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..

Wall Street Week Ahead: Going off "cliff" with a bungee cord

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The 1987 crash. The Y2K bug. The debt ceiling debacle of 2011.

All these events, in the end, turned out to be buying opportunities for stocks. So will the "fiscal cliff," some investors say as they watch favorite stocks tumble during the political give-and-take happening in Washington.

The first round of talks aimed at avoiding the "fiscal cliff" caused a temporary rise in equities on Friday, signaling Wall Street's recent declines could be a buying opportunity. The gains were small and sentiment remains weak, but it suggests hope for market bulls.

Though shares ended moderately higher on Friday, it was not enough to offset losses for the week. The S&P was down 1.5 percent, while both the Dow and the Nasdaq fell 1.8 percent.

The S&P 500 is down more than 5 percent in the seven sessions that followed President Barack Obama's re-election. Uncertainty arose as attention turned to Washington's task of dealing with mandated tax hikes and spending cuts that could take the U.S. economy back into recession.

Some see the market's move as an overreaction to hyperbolic headlines about policy gridlock in Washington, believing stocks may start to rebound in what should be a quiet few days ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday next Thursday.

"It just doesn't seem to make any sense that you suddenly wake up the day after the election and realize we've got a fiscal cliff," said Krishna Kumar, partner at New York hedge fund Goose Hollow Alpha Advisors.

Not long ago the S&P was on target for its second-best year in the last 10, riding a 17 percent advance in 2012. That's been halved to about 8 percent, which isn't bad but disappointing compared with just a month ago.

Investors have been selling the year's winners. Apple is down 25 percent from its peak above $700. General Electric is down 14 percent; Google has lost 16 percent. Overall, the stocks that make up the top 10 percent of performers in the month prior to Election Day have been the worst performers since, according to Bespoke Investment Group of Harrison, New York.

"I think it's a good opportunity to be long stocks at these levels," said Kumar.

Hikes on capital gains and dividend taxes are on the line, and Obama has dug in his heels on what he sees as a mandate to make the tax code more progressive.

He seems to have the upper hand in dealings with Congress because Republican lawmakers don't want to see tax rates increase, which is what will happen if no solution is found by the beginning of 2013. Republicans don't want to take the blame for driving the economy over the cliff.

The current crisis is similar to last year's fight to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, which led to the downgrade of the United States' top credit rating in early August 2011.

During the dealings, the S&P 500 lost 18.8 percent between its peak in July 2011 and its bottom in August. As the market slid, the political standoff badly hurt investors' confidence in Washington, setting off a spike in volatility.

In the end a deal was announced that raised the ceiling and put off longer-term fiscal decisions until January 1, 2013, setting the stage for today's "fiscal cliff" crisis.

After staying flat through September 2011, the S&P 500 jumped 31 percent between its October low and the end of March.

BUY THE DIP?

Gridlock in Washington and all that could possibly go wrong with the economy if a deal is not reached have grabbed the headlines, but the negotiations leave room for stock market gains. Congressional leaders said Friday they will work through the Thanksgiving holiday recess to find a solution.

"The debate over how to solve (the fiscal cliff) may be more productive than is commonly recognized," said Brad Lipsig, senior portfolio manager at UBS Financial Services in New York.

"The U.S. is facing a major debt overhang, and serious steps toward addressing it might ultimately be viewed as a positive for future growth," he said. "The market may recognize this and, after a time of hand wringing, recover from the concerns with a renewed sense of optimism."

The recent selling took the S&P 500's relative strength index - a technical measure of internal strength - below 30 this week, indicating the benchmark is oversold and due for a rebound.

The RSI in four of the 10 S&P sectors - utilities, telecoms, consumer staples and technology - is below 30 and the highest RSI reading, for the consumer discretionary sector, is below 40, suggesting a bounce is in store.

"What I want to do is what we did during the decline following the budget negotiations in the summer of 2011: The lower the stock market goes, the more I want to own stock," said Brian Reynolds, chief market strategist at New York-based Rosenblatt Securities.

"If we go off the cliff it will be with a bungee cord attached," he said.

KEEP CALM AND HEDGE

Volatility is expected to rise through the end of November and to spike in late December if no agreement on the fiscal cliff is reached in Congress. Alongside comes opportunity for those with high risk tolerance.

"Recently, volatility has increased in the market overall. You can't really pick it up in the VIX yet, but I think as we get through November, I think you're likely to see the VIX be at a relatively higher level," said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.

In 2011, the VIX averaged 19.2 in July and 35 in August. So far this month the average is 17.8 and it is expected to spike if negotiations on the cliff drag into late next month.

"Looking at the range of possibilities, I would say any of them would be better than sitting here waiting. I would even put going off the fiscal cliff in that category," said Jill Cuniff, president of Seattle-based Edge Asset Management Inc, which manages about $20 billion.

"But we don't believe Congress will let that happen; there's going to be some middle ground here."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Jonathan Spincer, additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

Israel hits Hamas government buildings, reservists mobilized

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the prime minister's office, after Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists in preparation for a possible ground invasion.

Palestinian militants in Gaza kept up cross-border salvoes, firing a rocket at Israel's biggest city Tel Aviv for the third straight day. Police said it was destroyed in mid-air by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery deployed hours earlier, and no one was injured.

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.

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

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.

Officials in Gaza said 41 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children and a pregnant woman, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

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.

Israel uncorked 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 salvoes recently intensified, and are now displaying greater range.

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

"We have not limited ourselves in means or in time," Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Israel's Channel One television. "We hope that it will end as soon as possible, but that will be only after all the objectives have been achieved."

Hamas says it is committed to continued confrontation with Israel and is eager not to seem any less resolute than smaller, more radical groups that have emerged in Gaza in recent years.

The Islamist movement has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel pulled settlers out of Gaza in 2005 but maintains a blockade of the tiny, densely populated coastal territory.

RESERVE TROOP QUOTA DOUBLED

At a late night session on Friday, Israel's cabinet decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said.

The move did not necessarily mean all would be called up or that an invasion would follow. Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the sandy border zone on Saturday, and around 16,000 reservists have already been summoned to active duty.

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.

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.

Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday's rocket attack on Tel Aviv, saying it had fired a longer-range, Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of the Gaza Strip.

After air raid sirens sounded, witnesses saw two white plumes rise into the sky over the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv and heard an explosion when the incoming rocket was hit.

The anti-missile battery had been due to take delivery of its fifth Iron Dome battery early next year but it was rushed into service near Tel Aviv after rockets were launched toward the city on Thursday and Friday. Those attacks caused no damage or casualties.

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.

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

ISRAEL'S GAZA TARGETS

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."

A three-storey house belonging to Hamas official Abu Hassan Salah was also hit and totally destroyed early on Saturday. Rescuers said at least 30 people were pulled from the rubble.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama commended Egypt's efforts to help defuse the Gaza violence in a call to Mursi on Friday, the White House said in a statement, and underscored his hope of restoring stability there.

On Friday, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil paid a high-profile visit to Gaza, denouncing what he called Israeli aggression and saying Cairo was prepared to mediate a truce.

Egypt's Islamist government, freely elected after U.S.-backed autocrat Hosni Mubarak fell to a popular uprising last year, is allied with Hamas but Cairo is also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

In a call to Netanyahu, Obama discussed options for "de-escalating" the situation, the White House said, adding that the president "reiterated U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself, and expressed regret over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives".

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 few believe Israeli military action can snuff out militant rocket fire entirely without a reoccupation of Gaza, an option all but ruled out because it would risk major casualties and an international outcry.

While Hamas rejects the Jewish state's existence, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in areas of the nearby West Bank not occupied by Israelis, does recognize Israel but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Read More..

It's a Girl for Chad Lowe

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

11/17/2012 at 12:20 AM ET

Chelsea Lauren/WireImage

It’s a girl for Chad Lowe.

The Pretty Little Liars star and wife Kim welcomed their second daughter on Thursday, Nov. 15, the actor announced via Twitter.

“It’s a girl!!! And she’s as beautiful as her mommy and [3½-year-old] big sister Mabel,” Lowe, 44, writes. “We are blessed!”

The couple, who married in August 2010, announced the pregnancy in June.

“I’m trying to bank some sleeping hours, which is a little tough,” Lowe joked to PEOPLE last Saturday, sharing that his wife was due to deliver this week.

– Sarah Michaud

Read More..

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..

Wall Street rises as Republicans call talks constructive

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Friday after Republicans said their meeting with Democratic President Barack Obama about the "fiscal cliff" was constructive and that they were prepared to put higher revenue on the table if there were also significant spending cuts.

All three major U.S. stock indexes erased losses to turn higher following comments by Republican House Speaker John Boehner and others who discussed with Obama ways to avert sharp tax increases and spending cuts that would take effect next year. Analysts have said the fiscal cliff could tip the economy into recession.

"To show our seriousness, we've put revenue on the table as long as it's accompanied by significant spending cuts," Boehner told reporters at the White House.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also offered conditional backing for new revenue but said reforms to social safety net programs are also necessary.

"I would call this a PR stunt, but just the fact that people are reacting to it this positively shows that the market is oversold and is seeking a reason to rally," said James Dailey, portfolio manager at TEAM Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

"If we fail to hold onto (gains) and hit new lows later today, then that will definitely be very alarming."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 40.13 points, or 0.32 percent, at 12,582.51. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 4.76 points, or 0.35 percent, at 1,358.09. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 10.09 points, or 0.36 percent, at 2,847.02.

The S&P is down 4.3 percent over the past two weeks, with such sectors as financials <.gspf> and materials <.gspm> among the hardest hit. The S&P and the Dow are currently down about 1.5 percent for the week while the Nasdaq is down about 2.2 percent.

Dell Inc's stock slumped 7.8 percent to $8.81 and was the biggest percentage decliner on the S&P 500 a day after reporting a steep drop in its quarterly profit.

Shares of Penn National Gaming Inc jumped 30 percent to $48.65 after the owner of gaming and pari-mutuel properties said late Thursday it will split its business into two separate publicly traded companies - a gaming focused real estate investment trust and a gaming operator.

Sears Holdings Corp late Thursday reported a quarterly loss that was narrower than expected, but same-store sales fell on weak demand for electronics, sending shares down 16.7 percent to $48.72.

J.M. Smucker Co reported a rise in second-quarter earnings, helped by a drop in commodity costs, but the stock fell 2.9 percent to $82.94.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv under rocket fire, Netanyahu warns Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian militants nearly hit Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades on Friday and fired at Tel Aviv for a second day, in a stinging challenge to Israel's Gaza offensive after an Egyptian bid to broker a truce.

The attacks came just hours after Egypt's prime minister, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression, visited the Gaza Strip and said Cairo was prepared to mediate.

Israel began bombing Gaza on Wednesday with an attack that killed the Hamas military chief. It says its campaign is in response to Hamas missiles fired on its territory. Hamas stepped up rocket attacks in response.

Israeli police said a rocket fired from Gaza landed in the Jerusalem area, outside the city, on Friday.

It was the first Palestinian rocket since 1970 to reach the vicinity of the holy city, which Israel claims as its capital, and was likely to spur an escalation in its three-day old air war against militants in Hamas-run Gaza.

Rockets nearly hit Tel Aviv on Thursday for the first time since Saddam Hussein's Iraq fired them during the 1991 Gulf War. An air raid siren rang out on Friday when the commercial centre was targeted again. Motorists crouched next to cars, many with their hands protecting their heads, while pedestrians scurried for cover in building stairwells.

The Jerusalem and Tel Aviv strikes have so far caused no casualties or damage, but could be political poison for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favored to win re-election in January on the strength of his ability to guarantee security.

"The Israel Defence Forces will continue to hit Hamas hard and are prepared to broaden the action inside Gaza," Netanyahu, signaling a possible ground campaign, said hours earlier.

A Hamas source said the Israeli air force launched an attack on the house of Hamas's commander for southern Gaza which resulted in the death of two civilians, one a child.

Officials in Gaza said 22 Palestinians had been killed in the enclave since Israel began the air offensive with the declared aim of stemming surges of rocket strikes that have disrupted life in southern Israeli towns.

The Palestinian dead include eight militants and 14 civilians, among them seven children and a pregnant woman. Three Israelis were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

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 said more than 35 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip hit its territory and 86 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Israel denied Palestinian assertions that its aircraft struck while Kandil was in the enclave.

TEL AVIV ROCKET

Israel Radio's military affairs correspondent said the army's Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defense 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".

Meanwhile, Israel has begun drafting 16,000 reserve troops, a possible precursor to invasion. Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the border area of Friday.

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 also 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 Ori Lewis, Ari Rabinovitch, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Peter Graff)

Read More..

Jennifer Aniston & Justin Theroux Honor Ben Stiller with Funny Tribute

11/16/2012 at 11:20 AM EST

From left: Christine Taylor, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux and Ben Stiller

Jeff Vespa/WireImage

What are friends for, if not to help pay tribute with some good-natured ribbing?

Which is what Jennifer Aniston and her fiancé Justin Theroux did Thursday night, when the 26th American Cinematheque honored her Along Comes Polly costar Ben Stiller at a Beverly Hilton gala that also featured Will Ferrell and Jack Black on stage, and, in video clips, Tom Cruise, Judd Apatow, William Shatner, Conan O'Brien, Ben's parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, sister Amy Stiller, and that showbiz newcomer, former President Bill Clinton.

On stage, Theroux – a longtime friend and writing collaborator of Stiller's – introduced a laugh-out-loud video that starred Cruise, Owen Wilson, Robert Downey Jr., Al Pacino and Noah Baumbach – as well as Aniston, who made an onscreen cameo.

In the video, Theroux chases Aniston, seeking out an interview, though she demurs, saying she'll be at the tribute in person. Just then, when she turns to face the camera, the frame freezes, and her name appears on screen.

When she was live on stage herself, Aniston introduced her own video, featuring romantic comedy scenes starring Stiller – who watched like a good sport with wife Christine Taylor.

• Reporting by SCOTT HUVER

Read More..

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..

BP agrees to pay $4.5 billion in penalties for U.S. oil spill

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - BP Plc will pay $4.5 billion in penalties and plead guilty to felony misconduct in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The settlement includes a $1.256 billion criminal fine, the largest such levy in U.S. history, the company said on Thursday. Analysts said the deal let BP put its focus back on oil production, though at least one member of Congress questioned whether it would hurt states' chances for civil penalties.

The April 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers. The mile-deep Macondo oil well then spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf over 87 days, fouling shorelines from Texas to Florida and eclipsing in severity the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

The oil company said it would plead guilty to 11 felony counts related to the workers' deaths, a felony related to obstruction of Congress and two misdemeanors.

BP, which replaced its chief executive after the spill as its market value plummeted, still faces economic and environmental damage claims sought by four Gulf Coast states and other private plaintiffs.

Its U.S. shares gained about 0.3 percent on Thursday while its London-traded shares were flat.

Wall Street analysts were encouraged that the plea deal could resolve a significant share of the liability BP faces. But it is not a "global" deal to resolve all outstanding liability.

"It certainly is an encouraging step," said Pavel Molchanov, oil company analyst with Raymond James. "By eliminating the overhang of the criminal litigation, it is another step in clearing up BP's legal framework as it relates to Macondo."

Other analysts said the settlement had been a communications challenge for the company, and they hoped to receive more detail at a presentation next month.

"Of course you never like to see value moving out of the company, but it's good news if this will allow them to be an oil company again," said Jason Gammel, energy analyst at Macquarie in London.

The disaster has dragged BP from second to a distant fourth in the ranking of top Western oil companies by value.

PROBATION AND MONITORS

A week after the U.S. presidential election, the settlement could also prompt a debate in Congress about how funds would be shared with the Gulf Coast states.

Congress passed a law last year that would earmark 80 percent of BP penalties paid under the Clean Water Act to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas.

"With these unprecedented criminal penalties assessed, I urge the Obama administration to be equally aggressive in securing civil monies that can help save our Louisiana coast" through other avenues, Louisiana Senator David Vitter said in a statement. "I certainly hope they didn't trade any of those monies away just to nail this criminal scalp to the wall."

The company said the payments would be spread out over six years in total, adding it expected to be able to handle the payments "within BP's current financial framework".

BP has sold $35 billion worth of assets to fund the costs of the spill. Matching that, it has paid $23 billion already in clean-up costs and claims, and has a further $12 billion earmarked for payment in its spill trust fund.

The deal also includes a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, plus payments to the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the penalties, BP agreed to go on five years' probation and to the appointment of two monitors, one for process safety and one for ethics. They have four-year terms.

The oil company said it has not been advised of any government authority that intends to debar BP from federal contracting activities as a result of the deal.

'RECKLESS MANAGEMENT'

In an August filing, the Justice Department said "reckless management" of the Macondo well "constituted gross negligence and willful misconduct" which it intended to prove at a civil trial set to begin in New Orleans in February 2013.

Negligence is a central issue to BP's potential liability. A gross negligence finding could nearly quadruple the civil damages owed by BP under the Clean Water Act to $21 billion in a straight-line calculation.

Still unresolved is potential liability faced by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, owner of the Deepwater Horizon vessel, and Halliburton Co, which provided cementing work on the well that U.S. investigators say was flawed. Both companies were not immediately available for comment.

According to the Justice Department, errors made by BP and Transocean in deciphering a pressure test of the Macondo well are a clear indication of gross negligence.

"That such a simple, yet fundamental and safety-critical test could have been so stunningly, blindingly botched in so many ways, by so many people, demonstrates gross negligence," the government said in its August filing.

Transocean disclosed in September that it is in discussions with the Justice Department to pay $1.5 billion to resolve civil and criminal claims.

BP has already announced an uncapped class-action settlement with private plaintiffs that the company estimates will cost $7.8 billion to resolve litigation brought by over 100,000 individuals and businesses claiming economic and medical damages from the spill.

(Additional reporting by Anna Driver in Houston, Braden Reddall in San Francisco and Andrew Callus in London; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by David Gregorio and Dale Hudson)

Read More..