Today's Globe: Globe 100, healthcare overhaul costs, swine flu, obesity, breakthrough science, Benjamin Molbert, Edwin Shneidman

Years ago, a small Cambridge biotech firm called Cubist Pharmaceuticals made a business deal, a long shot that is paying off many times over. Now it leads the Globe 100, the best of Massachusetts business 2009.

The Senate committee in charge of financing the upcoming healthcare overhaul is considering changes that could place new financial burdens on Massachusetts institutions and employees, including limiting the tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage, a major benefit to employees in states like Massachusetts, where insurance is expensive and plans tend to be generous.

China, Britain, Japan, and other countries urged the World Health Organization yesterday to be very cautious about declaring the arrival of a swine flu pandemic, fearing that a premature announcement could cause worldwide panic and confusion. WHO bent to their wishes.

State laboratory tests show that 26 more Massachusetts adults and children have swine flu, with two of the newly diagnosed patients requiring hospitalization, the state Department of Public Health reported yesterday (fourth item).

The city needs to go beyond posting calorie counts on menus to seriously address its obesity problem, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's incoming health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said yesterday.

"The prospect of rapid funding is whipping researchers into a grant-writing frenzy, initially resulting in tens of thousands of grant proposals competing for several hundred awards and overwhelming the peer review process," Stephen B. Soumerai, a professor of ambulatory care and prevention and director of the Drug Policy Research Group at Harvard Medical School, writes on the opinion page. "In 30 years of research, I have never witnessed such a mad rush for funding."

Whistling his way through the hallways of the McLean Southeast Adolescent Acute Residential Treatment Program in Brockton, Dr. Benjamin J. Molbert was light on his feet, practically dancing his way through the building as he geared up for patients who hoped he could help turn their lives around. While traveling on a cruise in the Bahamas, Dr. Molbert, who was 38, died April 18 when he went overboard while on a Norwegian Sky ship about 60 miles north of Nassau, according to US Coast Guard officials.

Edwin Shneidman, a pioneer in the field of suicide prevention and a prolific thinker and writer who believed that life is enriched by contemplation of death and dying, has died. He was 91.