AFP - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva eased rules on importing genetically modified agricultural organisms, the official news agency said.

Reuters - Scientists have discovered a genetic mutation linked with colon cancer that may work like a spigot, controlling the number of precancerous growths that develop and determining a person's susceptibility to cancer.

Reuters - Findings of a U.S. government study that would help pave the way for the sale of milk and meat from cloned animals was "flawed" and failed to adequately check for possible side-effects, a consumer group said on Wednesday.

AFP - US researchers have created genetically-modified mosquitoes resistant to a malaria parasite, raising the possibility of one day stopping the spread of the disease, a new study says.

AP - Lifting the ban on taxpayer funding of research on new stem cells from fertilized embryos would better serve both science and the nation, the chief of the National Institutes of Health told lawmakers Monday.

AFP - Greenpeace activists Friday unloaded a truck of maize outside the Paris headquarters of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, urging him to back a moratorium on genetically-modified crops.

AP - A Scottish scientist says American bird experts may have been wrong when they concluded that the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, might have survived. In an article published Wednesday in the journal BMC Biology, University of Aberdeen geneticist Martin Collinson disputed whether a video shot by an Arkansas scientist showed the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Reuters - Environmental group Greenpeace launched a fresh attack on genetically modified maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, saying on Tuesday that rats fed on one version developed liver and kidney problems.