Cool way to get high

Sweetened offer wins Genzyme for Sanofi
French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis has agreed to buy US biotech group Genzyme with a improved cash offer the equivalent of almost 14.9 billion euros. It will also make additional payments based on the success of Genzyme’s drugs. The acquisition comes nine months after it was first proposed and the deal should increase Sanofi’s earnings through Genzyme’s treatments for rare diseases. The value of the extra payments will depend on Genzyme’s experimental multiple sclerosis drug Lemtrada and production of two other medicines. It is the second-biggest deal in biotech history and will help Sanofi offset declining revenue from drugs that have lost, or are going to lose, patent protection, which means competitors can make cheaper so-called ‘generic’ versions. Shares in Sanofi rose as investors welcomed the boost to earnings. Copyright © 2011 euronews

Hindu Festival of Colours in Trinidad and Tobago
A man smeared with coloured powder celebrates Phagwa or Holi, the Hindu Festival of Colours, which marks the beginning of spring, in Trinidad and Tobago. REUTERS/Andrea De Silva Copyright © 2011 euronews

Another view on Mideast domino effect
For insight into events in Middle East we spoke to Nabil Al Khatib, the Executive Editor of the Al-Arabiya TV channel. Riad Muasses, euronews: Nabil Al Khatib, we’ve seen big demonstrations in Cairo, deaths in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain. Is this a contagious revolution where all cases are similar? Nabil Al Khatib, Executive Editor, Al-Arabiya I don’t think all the situations in the Arab world are similar, but the common denominator in all these countries is corruption and stagnant politics, and the youth are looking for their future horizons. All these are common factors, and they spur the population to demand change. euronews: Is what you’ve said applicable in Bahrain? Nabil Al Khatib: Bahrain is different because the demonstrators belong to a religious group, and that gives the impression it’s a religious problem. And that adds grist to the mill for the authorities to aggravate the religious question because the protesters are, in the main, shi-ites. The sunnis are shying away from being implicated in a wider plan controlled by Iran. Whether or not that’s true, it gives that impression, and that’s what the sunni population think. euronews: Do you think that this could extend to other Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Oman? Nabil Al Khatib: I think the question remains open in all of those countries, but the problems are quite different when we talk about Gulf states. That’s down to the comfortable lives these populations have compared with the other countries, because they’re oil producers, and they’re rich. But that doesn’t stop these kinds of movements. euronews: The United States has expressed its concern about the events in Bahrain, and everything of course, that affects its interests in the Gulf. Can you see any threat to US interests, bearing in mind what’s happening in Bahrain? Nabil Al Khatib: I’m inclined to say that the American position is very ambiguous. We all thought that the US position on the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes would have been to support them. Because the general impression was that the US always defends its allies in the region and maintains the status quo. But its position has completely changed Tunisia its ally in the fight against terrorism, or Egypt, trying to maintain stability in the region and good relations with Israel. But the US backed the changes in these countries. The big question is how far can it go in supporting these changes, particularly in the Gulf states where the situation is much more sensitive because what’s at stake is terrorism, oil, and relations with Iran. But from here it looks like the Americans are being hesitant, lacking clarity and in the end, being superficial — not sure that the decisions being taken are good ones. Copyright © 2011 euronews

Pick of the Clicks: Nature’s worst brings out Human nature’s best
Pick of the Clicks looks at the most clicked story of the week on our website and how it is being treated elsewhere on the net. This week: Disaster in Japan.?�Last?�week, it was while writing a POTC about the Apocalypse that?�one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded?�triggered a tsunami so powerful that even now it leaves us clueless as to the human cost.?�In the time since – rightly or wrongly – the world’s focus has turned from?�the very real human tragedy of the natural disaster itself to the?�theoretical threat of nuclear meltdown created by the earthquake.?�But the Apocalypse was last week. Now, despite the circumstances, is a time for an attempt at optimism.?�The worst that Nature has thrown at us is bringing out the?�best in humankind. First, let’s talk about heroism.?�Their job titles?�may sometimes be?�such?�mundane descriptions as ‘technicians’, ‘reactor operators’ or ‘security agents’. There are more colourful?�and?�less bureaucratic terms being bandied about out there like?�‘Atomic Kamikazes’ or even ‘Nuclear Samurai’.?�I prefer heroes because that is what they are.?�They are the men and women who choose to wade into a nuclear disaster zone to clear up the mess. They know there is a good chance that what they are doing will kill them or, at the very?�least, permanently damage their health. ?�But they do it all the same. Not for glory, not for money but?�so that their families and friends will be saved.?�?�In the aftermath of Chernobyl, they went in their hundreds of thousands although?�many of the Liquidators?�(as they were called at the time)?�would have known?�little about?�the dangers?�awaiting them. Their bosses had more of an idea but filtered the details. ?�Some died agonising deaths within days. Others survived, but not for as long as they otherwise would have. A few remain. ?�There were many heroes too in the aftermath of the Twin Towers strikes on 9/11. The surviving ‘responders’ have managed, after a long battle, to get a compensation package out of the authorities but even now there are cases where one feels heroism might have been taken for granted.?�Let that not be the case for the Fukushima 50 .?�They, unlike their predecessors in Chernobyl,?�are under no illusion?�about the nature of the?�risk they are taking yet still they take it.?�That’s just how some folk roll.?�It’s not only that handful of heroes who deserve enormous credit for their reaction to such appalling adversity. The?�absence of self-pity?�of the people of Japan also provides an example of what humans can feel proud of.?�The?�thought of?�suffering?�a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a massive tsunami only to have that misery compounded by the threat of atomic fallout is completely unimaginable to most people. It should perhaps have been imaginable to the people who chose where to built a nuclear plant, but that’s another matter.?�Any one of those disastrous events could break a person’s resilience. All three in one day could break a nation’s. Not Japan.?�Japan has known all three and each time it has been shaken to the core. And each time it has picked itself up, dusted itself down and ploughed on. In the years and decades after the dropping of the Atom bombs, Japan managed somehow to climb its way up to second on the world’s?�biggest economy list.?�One South Korean?�resident of Tokyo?�interviewed for a Bloomberg article told how in the?�moments after the quake, “no one was crying or showing any negativity…In Korea, people would be bawling.”?�Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lewis M. Simons, resident in Japan for 14 years,?�writes in this article that “…rebuild the people of Japan will. Stoically, quietly courageously, they will start over.”?�An article in The Economist even tells us that in Tokyo “many queued patiently on March 15th to meet their tax deadlines.” There are people in other countries (and I am one of them) who do not meet their tax deadlines in disaster-free circumstances.?�Japan rebuilt after the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 which took more than 100,000 lives. It rebuilt after the 1995 earthquake in?�Kobe, Japan’s second most populated area after Tokyo. While?�a question mark may follow the future of nuclear energy?�in Japan after this latest disaster, there is nothing to suggest Japan will not rebuild again. And it will do so by itself, even if there is no lack of support from the international community. Japan will carry the cost of reconstruction, which by some estimates?�could even?�rise to something like five percent of GDP.?�Initially though, rescue teams arrived from across the globe to help sift through the rubble in the hope of finding anyone still alive. The Japanese government had not done wonders in its international relations?�with Russia or China in the months before the quake but quarrels about territory have been put to one side and the response to the disaster from Moscow and Beijing has been warm.?�Charities all over the world have been sent donations destined for Japan even without having to launch appeals. Canadians for example have given around 7.5 million euros worth of donations to the Red Cross without needing to be prompted.?�Minutes of silence and other similar gestures have been offered. They may be just gestures but at least they are showing that people everywhere care?�about other humans in trouble.?�And it’s not just humans who have this capacity to show strength in adversity. Animals too look after each other?�in the immediate wake of calamity, as this video quite nicely illustrates.?�It has been one of those terrifying weeks in which we remember that when Nature strikes there’s little or nothing we can do about it. But if we are capable of looking straight into the face of what can seem like the Apocalypse and?�reacting with humanity, maybe we’re not damned after all.?� By Mark Davis Copyright © 2011 euronews

Obama launches attack on US deficit
Halving the US deficit by 2013. That is the aim set out in the president’s new budget plan as Republicans prepare for an all-out fight in Congress. Through a series of spending cuts and tax increases Barack Obama and his Democrats want to shave off $1.1 trillion dollars over the next ten years. While he said annual domestic spending will be frozen, critics complained he had been vague on how to cover major outlays such as the Medicare programme. “While it’s absolutely essential to live within our means, while we are absolutely committed to working with Democrats and Republicans to find further savings and to look at the whole range of budget issues, we can’t sacrifice our future in the process,” said President Barack Obama. Obama used a visit to a Baltimore school to present the budget using the venue to stress investment in areas such as education and broadband internet would continue. But the Republicans who have already unveiled much tougher proposals to reign in the rising US debt, plan to resist and say this tax-and-spend president has not gone far enough. Copyright © 2011 euronews