Peter Jefferson is a full-time researcher for www.businessdistrict.com, a task he took on in 2011 when the site was launched. He brings to the position a wealth of practical experience in the field of fiscal policy, having consulted with various government bodies on revenue collection, expenditure and economic growth. Contact Peter at peter[at]businessdistrict.com
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In what is at least the third recall of generic Lipitor in the past two years, The Federal Food and Drug Administration announced a Class II recall of the Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd product.
Over 64,000 bottles of the medication that lowers cholesterol levels were recalled in the United States as a reaction to the discovery by a pharmacist of a 20-milligram tablet in a sealed bottle which was marked as containing just 10-milligram tablets.
A Class II recall means that there is only a slight chance that severe bad consequences or death will ensue due to the problem. Ranbaxy, located in India, did not comment on the recall announcement.
Ranbaxy is India’s largest drug manufacturer by revenue. In November 2012 the company recalled 480,000 bottles of atorvastatin calcium, the generic name for Lipitor’s active ingredient, due to the discovery of tiny particles of glass by the company.
Speeding violations major source of revenue for Hampton, Florida
The tiny town of Hampton, population 477, is well-known in north Florida despite its small size. Sitting along route 301 between Gainesville, where the University of Florida has a campus, and other much larger communities, Hampton is known as a speed-trap, a place where driving too fast frequently gained the transgressor a speeding ticket . It turns out that the 17 policemen on the force of Hampton gave out tickets to the tune of $200,000 over the years, but did not keep track of where the money finally ended up.
This turns out to be only a small sample of the mismanagement at best, and pervasive corruption at worst, that plagued the town for many years. Hampton just went through a devastating audit pointing to gross wrongdoing by city officials. As a result of the audit the entire staff of the town resigned, and the Florida legislature plans on filing legislation to abolish the town this coming spring.
In wake of the fact that the town’s staff has resigned en masse, passage of a bill to disband the town may be purely symbolic, as the town, for all intents and purposes, already does not exist as a political entity.
“The whole town’s resigned now,” said the chairman of the Legislature’s joint auditing committee Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville. “Apparently, the operator of the water plant had resigned but agreed to come back and work for a little while.”
Hampton is about 130 miles north of Orlando. The audit, overseen by the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, showed that the town kept horrible records of expenses, could not account for 46 percent of its water, entered into contracts without keeping records, and in one case at least, lost public records “in a swamp.” Not to mention the 17 policeman who generated $200,000 in revenue through the handing out of speeding tickets, with no record of where those funds went to.
“You can’t make this stuff up in a book,” Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith told the panel last week.
“We do have the information that says there’s a lot of unusual activities,” Ray said. “So therefore we believe there may be some problems, so we’re sending it to the State Attorney’s office. Our understanding is they’re aware of it and they will be taking action.”
The committee is planning on sending a letter to the State Attorney to ask for an investigation into the issue of whether criminal wrongdoing took place in the running of Hampton.
Moving in a distinctly reverse direction to the innovation companies like Google and Zappos have embraced, where employees are given freedom in areas like creativity, time-off and more; a Japanese company has created a tool that will track just about every movement and interaction an employee has in the office or workplace.
The device, which is worn as a badge or ID card, holds chips and sensors which record a variety of behaviors, including how often a worker goes to the lavatory; to whom an employee speaks during the day, how often, where and with how much enthusiasm, and just about every move a worker is capable of making.
Hitachi, the developer of the device, calls it the “Business Microscope.” It is a good name since it will certainly make employees feel like they are being scrutinized as if they were bugs on a slide under the eye of their supervisor.
The gadget can tell how often a worker gets up out of his chair, how far he walks and where he went. It can also tell how often he speaks at meetings, reporting on how much and what he contributes to groups.
“Business Microscope uses sensor technology to measure and analyze inner company communication and activities. Multiple-sensor devices are placed inside a nameplate-type sensor that is attached to employees,” Hitachi said on its website.
“When the name tag sensors come within a specified distance of each other, they recognize each other and record the face time, body and behavior rhythm data to a server,” Hitachi added.
Hitachi said their goal for developing the badge is to make workers more efficient while also helping supervisors and bosses to organize the workspace to make it more worker-friendly, enhancing cooperation between workers.
In response to a complaint lodged at the end of last year by the US unit of a German solar manufacturer, the US launched an investigation into the imports of solar power from China, sparking a strong response from the Chinese commerce ministry.
The US began investigations on Thursday into the allegations that imports of some solar products from Taiwan and China are being “dumped” onto the US market. China fears that the US investigation could negatively affect their growing solar market.
The US Department of Commerce said it will investigate whether China is selling their solar products in the US at prices below their fair value, or whether their producers are getting inappropriate amounts of foreign government subsides.
The Chinese commerce ministry wrote on their website that
“The Chinese side expresses serious concern. China urges the United States again to carefully handle the current … investigations, be prudent in taking measures and terminate the investigation proceedings.”
The ministry added that China will evaluate the impact the investigation has on its solar industry and will “resolutely defend” it via a variety of mechanisms.
The present investigation was a response to complaints by SolarWorld AG which said they wanted to close a loophole in a previous trade case which allowed Chinese solar panel manufacturers to sidestep duties by using solar cells produced in other countries, such as Taiwan.
In one more buyout in which Apple keeps the competition down, the mega computer company purchased the company that created the popular photography application SnappyCam. The purchase of SnappyLabs is one more in a series of acquisitions and buyouts by Apple which keeps them current with the latest technology without requiring Apple itself to introduce anything new.
Apple Buys Popular App SnappyCam
Users can purchase SnappyCam as a $1 app which upgrades their mobile phone’s camera functions. SnappyCam adds several useful functions, but it’s most well-known and popular is allowing a smartphone to take pictures in quick succession by holding down the on-screen shutter-button.
The tech blog TechCrunch first reported the Apple’s most recent purchase, but the amount of the buyout is still unknown. The buyout is further proof that Apple has diverged from the company’s traditional custom of avoiding acquisitions while Steve Jobs was the CEO. It appears that the company buyouts are taking the place of innovation as competition in the app marketplace only increases.
Apple has been teasing the marketplace with a soon-to-be-but-yet-to materialize smartwatch and TV product. The iWatch is due for release in late 2014, buy a Samsung iWatch has already hit the market. The response to the buyout of SnappyLabs was a 22 percent downturn in Apple’s share price, closing at $540.98.
In 2013 Apple purchased 11 companies. In 2011, the last year Jobs ran Apple the company only purchased two tech firms. In 2009 they bought one company, a music service known as Lala.com because it was in completion with Apple’s own platform iTunes. Apple predictably closed down Lala.com and maintained its tight hold on music delivery. In 2010 Apple bought-out four companies.
