UK fraud authorities to probe MG Rover collapse

The circumstances surrounding the 2005 collapse of carmaker MG Rover are to be investigated, the British government confirmed Monday. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said in a statement it had been asked to consider whether there should be a criminal investigation following completion of an inquiry into the failure of the MG Rover Group (MGRG) on April 8, 2005, which owed nearly £1.3 billion ($2.09 billion) to creditors.

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‘Serial killer’ sought in South Carolina

The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office on Friday released a second sketch of a man believed to have fatally shot four people in less than a week near Gaffney, South Carolina. “Let me say that, under the FBI’s definition of a serial killer, yes, we have a serial killer,” Sheriff Bill Blanton told reporters in Gaffney, a town in the county of about 54,000 residents some 50 miles southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina. He would not detail what has led investigators to conclude the shootings are linked or how they received the description of the suspect that has led to the two sketches.

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California’s Budget Crisis: Is There a Way Out?

With budget negotiations stalled, a cash crisis looming and its fiscal crisis deepening, California today will begin issuing IOUs — formally called registered warrants — to tens of thousands of businesses and individuals to whom the state owes money. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday declared a fiscal emergency and ordered a third unpaid furlough day each month for 235,000 state employees.

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Will Obama Tax Employer-Provided Health Benefits?

As lawmakers continue to struggle to find a way to pay for a health reform that could cost $1 trillion or more over the next decade, Barack Obama seems to be opening the door a little wider to an approach that he rejected soundly when John McCain proposed it during last year’s presidential campaign: taxing the health benefits that employers provide their workers.

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FDA advisers vote to take Vicodin, Percocet off market

A government advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend eliminating prescription drugs that combine acetaminophen with narcotics — such as Vicodin and Percocet — because of their risk for overdose and for severe liver injury. The panel, assembled by the Food and Drug Administration, voted 20 to 17 to advise the FDA to remove such prescription combination drugs from the market. The group recommended that the FDA “send a clear message that there’s a high likelihood of overdose from prescription narcotics and acetaminophen products,” Dr.

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China’s ‘Green Dam’ unleashes flood of business complaints

China’s last-minute decision to postpone a controversial content-filtering application on computers sold there is the latest example of the trouble that Western technology companies face doing business in the world’s fastest growing economy.

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