By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Kathrin Jansen is a microbiologist with at least two breakthrough vaccines to her name: she brought the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil to market for Merck and helped develop the $4 billion a year pneumonia and meningitis vaccine Prevnar 13 for Pfizer. Jansen's next vaccine success could come by taming the superbug MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterium that she has seen ravage a healthy man up close and personally. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infects an estimated 53 million people globally and costs more than $20 billion a year to treat. …

Read more here: Pfizer takes its shot at a vaccine for evasive superbug

By Tarek Amara TUNIS (Reuters) – For the first time since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, relations between mainstream Islamists in government and radical Salafist Muslim activists have reached breaking point, sparking deadly clashes in two Tunisian cities. The rupture between the Ennahda party, the Tunisian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which governs in coalition with secular parties, and the Ansar al-Sharia movement could have ramifications across north Africa, potentially fuelling armed insurrection in Tunisia and neighboring Algeria. …

Read more here: Analysis: Crackdown on radical Islamists tests Tunisia's stability

By Marc Frank HAVANA (Reuters) – A Canadian businessman who has confessed to bribing Cuban officials was scheduled to go on trial in Havana on Thursday, almost two years after his arrest in a sweeping government crackdown on corruption. The closed trial of 53-year-old Sarkis Yacoubian, originally from Armenia and the owner of import firm Tri-Star Caribbean, was expected to last two days. An associate of Yacoubian, Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian, is a co-defendant. …

Read more here: Canadian businessman goes on trial in Cuban corruption crackdown

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A police officer says a car bomb in southwest Pakistan has killed 11 policemen and a civilian.

Read more here: Police: Car bomb kills 12 in southwest Pakistan

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stock markets slid Thursday, pulled down by a contraction in China's manufacturing that adds to signs that the shaky recovery in the world's No. 2 economy is slowing.

Read more here: Asia stocks slide as China factory output slips

By Lee Chyen Yee and Umesh Desai HONG KONG (Reuters) – Lenovo Group Ltd's bold acquisitions in its flagship PC business, a foray into mobile gadgets, and a relatively light debt load are setting it apart from PC rivals as industry shipments take their steepest fall in decades. Lenovo, a sliver away from unseating Hewlett-Packard Co as the world's top PC maker by shipments, posted on Thursday an estimate-beating 90 percent rise in quarterly profit, its fastest in seven quarters. …

Read more here: China's Lenovo buys and diversifies to outshine PC rivals

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's record-low teen birth rate stems from robust declines in nearly every state, but most dramatically in several Mountain States and among Hispanics, according to a new government report.

Read more here: Nearly all US states see hefty drop in teen births

The U.S. teen birth rate fell 25 percent over five years to a record low of 31 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read more here: Teen birth rates decline in most US states

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A government investigation found poor quality construction materials and building code violations were among the “series of irregularities” that caused the collapse of a building housing garment factories last month in Bangladesh, the committee head said Thursday.

Read more here: Building materials blamed in Bangladesh disaster

MIAMI (AP) — LeBron James made a layup as time expired in overtime, and the Miami Heat found a way to beat the Indiana Pacers 103-102 in a wild Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals Wednesday night.

Read more here: LeBron saves Heat at buzzer of Game 1