US clears Mittal bid for Arcelor
Mittal Steel which is trying to take over Arcelor in a €20.7bn hostile bid, said it has received US antitrust clearance for its bid. Though both Arcelor and Mittal Steel reported strong first-quarter results, profits of both companies took a hit due to higher costs and lower steel prices.

Meanwhile Arcelor says it has started a legal action against Mittal in the US over car-steel technology.

Arcelor filed the suit for patent infringement on its Usibor technology used in high-strength steel for auto-body panels, the company's spokesman Luc Scheer said on Wednesday.
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Oil rises above $73 a barrel
New York: Crude oil futures rose above $73 a barrel on supply worries, as gunmen in Nigeria kidnapped least two foreign oil workers from a bus. This was the second day of attacks targeting foreigners in Port Harcourt, where many oil-services companies have based their their main Nigerian operations.

Militants are targeting oil installations and their actions have cut more than 20 per cent of Nigeria's of 2.5 million daily barrel production. The militants have also threatened to target oil workers with fresh attacks.

The news sent light, sweet crude for June delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange as high as $73.90 a barrel Thursday, before it fell back to settle at $73.32, still up $1.19 from its settlement a day earlier.
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Global pharma companies agree to phase out artemisinin medicines
New York: A number of global pharmaceutical companies have agreed with the World Health Organisation's (WHO) recommendation to phase out single-drug artemisinin medicines for oral treatment of malaria as this hastens the development of resistance to the drug in malaria parasites.

The companies say they will focus their marketing efforts for malaria, primarily on artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs), in line with WHO recommendations, because when used with other anti-malarial drugs artemesin is nearly 95 per cent effective in curing uncomplicated malaria and the parasite is highly unlikely to become drug resistant.

In January this year, WHO appealed to all companies to stop marketing single-drug artemisin treatment, or monotherapy, and to redirect their production efforts towards ACTs. Following this appeal, 23 companies were identified and informed of the recommendation, and 13 said they would comply with guidelines.
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