Gannett Co., one of the largest newspaper publishers, may be preparing to lay off more than 1000 workers, according to a report on the website of Wall Street Journal.

The steady decline in advertising revenues is being seen as the primary cause for the massive lay-offs undertaken by Gannet. It is estimated that the publisher’s latest round of job cuts is going to affect between 1000 to 2000 people, according to an unnamed source quoted in the Journal’s report. At present the company has a strength of 41,500 employees after pruning off almost 10 percent of its workforce last year.

The US publishing industry has been going through a rough phase since the past year with advertising sales declining and newspapers folding up. In the first three months of this year alone, ad sales at Gannet have plunged by 34% and analysts predict that the latest quarterly results won’t be much to cheer about.

However the Journal report also said that the lay-offs by Gannet are unlikely to affect its largest newspaper, the USA Today. Based in Maclean, Virginia Gannet Co owns more than eighty other daily newspapers and has been on an austerity drive of late to contain costs.

Wal-Mart, the biggest private employer in US, sided with a major labor union on Tuesday to back the proposal of large companies providing health insurance to their employees.

In a letter to the White House and officials of the Congress, Wal-Mart chief executive Michael T.Duke emphasized the need for every business to make some contribution to employees’ welfare programs. The letter was issued jointly with the president of Service Employees International Union, Andrew W.Stern as well as John D.Podesta who heads the Center for American Progress.

The endorsement by Wal-Mart of the idea of employer mandate in employees’ health programs comes as a welcome move for US President Obama who is poised to push his health legislation in the Capitol Hill. The employer mandate is crucial to the President’s health coverage plan which if passed will extend medical insurance to around 48 million uninsured people in the country. However Mr. Obama’s proposals have long met with resistance from private businesses which have traditionally opposed any form of employer mandate in health insurance programs.

However Wal-Mart’s support for employer mandate may come with riders. The company has made it clear in its letter that if the Congress makes it mandatory for private employers to offer health insurance, it must also ensure that health costs will be kept within limits.

A US federal advisory board voted on Tuesday to recommend a ban on painkillers Percocet and Vicodin because of their suspected harmful effect on liver.

Percocet and Vicodin are two of the most-frequently prescribed painkillers across the world. These drugs combine a narcotic with acetaminophen which is the primary ingredient in most popular over-the-counter painkillers and anti-pyretics like Tylenol and Excedrin. However overdose of acetaminophen has been known to cause liver damage and a prolonged use of the ingredient may have a harmful effect on the liver. The advisory panel noted that patients who take acetaminophen over a long period of time may need increasingly bigger doses to achieve the same effect, thus putting their liver at risk.

The federal advisory panel voted 20-17 in favor of recommending a ban on painkillers which combine Acetaminophen with narcotics. In the US at least seven other prescription painkillers are based on such a combination. While Vicodin and similar generic products are alone prescribed more than 100 million times in the country, a report estimates that American consumers bought 28 billion doses of acetaminophen in 2005.

The Food and Drug Administration is however not bound to follow the recommendations of its advisory panels.

China’s official PMI or the purchasing managers’ index rose for the month of June to 53.2 from 53.1 last month. The rise holds out hopes for Chinese officials that their economy is faring better than most in the aftermath of the worst global recession since the Second World War.

The 0.1 rise in PMI for June was reported by China’s Federation of Logistics and Purchasing on Wednesday. The country’s PMI has been above the 50-mark for the fourth straight month in June but is still lower than the 53.5 peak the index touched in April this year. The significance of the PMI lies in the fact that a reading above the 50-mark indicates growth in manufacturing sector while a reading below the level is a sign that manufacturing growth rate has come down.

Chinese economists believe that June’s PMI is a sign of the economy shaking off the worst effects of the recession. Zhang Liqun, who works with the Development Research Center of the State Council, is of the opinion that the rise in PMI is a confirmation of the recovery of the Chinese economy for the first time in the last five months.

If you find yourself in Moscow this summer, do not miss out its Museum of Modern Art which houses the works of many modern and contemporary artists from all over the world with special emphasis on Russian artists as part of its permanent collection.

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the brainchild of Zurab Tsereteli whose private collection of famous artworks forms the core of the museum’s treasures. Tsereteli was the president of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts from where he initiated the project of the museum and carried it through till it opened to the public in December 1999.

Some of the most renowned works of contemporary art housed in the museum are creations of Armand, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Japanese conceptualist Yukinori Yanagi. Among the current school of Russian artists whose works are displayed are Dmitry Prigov, Lena Hades, Boris Orlov, Francisco Infante and others. While the modern Russian artists are represented by Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, David Burlyuk, Alenxandra Exter and others, international masters of modern art like Picasso, Leger, Dali, Rufino Tamayo are represented by their lithographs. The Museum also showcases important works of the non-conformists of the 1950-70s whose creative works often ran against state ideologies of the Soviet regime.

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