Wire Health & Science

President Barack Obama's administration can go forward with its new plan to make the morning-after pill available to buyers of any age without prescriptions, but it needs to do it promptly or face potential sanctions in the long-running dispute over access to the emergency contraceptives, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

A Chinese spacecraft blasted off to begin the country's fifth and longest manned space mission, taking three astronauts to an orbiting space lab from where they will give science lessons to youngsters.

A $20 billion plan to gird New York with levees, flood gates and other defenses is a bold stroke from a mayor who saw the city through Superstorm Sandy and has championed preparedness for global warming. But the future of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's sweeping proposals will largely rest with his successor.

A state appeals court panel had few sweet words Tuesday for a city health regulation that would fight diabetes and obesity by setting a size limit on sugary beverages sold in restaurants.

A New York City judge has found the government can go ahead with its plan to make the morning-after pill available over the counter.

The Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday called for protection of all chimpanzees as endangered, an action that could affect use of the apes in medical research.

Don't look for the morning-after pill to move next to the condoms on drugstore shelves right away - but after a decade-plus fight, it appears it really will happen. Backed into a corner by a series of court rulings, the Obama administration has agreed to let the Plan B One-Step brand of emergency contraception sell over the counter to anyone of any age.

The Obama administration's appeal in the legal fight over morning-after pills has been officially put on hold until a judge weighs a new plan to allow girls of all ages to buy the contraceptives without a prescription, according to a government letter filed Tuesday.

Removable floodwalls would be erected in lower Manhattan, and levees, gates and other defenses would be built elsewhere around the city under a nearly $20 billion plan proposed Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to protect New York from storms and the effects of global warming.

China's astronauts have braved the tension of docking with a space station and performed delicate tasks outside their orbiting capsule, but now face a more down-to-earth job that is perhaps equally challenging: Talking to young people about science.

Faced with a federal judge's order in the heart-wrenching cases of two terminally ill children seeking lung transplants, a national review board sought a balance that will keep such decisions in the hands of doctors, not lawyers or judges.

Officials say new projections show 800,000 New York City residents could be living in flood zone that would cover a quarter of the city's land by the 2050s as rising seas and other effects of global warming take hold.

Federal prosecutors in New Jersey say a former executive for biopharmaceuticals company Bristol-Myers Squibb has admitted using his high-level position and access to nonpublic information to make about $310,000 from insider trades.

A bill that is intended to persuade more Oregon parents to take their kids to doctors for shots and get over their mistrust of conventional medicine has taken a big step in the Legislature with passage by the state Senate.

NASA's Opportunity rover is rolling across the Martian surface again, leaving behind a clay-rich rock in search of more discoveries.

A 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy named Padihershef came out of his coffin Friday to go to the hospital.

The psychiatrist who opened the Oregon State Hospital's doors to filming of the 1975 Academy Award-winning movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" has died.

Federal health officials say they have found bacteria and fungus in drug vials from a Tennessee specialty pharmacy that recalled all of its injectable medicines last month.

Arena Pharmaceuticals says its weight loss drug Belviq will be available to U.S. patients beginning next week, nearly a year after the drug was officially approved by federal regulators.

Federal officials are declaring victory in their four-decade campaign to rescue the gray wolf, a predator the government once considered a nuisance and tried to exterminate.

Don't expect to see morning-after pills for all ages on drugstore shelves anytime soon. A federal appeals court decision allowing girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without a prescription won't immediately change access.

New Hampshire health officials say the hepatitis C outbreak associated with a former hospital technician has spread beyond his patients to a person who is believed to have had sexual contact with one of them.

A dying Pennsylvania girl has been placed on the adult waiting list for donated lungs amid a court fight over the nation's transplant rules with help from a judge who granted another petition Thursday from a boy at the same hospital.

It's a life or death matter: Who gets the next scarce donated organ? In an unprecedented challenge to the nation's transplant system, a federal judge has allowed one dying child - and a day later another - to essentially jump the line in rulings that could have ramifications for thousands of people awaiting new organs.

The organ transplant network has placed a dying 10-year-old girl on the adult waiting list for a donated lung, complying with a judge's unusual order.