| AstraZeneca to lay off 3,000 over three years
AstraZeneca P.L.C. yesterday reported a strong 18 percent leap in quarterly profit and then handed employees pink slips, a stark sign of retrenchment across the pharmaceutical industry. The London-based maker of heartburn medicine Nexium and high-cholesterol treatment Crestor said roughly 3,000 people in its manufacturing divisions, or 4.6 percent of its 65,000 employees worldwide, would lose their jobs over the next three years. Job cuts will include an unspecified number of layoffs in the Wilmington-Philadelphia area, where AstraZeneca's U.S. headquarters employs about 5,000 people, said David Elkins, chief financial officer for U.S. operations. The cuts were forced by weak projections and new generic competition for its heart drug Toprol XL. AstraZeneca is also struggling to replenish its research pipeline after ceasing work on several products, including Galida for diabetes and an experimental compound for strokes.
Opinions: Nat-ural Wisdom: A new approach to literary criticism
“deconstructivism," best talked about in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is; and the various “-isms" relating to creating heroes of all the women, minorities, and especially women-minorities in a work of literature, just to name a few. But I propose a new -ism: Anti-textualism. In this “-ism," you assume that the author didn't really mean what the author actually meant, and support this argument with reasons that not only lack textual evidence but heavily reflect personal preferences, biases and even prejudices. Essentially, you don't let the idea of “textual evidence" get in the way of understanding a work. For instance, take John Steinbeck's masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Hailed by many as “The Great American Epic," it has received a great deal of praise in high literary circles for its stark depiction of the suffering of the Great Depression.
Nursery games
As the latest round of parental heartburn outside nursery schools suggests, the Ganguly Committee's 100-point formula for nursery admissions has not worked. The five-member committee, headed by CBSE Chairman Ashok Ganguly and comprising eminent educationists, has been a let-down. Parents have not been spared the harassment of scurrying about to cast their nets wide, investing time, energy and money in filling up admission forms in as many schools as possible. Like any other year, there has been little transparency in the process of rejecting applications. As for the schools, which have protested against the illogical procedure all along, the formula has hardly signalled the end of admissions through 'contacts'. All this is not surprising. The formula, ridden with holes, was supposed to ensure that private schools follow guidelines and have transparent dealings in their nursery admissions.
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