Shares in William Hill crashed 3 per cent yesterday after its chief executive revealed he had cashed in the vast bulk of his stake in the bookmaker. David Harding raised £5.3m after he exercised options over almost 1 million shares. Anti-arrhythmic drugs, introduced in the late 1970s for heart problems, were estimated to be killing more Americans every year by 1990 than died in the Vietnam War. Yet early evidence suggesting the drugs were lethal went unpublished.A regulatory system can only be as good as the information supplied to it. To ensure information is complete and untainted by commercial interests, more drug trials must be run by independent research organisations with state or charitable funding It is the only way to ensure the drugs we take are safe..

Glaxo is now in the dock - but it is not alone.In cancer, heart disease, mental health and related fields, pharmaceuticals companies have sponsored drug trials which have held out great promise for patients. But when the same drugs have been tested in independent trials paid for by non-profit organisations - govern- ments, medical institutions or charities - they have yielded different results.It is not a matter of dishonesty but rather of cleverness. Researching and developing drugs is hugely costly, so it is not surprising the companies have become adept at ensuring trials deliver the right results.Expensive new cancer drugs have been introduced in the last decade but increasingly their benefits have been questioned. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a review showing 38 per cent of independent studies of the drugs reached unfavourable conclusions about them compared with 5 per cent of those funded by pharmaceuticals companies. If a supposedly beneficial medicine such as Seroxat were to provoke the suicide of a child, it would be a catastrophe. That is what the elaborate and costly drug regulatory structure was set up to avoid. But the multibillion-pound pharmaceuticals industry has become adept at manipulating results and selectively withholding unfavourable data that could expose patients to harm. The drop in prices comes at a critical time for fuel providers.

A rise in petrol prices and the Government's 2p-a-litre tax hike has resulted in the risk of disruptive protests. Four years ago, fuel protesters caused chaos when petrol prices reached 85.32p a litre.Supermarkets are currently about 1p a litre cheaper than the average price for unleaded petrol of 82.77p, according to the AA The average price for diesel is currently 83.72p a litre.. Nothing is more important than drug safety. Mr Paradza, a former journalist, was suspended from Zanu-PF last month. He criticised Zimbabwe's restrictive media laws in his maiden speech in parliament in March. He said the laws, which also prohibit private broadcasting, discouraged investment in the media.

The speech was condemned by his party chiefs who accused him of conspiring with Britain against President Robert Mugabe.When Mr Paradza travelled to London to try to establish a market for the newspaper among Britain's large Zimbabwean community, Zanu-PF accused him of seeking funding from Britain to undermine the government. But the newspaper quickly established a reputation for condemning human rights abuses. Another independent national newspaper was shut down by the Zimbabwe government yesterday - the third in less than a year. Several provincial newspapers were forced to close in 2002 because they could not afford the hefty deposits that had to be lodged with the state-run Media and Information Commission (MIC) under a new media law.The Tribune had recently been bought by an MP from the ruling Zanu-PF, Kindness Paradza. Since 7 May, there have been suicide bombings on two Shia mosques that have killed more than 40 people, the drive-by shooting of a top Sunni cleric, and a twin car bombing near the US consul-general's residence - near to the scene of Thursday's assault - that killed a police officer and injured 40 other people.Some officials have speculated the attacks are part of an al-Qa'ida plot to provoke discord in Karachi - a city riven by ethnic, religious and political divisions Until May, it had enjoyed a year of relative calm..