Just In: Med board suspends doc for ‘impairment’ during surgery

Cambridge’s Genzyme Corp. said second-quarter profit fell 17 percent after a charge from a drug partnership offset higher sales.

Medtronic Inc. agreed that a $250 million patent-infringement verdict won against Natick’s Boston Scientific Corp. should be cut by almost $64 million since a judge threw part of the decision out.

Median Boston condo prices rose 5.4 percent in the second quarter to $500,000, according to the Listing Information Network. Prices rose in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, Midtown, South Boston and the South End, but fell in Charlestown, the Leather and Seaport districts.

Gov. Deval Patrick and legislative leaders are creating a nine-member task force to study over the next 60 days what the state can do this winter as home-heating prices skyrocket.

Boston Properties Inc. Chairman Mortimer Zuckerman said he is looking to buy more properties with the same Middle Eastern partners who joined him in the $2.8 billion purchase of New York’s General Motors Building.

Affiliated Managers Group Inc. of Beverly agreed to buy Gannett Welsh & Kotler LLC of Boston and Harding Loevner LLC of Somerville, N.J., adding to a roster of more than two dozen money managers in which it holds stakes.

Rescue legislation sailed through the U.S. House aimed at helping 400,000 strapped homeowners avoid foreclosure and to prevent troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from collapsing. President Bush dropped his opposition to the measure, now on track to pass the Senate and become law within days.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are pooling their piles of money to pour $375 million into a global effort to cut smoking.