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| India's Sun Pharma to buy Ranbaxy in $3.2 billion deal Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 05:41 PM PDT  India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd said it will buy generic drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd , which has hit regulatory snags in its key U.S. market over quality issues, in an all-share deal with total equity value of $3.2 billion. Ranbaxy, India's No.1 drugmaker by sales and 63.4 percent held by Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd , is banned from exporting drug ingredients to the United States, while Sun Pharmaceutical's Karkhadi plant is also barred from shipping products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sun Pharmaceutical said Ranbaxy shareholders will get 0.8 Sun Pharma shares for each Ranbaxy share. Full Story | Top |
| Drugmaker GSK investigates alleged bribery in Iraq Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 04:24 PM PDT  By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, already facing corruption accusations in China, is now investigating allegations of bribery in Iraq, the British company said on Sunday. The latest controversy centers on claims that the company hired government-employed physicians and pharmacists in Iraq as paid sales representatives to improperly boost use of its products. "We are investigating allegations of improper conduct in our Iraq business. We have zero tolerance for unethical or illegal behavior," a company spokesman said. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. lawmaker urges easing gun rules on bases after Fort Hood shooting Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 04:22 PM PDT By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers should look at arming commanders and easing restrictions for carrying weapons on military posts in the United States in the wake of a deadly shooting at the Fort Hood base in Texas, a prominent congressman said on Sunday. The remarks came as the Fort Hood Army base set up a mental health hotline over the weekend for those who carry emotional scars or feel traumatized after suspected gunman Ivan Lopez, 34 and under psychiatric evaluation, shot dead three people, wounded 16 and then turned the gun on himself in the second deadly rampage at the post in five years. They defend us overseas and abroad and defend our freedom abroad," U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told Fox News Sunday. The shooting at Fort Hood was the third such incident at a military base in the United States in about six months. Full Story | Top |
| Ghana testing blood samples of suspected Ebola case: official Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 03:49 PM PDT By Kwasi Kpodo ACCRA (Reuters) - Health authorities in Ghana are testing blood samples from a 12-year-old girl who died of a viral fever with bleeding in the country's first suspected case of Ebola, officials said on Sunday. More than 90 people have died of Ebola in Guinea and Liberia and there is a reported case in Mali. Medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres has warned of an unprecedented epidemic in an impoverished region with weak health services. Samples from the girl were taken from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana's second-largest city, to a medical research center in the capital Accra, Dennis Laryea, head of public health at the teaching hospital, told Reuters. Full Story | Top |
| El Salvador president-elect plans 'routine' health check-up abroad Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 03:23 PM PDT  El Salvador's president-elect, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, said on Sunday he will travel abroad for a "routine" medical check-up ahead of assuming the presidency in June, and said he did not have any serious illness. The 69-year-old Sanchez Ceren, a former Marxist rebel commander from the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, became the next president of the small coffee-exporting Central American nation last month. "These are routine check-ups and it's not that I have any serious illness." Sanchez Ceren is set to take office on June 1. Full Story | Top |
| India's drug inspectors hard-pressed to scrutinize factories Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 02:11 PM PDT By Zeba Siddiqui and Sumeet Chatterjee MUMBAI (Reuters) - An Indian drugs regulator is among the first to admit that oversight of the nation's huge pharmaceutical industry can be patchy. G.L. Singhal, chief regulator of northern Haryana state, a drugs manufacturing hub, says he needs double the number of inspectors if he is to properly scrutinize factories there. Inspectors are so overburdened, and their nature of duty is very serious," Singhal told Reuters. There are just 1,500 drug inspectors responsible for more than 10,000 factories in India, where one in every 22 locally made samples was of sub-standard quality according to a study carried out two years ago. Full Story | Top |
| Navy picks up U.S. family with sick baby from sailboat in Pacific Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 01:21 PM PDT Rescuers plucked a seriously ill American baby girl and her family from a sailboat in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday and transferred them to a U.S. Navy frigate that will take them back to California, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The family was put into an inflatable raft then helped aboard the USS Vandegrift, which arrived early on Sunday to rescue them from their crippled sailboat about 1,000 miles off Mexico's Pacific coast, the Coast Guard said. The San Diego family had been two weeks into a cruise around the world on a 36-foot (11-meter) vessel called the Rebel Heart when the youngest child developed a fever and rash, prompting her parents to send a satellite distress call to the Coast Guard on Thursday. Eric and Charlotte Kaufman and their daughters, Cora, 3, and Lyra, 1, were in stable condition and would undergo further medical evaluations, the Coast Guard said in a statement. Full Story | Top |
| Agios leukemia drug shows promise in tiny, early study Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 07:31 AM PDT An experimental drug being developed by Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc showed promising anti-cancer activity in a tiny Phase I study of patients with relapsed acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to data presented on Sunday. Three of them achieved complete remission and two achieved complete remission with incomplete platelet recovery, meaning that the leukemia had exited their bone marrow but the blood platelet count had not yet returned to normal levels. "I'm very excited about what has happened with those patients so far who have responded," the study's lead investigator, Dr. Eytan Stein of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said in a telephone interview. AML, the most common type of acute leukemia in adults, is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow that progresses quickly if left untreated. Full Story | Top |
| Pfizer drug doubles time to breast cancer tumor growth in trial Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 07:30 AM PDT Pfizer Inc's experimental breast cancer drug in a clinical trial nearly doubled the amount of time patients lived without their disease getting worse, but overall survival was not yet shown to be statistically significant, researchers said. The Phase 2 study, which involved women with the most common form of breast cancer, found that those treated with hormone drug letrozole plus Pfizer's palbociclib lived for an average of 20.2 months before their cancer progressed, compared with 10.2 months for patients given letrozole alone. Pfizer is still discussing a regulatory pathway for the drug and has not decided whether to seek accelerated approval based on Phase 2 trial results, said Mace Rothenberg, chief medical officer for Pfizer's oncology unit. The trial tested the pill, which targets proteins involved in cell division, in post-menopausal women with locally advanced or newly diagnosed breast cancer that had spread to other parts of the body. Full Story | Top |
| Bill Gates wants China to encourage wealthy Chinese to be more giving Sunday, Apr 06, 2014 05:58 AM PDT  By Rachel Armstrong and Andrew Toh SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China should do more to encourage wealthy Chinese to donate to charitable causes and to make philanthropy a common practice in the world's most populous country, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on Sunday. Gates, who runs the $38 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said he thought people in China would take cues from central leadership on donations and worthy causes. "When you have something like a disaster (in China) you see the basic generosity, but if you look at systemic things like giving to health causes, giving to universities to do research, giving to handicapped people, it's not there yet," Gates told Reuters in Singapore. According to the World Bank, the average income per capita in China was $6,091 in 2012. Full Story | Top |
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