Year: 2014

By Mehrdad Balali DUBAI (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has told his French counterpart a trip to Iran by French executives was "not helpful" and that it gave the wrong impression that the West could do business with Tehran as usual, a U.S. official said. Under an interim deal reached by Iran and six world powers in November, Tehran agreed to limit parts of its nuclear work in return for the easing of some international sanctions. The easing of sanctions, which began in late January, has prompted Western firms to race for business opportunities. Iran welcomed more than 100 executives from France's biggest firms on Monday, the most senior French trade mission in years.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is praising CVS Caremark for its decision to stop selling tobacco products at its drugstores.

Hope Juarez, who was 6 pounds, 2 ounces, had lost about 80 percent of her blood in a fetal-maternal hemorrhage and her hemoglobin level was 3.8; an average baby should be between 10 and 15.        

A Cuban doctor working in Brazil has sought political asylum in the office of a conservative party complaining that Cuba’s communist government takes too big a slice of her pay, a party official said on Wednesday. Ramona Rodriguez, 51, entered the office of the center-right Democratas party leadership in the lower chamber of Brazil’s Congress on Tuesday afternoon and slept the night on a sofa, the official said. Rodriguez is one of 7,400 Cubans in Brazil who work in a program that hires foreign doctors to attend the sick in slums and remote rural locations unattended by Brazilian physicians. Under an agreement signed last year with Cuba through the Pan-American Health Organization, or PAHO, the Cubans get only one fifth of the 10,000 reais ($4,100) a month that Brazil pays each physician in the program.

By Sumeet Chatterjee MUMBAI (Reuters) – Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd has been hit by more regulatory scrutiny sparked by a U.S. ban on the bulk of its drugs, in a backlash that could bump up compliance costs and erode profitability among some Indian makers of generic drugs. India's biggest drugmaker by revenue, like rival Wockhardt Ltd, has had factories stopped from sending drugs and ingredients to its biggest market because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the plants fell short of "good manufacturing practices".

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline has predicted a pick-up in sales growth to around 2 percent this year as productivity in its drug research labs improves and pressure on sales in China moderates following a damaging bribery scandal. Britain's biggest drugmaker also said on Wednesday that it would stay market leader in the respiratory medicine market – a category it has dominated since the launch of Ventolin in 1969 – despite generic threats to its top-selling Advair drug. Chief Executive Andrew Witty said the expected improvement in 2014 reflected the roll-out of new products, which would offset further potential competition from generics to older products such as the heart drug Lovaza. The Stoxx Europe 600 healthcare sector index was up 0.6 percent.

While the flurries are fun for some, an estimated 14 percent of Americans battle the winter blues. And almost half of those people (more women than men) have full-on seasonal affective disorder or SAD – a form of depression more common in the colder months.