Biogen’s decision to price its newly approved Alzheimer’s treatment at $56,000-a-year has reignited the debate over the high cost of drugs in the US, the world’s largest and most profitable healthcare market. Shortly after securing US approval on Monday for the first new Alzheimer’s medicine in almost two decades, the Massachusetts-based biotech group announced a
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Kamoa-Kakula in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a rare commodity in the modern resources industry: a high-grade copper mine that one day could produce enough metal to satisfy more than 5 per cent of China’s annual demand. Surrounded by small villages, the mine employs around 7,000 workers and has its own road for trucks
Thousands of websites went offline for almost an hour on Tuesday morning, including several of the world’s largest news sites, streaming services, online retailers and even the UK government, disrupting millions of internet users. Connectivity problems lasting almost an hour appeared to affect news sites including the BBC, New York Times and FT.com, streaming services
Russia has agreed to release $500m in credit to Belarus and look to increase the number of flights between the two countries as the Kremlin doubled down on its support for Alexander Lukashenko after his forced landing of a passenger flight that has sparked western condemnation. Russian president Vladimir Putin hosted Lukashenko in Sochi on
The US has moved to punish Belarus for the forced landing of a Ryanair flight last weekend by announcing that it would reimpose sanctions on nine of the country’s state-owned companies and would join the EU in developing a list of additional targets. In a statement late on Friday, Jen Psaki, the White House press
A US inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve posted its biggest year-on-year jump since the 1990s in April, rising more than expected and fuelling concerns about price increases. The commerce department’s core personal consumption expenditure index, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, rose 3.1 per cent last month compared to a
Tesla is set to take the unusual step of paying in advance for chips to secure its supply of the crucial materials and is also exploring buying a plant as part of efforts to overcome the global shortage, according to people familiar with the matter. The US electric-car maker is discussing the proposals to secure
The EU has demanded damages potentially amounting to billions of euros from AstraZeneca if the company fails to increase deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine by next month. The EU wants the company to pay penalties of €10 a dose a day if it does not supply 20m extra shots the European bloc wants by the
Goldman Sachs Asset Management has won initial approval for a wealth management joint venture with ICBC, one of China’s largest banks, as Wall Street groups expand their presence in the country. Goldman will hold a 51 per cent stake in the venture, while ICBC wealth management, a subsidiary of the bank, will own the rest.
Asian countries that led the way in controlling Covid-19 last year have become laggards in the battle against the virus as their efforts to vaccinate their populations fall behind other parts of the world. The problems with rollout vary from country to country, but across most of Asia one factor is constant: a lack of
European leaders have called for an immediate international response after Belarus forced a Ryanair flight bound for Lithuania to land in Minsk on Sunday and arrested one of its passengers, a top opposition activist. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’s exiled opposition leader, said online activist Roman Protasevich, resident in Lithuania, had been detained in the Belarusian capital.
The chief executive of AstraZeneca has insisted its Covid-19 vaccine has a future, as he revealed the UK had priority access to the jab and hit out at the “armchair generals” behind “traumatic” attacks on the company. In his first interview following a string of setbacks, including the emergence of rare fatal side-effects, Pascal Soriot
The world could “end the pandemic” in mid-2022 by vaccinating 60 per cent of the population at a cost of $50bn, the IMF has said, as rich countries and vaccine manufacturers pledged to address the inequality undermining the global response to coronavirus. Countries with sufficient vaccine supplies could afford to donate 1bn doses in 2021,
WeWork’s losses almost quadrupled to $2.1bn in the first quarter of this year, as the co-working company haemorrhaged more than a quarter of its members and shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to restructure its property portfolio. Documents seen by the Financial Times showed lockdowns and remote working in the pandemic drove WeWork’s losses
An investment firm founded by the son of China’s most powerful financial official has invested heavily in technology companies, including units of leading Chinese internet groups Tencent and JD.com. Liu Tianran, son of vice-premier Liu He, was listed as chair of Tianyi Ziteng Asset Management, also known as Skycus Capital, when the firm was established
Nabil al-Kurd, a Palestinian, remembers the day Jewish settlers moved into his house, a modest one-storey home in Sheikh Jarrah, a mostly Arab neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem. Yaacov Fauci, a Jew from New York, arrived with a police guard on a sunny autumn day in 2009, threw out the furniture and moved into the
The World Economic Forum has been forced to scrap its plans for an in-person annual meeting once again, cancelling a gathering planned for August in Singapore as the city state imposed new restrictions and new Covid-19 outbreaks shake its members’ confidence. “Regretfully, the tragic circumstances unfolding across geographies, an uncertain travel outlook, differing speeds of
AT&T has agreed to spin off and combine WarnerMedia with its rival Discovery in a multibillion-dollar deal to create a media empire that has the programming heft to compete with Disney and Netflix in a global streaming race. The move will create the second largest media company in the world by revenue after Disney. It
Foxconn does not normally care too much about style. Even its investor conferences are held at the drab concrete-block building that houses the Apple supplier’s headquarters in an industrial suburb of Taipei. But in March, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer put on a real show: hosting 500 executives at a chic event space in
Israeli security forces struggled to quell worsening communal violence in its cities as it stepped up operations in Gaza against Palestinian militant group Hamas. Jews and minority Israeli Arabs fought each other in several Israeli towns overnight as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to quell the rioting with “a lot of force” and warned the