“But how can I go and check my name in a different constituency when I know very well I registered in this constituency (Harare Central)?” asked David Timbe, a perplexed would-be voter.Opposition parties have accused the government of leaving off the rolls young voters and whites sympathetic to them. Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has threatened to go to court unless the registrar general, Tobaiwa Mudede, guaranteesin writing to prepare a supplementary list of people omitted from the original roll released for public inspection a week ago.President Robert Mugabe said at a rally in Gutu on Wednesday that all those whose names were not on the roll should re-register so they could vote. Mr Mugabe said it was not his government’s intention to disenfranchise any blacks.His statement contradicts officials from the registrar general’s office at various inspection centres who say people who re-register on the supplementary roll will be eligible to vote only in the 2005 parliamentary elections.Opposition parties say they have little hope that their supporters, especially the young, will be able to vote on 24 and 25 June, even if their names are put on the supplementary role.John Chimusoro, a 19-year-old student at the University of Zimbabwe whose name is missing, said: “I don’t even understand why so many people should be asked to re-register now when they had already registered in the first place. What if they come with another excuse on the election day itself and we fail to vote? These are all excuses designed to rig the election.”David Coltart, MDC secretary for legal affairs, said his party had been inundated with calls from those who failed to register to vote, especially people between 18 and 20.”More than 100,000 of our supporters in the urban centres are affected and we will have to resort to court action to seek redress,” Mr Coltart said.But Mr Mudede dismissed the charges that he was manipulating the voters’ roll.

“If it was intended that a certain section of the community should be disenfranchised, then why put the voters’ roll [out] to public inspection?” asked Mr Mudede. “This allegation is unfounded and baseless.”A United Nations team of election experts said the voters’ roll was in disarray, with one in four of the people registered to vote being dead.. The British Medical Journal yesterday admitted lapses of procedure when it published an article that wiped £30m from the market value of Scotia Holdings, the biotechnology group, last month. The British Medical Journal yesterday admitted lapses of procedure when it published an article that wiped £30m from the market value of Scotia Holdings, the biotechnology group, last month.
The BMJ said it should have included data from Scotia and details of the authors’ conflicting interests in a study about Foscan, Scotia’s lead product which makes tumours char under light. Scotia claims the article suggested that Foscan caused burns in 43 per cent of patients when the actual figure is about 2 per cent.”We didn’t go through the procedures we normally do.

That was an error on our part,” said Tony Delamothe, the journal’s deputy editor. “Someone not conversant with our policies dealt with this paper. I can’t see how this nullifies the paper’s points.” He added: “If the editor thought there were serious doubts about the report, he would have said so.”Scotia shares yesterday closed up 9p at 123.5p.The study’s authors, John Clarke of Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in London and Shehan Hettiaratchy of University Hospital, Birmingham, yesterday denied they were suggesting that the incidence of burns in their study was the true incidence.They stuck by their conclusions, but conceded that there may have been problems with the way the drug was administered.”I think the study’s been misinterpreted,” said Mr Hettiaratchy. “The bottom line is that if this is going to be widely used, the medical community should know it can cause burns. All we’ve done is report the facts.”Dr Robert Dow, Scotia’s chief executive, said it was already known there were rare cases of burns and that these could be “properly managed” “We’ve said what the causes are – it’s obvious. But our instructions were not applied.”The BMJ also said that Mr Clarke had provided medical reports to patients injured in the study for possible compensation claims.

Mr Clarke did not receive a fee for this.The article’s co-authors, who administered the drug, worked for a centre that also worked for pharmaceutical companies. That raised questions over their suitability if the adverse reactions resulted from how the drug was given rather than from the drug itself, the BMJ said.Scotia welcomed the statement “On the day it came out, we lost the argument by £30m Thirty days later everyone’s agreeing with us,” said Dr Dow “We have now got into the public domain the real context We are reserving our legal position. It will take time to see whether we have been damaged by the article.”Mr Hettiaratchy said: “You get concerned when a multinational says it might sue you for £30m But we feel we have done nothing wrong.”. British Biotech, the former leader of the country’s biotechnology sector, is cutting 40 per cent of its workforce to scale back research and focus on less risky drug development. The move is another nail in the coffin of the once-fashionable notion that small companies could focus on pioneering drug discovery. British Biotech, the former leader of the country’s biotechnology sector, is cutting 40 per cent of its workforce to scale back research and focus on less risky drug development.