Naveen Jindal's chopper makes emergency landing, Congress MP safe

CHANDIGARH: Congress MP from Kurukshetra Naveen Jindal's helicopter made an emergency landing due to a technical snag on Monday evening at the airport here.

"The chopper made an emergency landing at the airport. A Jet Airways flight that was on the runway could not take off while we had to divert a GoAir flight. Other flights scheduled to take off from here could not do so," a senior official at the Chandigarh airport said.

Jindal, who was coming from Kurukshetra in his chopper, tweeted that the helicopter developed a "technical snag" and that he was safe after the incident.

"Had a technical snag in the helicopter and pilots made a good landing at the Chandigarh airport. All is well," he tweeted.

He also wrote that "I wanted to avoid writing about this helicopter incident as all is fine, but media found out anyways. So must clarify that all is well".

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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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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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Israel says prefers diplomacy but ready to invade Gaza

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed dozens of 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.


Mediator Egypt said a deal for a truce to end the fighting could be close. The leader of Hamas said it was up to Israel to end the new conflict it had started. Israel says its strikes are to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.


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. Hospital officials in Gaza said more than half of those killed were non-combatants. Three Israeli civilians died on Thursday in a rocket strike.


Militants in the Gaza Strip fired 110 rockets at southern Israel on Monday, causing no casualties, police said.


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, exiled 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 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an election in January, had asked for a truce, an assertion a senior Israeli official denied.


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 Gaza guerrilla activity in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula.


Although 84 percent of Israelis supported the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent wanted an invasion, while 19 percent wanted their government to work on securing a truce soon.


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," a senior 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 newly elected President Mohamed Mursi has his roots in the Muslim Brotherhood seen as mentors to Hamas, is acting as a mediator in the biggest test yet of Cairo's 1979 peace treaty with Israel since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.


"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.


United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo to weigh in on ceasefire efforts. Egypt's foreign minister 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, among 11 people killed in an Israeli 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".


The deaths of the 11 in an air strike drew more international calls for an end to six days of hostilities and could test Western support for an offensive Israel billed as self-defense after years of cross-border rocket attacks.


Israel said it was investigating its air strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the wrong house may have been mistakenly targeted.


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 and military convoys moved on roads in the area.


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 for 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.


Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force Hamas to stop rocket fire that has hit Israeli border towns for years.


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, the Islamist group 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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Hollande slams countries seeking rebates in EU budget






PARIS: French President Francois Hollande on Monday slammed countries seeking rebates and discounts in the European Union's next budget, ahead of a key summit this week in Brussels.

Criticising those calling for a decrease in the budget "at the exact moment we are calling for solidarity and mobilisation for growth," Hollande decried countries who "come to get their cheques, their rebates, their discounts".

He did not name any specific countries, but Britain in particular cherishes its budget rebate, won by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and which London is fiercely defending in the budget talks.

Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria have all negotiated rebates because they felt they were contributing too much to the budget.

"The idea that they have of Europe is to obtain exactly what they put in... as if solidarity is not that the most fortunate provide for the others," Hollande told mayors from France's overseas territories meeting in Paris.

Hollande also vowed "to fight to keep the structural funds and the Common Agricultural Policy" during the November 22-23 summit.

The structural funds are designed for wealthier EU nations to provide financial assistance to poorer ones, while the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU's biggest single budget item, is a farm aid programme of which France is the main beneficiary.

The EU's 27 nations are heading into the summit deeply divided over whether to cut the European Commission's proposed 1.03-trillion-euro ($1.3 trillion) 2014-2020 budget.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has been particularly vocal in his opposition and has said Britain is prepared to veto the budget.

- AFP/fa



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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets Singapore, Philippines leaders in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday held bilateral meetings with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Philippines President Benigno Simeon Aquino III to discuss various issues including maritime piracy and the regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) agreement.

Officials said the prime minister discussed ways to deepen India's engagement with the Asean nations and the countries in the region.

The prime minister arrived at the Cambodian capital earlier in the day to attend the 10th Asean-India Summit and the 7th East Asia Summit.

The Asean economic ministers firmed up the draft of the RCEP, an agreement between the East Asia countries, in August. The summit would take a view on it.

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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.

Read More..

Obama Backs 'Israel's Right to Defend Itself'


Nov 18, 2012 8:45am







ap obama thailand lt 121118 wblog Obama:`We Are Fully Supportive of Israels Right to Defend Itself

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais


BANGKOK, Thailand — President Obama today fully backed Israel’s right to defend itself and warned that the escalating violence in the Middle East threatens the prospect for a lasting peace process.


Speaking at a joint press conference with Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Obama called for an end to the firing of missiles into Israel by militants inside Gaza, saying “there is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”


The president cautioned that any ground offensive could lead to greater Israeli casualties.


“Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory,” he said. “If that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable. That’s not just preferable for the people in Gaza, it’s also preferable for the Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they are much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.”


PHOTOS: Israel-Gaza Rocket Attacks Continue


Obama reiterated America’s unwavering support for Israel. “We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians. And we will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself,” he said.


The president, who has been in contact with leaders in the region to try and de-escalate the violence, said “if we’re serious about wanting to resolve this situation and create a genuine peace process, it starts with no more missiles being fired into Israel’s territory and that then gives us the space to try and deal with these long-standing conflicts that exist.”


“We’re going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours, but what I’ve said to [Egyptian] President Morsi and [Turkish] Prime Minister Erdogan is that those who champion the cause of the Palestinians should recognize that if we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza than the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future,” he said.




SHOWS: World News







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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, in an apparent 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.


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.


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 with one attack in the morning and another after nightfall.


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 organisations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.


Gaza health officials said 69 Palestinians - about half of them women and children - have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began, with hundreds wounded.


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 bedevilled 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.


Israeli officials declined to confirm or deny reports that an Israeli negotiator had flown to Cairo to discuss a ceasefire.


Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo, as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that "there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees".


Silvan Shalom, one of Netanyahu's deputies, said: "There are contacts, but they are currently far from being concluded."


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.


Listing Israel's terms for ceasing fire, Moshe Yaalon, another 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."


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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Football: Sunderland ends away barren spell at Fulham






LONDON: Sunderland registered their first Premier League away win since February and ended a run of five games without victory by overcoming 10-man Fulham 3-1 on Sunday.

Brede Hangeland was sent off for Fulham after half an hour, but although Steven Fletcher's opener for the visitors was cancelled out by Mladen Petric, goals from Carlos Cuellar and Stephane Sessegnon gave Sunderland the win.

With 10 goals to their name, Martin O'Neill's side are no longer the lowest-scoring team out of England's 92 league clubs.

Victory lifted the Black Cats above Wigan Athletic into 15th place, three points above the relegation zone, while Fulham remain ninth.

Dimitar Berbatov headed wide from Damien Duff's cross after five minutes at Craven Cottage, but the first half was a sleepy affair until Hangeland was sent off by referee Lee Probert.

The Norwegian was shown a straight red card for jumping in two-footed on Lee Cattermole -- himself no stranger to full-blooded challenges -- and despite Fulham coach Martin Jol's incredulous reaction, the decision was correct.

A pivotal 14-second passage of play tipped the balance of the match in Sunderland's favour after five minutes of the second period.

Fulham left-back John Arne Riise hit the Sunderland bar with a deflected shot but Sunderland broke quickly, with Adam Johnson's fine, sweeping cross freeing Fletcher to toe the ball past Mark Schwarzer.

Petric came on for the injured Bryan Ruiz and lifted a chance over the bar shortly after making his entrance, while at the other end, Schwarzer produced a full-stretch save to repel Johnson's curler.

Fulham drew level a minute later, Petric steering the ball into the roof of the net from inside the six-yard box after Duff drilled a low cross across the face of goal from the left.

The teams were not level for long, however, with Spanish centre-back Cuellar heading Sunderland back into the lead from Johnson's corner only three minutes later to register his first goal for the club.

Sessegnon put daylight between the teams with a superb goal in the 70th minute, rolling his marker and unleashing a glorious strike from 25 yards that found the net via the inside of the right-hand post.

Fletcher was denied a second goal by the assistant referee's flag, while Sunderland were indebted to goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, who saved brilliantly from Steve Sidwell and Petric to preserve the visitors' two-goal cushion.

- AFP/fa



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