Spokesman: Gaza Ceasefire to Be Announced

A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel will be announced tonight, almost a week after the assassination of Hamas' top military commander led to the worst violence between Gaza and Israel in four years.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told ABC News the news would be announced at 8 p.m. in Cairo (1 p.m. ET), where Egypt has been trying to broker a peace deal. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian mediator would make the announcement, Barhoum said. Earlier, an Islamic Jihad website reported that the ceasefire would go into effect at 9 p.m. local time.

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Israeli newspaper Haaretz also reported that a ceasefire would begin tonight, citing senior Israeli officials.

The news comes just hours before American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lands in Israel for discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about the fighting.

As the news broke, Israeli missiles continued to explode in Gaza while sirens sounded in Israel, signalling incoming rocket fire from Gaza.

Gazans streamed out of northern neighborhoods during the afternoon after the Israel Defense Forces dropped leaflets telling residents to evacuate before dark. Scared Palestinians poured into Gaza City, cars and trucks piled high with belongings, many heading to schools for shelter.

There have been 126 Palestinian deaths in six days of fighting, just under half were civilians. Three Israelis were killed last Thursday when a rocket slammed into their apartment.

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Israel says prefers diplomacy but ready to invade Gaza

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed dozens more targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday and said that, while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that would end Palestinian rocket fire.

Egypt said a deal for a truce could be close, though by late evening there was no end to six days of heavy missile exchanges as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed his next steps with his inner circle of senior ministers.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi, who has been trying to use his influence with Hamas, his fellow Islamists who run Gaza, to broker a halt. Obama "underscored the necessity of Hamas ending rocket fire", the White House said.

The leader of Hamas, speaking in Cairo, said it was up to Israel to end a new conflict that he said it had started. Israel, which assassinated a Hamas military chief on Wednesday, says its air strikes are to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

To Mursi and in a subsequent call to Netanyahu, Obama said he regretted the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

Israeli attacks on the sixth day of fighting raised the number of Palestinian dead to 101, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said, listing 24 children among them. Subsequent deaths raised the toll in Gaza to 106. Hospital officials in the enclave said more than half of those killed were non-combatants. Three Israeli civilians died on Thursday in a rocket strike.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, touring the region in the hopes of helping to broker a peace deal, arrived in Cairo, where he met Egypt's foreign minister in preparation for talks with Mursi on Tuesday. He also plans to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

With the power balances of the Middle East drastically reshaped by the Arab Spring during a first Obama term that began two days after Israel ended its last major Gaza offensive, the newly re-elected U.S. president faces testing choices to achieve Washington's hopes for peace and stability across the region.

ROCKET FIRE

Militants in the Gaza Strip fired 110 rockets at southern Israel on Monday, causing no casualties, police said. Israel said it had conducted 80 air strikes on the enclave. The figures meant a relative easing in ferocity - over 1,000 rockets have been fired in the six days, and 1,350 air strikes carried out.

For the second straight day, Israeli missiles blasted a tower block in the city of Gaza housing international media. Two people were killed there, one of them an Islamic Jihad militant.

Khaled Meshaal, exile leader of Hamas, said a truce was possible but the Islamist group, in charge of the Gaza Strip since 2007, would not accept Israeli demands and wanted Israel to halt its strikes first and lift its blockade of the enclave.

"Whoever started the war must end it," he told a news conference in Cairo, adding that Netanyahu, who faces an election in January, had asked for a truce, an assertion a senior Israeli official described as untrue.

Meshaal said Netanyahu feared the domestic consequences of a "land war" of the kind Israel launched four years ago: "He can do it, but he knows that it will not be a picnic and that it could be his political death and cost him the elections."

For Israel, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon has said that "if there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack".

Yaalon also said Israel wanted an end to guerrilla activity by militants from Gaza in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula.

Although 84 percent of Israelis support the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent want an invasion.

DIPLOMACY "PREFERRED"

"Israel is prepared and has taken steps, and is ready for a ground incursion which will deal severely with the Hamas military machine," an official close to Netanyahu told Reuters.

"We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would guarantee the peace for Israel's population in the south. If that is possible, then a ground operation would no longer be required. If diplomacy fails, we may well have no alternative but to send in ground forces," he added.

Egypt, where Mursi has his roots in Hamas's spiritual mentors the Muslim Brotherhood, is acting as a mediator in the biggest test yet of Cairo's 1979 peace treaty with Israel since the fall of Hosni Mubarak early last year.

"I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation, (means) it is very difficult to predict," Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who visited Gaza on Friday in a show of support for its people, said in an interview in Cairo for the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit.

Egypt has been hosting leaders of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction.

Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had also been to Cairo for truce talks. A spokesman for Netanyahu's government declined comment on the matter.

Egypt's foreign minister, who met U.N. chief Ban on Monday, is expected to visit Gaza on Tuesday with a delegation of Arab ministers.

THOUSANDS MOURN FAMILY

Thousands turned out on Gaza's streets to mourn four children and five women who were among 11 people killed in an Israeli air strike that flattened a three-storey home the previous day.

The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of "God is greatest!".

Those deaths drew more international calls for an end to hostilities and could test Western support for an offensive that Israel billed as self-defense after years of cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel said it was investigating the strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the house might have been targeted by mistake.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of the coastal enclave, tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border.

Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

The Gaza fighting adds to worries of world powers watching an already combustible region, where several Arab autocrats have been toppled in popular revolts in the past two years and a civil war in Syria threatens to spread beyond its borders.

In the absence of any prospect of permanent peace between Israel and Islamist factions such as Hamas, mediated deals for each to hold fire unilaterally have been the only formula for stemming bloodshed in the past.

Hamas and other groups in Gaza are sworn enemies of the Jewish state, which they refuse to recognize and seek to eradicate, claiming all Israeli territory as rightfully theirs.

Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006. A year later, after the collapse of a unity government under President Mahmoud Abbas, it seized Gaza in a brief civil war with Abbas's forces.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Peter Graff; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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Football: O'Brien breaks goal drought to rescue Hammers

LONDON: West Ham rescued a 1-1 draw against Stoke at Upton Park on Monday thanks to Joey O'Brien's first ever Premier League goal.

Republic of Ireland right-back O'Brien had never scored in the English top-flight despite a long career at that level with Bolton and now West Ham, but the 26-year-old chose the perfect moment to end his drought.

Sam Allardyce's side trailed to a goal early in the first half from Stoke striker Jonathan Walters until O'Brien slotted home from close-range three minutes after the interval to earn his moment as the unlikely hero.

O'Brien's intervention maintained West Ham's impressive start to the season and they remain seventh in the table, level on points with Arsenal, and above the likes of Tottenham, Liverpool and Newcastle.

Stoke's seventh draw from 12 league matches this season kept Tony Pulis's team clear of the relegation zone, although it also extended their winless run on their travels to 16 matches.

After all the pre-match talk that this would be a bruising battle between two sides who prefer the aggressive route-one approach, it was fitting that Stoke's early opener arrived via a set piece rather than a intricate passing move.

Pulis's side took the lead in the 12th minute when Glenn Whelan's corner was met by Walters, who timed his run perfectly to drive his shot past Hammers goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen and beyond Andy Carroll's attempt to clear off the line.

That was Walters' third goal of the season and Stoke could have been further in front before half-time when midfielder Steven Nzonzi lashed a fierce strike against the crossbar from long-range.

Just before that referee Chris Foy had turned down West Ham's penalty appeals after Geoff Cameron's push on Carroll.

But the hosts came out with more energy in the second half and Kevin Nolan should have equalised almost immediately when the midfielder's close-range header from George McCartney's cross was straight at goalkeeper Asmir Begovic.

Nolan didn't have worry for long though as West Ham equalised in the 48th minute when Gary O'Neil crossed from the right for O'Brien to flick home.

Allardyce's men came closest to winning it when Carroll flicked on Mark Noble's corner and Modibo Maiga pounced to fire in a shot that Begovic saved well.

- AFP/fa

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30% populace face respiratory disorder

INDORE: With rising pollution and increasing number of people getting hooked to smoking is leading to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD). Nearly 25-30% of city population is afflicted by chest and respiratory disorders.

To curb this, many city doctors staged a street play at 56 dukan, Transport Nagar and Dewas Naka area on Monday. Doctors said that due to COPD, wind pipe gets shrink and people develop complications like cough and breathlessness. Dr S Z Jafri, chest and asthma specialist, said, "People are unaware of COPD. The number of people afflicted by the disease is on rise. Those above 40 years of age are at risk. The disease is considered to be fifth most fatal disease in the world."

To raise awareness about the diseases in masses, theatre artistes presented a street play and spread steps to avoid contraction of disease. A free breath screening was also done through breathometer and vitalograph equipment.

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New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

___

Online:

Task force recommendation: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

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Israeli Airstrike Kills Top Islamic Jihad Commander

An Israeli strike on a Gaza City high-rise today has killed one of the top militant leaders of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group said.

The second strike in two days on the downtown Gaza City building that houses the Hamas TV station, Al Aqsa, has killed Ramez Harb, who is a leading figure in Al Quds Brigades militant wing, according to a text message Islamic Jihad sent to reporters.

Witnesses told the AP that the Israeli airstrike, part of a widening effort to suppress Hamas rocket fire into Israel, struck the building Monday afternoon, and ambulances quickly rushed to the scene. Paramedics told the AP that one person was killed and several wounded.

It is also the second high profile commander taken out in the Israeli offensive, which began six days with a missile strike that killed Ahmed Jibari, Hamas' top military commander.

Today mourners buried the 11 victims of an Israeli air strike on Sunday, the single deadliest incident since the escalation between Hamas and Israel began Wednesday. Among the dead were nine members of the Daloo family, killed when an Israeli warplane targeted their home in Gaza City while trying to kill a Hamas rocket maker, whose fate is unknown.

Palestinian deaths climbed to 96 Monday when four more, including two children, were killed in a strike on a sports stadium the Israel Defense Forces said was being used to launch rockets. Gaza health officials said half of those killed were children, women or elderly men.

With the death toll rising, Egypt accelerated efforts to broker a cease-fire, but so far the two sides are far apart. Egypt is being supported by Qatar and Turkey in its peacemaking mission and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to arrive at the talks later today.

Israel carried out 80 air strikes this morning, down from previous morning totals. There were 75 militant rocket launches, the Israeli military said, also a relatively low tally. The Israel Defense Forces said that since Wednesday, around 1,100 strikes had been carried out in Gaza while militants have launched about 1,000 rockets towards Israel.

Three Israeli civilians died from militant rocket fire in one attack Thursday and dozens have been wounded.

Sunday proved to be one the deadliest days of what Israel has called "Operation Pillar of Defense" with at least 23 Palestinians reported killed. Of those, at least 14 were women and children, according to a Gaza health official. The Israel Defense Forces told ABC News it was targeting Hamas rocket maker Yehiya Bia, who lives near the Daloo family in a densely populated Gaza neighborhood and has not been accounted for.

Israel shifted its tactics this weekend from striking rocket arsenals and firing positions to targeting the homes of senior Hamas commanders and the offices of Hamas politicians in Gaza. Doing so brought the violence into Gaza's most densely populated areas.

Israel hit two high-rise buildings Sunday that house the offices of Hamas and international media outlets, injuring at least six journalists.

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Israeli air strike kills 11 civilians in Gaza: Hamas

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza on Sunday, medical officials said, apparently an attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down.

International pressure for a ceasefire seemed certain to mount in response to the deadliest single incident in five days of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Egypt has taken the lead in trying to broker a ceasefire and Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had been to Cairo for talks on ending the fighting, although a government spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi met Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal and Islamic Jihad's head Ramadan Shallah as part of the mediation efforts, but a presidency statement did not say if they were conclusive.

Izzat Risheq, a close aide to Meshaal, wrote in a Facebook message that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire only after Israel "stops its aggression, ends its policy of targeted assassinations and lifts the blockade of Gaza".

Listing Israel's terms for ceasing fire, Moshe Yaalon, a deputy to the prime minister, wrote on Twitter: "If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

Gaza health officials said 72 Palestinians , 21 of them children and several women have been killed in Gaza since Israel's offensive began. Hundreds have been wounded.

Israel gave off signs of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-run enclave as the next stage in its offensive, billed as a bid to stop Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state. It also spelt out its conditions for a truce.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that while Israel had a right to defend itself against the salvoes, it would be "preferable" to avoid a military thrust into the Gaza Strip, a narrow, densely populated coastal territory. Such an assault would risk high casualties and an international outcry.

A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said 11 people, all of them civilians, were killed when an Israeli missile flattened the home of the Dalu family. Medics said four women and four children were among the dead.

Israel's chief military spokesman said Yihia Abayah, a senior commander of rocket operations in the Gaza Strip, had been the target.

The spokesman, Yoav Mordechai, told Israel's Channel 2 television he did not know whether Abayah was killed, "but the outcome was that there were civilian casualties". He made no direct mention of the destroyed dwelling.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties in the military showdown with Hamas.

"The massacre of the Dalu family will not pass without punishment," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.

VIOLENCE

In other air raids on Sunday, two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said. Eight journalists were wounded and facilities belonging to Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain's Sky News were damaged.

An employee of the Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, local medics said.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity", and that journalists in the building had effectively been used as human shields by Gaza's rulers.

For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital, Tel Aviv, for a fourth day, once in the morning and another after dark.

Israel's "Iron Dome" missile shield shot down all three rockets, but falling debris from the daytime interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border. Military convoys moved on roads in the area newly closed to civilian traffic.

Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive.

"We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.

The Israeli military said 544 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens. Some 302 were intercepted and 99 failed to reach Israel and landed inside the Gaza Strip, it added.

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force the Islamist Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedeviled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.

Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the impoverished enclave, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.

OBAMA CAUTIONS AGAINST GROUND CAMPAIGN

At a news conference during a visit to the Thai capital Bangkok, Obama said Israel has "every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory".

He added: "If this can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza that is preferable. That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded," he said.

Obama said he had been in regular contact with Egyptian and Turkish leaders - to secure their mediation in bringing about a halt to rocket barrages by Hamas and other Islamist militants.

"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," he added.

Diplomatic efforts continued on Sunday when French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met Israeli officials and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

"It is absolutely necessary that we move urgently towards a ceasefire, and that's where France can be useful," Fabius told French television, adding that war must be avoided.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be in Egypt on Monday for talks with Mursi, the foreign ministry in Cairo said. U.N. diplomats earlier said Ban was expected in Israel and Egypt this week to push for an end to the fighting.

Israel's operation has so far drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defence, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.

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WADA proposes tougher doping sanctions

MONTREAL: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) proposed a draft code Sunday that would usher in stiffer sanctions against cheaters and grant itself investigative powers in cases where national sports bodies refuse to take action.

The WADA draft code, which will be reviewed in December and approved in 2013, calls for a four-year sanction of ineligibility from a sport instead of two years under the current code.

"I think there is a real will in the world of sport to see sanctions that are a little more meaningful," John Fahey, WADA chairman told AFP.

"I believe that the proposals that are in the draft are proportionate. They certainly respond to those who seek to extend the current sanctions from two up to the four years. I think the message is strong here."

Fahey was speaking at a WADA foundation meeting which drew a number of participants, including the president of International Cycling Union (UCI) Pat McQuaid, who sat solemnly and consulted his smart phone for most of the proceedings.

McQuaid has tried to defend himself against charges that he failed to fight against drugtaking in cycling in the wake of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report that revealed rampant doping by Lance Armstrong and the teams the disgraced rider was associated with.

Fahey said USADA's probe was able to show "the most comprehensive, irrefutable outcome of a culture of doping in cycling and certainly the most sophisticated sham in the teams associated with Armstrong. That indicates that we can achieve outcomes. We can bring things through to a point where these cheats are exposed."

Fahey said that while anti-doping advocates were buoyed by USADA's dramatic findings, WADA itself needed extend its jurisdiction in cases where sports governing bodies refuse to investigate allegations of cheating. The draft code proposes more testing and newly-minted powers of investigation.

"The proposal that goes out in December clearly articulates that WADA has the power to investigate. What that tells me is that when a sporting body, an anti-doping organization is given information and they do nothing about it - and we've had many examples of that in the past - that WADA can go in and do something about it with investigative powers."

Fahey, who was in Kenya recently, said he was dismayed to realize that authorities there were not committed to investigating a German media report that performance-enhancing substances were being made available to Kenyan runners by people posing as doctors.

'We asked the Kenyan authorities to investigate that independently. We said to the National Olympic Committee and to Athletics Kenya that you need to establish an independent inquiry to see if it's true."

"Nothing has happened. They haven't done anything. I asked the minister when I was there. I spoke to president of the National Olympic Committee. They talked to me about looking into it. We went around in circles. I've written since and said 'have you got an independent investigation going as to the availability of performance enhancing drugs readily in your country that was a statement from one of your own athletes?' I haven't got any answers from them."

"If we had investigative powers I could have said: 'You set up an independent inquiry or we will. If you don't do it, we will."

WADA's draft code, which would be finalized in 2013, would officially take effect in 2015.

- AFP/fa

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Warring Thackeray cousins unite in grief, but briefly

MUMBAI: Long-simmering differences between the Thackeray cousins came to the fore on Sunday, with Raj leaving his uncle's funeral procession mid-way in a huff after a spat with Uddhav.

A key MNS functionary said his party chief was deliberately kept away from the family rituals. "Rajsaheb was not allowed to be a pallbearer, which is his undeniable right as he is Balasaheb's nephew."

That he was not to be one of the pallbearers was conveyed to Raj when he reached Matoshree earlier in the day. "He was told that Shiv Sena leaders and deputy leaders would take turns to carry the casket," the MNS functionary said. "This was Matoshree's way of rebuffing Rajsaheb and reminding him that while he may be a family member, in the Sena, which he quit in 2005, he is still persona non-grata."

As the funeral procession made its way to Shivaji Park, Raj walked ahead, hoping that Uddhav would join him. "The cousins were supposed to walk together, preceding the cortege," the MNS worker said.

However, Uddhav scrambled on to the truck carrying Bal Thackeray's body, leaving Raj to walk alone. A miffed Raj hopped into his vehicle and returned to his residence.

Brothers' spat sign of things to come?

The spat between Uddhav and Raj on Sunday, even as Bal Thackeray's funeral was under way, is a clear indication that the possibility of a thaw between the cousins is bleak, say political observers.

Left to walk alone in the funeral procession, Raj Thackeray abandoned the course mid-way and returned home late afternoon. On reaching his residence, Raj shut himself in his study and watched the funeral procession on TV, it is reliably learned. He told mediapersons who called him to know his whereabouts that he would be at Shivaji Park for the cremation. Raj's wife, Sharmila, though, accompanied the cortege with Uddhav, his wife Rashmi and their children.

Later in the evening, he attended the final rites along with Uddhav and his brother Jaidev at Shivaji Park.

Raj was made aware of the lurking hostility in Matoshree earlier last week when he called on the fast-sinking Sena patriarch. "Things became immensely embarrassing for Rajsaheb. He left Matoshree and sat in his car which was parked nearby for nearly two hours. He politely turned down Smitatai's (Thackeray) suggestion that he should retire to her room in Matoshree," said an MNS corporator.

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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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