Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the "Iron Dome" defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister - and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia's foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh's office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister's office and pledged: "We will declare victory from here."

Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday's rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

"Well that wasn't such a big deal," said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel's operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel's right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: "Definitely."

"We have a plan ... it will take time. We need to have patience. It won't be a day or two," he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

"Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river," Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel's manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

"DE-ESCALATION"

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

"(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries," the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran's nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington "wants the same thing as the Israelis want", an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and "de-escalation".

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt's Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes - some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets - and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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Southeast Asian leaders meet in Phnom Penh amid tensions

PHNOM PENH: Southeast Asian leaders will hold annual talks on Sunday that are set to focus on bruising territorial rows, a controversial pact on human rights and deadly ethnic unrest in Myanmar.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit is being held following months of acrimony within the 10-member bloc over how to handle disputes with China over competing claims to the strategically vital South China Sea.

The maritime tensions are expected to be high on the agenda at the summit in Cambodia, as well as two days of expanded talks starting on Monday that will include US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

After Southeast Asian foreign ministers met in Phnom Penh on Saturday to prepare for their leaders' events, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said the bloc was determined to lower the diplomatic temperature with China.

"Both sides, all sides, are committed to communicate... to the global community that things are under control. We have differences but we can manage," Surin told reporters.

As a confidence-building mechanism, he said ASEAN would propose to China that a hotline be set up to allow a direct line of communication in the event of incidents in disputed waters.

Rival claims to the South China Sea have for decades made the waterways, home to some of the world's most important shipping lanes and believed to sit atop vast natural resources, a potential military flashpoint.

China insists it has sovereign rights to nearly all of the sea, including waters close to the coasts of its Asian neighbours.

ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, also have sometimes overlapping claims to the sea.

Tensions escalated this year amid complaints by the Philippines and Vietnam that China was becoming increasingly aggressive in staking its claim to the sea, including by employing bullying diplomatic tactics.

An ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Phnom Penh ended in July without issuing a joint communique for the first time in the bloc's 45-year history because of divisions over how to handle the South China Sea issue.

The Philippines and Vietnam had wanted the communique to make specific reference to their disputes with China.

But Cambodia, the host of the talks and a close China ally, blocked the moves.

While Surin insisted that tensions had eased since then, analysts said the presence of Obama and Wen at the two-day East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh starting on Monday risked inflaming the situation.

The East Asia Summit brings together the leaders of ASEAN, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Obama is likely to reiterate that the United States has a fundamental interest in freedom of navigation in the sea and emphasise the need for a code of conduct among rival claimants, according to analysts.

China has long insisted the United States has no right to comment on the dispute. Chinese vice foreign minister Fu Ying warned on Saturday that it did not want the South China Sea brought up at the East Asia Summit.

In one of the major set pieces on Sunday, ASEAN leaders are scheduled to endorse a pact they say will enshrine human right protections for the bloc's 600 million people.

However the pact, drafts of which have been released to the media, has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups which say it allows loopholes for governments.

ASEAN's members have a wide range of political systems, from authoritarian regimes in Vietnam and Laos at one end of the spectrum to the freewheeling democracy of the Philippines at the other.

And even as the rights pact is signed, ASEAN leaders will on Sunday have to focus on sectarian violence in Myanmar's Rakhine that has left 180 dead since June.

Surin said ASEAN foreign ministers discussed the unrest on Saturday, with some expressing concern about the situation and whether it would impact the political transformation underway in Myanmar away from military rule.

- AFP/de

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Bodoland Territorial Council member held with weapons, 5 more killed

GUWAHATI: Assam Police have arrested a key administrator of Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) with two AK 47s and ammunition hours after five villagers were shot dead in Kokrajhar on Friday night. Since November 10, 11 persons have died in renewed ethnic violence.

Unidentified gunmen raided Jiabari village near Kokrajhar at 11.30 pm on Friday night and shot dead four of a family, including three women, and left a child injured. Another woman, who was shot earlier in the evening at Barkhas Nalbari, also died at a Bilasipara hospital. In curfew-bound Kokrajhar, miscreants fired at a Special Police Officer (SPO) while he was guarding National Highway 31 at Serfanguri at 6 pm on Saturday and snatched away his self- loading rifle. The SPO, Biraj Das, has been admitted to a private hospital in Bongaigaon in a critical condition.

Police have also imposed restrictions on use of personal security by all members of the council, most of whom are of Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), which was disbanded in 2003 following the peace accord. They later floated the Bodoland People's Front (BPF) which is power in the council since then. The ministry of home affairs on Friday sent an advisory to the state government to seize a large number of illegal weapons in Bodo pockets to contain unabated violence. "Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has asked the police to go all out to bring the situation under control. Police are on zero-tolerance mode," a top government official said.

Police have sent the two weapons recovered from BTC executive member Mono Kumar Brahma's house to the forensic laboratory to verify if they were used in the recent incidents. Two magazines and 60 rounds of ammunition have also been recovered along with the two guns. "We had information about illegal weapons with Brahma and we raided his house and found them. Brahma has been sent to 2-day police custody by a local court," police said.

DGP Jayanto Narayan Choudhury, while talking about the crackdown, said there are at least 100 illegal sophisticated weapons and a large number of countrymade weapons in use.

The police administration also extended its crackdown in pulling out house guards attached to executive members of the council, most of who are former members of now disbanded Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT). "The extra security cover of these leaders has been pulled out. The security personnel, who will remain attached to them, have been asked to be in uniform while on duty and will no longer be armed with AK series rifles. Instead, they will be given 303 rifles and carbines," a home department source said. Security cover allocated to the council's chief executive member Hagrama Mohilary, his deputy Khampa Borgoyari and transport minister Chandan Brahma have not been changed, the source added.

The Bodoland People's Front (BPF), in which Mono Kumar Brahma is a senior leader, is an ally of the Congress in the state government. Brahma's arrest, however, has not evoked any mass reaction. Senior BPF leader Chandan Brahma, who is the transport minister, said, "This is not good. I smell a conspiracy. Mono Kumar Brahma is not the person to possess a weapon. He is a senior leader of BPF and has been actively involved in rehabilitation of people displaced in the July violence." CM Tarun Gogoi refused to link Brahma's arrest to any impact on the alliance. "Brahma has been arrested because some illegal weapons have been recovered from his house. This will have no impact on our alliance with BPF."

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Israel Targets Hamas Headquarters

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Israel's Air Force reduced the headquarters of the militant group Hamas to rubble. It was one of several Hamas buildings and homes targeted, part of Israel's continuing effort to destroy the group's command and control structure as speculation mounts over an Israeli ground invasion.

The Israel Defense Forces released aerial drone video of the attack on the government building, the seat of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Hanniyeh. Israeli warplanes have also struck the main police station, the interior ministry and the homes of top Hamas leaders.

As of Saturday morning, almost 900 "terror sites" had been targeted by Israel, including weapons caches and rocket launching sites. Around 600 rockets have been fired into Israel by Hamas and other militant groups, around a third of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, according to the Israeli military.

The loud thud of Israeli missiles hitting Gaza and the buzz of drones overhead were consistent on Saturday, as Israeli tanks and troops massed on the border in preparation of a ground invasion. Israeli media also reported that 20,000 reservists have been called up.

PHOTOS: Airstrikes and Rocket Attacks Continue

"We are preparing for any possibility, a ground invasion is a possibility although it hasn't been decided at this point," said IDF spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Liebovich. "We are ready to continue this operation "Pillar of Defense "until the peace and quiet and normality will return."

Israel Showdown: Tel Aviv Braces for More Rocket Attacks Watch Video

On Friday, Jerusalem was targeted for the first time in this escalation by militants in Gaza. A rocket landed around ten miles south near the West Bank Israeli settlements of Gush Etzion. And for the second day, sirens sounded in Tel Aviv as a rocket landed off the coast.

Three Israelis were killed Thursday by a rocket attack in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi. As of Saturday morning 39 Palestinians had been killed, among them more than half were civilians, according to Gaza health officials.

"Up until now we can say the situation is stable," Dr. Ayman al-Sahbani, the head of the emergency unit at Gaza's main al-Shifa hospital, said on Friday. "If it continues, we can't [cope]. Of course we can't. We hope to stop the [Israeli] aggression."

Israel's Iron Dome Proves Effective

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil visited the strip for three hours Friday morning, raising hope a ceasefire would be brokered. Qandil and the Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, are both from the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot. They have the delicate task of trying to coordinate between Hamas, Israel and the United States.

"What I am witnessing in Gaza is a disaster and I can't keep quiet," Qandil said, "The Israeli aggression must stop."
Israel says this operation, dubbed "Pillar of Defense," is the result of the rockets that regularly fly into southern Israel from Gaza. This operation started when Israel assassinated the top commander of Hamas' military wing, Ahmed Jabari.

"As long as Israel keeps killing us, we will keep defending ourselves by any means possible," the spokesman of Islamic Jihad, Daoud Shahab said in an interview. "If Israel stops its aggression, we are ready to stop firing the rockets."

In Washington, the Obama administration reiterated its view that Israel has the right to defend itself.

"It's a matter of the international community and particularly regional states with influence to do what they can to make clear to Hamas that this is not benefiting the cause of the Palestinian people, and it's certainly not benefiting the cause of regional stability," said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.

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Israel authorizes more reservists after rockets target cities

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists late on Friday, preparing the ground for a possible Gaza invasion after Palestinians fired a rocket toward Jerusalem for the first time in decades.

Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial centre, also came under rocket attack for the second straight day, in defiance of an Israeli air offensive that began on Wednesday with the declared aim of deterring Hamas from launching cross-border attacks that have plagued southern Israel for years.

Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, claimed responsibility for firing at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israel said the rocket launched toward Jerusalem landed in the occupied West Bank, and the one fired at Tel Aviv did not hit the city. There were no reports of casualties.

The siren that sounded in Jerusalem stunned many Israelis. The city, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, was last struck by a Palestinian rocket in 1970, and it was not a target when Saddam Hussein's Iraq fired missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a four-hour strategy session with a clutch of senior ministers in Tel Aviv on widening the military campaign, while other cabinet members were polled by telephone on raising the mobilization level.

Political sources said they decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000. The move did not necessarily mean all would be called into service.

Hours earlier, Egypt's prime minister, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression, visited Gaza and said Cairo was prepared to mediate a truce.

Officials in Gaza said 29 Palestinians - 13 militants and 16 civilians, among them eight children and a pregnant woman - had been killed in the enclave since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

The Israeli military said 97 rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel on Friday and 99 more were intercepted by its Iron Dome anti-missile system. Dozens of Israeli bombing raids rocked the enclave, and one flattened the Gaza Interior Ministry building.

In a further sign Netanyahu might be clearing the way for a ground operation, Israel's armed forces announced that a highway leading to the territory and two roads bordering the enclave of 1.7 million Palestinians would be off-limits to civilian traffic.

Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the border area on Friday, and the military said it had already called 16,000 reservists to active duty.

Netanyahu is favorite to win a January national election, but further rocket strikes against Tel Aviv, a free-wheeling city Israelis equate with New York, and Jerusalem, which Israel regards as its capital, could be political poison for the conservative leader.

"The Israel Defence Forces will continue to hit Hamas hard and are prepared to broaden the action inside Gaza," Netanyahu said before the rocket attacks on the two cities.

Asked about Israel massing forces for a possible Gaza invasion, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: "The Israelis should be aware of the grave results of such a raid, and they should bring their body bags."

SOLIDARITY VISIT

A solidarity visit to Gaza by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, whose Islamist government is allied with Hamas but also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, had appeared to open a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy.

Kandil said: "Egypt will spare no effort ... to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce."

But a three-hour truce that Israel declared for the duration of Kandil's visit never took hold.

Israel Radio's military affairs correspondent said the army's Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defence preparations for the possibility that fighting could drag on for seven weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Gaza conflagration has stoked the flames of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to leap across borders.

It is the biggest test yet for Egypt's new President Mohamed Mursi, a veteran Islamist politician from the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected this year after last year's protests ousted military autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood are spiritual mentors of Hamas, yet Mursi has also pledged to respect Cairo's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, seen in the West as the cornerstone of regional security. Egypt and Israel both receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to underwrite their treaty.

Mursi has vocally denounced the Israeli military action while promoting Egypt as a mediator, a mission that his prime minister's visit was intended to further.

A Palestinian official close to Egypt's mediators told Reuters Kandil's visit "was the beginning of a process to explore the possibility of reaching a truce. It is early to speak of any details or of how things will evolve".

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-2009, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

Tunisia's foreign minister was due to visit Gaza on Saturday "to provide all political support for Gaza" the spokesman for the Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, said in a statement.

The United States asked countries that have contact with Hamas to urge the Islamist movement to stop its rocket attacks.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. By contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in the nearby West Bank, does recognize Israel, but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

Abbas's supporters say they will push ahead with a plan to have Palestine declared an "observer state" rather than a mere "entity" at the United Nations later this month.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood and Will Waterman)

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Arabs should use oil weapon against Israel: Iraq

CAIRO: An Iraqi official said on Friday Baghdad will recommend that Arab states use oil as a weapon to exert pressure on Israel and countries that back it, particularly the United States, over the Gaza crisis.

"Playing the economic card is our most powerful weapon at the moment in supporting the Palestinian people, for no military power can currently stand up to Israel," Iraq's permanent Arab League representative Qais al-Azzawi said.

He told reporters in the Egyptian capital, where the League has its headquarters, that Baghdad would take this stand at Saturday's emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the pan-Arab body called by Egypt to discuss Gaza.

"What happened in 1973, when the Arabs stopped oil exports to Western states, is proof that this weapon can succeed in the battle between the Arabs and Israel," Azzawi said of a decision taken during the October Yom Kippur war.

- AFP/fa

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SP releases list of 55 LS candidates, four of Mulayam's clan included

LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party (SP), in an attempt to grab the first-mover's advantage, released a list of 55 candidates from Uttar Pradesh for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The list includes four members of Mulayam Singh Yadav's clan, including the party boss himself.

The SP became the first major party to name its Lok Sabha candidates on Friday, a day after the Congress declared that party general secretary Rahul Gandhi would lead its poll campaign.

The BSP is said to have finalized its list but is yet to make it public, while the BJP is likely to announce the list of its candidates from UP in December. UP holds the fortune of the central government with 80 Lok Sabha seats.

SP list is signal to Congress?

By releasing its list of election candidates on the eve of the winter session of Parliament, the Samajwadi Party may be trying to tell the Congress that it cannot be taken for granted and that UPA-2 may not complete its term which ends in 2014. Also, the general thinking in SP is that early elections will suit the party.

If Lok Sabha elections are held on schedule, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav fears that apart from rivals, his party will also have to fight anti-incumbency. Mulayam, who harbours prime ministerial ambitions, has set a target of winning 60 seats in UP so that he can play a key role in the formation of the next government at the Centre.

The SP, which supports the Congress-led UPA government from outside, has not announced candidates for Rae Bareli and Amethi yet and placed strong candidates against friends-turned-foes Beni Prasad Verma and Raj Babbar. Also missing from its list is actor Jayaprada. BJP's Rajnath Singh and RLD's Jayant Chaudhary will not get "walkovers". At least two dons-turned-politicians, too, have got tickets.

Asked whether SP's move was in reaction to Rahul's nomination as in-charge of the Congress coordination committee for the polls, party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav said, "we declared our candidates for the 2012 assembly elections almost 18 months in advance. This helps candidates to nurture their constituencies better."

Mulayam will contest from Mainpuri; his daughter-in-law Dimple, who won a byelection unopposed from Kannauj this year, will fight for the same seat. Ram Gopal's son Akshay Yadav will make his political debut from Ferozabad. Besides family members, the SP has given ticket to Neeraj Shekhar, son of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, from Ballia. UP speaker Mata Prasad Pandey will contest from Domariaganj.

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Hero Vet Dies Saving Wife in Texas Parade Crash

Police have identified the four servicemen who died in Midland, Texas when a freight train plowed into a parade float carrying wounded veterans and their spouses at a crossing, two of whom saved their wives by pushing them to safety before they died.

Army SGM Gary Stouffer, 37, and 47-year-old Army SGM Lawrence Boivin were pronounced dead at the scene, police said, after the float carrying wounded veterans and their families to an honorary banquet was struck by a Union Pacific train around 4:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon. The train struck as the parade was crossing the tracks, turning the honorary event into a scene of destruction.

Army SGT Joshua Michael, 34, and 43-year-old Army SGM William Lubbers were transported from the scene and later pronounced dead at Midland Memorial Hospital, according to the Midland Police.

Seventeen people in all were transported to the hospital and 10 were treated and released. Four people were in stable condition and one is in critical condition as of this morning.

Michael was killed in the crash but was able to save his wife, his mother-in-law told the Amarillo Globe-News.

"He pushed his wife off the float -- my daughter," Mary Hefley told the newspaper. "He was that kind of guy. He always had a smile on his face. He would do for others before he would do for himself."

Hefley said Michael retired from the Army due to health reasons.

According to a website set up by Cory Rogers, a friend of Michael's family, the father of two completed two tours of duty in Iraq, and received two Purple Hearts after being wounded in combat.

"His love of country and for his wife, Daylyn and their two children shone through," his family said in a statement on the site. "The family appreciates everyone's thoughts and prayers in this very difficult time."

AP | Courtesy Mary Hefley

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SGM Boivin also pushed his wife out of the way before he was hit, Jaime Garza told ABC News. He said that his wife was hurt in the crash, but survived. Boivin died in his arms, Garza said.

Garza said that he and his wife Denise lost their son in Afghanistan seven years ago. On Thursday they were driving in a separate car about a block away, helping escort the floats.

"I looked in my rear view mirror. That's when I saw the train hit the float," he said. "I made a quick U-turn to get back up there. The first person who was there was Lawrence. I had to help him out ... and he gave me his last breath ... He actually pushed [his wife] off the float and then he got hit."

Denise Garza said that the entire incident happened very fast.

"Everybody was getting help in two seconds. Everybody had help. It was like the best response," she said. "It was terrible. The worst thing I've ever seen in my whole life."

About two dozen veterans and their spouses had been sitting in chairs on the back of a flatbed tractor-trailer decorated with American flags and signs identifying each veteran.

The first truck crossed the tracks in time, but the second did not, according to Hamid Vatankhah, a witness who owns a used car lot near the scene of the crash.

Sirens from the police cars in the parade may have drowned out the sound of the approaching train, Vatankhah said.

The impact, witnesses say, was deafening as the train plowed through the parade float crossing the tracks in an industrial part of Midland.

"Some people were able to jump, and some that were sitting in wheelchairs on top couldn't do nothing about it," Vatankhah added.

Patricia Howle was sitting traffic with her daughter watching the parade go by when she heard the train honking its horn.

"I just saw people going under the train. There was blood. There was blood all over," said eyewitness Eservando Wisler.

A Union Pacific spokesman Tom Lange said it appeared safety devices at the crash site were working. But there were conflicting reports by eyewitnesses about whether the gates went down at the crossing when the train approached.

"I saw the truck crossing the tracks. About halfway across the gates started coming down. The truck tried to blow his horn to get the other people in front of him out of the way. The gates actually hit the first people on the trailer," witness Michael Briggs said.

"Our preliminary findings indicate that the lights and gates were working at the time of the incident and that our train crew sounded the locomotive horn," said Lange.

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