Tricky SQL question

I need to create a sql statement that select a specific number of records from a table for each unique value within a column.

For example.... I have a table that stores news articles. Every news article has a type( headlines, health, comics, etc ). I need to select two news articles from the table for every news type. If there are 10 unique news types in the table, then I need to select two records for every type in the table.

We tried using UNION but there are over 200 types and the sql statement was greater than 4000 characters!

If anyone can help, I would appreciate it.

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