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| SSE freezes prices as pressure grows on UK utilities Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 07:30 PM PDT  By Karolin Schaps LONDON (Reuters) - Power utility SSE said it would freeze prices and separate its wholesale and retail businesses after an outcry over soaring energy bills prompted a review of competition in the sector. Britain's 'Big Six' energy suppliers, which control around 95 percent of the retail market, have come under fire for consistently increasing tariffs and regulators are deciding this week whether to open a full antitrust investigation. The price increases have put SSE, Scottish Power, Centrica, RWE npower, E.ON and EDF Energy at the centre of a political row over the cost of living, nearly one year before a general election. The price freeze forces SSE's rivals to consider similar moves as customers increasingly shop around for the best deals. Full Story | Top |
| Energy suppliers could face first anti-trust probe Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 05:34 PM PDT  By Karolin Schaps LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's energy suppliers could be on track for their biggest shake up since privatisation when regulators rule on Thursday whether the industry is competitive enough following a public outcry over high prices. Three regulators will say whether the whole industry needs to be subjected to a full-blown anti-trust investigation which could result in some of the big gas and electricity suppliers being broken up. Public trust in the country's "big six" providers, which control around 95 percent of the market, is at an all-time low after years of rising energy bills and allegations they are abusing their market position. Prime Minister David Cameron ordered a review of competition in the energy retail sector in October last year, calling the high cost of energy unacceptable. Full Story | Top |
| GSK links with top labs on 'big data' drug project Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 05:26 PM PDT  By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline is linking with two top bioscience centres on an open-access research project to tap into "big data" generated by gene research, in a move highlighting how drug companies are learning to share. The new public-private Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV) is being created by GSK working alongside the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute, both of which are based in Cambridge, England. "I fully expect others to join," Patrick Vallance, GSK's head of pharmaceuticals research and development, told Reuters. As a result, there is a growing trend among pharmaceutical companies to become more open about sharing early-stage - or pre-competitive - research work, rather than keeping their science locked up behind high walls. Full Story | Top |
| NICE to take broader view of drug value Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 05:14 PM PDT By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is to take a broader view of the value offered by new medicines under proposals that may make it more likely that it will say "yes" to novel drugs in future. Chief Executive Andrew Dillon told Reuters that wider uptake would only occur, however, if pharmaceutical manufacturers kept a tight rein on prices. NICE, which determines the use of treatments on the state-run health service, will in future look at the "wider societal impact" of therapies, as well as their cost-effectiveness on more limited clinical grounds. Full Story | Top |
| British cost agency to take broader view of drug value Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 05:03 PM PDT By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - British healthcare cost agency NICE is to take a broader view of the value offered by new medicines under proposals that may make it more likely that it will say "yes" to novel drugs in future. Chief Executive Andrew Dillon told Reuters that wider uptake would only occur, however, if pharmaceutical manufacturers kept a tight rein on prices. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which determines the use of treatments on the state-run health service, will in future look at the "wider societal impact" of therapies, as well as their cost-effectiveness on more limited clinical grounds. Full Story | Top |
| Step aside Saturn: Little asteroid has rings too Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 05:00 PM PDT By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - It is not just Saturn and the giant gas planets of the solar system that bear rings. The asteroid, known as Chariklo, is more than 621 million miles (1 billion km) from Earth, circling the sun in an orbit between Saturn and Uranus. "We weren't looking for a ring and didn't think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all," lead astronomer Felipe Braga-Ribas, with Brazil's National Observatory in Rio de Janeiro, said in a statement. "It's likely that Chariklo has at least one small moon still waiting to be discovered," Braga-Ribas said. Full Story | Top |
| Merck, Glaxo end co-pay assistance for Obamacare plans Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 03:27 PM PDT (Reuters) - Merck and Co Inc and GlaxoSmithKline Plc are not reimbursing drug co-payments for patients who purchase their health insurance through state and federal exchanges set up under the Obamacare program. The two drugmakers said their decision, first reported by Bloomberg News, is based on uncertainty about whether insurance programs offered under the Affordable Care Act are governed by federal laws that ban kickbacks to businesses. At the same time, most drugmakers offer patient assistance programs, or coupons, to people who might otherwise not be able to afford medications that have been prescribed by doctors. Merck, which makes drugs such as Januvia for diabetes, said it plans to revisit its decision once more information is available about implementation of the law governing the federal health program. Full Story | Top |
| U.S., EU to work together on tougher Russia sanctions Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 03:06 PM PDT  By Jeff Mason and Lidia Kelly BRUSSELS/MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union agreed on Wednesday to work together to prepare possible tougher economic sanctions in response to Russia's behavior in Ukraine, including on the energy sector, and to make Europe less dependent on Russian gas. U.S. President Barack Obama said after a summit with top EU officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin had miscalculated if he thought he could divide the West or count on its indifference over his annexation of Crimea. Leaders of the Group of Seven major industrial powers decided this week to hold off on sanctions targeting Moscow's economy unless Putin took further action to destabilize Ukraine or other former Soviet republics. "If Russia continues on its current course, however, the isolation will deepen, sanctions will increase and there will be more consequences for the Russian economy," Obama told a joint news conference with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Full Story | Top |
| Wall Street drops on Russia worry as techs, materials drag Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:57 PM PDT  By Angela Moon NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday, led by losses in the technology and materials sectors, as geopolitical concerns rose after the United States and the European Union agreed to work together on tougher sanctions on Russia. But the major indexes reversed course in the afternoon as technology stocks turned sharply lower. Among technology stocks, Facebook was one of the biggest decliners a day after the social networking company said it would acquire two-year-old Oculus VR Inc, a maker of virtual-reality glasses for gaming, for $2 billion. The United States and the European Union agreed to work together to prepare possible tougher economic sanctions in response to Russia's behavior in Ukraine. Full Story | Top |
| Ship backlog in Houston Ship Channel falling: Pilots Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:49 PM PDT The backlog of ships waiting to sail in or out of the Houston Ship Channel fell on Wednesday as crews cleaned a fuel oil spill in Galveston Bay, the head of the Houston Pilots said. The U.S. Coast Guard also reduced the so-called daylight restriction, allowing ships to sail until midnight CDT (0500 GMT) before movement stops until Wednesday morning, which is expected to further reduce the backlog, Houston Pilots Capt. Clint Winegar said. He said the number of ships waiting to move to or from the port of Houston through the channel, the waterway through which more than a tenth of U.S. refining capacity receives crude oil, slid by 30 to 57 by Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday, when both inbound and outbound traffic resumed, the Coast Guard stopped movement at about 6 p.m. CDT (2300 GMT) to limit the spread of fuel oil floating in Galveston Bay. Full Story | Top |
| Astronomers find mini-planet in solar system's backyard Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:45 PM PDT By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Astronomers have found a dwarf planet far beyond the orbit of Pluto and can only guess how it got there. The diminutive world, provisionally called "2012 VP 113" by the international Minor Planet Center, is estimated to be about 280 miles in diameter, less than half the size of a neighboring dwarf planet named Sedna discovered a decade ago. Sedna and VP 113 are the first objects found in a region of the solar system previously believed to be devoid of planetary bodies. The proverbial no-man's land extended from the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt, home to the dwarf planet Pluto and more than 1,000 other small icy bodies, to the comet-rich Oort Cloud, which orbits the sun some 10,000 times farther away than Earth. Full Story | Top |
| Scientists publish 'navigation maps' for human genome Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:42 PM PDT  By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - A large international team of scientists has built the clearest picture yet of how human genes are regulated in the vast array of cell types in the body - work that should help researchers target genes linked to disease. The three-year long project, called FANTOM5 and led by the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies in Japan, involved more than 250 scientists across 20 countries and regions. "Humans are complex multicellular organisms composed of at least 400 distinct cell types. This beautiful diversity of cell types allow us to see, think, hear, move and fight infection - yet all of this is encoded in the same genome," said Alistair Forrest, scientific coordinator of FANTOM5. Full Story | Top |
| Late blast of wintry weather hits parts of New England Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:18 PM PDT  By Dave Sherwood BOWDOINHAM, Maine (Reuters) - Parts of New England were hit with a late blast of wintry weather on Wednesday, the so-called "bombogenesis" storm that brought high winds to much of the region and snow to parts of Maine and Massachusetts' Cape Cod resort area. Maine's rural "Downeast" coast, known for hilltop blueberry fields and a jagged, picturesque shore, is projected to see 60 mile per hour winds over land, hurricane force gusts at sea and as much as 18 inches of new snow, said National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Schwibs. After a season rife with "polar vortexes" along the eastern seaboard, "bombogenesis," short for "bomb cyclogenesis," provides weather watchers with yet another fantastic-sounding term to describe the winter weather, said Schwibs. Full Story | Top |
| Chinese developers seek alternative financing as investors grow wary Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:08 PM PDT  By Clare Jim and Umesh Desai HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's property developers are turning to commercial mortgage-backed securities and looking at other alternative financing as creditors grow more discriminating in the face of rising concerns about the country's real estate and debt markets. The expected bankruptcy of a local developer and the country's first domestic bond default this month have heightened scrutiny of borrowers. Highlighting the search for alternative funding avenues, property fund MWREF Ltd earlier this month issued the first cross-border offering of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) since 2006. The offer was priced at a yield lower than two dollar bonds issued last week, IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication, said. Full Story | Top |
| Crows solve Aesop's fable puzzles, offer clues to cognition Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014 02:05 PM PDT Like other research on the cognitive abilities of nonhuman animals, the study sheds light on the evolution of intelligence and whether disparate cognitive capacities develop in lockstep or at radically different rates between species. By studying the cognitive abilities of other animals, "we can assess the factors which may have led to the evolution of different cognitive mechanisms, in particular the flexible problem solving, or intelligence, that we find in certain groups in the animal kingdom," said biologist Sarah Jelbert of the University of Auckland, who led the research. The scientists challenged the crows with a task inspired by an ancient Greek fable by Aesop known as the "Crow and the Pitcher," in which a thirsty crow confronts a pitcher whose water level is too low for it to reach and so drops in stones to raise the level. Full Story | Top |
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