Interpublic exits Facebook

(Reuters) – Interpublic Group of Cos said it sold its remaining investment in Facebook Inc for $ 95 million in cash.

Interpublic said it expects to record a pre-tax gain of $ 94 million. It had recorded a pre-tax gain of $ 132.2 million for the third quarter of last year from the sale of half of its 0.4 percent stake in Facebook.

Interpublic paid less than $ 5 million for the stake in 2006.

Shares of Facebook, which debuted with a market value of more than $ 100 billion in May, have lost nearly half their value since then on concerns about money-making prospects.

“We decided to sell our remaining shares in Facebook as our investment was no longer strategic in nature,” Chief Executive Michael Roth said in a statement.

Interpublic also authorized an increase in its existing share repurchase program to $ 400 million from $ 300 million. The company repurchased shares worth $ 151 million, as of September 30.

Shares of the company were up 1 percent at $ 10 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Facebook shares were marginally up at $ 23.00 on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Do You Recognize January Jones?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

11/20/2012 at 10:00 AM ET

Splash News Online

She’s been a blonde and a redhead, so it was only a matter of time before January Jones experimented with a brunette hue.

The actress debuted a new hairstyle on Monday, while out in Los Angeles with her son, Xander. The Mad Men star looked cute and casual, wearing a blue sweater, slim jeans and Rachel Zoe Collection boots with her new ‘do.

Jones, normally a blonde, experimented with “rose gold” highlights in March before going totally red for a role in June, later returning to blonde. No word yet on why she went brunette — possibly for another role? — but with winter looming it seems like the perfect seasonal change. Tell us: Do you like Jones’s brunette ‘do? Or do you prefer her as a blonde? 

PHOTOS: SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON STAR HAIRSTYLES!

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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 that 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."

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Wall Street edges up as bargain hunting offsets HP, France

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks inched higher on Tuesday, reversing earlier declines after bargain hunters stepped in to buy beaten-down shares and offset the impact of Hewlett-Packard's accounting charge and France losing its triple-A credit rating.

The S&P 500 briefly dipped below its 200-day moving average at 1,382, but recovered to trade slightly above the key technical level, which is seen as a support mark.

Stocks rallied for the last two days on optimism that Washington politicians could agree on a deal to avoid the U.S. "fiscal cliff." But the gains followed two weeks of sharp losses.

"We got into a very oversold condition on just about any indicator and then you had intraday reversals in just about all the indexes," said Jeffrey Saut, Raymond James Financial's chief investment strategist in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Shares of McDonald's shot up 1.3 percent to $86.11, leading the Dow industrials' slim advance.

Moody's Investors Service cut France's sovereign rating by one notch to Aa1 after the market's close on Monday, citing an uncertain fiscal outlook as a result of the weakening economy.

While the move was expected after Standard & Poor's made a similar downgrade in January, it was a reminder of the headwinds buffeting the global economy and the danger of contagion by the euro zone's debt crisis.

Hewlett-Packard Co shares tumbled 10.5 percent to a 10-year low at $11.91 as the computer and printer maker swung to a fourth-quarter loss. The company said it took an $8.8 billion charge related to its acquisition of software firm Autonomy, citing "serious accounting improprieties.

A bright spot for the economy came in data showing U.S. housing starts rose to their highest rate in more than four years in October, suggesting the housing market's recovery was gathering momentum. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> jumped 2.4 percent, led by PulteGroup Inc , up 4.8 percent at $16.67.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 10.34 points, or 0.08 percent, at 12,806.30. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 2.17 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,389.06. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 3.41 points, or 0.12 percent, at 2,913.48.

The S&P 500 index had fallen 5.3 percent between election day two weeks ago and the start of the rebound as angst over a possible U.S. budget deal drove investors to sell stocks and limit the impact of expected tax increases on capital gains and dividends.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders hope to start serious negotiations after the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a series of mandatory tax hikes and spending cuts that would go into effect early next year - if a deal is not reached - and could push the U.S. economy back into recession.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Editing by W Simon, Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)

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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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Apolo Ohno Blogs About the 'Hardest Week' on Dancing with the Stars

TV Watch
Only on People.com

By Apolo Ohno

11/19/2012 at 11:45 AM EST

Apolo Anton Ohno and Karina Smirnoff

Craig Sjodin/ABC

Apolo Ohno is a former Dancing with the Stars champion, winning the coveted mirror-ball trophy in season 4 with Julianne Hough. The ice-skating Olympian is now blogging for PEOPLE.com about competing with Karina Smirnoff in the all-star season.

It felt good not going home on Tuesday, but at the same time, I never want to see anyone else go home either. Everybody's dancing so well and you become friends with everybody on the show during the time you're there. You cheer everybody on and you watch them grow as dancers and as people.

Now that we've made it to week nine, oh, man, I'm dying. Not really, but for me this is by far the absolute hardest week I've ever had on Dancing with the Stars. We have big top jazz, which is a dance that I know zero about. I've never done it before on the show, and I don't think we've ever seen it before on the show.

Our choreography is super intense, different, unique, fun, almost Cirque du Soleil-like a little bit. It's crazy. There's so much content in it. I feel like I need another two weeks just to work on that dance. Then we also have the rumba, which we haven't even started yet.

I can't control the outcome of the show. The fans have carried us this far, which has been an absolute blessing. But I take every week on the show as if it's my last. The only thing I can control is how much time, energy and effort we put into each week. Who cares about the scores? Who cares if somebody dances better? Doing my very best is rewarding internally.

I think voters know that we work extremely hard and we have fun. I hope that, especially over the past couple of weeks, people have been able to see how much in character we get. It's acting, it's fun, it's theatrical, it's emotional, it's physical. It's all in one package.

Looking back on the season thus far, I had no idea the competition was going to be this difficult. I knew there were going to be challenges, but I didn't know they were going to be this big. Every single week has been a true test for me to really dig deep and find what is possible beyond just the dance floor.

Luckily, Karina [Smirnoff] has been there as an absolutely incredible teacher who is so passionate and so into giving her best. That's what it takes. I feel like we've overcome so many challenges so far. I feel like we are champions already, regardless of what happens in the next couple of weeks. I feel like that's going to show when we dance on Monday. We are truly going to push the boundaries this week.

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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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Wall Street bounces on budget talk optimism, housing data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street bounced on Monday as investors were heartened by signs of progress in talks to resolve the fiscal crunch and data that showed the recovery in the housing sector was gaining strength.

The major indexes climbed more than 1 percent after tumbling in recent weeks on nervousness over when and if Washington will come to an agreement to avoid the series of tax and spending changes that will start to come into effect in the new year.

Over the weekend, leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers expressed confidence that they could reach a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff", even as they laid down markers on raising taxes and spending cuts that may make any agreement more difficult.

"What you're seeing today is an oversold bounce in the market," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.

"This could last for a few more days, but ultimately we'll need to see what type of legislation or forward progress comes out of Washington."

Stronger-than-expected earnings from Lowe's and Tyson Foods, as well as encouraging housing data also contributed to the market's advance.

U.S. home resales unexpectedly rose in October, while separate data showed homebuilder sentiment rose to its highest level in over six years in November.

The PHLX Housing Index <.hgx> rose 1.7 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 163.07 points, or 1.30 percent, to 12,751.38. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 21.52 points, or 1.58 percent, to 1,381.40. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> climbed 46.51 points, or 1.63 percent, to 2,899.64.

The S&P 500 was approaching its 200-day moving average around 1,382. Rising back above the key technical level could provide additional support for the index.

Shares of Lowe's Cos Inc , the world's No. 2 home improvement chain, jumped 6.3 percent to $33.99 after the company reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit and raised its full-year sales forecast.

Tyson Foods Inc likewise beat expectations and gave an upbeat forecast, sending its stock up 8.5 percent at $18.32.

Intel shares erased earlier losses to trade higher after the company said its chief executive will retire in May. Intel was up 0.9 percent at $20.37.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Israeli air strike kills 11 civilians in Gaza: Hamas

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - At least 11 Palestinian civilians, including four children, were killed on Sunday in what Hamas said was an Israeli air strike on a Gaza apartment building, the highest death toll in a single incident in five days of fighting.

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

U.S. President Barack Obama said that while Israel had a right to defend itself against rocket 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 an Israeli missile wrecked the three-storey residential building, killing 11 people, all of them civilians. Medics said four women and four children were among the dead.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment. 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.

For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital, Tel Aviv, for a fourth day. The Jewish state's "Iron Dome" missile shield shot down two of the rockets fired toward Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city, but falling debris from the interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter incursion into 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.

Gaza health official Mufid al-Miklalati said 65 Palestinians - around half of them women and children - have been killed in small, densely populated Gaza began, with hundreds wounded.

More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens.

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 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 bring 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.

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.

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".

Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying "there is hope", but that it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

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.

The head of the Arab League and a group of Arab foreign ministers will visit Gaza on Tuesday to show solidarity with the Palestinians, officials said in Cairo.

Asked on Israel Radio about progress in the Cairo talks, Silvan Shalom, one of Netanyahu's deputies, said: "There are contacts, but they are currently far from being concluded."

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."

WESTERN SUPPORT

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

British Foreign Minister William Hague said on Sky News that he and Prime Minister David Cameron "stressed to our Israeli counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza would lose Israel a lot of the international support and sympathy that they have in this situation".

Israel's cabinet decided on Friday to double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza campaign to 75,000. Some 31,000 soldiers have already been called up, the military said.

A possible sweep into the Gaza Strip and the risk of heavy casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.

The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion four years ago, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.

The current flare-up around Gaza has fanned the fires of a Middle East ignited by a series of Arab uprisings and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

One significant change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, which may narrow Israel's maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

Israel's Iron Dome missile interceptor system has destroyed more than 200 incoming rockets from Gaza in mid-air since Wednesday, saving Israeli towns and cities from potentially significant damage.

However, one rocket salvo unleashed on Sunday evaded Iron Dome and wounded two people when it struck a house in the Mediterranean coastal city of Ashkelon, police said.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Ayman Samir in Cairo, Seltem Iyigun in Istanbul, Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason in Bangkok, and Tim Castle in London; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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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..