The security company Blackwater Worldwide formed a network of 30 shell companies and subsidiaries to try to get millions of dollars in government business after the company faced strong criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, The New York Times reported Friday.

Against the backdrop of some drug companies selling their domestic operations to multinationals, the Union Health Minister, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, said the Government would set up a task-force to look at policies to spur growth of the pharma industry.

The country may lose out on a great opportunity to maximise raw cotton exports in the coming months and in the process fail to deliver more remunerative prices to growers because of likely quantitative restrictions on exports that the policymakers are talking about.