FLU

Continue washing your hands: That‘s the best advice for avoiding the flu.

“You’re exposed to so many people on an everyday basis, you can’t really do anything to protect yourself,” said Dr. Matthew Wheeler, assistant medical director of emergency medicine for the Heritage Valley Health System. “There’s a lot of hysteria associated with it and it’s important to be mindful, but not necessarily panicked.”

The most recent flu numbers show that Beaver County has had 877 cases since October…nearly three-quarters of the number in the county between October 2016 and September 2017. Lawrence County and Allegheny County have already surpassed last year’s complete season.

“April Hutcheson, communications director for the health department says. “The best protection is to get the flu shot.” It’s not too late: The shot takes about two weeks to take effect, Hutcheson said, and can help decrease the severity of the flu.

Health officials say that if you’re exhibiting flulike symptoms, it’s best to call the doctor and stay home until the symptoms have subsided for at least 24 hours. Among the most notable symptoms this year are fever, headache, tiredness, dry cough, sore throat, nasal congestion and body aches.

Weather, Wednesday January 31, 2018

Today: Mostly cloudy with some peeks of sunshine later. High: 46

Tonight: Considerable cloudiness. Occasional rain showers after midnight. Snow may mix in. Low 36F.

Thursday: Showers in the morning, then cloudy in the afternoon. Snow may mix in. High 43F.

By TOM MURPHY, AP Health Writer
Three of corporate America’s heaviest hitters — Amazon, Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase — sent a shudder through the health industry Tuesday when they announced plans to jointly create a company to provide their employees with high-quality, affordable care.
The announcement was short on details about precisely what the independent company will do. But given the three players’ outsize influence — and Amazon’s ability to transform just about everything it touches — the alliance has the potential to shake up how Americans shop for health care, and the stocks of insurance companies, drug distributors and others slumped in reaction.
“One of the messages they are sending is they’ve given up on traditional ways in which employers have tried to reduce costs or manage costs better,” said Paul Fronstin, an economist with the nonprofit Employee Benefits Research Institute.
Benefits experts speculated that this new company could create a virtual marketplace that makes shopping for health care as easy as buying a shirt on Amazon. Or it could move directly into buying prescription drugs. Or it could be a system that bypasses insurance companies altogether and contracts directly with doctors and hospitals for better deals.
Employers are up for trying almost anything to control rising health care costs, which have been consuming bigger portions of their budgets for years and burdening their employees.
“The sky’s the limit on where they could possibly go with this,” said Brian Marcotte, CEO of the National Business Group on Health, another nonprofit that represents large employers. “We’re always supportive of disruptive innovation, and health care certainly is in need of it.”
The venture was announced by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; JP Morgan Chase CEO Jaime Dimon; and Buffett, the investment wizard of Berkshire Hathaway. The three companies have an estimated 1 million employees in the U.S.
The three businesses said their new venture will be independent and “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” It will have an initial focus on technology that provides “simplified, high-quality and transparent” care.
Those involved said the idea is still in the early planning stages. It was not clear whether the ultimate intention is to move beyond the three companies. But Dimon said: “Our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans.”
Employer-sponsored health insurance covers about 157 million people in the U.S., constituting the biggest piece of the nation’s patchwork health care market, and neither companies nor their employees are happy with the system.
Health care costs — branded by Buffett “a hungry tapeworm on the American economy” — routinely rise faster than inflation. Employers have been reacting by asking their workers to pay more of the bill and to shop around for better deals, something many people find hard to do.
Insurers and other companies already offer applications or programs that help people wade through the health care system’s often baffling mix of prices for procedures or prescriptions. But Amazon appears well-positioned to create a more user-friendly way to shop, Marcotte said.
“They have customer trust, they are already in people’s homes, and they’re already part of many people’s routines in how they shop,” he said.
The potential disruption from three renowned innovators in technology and finance sent a shock wave through the health care sector on Wall Street, erasing billions in value in seconds.
Several of the biggest losers on a down day for the market Tuesday were health care companies. They included the insurers Anthem and Cigna and the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.
The new venture gives Amazon another industry to shake up. The company, which mostly sold books when it was founded more than 20 years ago, has transformed how many people buy diapers, toys and paper towels. And it has been blamed for the decline of department stores, toy stores and bookstores.
Last year it pushed its way into the supermarket industry when it bought Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion.
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AP business writers Joseph Pisani and Josh Funk contributed to this report from New York and Omaha, Nebraska, respectively. Murphy reported from Indianapolis.

BOSTON (AP) — The prison death of former NFL star Aaron Hernandez is prompting lawmakers to revisit a centuries-old Massachusetts legal principle.
Under a bill heard Tuesday by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, a person who takes their own life after being convicted of a crime would automatically lose all rights to appeal.
Hernandez’s murder conviction in the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd was dismissed after Hernandez was found hanging in his cell last April. The legal principle holds that a defendant who dies before an appeal is heard should no longer be considered guilty in the eyes of the law.
Democratic Rep. Evandro Carvalho, of Boston, filed the legislation after meeting with Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward, who was upset when the conviction was erased.
The bill, if passed, could not be applied retroactively to Hernandez.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A woman has pleaded guilty to taking part in a shooting death during a 2013 home invasion in a Pittsburgh suburb.
Twenty-three-year-old Kexuana Sayles entered the plea Tuesday to third-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy as opening statements were about to begin in her Allegheny County trial.
Prosecutors said she and three other people planned to rob Thomas Cassano, who was found shot to death in Coraopolis in November 2013. Deputy District Attorney Kevin Chernosky told the judge that she knew the victim and her job was to open the door for the others.
Sayles is to be sentenced May 2. Three co-defendants — Tanika Paul, Bradley Kemp and Rasheim Wallace — are still awaiting trial.

By JULIE PACE, AP Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will herald a robust economy and push for bipartisan congressional action on immigration in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, as he seeks to rally a deeply divided nation and boost his own sagging standing with Americans.
The speech marks the ceremonial kickoff of Trump’s second year in office and is traditionally a president’s biggest platform to speak to the nation. However, Trump has redefined presidential communications with his high-octane, filter-free Twitter account and there’s no guarantee that the carefully crafted speech will resonate beyond his next tweet.
Trump was quiet Tuesday on Twitter, and the White House sought to focus attention on his big speech to Congress and millions of Americans watching at home. The White House said Trump has spent months giving aides “tidbits” about lines he wanted to use in the speech, and was assisted in its crafting by national security adviser H.R. McMaster and economy adviser Gary Cohn.
While stocks have been falling this week, the economy has been strong and White House officials are hopeful the president can use the prime-time address to take credit. Though the trajectory of lower unemployment and higher growth began under his predecessor, Trump argues that the tax overhaul he signed into law late last year has boosted business confidence and will lead companies to reinvest in the United States.
Considering the strength of the economy, Trump will step before lawmakers Tuesday night in a remarkably weak position. His approval rating has hovered in the 30s for much of his presidency and at the close of 2017, just 3 in 10 Americans said the United States was heading in the right direction, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In the same survey, 67 percent of Americans said the country was more divided because of Trump.
It’s unlikely Trump will be able to rely on a robust legislative agenda to reverse those numbers in 2018. Congress has struggled with the basic function of funding the government, prompting a brief government shutdown earlier this month that was resolved only with a short-term fix that pushed the spending deadline to Feb. 8.
Against the backdrop of the spending fight, Republicans and Democrats are also wrestling with the future of some 700,000 young immigrants living in the United States illegally. Trump has vowed to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation, but is also calling for changes to legal immigration that are controversial with both parties.
“We’re going to get something done, we hope bipartisan,” Trump told reporters Monday, before giving his speech a practice run-through in the White House map room. “The Republicans really don’t have the votes to get it done in any other way. So it has to be bipartisan.”
Though Democrats are eager to reach a resolution for the young immigrants, the party is hardly in the mood to compromise with Trump ahead of the midterm elections. Lawmakers see Trump’s unpopularity as a key to their success in November, and are eager to mobilize Democratic voters itching to deliver the president and his party a defeat at the ballot box.
Trump also is expected to use the speech to talk about the fate of the controversial U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the speech and spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump, who vowed during his campaign to load Guantanamo up with “bad dudes,” has long been expected to rescind President Barack Obama’s 2009 order to close the prison and issue his own stating his administration’s policy to keep it open.
Seeking to set the tone for their election-year strategy, party leaders have tapped Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, to deliver a post-speech rebuttal aimed at casting Democrats, not Trump, as champions of the middle class.
Democrats are also looking to make their mark in other ways. A handful of lawmakers are planning to boycott the president’s remarks. And several Democratic women plan to wear black to protest sexual harassment, an issue that has tarnished several lawmakers in both parties. Trump himself has been accused of assault or harassment by more than a dozen women, accusations he has denied. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that the president’s lawyer arranged a payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to prevent her from talking about her alleged encounter with the future president.
First lady Melania Trump, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight following those allegations, will attend Tuesday’s address, according to the White House. She’ll be joined in the audience by several guests whose stories amplify the president’s agenda, including an Ohio welder who the White House says will benefit from the new tax law and the parents of two Long Island teenagers who were believed to have been killed by MS-13 gang members.
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AP Writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

By JOHN ROGERS and MICHAEL BALSAMO, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mark Salling, one of the stars of the Fox musical comedy “Glee,” has died of a possible suicide at age 35 a few weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles on child pornography charges.
Salling’s lawyer, Michael J. Proctor, tells The Associated Press the actor died Tuesday. He did not reveal the cause of death.
A law enforcement official not authorized to speak publicly says Salling was found hanging at a home in the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles. The official says the actor’s death is being investigated as a suicide.
Salling pleaded guilty in December to possession of thousands of images of child pornography. He was scheduled to be sentenced March 7.
He played bad-boy Noah “Puck” Puckerman on the long-running show, which concluded in 2015.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A juror in Pennsylvania was briefly jailed after a prosecutor reportedly overheard him telling other jurors that he had lied in an attempt to get out jury duty.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that 39-year-old Daniel Puhala was held Monday in an Allegheny County courthouse cell for direct criminal contempt.
The judge released Puhala late in the day after criticizing him for “playing the system.”
Deputy District Attorney Jennifer DiGiovanni says she heard Puhala tell other jurors he was surprised to be picked because he had said “everything right” and had lied about being a victim of a crime in the past.
An attorney appointed to defend Puhala says he was joking with the other jurors and didn’t actually lie.

 

 

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A judge on Tuesday turned down a legal move that sought to force O.J. Simpson to turn over profits from autographs to satisfy a $70 million-plus civil judgment for the 1994 killings of the former football star’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg denied the request on grounds that Goldman’s father, Fred, cannot identify who is paying Simpson.
The ruling was made quickly after the request was made by Goldman family attorney David Cook.
Simpson was acquitted of two counts of murder in the 1994 slayings, but a civil court jury found him liable for wrongful death and ordered him to pay $33.5 million, which has more than doubled over two decades.
Fred Goldman has hounded Simpson for years and Cook contends the former football star has never willingly paid a cent of the court order.
“Mr. Simpson has sought to subvert this wrongful death judgment by his abject refusal to pay, much less accept personal responsibility,” Cook said in court papers.
Simpson sold autographs shortly after his release from a Nevada prison in October to pay legal bills and has no interest in signing memorabilia, one of his lawyers, Malcolm LaVergne, said in court papers objecting to any order relinquishing his right to publicity.
Goldman and Cook have “attempted to drag Mr. Simpson into court every time they hear a rumor, see something on television, or read in an internet news posting, a mere vague allegation involving Mr. Simpson’s commercial exploitation of himself,” attorney Ronald Slates wrote in court papers on behalf of Simpson.
While most of the court award has been unpaid, Fred Goldman has been able to seize some of the Pro Football Hall of Famer’s assets, including video game royalties and the rights to the book “If I Did It,” a ghostwritten account in which Simpson tells how he might have killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.
Goldman was also able to acquire memorabilia Simpson claimed he was trying to take back when he led five men, two with guns, into a Las Vegas casino hotel in September 2007 to confront two sports collectibles dealers.
Simpson, 70, served nine years in Nevada state prison for armed robbery and assault with a weapon in an ill-fated bid to retrieve memorabilia.

The man who was found shot in a vehicle in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood Monday night has been identified.

The Allegheny County medical examiner’s office said Tyqueon Goins, 20, of Pittsburgh, was discovered by officers with multiple gunshot wounds on Meadow Street between Tripod Way and Finley Street.

He was pronounced dead at 9:21 p.m.

Initial reports indicate the incident may be gang-related. After receiving ShotSpotter alerts, Zone 5 police officers responded to the area about 8:15 p.m.

Police continue to investigate and No arrests have been made. .

Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at 412-323-7800.