3xwy Blog

AP – AstraZeneca PLC announced a supply partnership with India’s Torrent Pharmaceuticals on Thursday, its first such link with a generic drugmaker as it seeks to boost its presence in emerging markets and counter patent losses on blockbuster medicines.

AP – WuXi PharmaTech Inc. late Monday said it shifted to a profit in the fourth quarter, compared with a year-ago period when the research and development outsourcing company lost money due to a large impairment charge.

AP – German carmaker Audi AG says its 2009 net income fell 39 percent to euro1.35 billion ($1.8 billion) as the economic downturn cut demand for its cars.

The move came minutes after the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution declaring the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I “genocide.” Turkey, a NATO ally, had warned that the resolution’s approval could jeopardize U.S.-Turkish cooperation and set back talks aimed at opening the Turkey-Armenia border.

AP – Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc. said Monday it will take a $3.5 billion takeover offer for OSI Pharmaceuticals directly to shareholders after being rebuffed several times by executives of the U.S. biotechnology company.

AP – Prudential PLC, Britain’s largest life insurer, is exploring a bid for the Asian life-insurance arm of American International Group Inc., according to media reports Saturday.

With global threats like ocean warming and acidification, it’s a tough time to be a coral. Marine ecologists John Bruno and Elizabeth Selig analyzed over 8,000 coral surveys from all over the world to see if local management through Marine Protected Areas had any positive effect on coral.

AP – German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer AG said Friday its net income rose 44 percent in the fourth quarter to euro153 million ($208 million) as cost savings and a pickup in some business offset negative currency effects and charges for the integration of Schering.

AP – Eight Democratic senators from industrial states want Congress — not the Environmental Protection Agency — to regulate pollution blamed for global warming, saying the issue has big implications for thousands of U.S. jobs and businesses.

Documentary producer Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy discusses how Karachi, Pakistan, has become a hot spot for militancy, and why the city appeals to the Taliban. She tells Steve Inskeep that “it only takes five minutes to shave off a beard and take off a black turban and you can melt right into the city.”