Subsidy push

The biotechnology industry and Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, have called on the US government to allow companies funded by venture capital to rejoin a research-support programme. Lawmakers decided two years ago that companies majority-owned by venture capitalists should be kicked off the Small Business Innovation Research programme and that participation should be limited to small, independent businesses. But bills now before Congress would restore access to the subsidy for such companies.

Intel plans fab

The world's largest chip manufacturer has announced that it will spend a cool $3 billion on its next chip-fabrication facility near Phoenix, Arizona. Intel says this will be its first plant to produce chips with components only 45 nanometres apart — about twice as compact as current technology — on wafers 300 millimetres in diameter. As Nature went to press, Intel hadn't yet confirmed reports attributed to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, that it will also build a second chip-making plant in Israel.

Aids awareness

A Chinese pharmaceutical company has signed a pact with a US health foundation to supply drug precursors at a discount price to companies that make generic AIDS drugs in India. The William J. Clinton Foundation, which was started by the ex-president in 2001, signed the agreement in Xiamen, China, with the Mchem Pharma Group. Under its terms, Mchem is also expected eventually to export finished AIDS drugs at affordable prices. It is the first Chinese company that the foundation has enlisted in its efforts to improve the availability of AIDS drugs in the developing world.