Cairo  - Many privately owned pharmacies were engaged in a second day of strikes Tuesday in a row to protest efforts by authorities to enforce a new tax law.

Some pharmacies had signs on their closed doors saying: "The pharmacy is closed in protest against the bad treatment of the Income Tax Authority against the Egyptian people."

Prague  - An Austrian pharmaceutical firm sent a flu vaccine, which it had accidentally contaminated with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, for testing in the Czech Republic, a report said Tuesday.

The Austrian firm Baxter said it contaminated the vaccine with the dangerous virus by accident, likely during packaging in Austria, the Mlada Fronta Dnes daily reported, citing Baxter's representative.

Baxter shipped the infected vaccine to the Czech biomedical firm Biotest for testing on ferrets in late January.

India's sixth largest publicly traded drug maker by sales, Wockhardt Ltd, has informed that it will be launching Levetiracetam tablets in the United States.

Recently, Wockhardt Limited has secured nod from the United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) for marketing the tablets containing 250mg, 500mg, 750mg and
1gm.

Levetiracetam is an anticonvulsant drug used for the treatment of epilepsy. It is S- enantiomer of etiracetam, structurally similar to the prototypical nootropic drug piracetam.

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has approved the marketing of Ranbaxy Laboratories' migraine drug, Imitrex (Sumatriptan), a low cost version of migraine drug GlaxoSmithKine, in the US market.

A spokesman of Rabnbaxy said, "We have received the US Food and Drug Administration's (USFDA) approval for 100 mg Sumatriptan."

The regulator provides 180-day marketing exclusivity for its marketing in 100 mg dosage which was earlier rejected by it on December 2008.

London - Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline confirmed Thursday that more jobs would be cut from its global workforce of 100,000 to achieve annual cost-savings of 1.7 billion pounds (2.5 billion dollars) by 2011.

The British company, the world's second-biggest pharmaceutical concern, said 2008 turnover fell to 24.4 billion pounds, a drop of 3 per cent from 2007.

Pre-tax profits fell to 6.66 billion pounds last year from 7.45 billion in 2007, the group said. But profits rose by 16 per cent in the last quarter of 2008 to 6.9 billion pounds, on account of the weak pound, results showed.

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has given its final approval to Glenmark Generics Inc. USA (GGI), the US arm of Glenmark Generics Limited (GGL), to market lithium carbonate capsules in variable strengths.

GGI will market the capsules in dosages of 150 mg, 300 mg and 600 mg.

Lithium is used for treating patients suffering from manic episodes of Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder, Manic (DSM-III) is equivalent to Manic Depressive illness, Manic, in the older DSM-II terminology.