News at a glance

In science news around the world, U.S. President Donald Trump releases his budget request for the 2020 fiscal year, which renews his call for deep cuts in research spending. Sudanese academics seek the release of Muntaser Ibrahim, a leading geneticist imprisoned in Khartoum on 21 February after participating in peaceful protests against the country's repressive regime. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a fast-acting treatment for depression. Norman Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, will become FDA's acting commissioner after its current chief, Scott Gottlieb, steps down in early April. The UK Biobank releases the study's first 50,000 exomes—the parts of the human genome that code for proteins—marking the largest-ever public data set that links partial genomes with detailed clinical information on participants. CERN, Europe's particle physics laboratory, severs its relationship with physicist Alessandro Strumia because of a much-criticized lecture he gave suggesting women are less able at physics than men.