GSK China bribery allegations are “credible”, says investigator July 4, 2014 An investigator hired by GlaxoSmithKline to look into claims of bribery at the company's China operation has said that the allegations are “credible”. Four senior executives at the company have been arrested by police in China. They are accused of bribing influential doctors with cash and expensive gifts so that they would use their [...]
Designer red blood cells to revolutionise drug delivery July 3, 2014 Red blood cells have the potential to do much more than carry oxygen around the body. A group of scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts has managed to modify the small, doughnut shaped cells to act as miniature drug delivery vehicles. The research paper, called Engineered red blood cells [...]
Amazon and Luxembourg hit by EU “sweetheart deal” tax crackdown. July 3, 2014 Amazon is the latest company to have been hit by an EU tax crackdown that has already caught out Apple, Starbucks and Fiat’s financial arm. According to a report in the FT, the EU's competition commission has sent a request to Luxembourg, where the company's headquarters are based, for information about whether decisions on [...]
Iran will limit uranium enrichment but deal remains unlikely, officials say July 3, 2014 Iran has agreed to reduce the number of its uranium enrichment centrifuges during negotiations in Vienna, but officials say the concession will not be enough. The talks, which involve Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, are aimed at helping the world powers come to an agreement on Iran's contested nuclear [...]
Hedge fund attack was not real, says BAE systems July 3, 2014 Last month, an employee of BAE Systems described a hacking that took place against an unnamed hedge fund, which he said caused it to lose millions of dollars. He said that the attackers had stolen portable company secrets by installing malware software, and in the process slowed down high-speed trading. But a spokeswoman [...]
Asda to cut 1,360 jobs in management restructure July 3, 2014 Asda has announced that it will be making 1,360 employees redundant over the next three months. The supermarket chain, which is owned by US-based Walmart, had previously said that there would be job losses but did not confirm the number until now. The cuts are being made to help create more flexible management structures across [...]
$16,000: The amount it costs to get one person into the Chinese army July 2, 2014 Joining the army isn't a cheap matter in China. Limited spots and high demand mean that Chinese families end up forking out $16,000 for one child to pass the army entrance exam. China has the world's largest army, but it also has the world's biggest population, and young people from across the 31 municipalities have [...]
“Facebook rape” is now a crime in Ireland July 2, 2014 Ireland's first case establishing so-called Facebook rape, or “frape”, as a crime has taken place in Dublin's central criminal court. The act involves posting updates from someone else's account without their permission. The case involved a man using a woman's mobile phone to access her Facebook account, publishing sexually offensive status updates from it. A [...]
Blog post criticising former Merrill Lynch boss is “forgotten” by Google July 2, 2014 This morning, BBC journalist Robert Peston received a “notice of removal” from Google, informing him that an article he had published in 2007 about former Merrill Lynch boss Stan O'Neal would no longer be shown in European Google search results. Titled “Merrill's Mess”, the piece describes how O'Neal was forced to leave the investment bank [...]
