles and a second-generation space program worker.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit Monday on what's likely the last nighttime launch for the shuttle program, hauling a new room and observation deck for the International Space Station.

PORTLAND, Maine The federal government advises throwing most unused or expired medications into the trash instead of down the drain, but they can end up in the water anyway, a study from Maine suggests.

MONSEY, N.Y. More than 300 people have been diagnosed with the mumps in suburban New York as the nation's largest outbreak of the disease in years spreads.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Clouds prevented space shuttle Endeavour from blasting off Sunday on the last planned nighttime shuttle launch, delaying its trip with a final few building blocks for the International Space Station.

SALT LAKE CITY The American pika isn't heading for the endangered species list, but federal scientists said there's no question it bears watching as the West warms in the coming decades.

ATLANTA If the U.S. swine flu epidemic isn't over, it certainly looks as if it's on its last legs. While federal health officials are not ready to declare the threat has passed and the outbreak has run its course, they did report Friday that for the fourth week in a row, no states had widespread flu activity. U.S. cases have been declining since late October.

MOSCOW A Russian cargo ship has sucessfully docked at the International Space Station, delivering supplies for its crew of five.

MONTPELIER, Vt. A radioactive substance recently found in groundwater monitoring wells at a Vermont nuclear plant has turned up again at levels more than nine times those previously reported and more than 37 times higher than a federal safe drinking water limit, officials said Thursday.

LOS ANGELES The teen fashion chain Aeropostale and outlet stores of upscale Saks Fifth Avenue have pulled from shelves necklaces that an environmental group's tests showed have high levels of the toxic metal cadmium.

WASHINGTON Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering its iceball surface here and there.

WASHINGTON Some dinosaurs had russet-colored feathers, and one jazzy specimen had a Mohawk crest and stripes, researchers say in the first reports to confidently assign colors to dinosaurs.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Life has never been so good off the planet, and it's about to get better.

WASHINGTON Government is poised to become king of the hill in America's vast health care system, with or without President Barack Obama's planned redo, according an economic report released Thursday.

WASHINGTON Expectant mothers are getting a new tool to help keep themselves and their babies healthy: pregnancy tips sent directly to their cell phones.

NEW YORK Scientists have detected glimmers of awareness in some vegetative brain-injury patients and have even communicated with one of them - findings that push the boundaries of how to assess and care for such people.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA is predicting good weather for this weekend's space shuttle launch.

LONDON About 40 percent of cancers could be prevented if people stopped smoking and overeating, limited their alcohol, exercised regularly and got vaccines targeting cancer-causing infections, experts say.

TEHRAN, Iran Iran announced Wednesday it launched a menagerie of animals - including a mouse, two turtles and worms - into space on a research rocket, a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. President Barack Obama's decision to scrap NASA's back-to-the-moon program in favor of private spacecraft created an outrage in places like Huntsville, where jobs depend on a return lunar trip.

NEW YORK Andrew Witty, who took over as GlaxoSmithKline PLC's chief executive in May 2008, has been remaking the company from a pure pharmaceutical business to a diverse healthcare conglomerate, a strategy most rivals now are pursuing.

WASHINGTON A half century ago the Mercury Seven embodied America's space future. Now it's the merchant seven - space companies for hire.

HARRISBURG, Pa. A drilling technique that is beginning to unlock staggering quantities of natural gas underneath Appalachia also yields a troubling byproduct: powerfully briny wastewater that can kill fish and give tap water a foul taste and odor.

A dizzying array of choices awaits those searching for a Medicare Advantage plan.

LONDON A major British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.

CHICAGO Fish oil pills may be able to save some young people with signs of mental illness from descending into schizophrenia, according to a preliminary but first-of-its-kind study.

CHICAGO An experimental abstinence-only program without a moralistic tone can delay teens from having sex, a provocative study found.

WASHINGTON A pill to ease a type of mental retardation? An experiment is under way to develop one, aimed at a genetic disorder that might unravel some of the mysteries of autism along the way.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is redirecting America's space program, killing NASA's $100 billion plans to return astronauts to the moon and using much of that money for new rocket technology research.

CHICAGO Paris Woods is hardly a poster child for the obesity epidemic. Lining up dripping wet with kids on her swim team, she's a blend of girlish chunkiness and womanly curves.

Here are some leading companies that are or could be developing a private space taxi system to take astronauts to the International Space Station. More firms may join in.

WASHINGTON Getting to space is about to be outsourced.

Federal consumer safety regulators on Friday announced the recall of "The Princess and The Frog" pendants sold at Walmart stores because of high levels of the toxic metal cadmium, an unprecedented action that reflects concerns of an emerging threat in children's jewelry.

DAVOS, Switzerland The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion over the next decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world's poorest countries, the Microsoft co-founder and his wife said Friday.

LONDON A new type of morning-after pill is more effective than the most widely used drug at preventing pregnancies in women who had unprotected sex and also works longer, for up to five days, a new study says.

LONDON The university at the center of a climate change dispute over stolen e-mails broke freedom of information laws by refusing to handle public requests for climate data, Britain's data-protection watchdog said Thursday.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is essentially grounding efforts to return astronauts to the moon and instead is sending NASA in new directions with roughly $6 billion more, according to officials familiar with the plans.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. First lady Michelle Obama framed her national campaign against childhood obesity in intensely personal terms Thursday, relating that her own daughters were starting to get off-track before the family's pediatrician gave her a wake-up call and warned her to watch it.

WASHINGTON The slowdown in global warming in the last few years may have been caused by a decline in water vapor in the stratosphere, a new report suggests.

TONINA, Mexico Mexican archaeologists have found an 1,100-year-old tomb from the twilight of the Maya civilization that they hope may shed light on what happened to the once-glorious culture.

NEW DELHI India's space agency is planning the nation's first manned space flight for 2016, if it gets government approval of the project budget, an official said Thursday.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. Researchers say a fatal fish virus has been found in Lake Superior for the first time, meaning it has spread to all the Great Lakes.