Gender & Health

Six executives of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis have been indicted in a South Korean bribery scandal. The indictments follow similar charges in China, Turkey and the U.S. and allegations of falsifying drug trial data in Japan. Korean prosecutors have recommended that Novartis sales be suspended for six months. Read More

New reports accuse employees of Broadspectrum Limited, the company that has the operating contract to house asylum seekers to Australia in remote island detention centers, of providing appalling living conditions and neglecting the care of their charges. Read More

Gilead Sciences Inc., a California based pharmaceutical company, has avoided paying $10 billion in taxes by moving its patents to Ireland. This is despite the fact that one of its most profitable drugs was developed with U.S. taxpayer money, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Read More

Uruguay has defeated Philip Morris, the global tobacco giant, in a major international lawsuit over the country's tough anti-smoking regulations. The Swiss-based company sued Uruguay at the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Dispute under the terms of a 1991 bilateral investment treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland. Read More

Johnson & Johnson has been sued by over 1,200 women who blame the company's talcum powder products for their ovarian cancer. Not only are U.S. courts beginning to agree with them, juries have started to award victims millions of dollars in compensation. Read More

Sun Pharma, India's biggest drug manufacturer, has been sent a warning letter about violations of manufacturing regulations at its Halol plant in Gujarat by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Indian companies supply as much as 40 percent of the drugs sold in the U.S. Read More

Some 500 Angolan fisherfolk have demanded compensation from Chevron after an oil spill polluted the Mandarin and Mpuela shoreline in Cabinda last month, close to the California company's drilling operations. Under government orders, all fishing activity was banned for almost two weeks. Read More

Three major U.S. medical associations - the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Cardiology - have bowed to pressure from activist doctors to stop accepting corporate donations from Coca-Cola. The campaigners say Coke exerted undue influence over the medical groups. Read More

A music video asking Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant, to clean up mercury waste from their former Indian factory notched up two million views in less than a week, prompting a reply from the company CEO. 'Kodaikanal Won't,' the video by Sonia Ashraf, parodied Nicki Minaj's song 'Anaconda.' Read More

Hundreds of drugs tested in India have been banned from sale in the European Union after French inspectors found flaws in clinical trials conducted by GVK Biosciences, a company based in Hyderabad. The Indian government has threatened to take legal action against the ban under international trade rules. Read More