Totally wired

The United States has reclaimed pole position in a league table of the ‘most-wired’ nations, according to the World Economic Forum. Singapore, Denmark, Iceland and Finland fleetingly supplanted it last year as the nations where telecommunications and information technology had the widest and deepest reach, the forum's annual survey finds. It describes the United States as a ‘powerhouse’ in information technology that continues to set the standard for other nations.

Generic grab

Europe's largest pharmaceutical company has carved out a piece of the burgeoning market for generic drugs, buying one-quarter of a fast-growing East European generics developer. Sanofi-Aventis has bought 24.9% of Zentiva, a Czech generics maker with 4,200 employees, for €430 million (US$520 million). The move makes Sanofi-Aventis the largest single shareholder in Zentiva, which markets 270 drugs in eastern and central Europe, and has additional production sites in Slovakia and Romania.

Nuclear sell-off

The UK government has confirmed that it will sell its nuclear clean-up business, British Nuclear Group, by autumn 2007. The group is currently part of the state-owned BNFL. The government also upped its estimate of the total future cost of cleaning up existing UK nuclear sites from £56 billion (US$98 billion) to £70 billion — the British Nuclear Group is likely to be well-positioned to win contracts under this huge clean-up programme