Latest

Rethinking Cancer: non-sexy, low-cost therapies

Increasingly, Big Pharma is betting on new blockbuster cancer drugs that cost billions to develop and can be sold for thousands of dollars a dose. In 2010, each of the top 10 cancer drugs topped more than $1 billion in sales, according to Campbell Alliance, a health-care consulting firm. A decade earlier, only two of them did. Left behind are low-cost alternatives — therapies like off-label medications, including generics — that have shown some merit but don’t have enough profit potential for drug companies to invest in researching them. Read the free, in-depth, investigation in Think, Magazine, by ProPublica’s Jake

Scottish Independence: complex and vexatious

 Scots  will vote in a referendum on September 18 on separation from the United Kingdom. But the division of assets and liabilities in the break-up of a country is complex and vexatious – and in the case of Scotland, these matters are particularly difficult. The latest polls in Scotland, with the undecided vote discounted, shows 52 percent of respondents support staying with the United Kingdom while 48 per cent want independence.  An excerpt of International Affairs columnist Jonathan Manthorpe’s column: Scotland’s First Minister and Nationalist Party leader Alex Salmond is generally reckoned to be the canniest politician in the British Isles.

Findings: Earth Day Videos from the BBC

In honour of Earth Day and all this week, the BBC is running archive clips celebrating more than 50 years of natural history film-making by Sir David Attenborough. In the video below, from the BBC’s Blue Planet series, a leopard seal hunts Emperor penguins in the Antarctic. You can find others on the BBC Earth YouTube channel.

New: Hurricane Carter, and U.S. Gun Violence Research

For Canadian journalist Cheryl Hawkes, Rubin (Hurricane) Carter’s death over Easter brought back memories  about the quiet, private and powerful man who was, for a while, her neighbour in Toronto. You will find her column in our Loose Leaf salon — along with a video of Bob Dylan’s song dedicated to Carter. Also today F&O also publishes ProPublica’s investigation into Republicans opposed to funding research on gun violence in America. The report is in the Publica section of Dispatches. Both stories are free, for public access. Hurricane Carter, Champion of the World. By Cheryl Hawkes Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, who spent

Weibo, the Free Market, and Censorship

Weibo, “China’s Twitter,” has begun offering shares on one of America’s free market stock exchanges. But unlike in the United States, where freedom of expression is protected, in China social media companies rely on censorship for their business model. Weibo’s regulatory disclosures reveal a company’s balancing act between censoring too much and too little. An excerpt of the ProPublica report, in F&O’s Dispatches/Money section: As of last week, investors can purchase shares of Weibo, sometimes called “China’s Twitter,” on NASDAQ. The company’s regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals details not previously known about Weibo’s censorship apparatus… Weibo, like

1 … 83 84 85 86 87 … 130