A cruise ship carrying dozens of victims of swine flu among its 5,000 passengers and crew has docked in the south of France, officials have said. Sixty crew members have so far been diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, while 70 of their colleagues were also showing signs of being infected, they added. They will [...]
The popularity of Apple’s iPhone is continuing to buck the fall in global mobile phone sales, a study has found. Shipments of the iPhone totalled 5.2 million units between April and June, a six-fold increase on a year earlier, according to Strategy Analytics. This compares with an industry-wide decline of 8% to 273 million units. [...]
American-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer has signed a settlement worth up to $75m (£45m) with the Nigerian state of Kano, a joint statement says. It follows a long-running legal battle over allegations that children were harmed by an experimental drug, Trovan, during a meningitis outbreak in 1996. Eleven children died and more than 180 others suffered [...]
Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil have both reported a big fall in quarterly profits, due to the sharp decline in oil prices since mid-2008. April-to-June profits at Anglo-Dutch group Shell slumped 70% from a year earlier, to $2.3bn (£1.4bn). Exxon’s profits for the same period declined 66% to $3.95bn. Global crude prices hit a [...]
Moldova’s governing Communist Party has lost its majority in parliament, according to preliminary results from Wednesday’s election. With 97% of ballots counted, the four main opposition parties have 50.7% compared with 45.1% for the Communists. Opposition leaders say they will form an alliance if the result is confirmed. Wednesday’s vote was a re-run of [...]
The voicemail-to-text service Spinvox has applied for two patents which describe the service as being operated by humans, the BBC has learned. Spinvox has previously claimed that state-of-the-art speech recognition technology is the basis of its service. However, its patent applications claim the approach is accurate precisely because it employs human operators. Spinvox’s head of [...]
Pregnant women are four times more likely than the general population to need hospital treatment for H1N1 swine flu, data from the US suggests. The findings suggest pregnancy does increase the risk of complications without speedy anti-viral treatment. It also underlines the need to ensure pregnant women are made a top priority when a vaccine [...]
Yahoo and Microsoft have announced a long-rumoured internet search deal that will help the two companies take on chief rival Google. Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft’s online offering. Yahoo has been struggling to make profits in recent years. But [...]
Moldovans are voting in the second parliamentary election in four months, with memories still fresh of the violence that followed the first poll. A BBC correspondent says voting has been very brisk. The election authority says turnout has already exceeded the 33% required to make the vote valid. Opposition parties claim the April vote [...]
Children who eat plenty of dairy foods such as milk and cheese can expect to live longer, a study suggests. Some 4,374 UK children from a 1930s study were traced 65 years later by researchers in Bristol and Queensland. They found those who had had high dairy and calcium intakes as children had been protected [...]
Broadband users are not getting the speeds they are paying for, according to the largest survey of its kind ever undertaken by telecoms regulator Ofcom. Nearly one fifth of UK broadband customers on an eight Megabit per second (Mbps) connection actually receive less than 2Mbps, it found. The research showed that less than 9% of [...]
Deutsche Bank has reported a 67% rise in quarterly profits, boosted by its investment banking arm. Germany’s largest bank announced a net profit of 1.1bn euros (£950m) for the second quarter of 2009, compared with a 645m euros profit a year ago. Provision for credit losses rose to 1bn euros from 135m euros a year [...]