A source familiar with the matter said on Saturday, Medical-device maker Medtronic Inc and rival Covidien, are in advanced talks to combine in a deal valued at $45 billion to $50 billion. The person said, asking not to be named because the matter is not public, the deal, which would allow Medtronic to be domiciled in Ireland where Covidien is based and thus take advantage of lower tax rates, could come as soon as Monday. Minneapolis-based Medtronic, which makes cardiovascular and orthopedic devices, has a market value of about $61 billion.

An executive vice-president of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc will leave the company, even as the Canadian drugmaker fends off criticism about management turnover from its takeover target Allergan Inc . Valeant confirmed late on Friday after inquiries by Reuters, Executive vice-president and company group chairman Ryan Weldon will leave. Like Chief Executive Mike Pearson, Weldon previously worked for management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Valeant said Weldon’s departure was planned, and takes effect after it completes a $1.4 billion sale of several injectable treatments to Nestle SA.

Before residents in southern Oregon overwhelmingly voted to ban genetically modified crops last month, farmers negotiated for months with a biotech company that grows engineered sugar beets near their fields. Their goal was to set up a system to peacefully coexist, an online mapping database of fields to help growers minimize cross-pollination between engineered and non-engineered crops. But the effort between farmers and Swiss company Syngenta failed, leading to the ban. Last October, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber directed the state’s Department of Agriculture to undertake something far more ambitious than that failed mapping effort — map GMO field locations across the entire state and establish buffer zones and exclusion areas for GE crops.

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