Police stations from Massachusetts to Mumbai have received similar alerts from Facebook over the last 18 months as part of what is most likely the world’s largest suicide threat screening and alert program. The social network ramped up the effort after several people live-streamed their suicides on Facebook Live in early 2017. It now utilizes both algorithms and user reports to flag possible suicide threats.

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A Chinese researcher claiming to have led a team that genetically edited human babies is now under investigation, as well as an American professor who might have helped him.

He Jiankui, an associate professor at Shenzhen’s Southern University of Science and Technology of China, revealed his gene editing work on Monday to an organizer of an international conference on gene editing in Hong Kong. He told the Associated Press he altered the DNA of twin girls born this month to resist HIV and AIDS virus. He said he’s altered embryos for seven couples in fertility treatments, but only had one pregnancy result.

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In a landmark move bound to further shake the tobacco industry, the Food and Drug Administration plans to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes next week as part of its aggressive campaign against flavored e-cigarettes and some tobacco products, agency officials said.

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The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new form of an extremely potent opioid to manage acute pain in adults, weeks after the chairman of the advisory committee that reviewed it asked the agency to reject it on grounds that it would likely be abused.

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Identity is socially, politically and legally determined, even if shaped by genetics. Yet, genetic ancestry testing does not offer insights about these dynamics. So we can’t look to DNA to settle debates about identity.

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Congress has approved a $2 billion raise, to $39.1 billion, for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a 2019 spending bill approved by House of Representatives and Senate negotiators last night. As expected, the 5% boost matches the Senate’s proposed spending level and surpasses a $1.25 billion increase in a draft bill passed by the House.

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Despite an international agreement, U.S. health authorities still have not received H7N9 avian flu specimens from their Chinese counterparts.

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A woman has become the first person in Denmark to be charged with wearing a veil in public, under a new law that bans Islamic face coverings.

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Pfizer chief executive Ian Read said late Tuesday that his company would delay increasing the prices of dozens of drug products after President Trump publicly berated the firm one day earlier.

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After more than a year of complaints and warnings — some subtle and others a little less so — the Trump administration has announced that the United States is withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley announced the decision in a joint statement Tuesday.

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