News at a glance

In science news around the world, Sydney Brenner, the Nobel laureate who made seminal discoveries in genetics and developmental biology, dies at age 92. Japan's Hayabusa2 mission continues its novel exploration of the asteroid Ryugu by blowing a crater in it so the spacecraft can collect samples; scientists are eager to study material from beneath the surface that has not undergone eons of space weathering. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has begun to restrict visitors from certain countries at its campus in Bethesda, Maryland, for national security reasons, sparking concerns from its staff scientists. Only 10 days after Google created an eight-member external advisory council on the ethics of artificial intelligence research, the company pulled the plug last week amid controversy over the views and affiliations of the council's members. The use of chemicals to disperse oil spills largely doesn't create a mixture more toxic than the oil itself, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reports.