Scientists said Monday they had used a new-generation gene sequencing technique to select a viable embryo for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) that yielded a healthy baby boy.

IVF, the process whereby a human egg is fertilized with sperm in the laboratory, is a hit-and-miss affair, with only about 30 percent of fertilized embryos resulting in pregnancy after implantation.

The case of a pregnant 11-year old girl who was raped in Chile by her mother's partner has set off a national debate about abortion in one of the most socially-conservative countries in Latin America.

Chileans were outraged on Friday after state TV reported that the girl is 14 weeks pregnant and was raped repeatedly over two years. Police in the remote southern city of Puerto Montt arrested her mother's partner, who confessed to abusing the fifth grader. The case was brought to their attention by the pregnant child's maternal grandmother.

Residents and water plants along a river in southern China that is used as a drinking source have been warned not to use the river's water after authorities detected excessive amounts of two dangerous chemicals.

Tests by authorities detected the chemicals thallium and cadmium in a section of the Hejiang River in Guangdong province after dead fish turned up in the water, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

Dengue fever has surged in the central Philippines, infecting more than 1,800 people and killing at least ten, a provincial official said Saturday.

The number of people struck down by the mosquito-borne disease in the central province of Iloilo this year is already 71 percent higher than the same period last year, provincial administrator Raul Banias told Agence France Presse.

The World Health Organization announced Friday it had convened emergency talks on the enigmatic, deadly MERS virus, which is striking hardest in Saudi Arabia.

The move comes amid concern about the potential impact of October's Islamic hajj pilgrimage, when millions of people from around the globe will head to and from Saudi Arabia.

First cousins who marry run twice the risk of having a child with genetic abnormalities, according to the findings of a study in the English city of Bradford, published Friday in The Lancet.

The city, which has a high proportion of South Asian immigrants and their descendants among its population, served as a microcosm for examining the risk of blood relative couplings.

Scientists in Japan said they had grown human liver tissue from stem cells in a first that holds promise for alleviating the critical shortage of donor organs.

Creating lab-grown tissue to replenish organs damaged by accident or disease is a Holy Grail for the pioneering field of research into the premature cells known as stem cells.

The new MERS coronavirus that has claimed dozens of lives in the Middle East does not yet have the ability to trigger a pandemic, but vigilance is needed in case it mutates, French scientists said on Friday.

"Our analysis suggests that MERS-CoV does not yet have pandemic potential," they reported online in The Lancet.

At least 11 people have been killed in an outbreak of H1N1 flu virus in northern Chile, where the rate of infection is more than six times higher than the rest of the country, authorities said Thursday.

"The average across the country is 24 patients per 100,000 residents, but in Tarapaca, in the past week, the rate was 148 patients per 100,000 residents," Medical Association president Enrique Paris said.

An environmental group said Wednesday that the caramel coloring used in Pepsi still contains a worrisome level of a carcinogen, even after the drink maker said it would change its formula.

In March, PepsiCo Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. both said they would adjust their formulas after California passed a law mandating drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens come with a cancer warning label. The changes were made for drinks sold in California when the law passed.