China has launched a national organ donation system to try to reduce its dependence on body parts harvested from executed prisoners, who make up the majority of donors.

Organ transplantation in China has long been criticized as profit-driven and unethical, with critics arguing death row inmates may feel pressured to become donors, violating personal, religious or cultural beliefs.

The former Giants receiver pleaded guilty last week to attempted criminal possession of a weapon after accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub last November. He accepted a two-year prison term and is to be sentenced Sept. 22.

With prison just weeks away, he acknowledged he's especially anxious about being separated from his family.

Speculation has been raging that the ship seized by pirates near Sweden last month and vanished for weeks before being recaptured by the Russian navy -- may have held weapons or even nuclear materials.

Scientists have produced monkeys with genetic material from two mothers, an advance that could help women with some inherited diseases have healthy children but which would raise a host of safety, legal, ethical and social questions if attempted in people.

Using cloning-related techniques, the researchers developed a way to replace most of the genes in the eggs from one rhesus macaque monkey with those from another, fertilized the eggs with sperm, transferred the resulting embryos into animals' wombs and produced four apparently healthy offspring.