Bill France Jr., the man who helped build Daytona International Speedway and built NASCAR into a nationwide billion-dollar conglomerate, died Monday at his Daytona Beach, Fla. home. France had been diagnosed with cancer in 1999 -- he never publicly disclosed any details about his disease -- and had been in poor health for much of the past 10 years. He was 74.

"He had a remarkable career and an even more remarkable life," said his son, Brian France, who replaced him as chairman in 2003. "Words cannot express how much he'll be missed by myself and the rest of our family and by the NASCAR industry overall."

France spent 31 years as NASCAR chairman and earned himself a reputation as a benevolent dictator. He rarely compromised yet always did what was best for NASCAR. France's passing is a huge loss for the sport.

The world's largest drug maker -- Pfizer Inc. -- announced Monday it will cut 10,000 jobs and close at least five facilities due to fierce competition from generic drug makers. The goal, says Pfizer spokespeople, is to whittle away annual costs by $2 billion by the end of the year -- to combat the prediction that the company will lose 41 percent of its sales to generic drugs between 2010 and 2012.

Pfizer's other obstacles include expiring drug patents -- costing Pfizer about $14 billion in revenues between 2005 and 2007 -- as well as demands for lower prices by insurers and large purchasers, and repeated requests for evidence of products' worth.

The 10,000 layoffs amount to 10 percent of the company's global workforce and will take jobs from 2,200 United States employees. The company will cut 20 percent of its European sales force, will close three research sites in Michigan and two manufacturing plants in New York and Nebraska, and is considering selling a manufacturing site in Germany and closing two research sites in Japan and France. In the midst of all of this, the company will focus its efforts on transforming the way they do business.

"I believe we must transform the way we've done business in the past in order to be more successful in the future," said Jeffrey Kindler, CEO and chairman of Pfizer. " Incremental evolution is not enough. Fundamental change is imperative -- and it must happen now."

Pfizer's Monday announcement is the second declaration of budget cuts. A previous announcement has the company -- the maker of cancer drugs Aromasin, Ellence, Camptosar, and Sutent -- slashing costs by $4 billion a year until 2008.

Metastatic brain tumors -- tumors that spread from a cancer in another area of the body -- are among the worst tumors and will plague about 200,000 people in the United States every year. But once considered a death sentence, these brain tumors -- primarily those one centimeter in size or less -- can now be treated with a breakthrough radiation technique launched at the University of Florida College of Medicine. This new state-of-the-art radiosurgery device for noninvasive, outpatient treatment is more precise and more powerful than previous methods of treatment. Approved by the FDA in June, this Trilogy Tx system makes traditional surgery unnecessary for many patients. Dr. William Friedman, chairman for the department of neurosurgery at UF and one of two professors who developed and patented seven components of this system over the past 20 years, says, "I'm a surgeon, but if you can provide an outpatient, noninvasive treatment that requires no anesthesia, has extremely high cure rates, and very low complication rates, the question is: Why do surgery?"

Patients of this treatment are fitted with a head ring that prevents the their heads from moving while the Trilogy machine rotates to deliver radiation beams from many angles. While traditional radiation is given every day, Monday through Friday, for six weeks, the Trilogy Tx requires one single treatment that lasts for 15 minutes. It's comparable in cost to standard radition, is cheaper than surgery, and is typically covered by insurance. And it works -- which is the best selling feature, I think.