Larry Bird's Son Connor Arrested

02/12/2013 at 10:00 PM EST

Conner Bird

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office/AP

Basketball star Larry Bird's son is in trouble with the law.

According to CBS Chicago, 21-year-old Connor Bird was involved in an argument with an ex-girlfriend at his apartment on Sunday afternoon and reportedly threw a cell phone at her.

Hours later, the two drove to a nearby parking lot where the woman got out of the car, intending to walk home, and Conner allegedly attempted to hit her twice with his vehicle.

Bird was later arrested by the Indiana University Police on charges of battery with injury, criminal mischief, intimidation with a deadly weapon and possession of marijuana. He is now free on bail. No trial date has been set.

A lawyer for Bird tells PEOPLE: "What has happened is a very private matter. We’re trying to resolve this as quickly as possible and we're all thankful no one was seriously injured."

Bird was reportedly arrested in 2011 for underage drinking and disorderly conduct, according to TMZ.

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

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Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Deaths of endangered fish curtail water exports

In a step that has become more routine over the last decade, water exports to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California have been reduced to avoid killing endangered delta smelt.

State and federal water managers said Tuesday that early winter pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been curtailed because too many of the native fish were dying at the delta's export pumps.

At this point it is difficult to say what effect the pumping cutbacks could have on water deliveries. December storms have left crucial Northern California reservoirs with slightly more water than usual for this time of year, although after a dry January, statewide snowpack is below normal for the date.

Proponents of a controversial proposal to change the way water supplies are conveyed through the delta immediately cited the export reductions, arguing that the cuts could have been avoided with the new system.

"This is all too familiar a story," said Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources. "This conflict will continue to play out year after year until we make fundamental changes in the way we manage the delta."

State and federal water officials — along with the biggest urban water and irrigation districts in California — are advocating the construction of two massive tunnels that would carry supplies beneath the delta to southbound aqueducts from a new diversion point on the Sacramento River. That would mean less water is pumped directly from the south delta, avoiding harm to the smelt and, backers hope, the accompanying pumping restrictions.

Cowin said computer modeling shows an additional 700,000 acre-feet of water could have been sent south and to the Bay Area since Nov. 1 if the new diversion had been in place, enough to irrigate more than 200,000 acres or supply 1.4 million homes.

Opponents of that plan warn that taking large volumes of water from the Sacramento River could create problems for another fish, the endangered salmon that migrate up the river to their spawning grounds. Delta farmers also worry that with less fresh water flowing through the delta, their irrigation supplies could grow saltier, hurting crops.

State and federal officials also acknowledge that even with the tunnel system, they will not be able to guarantee a certain level of water deliveries to farms and cities south of the delta.

It was probably the big December storms that drew smelt in the direction of the pumps. The finger-sized fish likes muddy water. When winter rains flush runoff into the delta, the increased turbidity acts as a signal to the smelt to swim to the interior — closer to the pumps — as they prepare to spawn.

At the same time state officials were discussing the water cutbacks, Southern California environmentalists who oppose the $14-billion tunnel project announced an advertising campaign in which they portray the proposal as a costly boondoggle that would drive up water rates.

bettina.boxall@latimes.com

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North Korea Promises to Test More Rockets

SEOUL, South Korea — The Politburo of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party has called for the continued testing of long-range rockets despite the condemnation of previous tests by the United Nations Security Council, the country’s official media reported Tuesday.

In a meeting on Monday, the Politburo, the main decision-making body of the party, said that more rocket tests could be an appropriate way to celebrate the 65th anniversary of North Korea’s founding and the 60th anniversary of the end of the Korean War.

North Korea declared itself as an independent state on Sept. 9, 1948, three years after the liberation of the Korean Peninsula from Japanese colonial rule. It also marks July 27, the day when the truce was signed 60 years ago to end the Korean War. North Korea celebrates those dates each year with hostile statements directed at countries it considers its enemies, as well as with festivities aimed at increasing domestic support for its top leaders.

The Monday meeting was the first time the Politburo had convened since July 2012, when it decided to dismiss Ri Yong-ho, a senior army general. That dismissal turned out to be the beginning of a round of political purges under the new supreme leader, Kim Jong-un.

The 10-point decision adopted at the meeting on Monday called for a huge military parade in Pyongyang, the capital, to mark the anniversary of the July 27 truce, as well as the construction of an international tourism complex in Wonsan, a port on the central eastern coast of North Korea. The Politburo also called for South Korea to fulfill promises to make large investments in the North, which were part of agreements reached in 2000 and 2007.

But the statement did not mention the nuclear test that North Korea has recently threatened to carry out. Officials in South Korea say that enough preparations have been made at a nuclear test site in northeastern North Korea that a test could happen at any time.

The Politburo decision “stressed continuing to launch Kwangmyongsong-class satellites and powerful long-range rockets,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported in its Tuesday dispatch, adding that North Korea should mark the two anniversaries this year with “new achievements for strengthening national defense.”

North Korea launched a rocket on Dec. 12, putting its Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite into orbit, the first for the impoverished country. Washington and its allies said that the rocket launching was a cover for North Korea to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach North America. The Security Council condemned the launching as a violation of its earlier resolutions that banned the North from testing technology used for ballistic missiles, and last month it adopted another resolution ordering the tightening of sanctions against North Korea.

North Korea has since issued a series of statements threatening more rocket and nuclear tests. The country conducted an underground nuclear test in 2006 and again in 2009.

The Politburo is the center of power in the Workers’ Party. Its Presidium consists of Mr. Kim, who is the top party secretary, and other leaders loyal to him.

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It's a Girl for John Cho

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/11/2013 at 06:30 PM ET

Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Surprise: Actor John Cho is a dad again!

The Go On star and his wife welcomed a daughter recently, Cho’s rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

Baby girl is the second child for the couple, who are also parents to a son. No further details are available.

Cho currently stars alongside Jason Bateman in Identity Thief and will reprise his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek Into Darkness in May.

He is also well known for his roles in American Pie and the Harold and Kumar films.

– Anya Leon with reporting by Julie Jordan

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

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Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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L.A. Unified aviation training center gets $100,000 donation

Single-engine Cessnas and a former Coast Guard HH-52 helicopter will continue to line one of the most unique classrooms within the Los Angeles Unified School District, thanks to a $100,000 donation announced Monday.

The North Valley Occupational Center-Aviation Center had been facing closure or relocation after 40 years at Van Nuys Airport because of budget cuts and a rent increase.

In recent weeks, the vocational school — which has produced thousands of mechanics — gained some high-powered backers, including L.A. Councilman and mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti.

Now the owners of the largest aircraft antenna manufacturer in the United States have contributed $100,000 to keep the center in place for at least another year while district officials negotiate a new lease with Los Angeles World Airports. The current rent is about $12,000 a month.

"This center is very important to our family, our business and our community," said Si Robin, owner and chairman of Sensor Systems Inc., who along with his wife made the donation to the school. "We make every antenna on every plane in these hangars, but the students are the ones who keep the airplanes running."

The center has about 75 students enrolled in the two-year course — nearly half of what it had before budget cuts eliminated night classes — and prepares students for Federal Aviation Administration certification.

"It's one of the diamonds of the [Career Technical Education] program," said Andres Ameigeiras, an administrator of L.A. Unified's Adult and Technical Career Division. "There's nothing like being hands-on in your own airport."

Students on Monday stood under the wing of an old U.S. Air Force T-33 jet trainer as Robin and Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City) joined L.A. Unified board member Nury Martinez in praising the center.

The program allows students to get real-life experience while being exposed to the job opportunities waiting for them upon graduation, Martinez said.

Jorge Arteaga is one of those students. His interest in aerospace science was piqued when he participated in Canoga Park High School's Air Force ROTC program, but he wasn't interested in pursuing a college degree.

"You can do a lot in today's world with a vocational degree," the 21-year-old said. "But counselors don't mention trade schools."

The donation will allow Arteaga to finish the program this spring at the airport, where students can run powerful engines and taxi planes — something they wouldn't be able to do in a regular school setting.

"That noise is fairly common here," instructor Michael Phillips said. "We wouldn't be able to do much of that anywhere else because of the sound complaints."

The aviation industry is suffering from a shortage of qualified, entry-level mechanics, Phillips said. And at $2,400, the program is one of the few that can offer students an affordable career path.

"Our first-time pass rate for the FAA certification exam is at 94%," Phillips said. "There are other good programs in the area, but this one is premier."

If a proposed $1-a-year lease is accepted by Los Angeles World Airports, the aviation industry would be the better for it, Cardenas said.

Without such specialized and technical education, "we might see the artificial collapse of an industry because it doesn't have the support it needs to thrive," Cardenas said.

dalina.castellanos@latimes.com

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Brazil Seethes Over Public Officials’ ‘Super Salaries’

Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — There are many ways of striking it rich in Brazil, but one strategy may come as a particular surprise in today’s economic climate: securing a government job.

While civil servants in Europe and the United States have had their pay slashed or jobs eliminated altogether, some public employees in Brazil are pulling down salaries and benefits that put their counterparts in developed countries to shame.

One clerk at a court in Brasília, the capital, earned $226,000 in a year — more than the chief justice of the nation’s Supreme Court. Likewise, São Paulo’s highway department paid one of its engineers $263,000 a year, more than the nation’s president.

Then there were the 168 public employees in São Paulo’s auditing court who received monthly salaries of at least $12,000, and sometimes as much as $25,000 — more than the mayor of the city, Brazil’s largest, was earning. Indeed, the mayor at the time joked that he planned to apply for a job in the parking garage of the City Council building when his term ended in December after the São Paulo legislature revealed that one parking valet earned $11,500 a month.

As Brazil’s once-booming economy stalls, these “super salaries,” as they have become known here, are feeding newfound resentment over inequality in the nation’s unwieldy bureaucracies. Powerful unions for certain classes of civil servants, strong legal protections for government workers, a swelling public sector that has created many new well-paying jobs, and generous benefits that can be exploited by insiders have all made Brazil’s public sector a coveted bastion of privilege.

But the spoils are not distributed equally. While thousands of public employees have exceeded constitutional limits on their pay, many more are scraping to get by. Across the country, schoolteachers and police officers generally earn little more than $1,000 a month, and sometimes less, exacerbating the country’s pressing security concerns and long-faltering education system.

“The salary distortions in our public bureaucracy have reached a point where they are an utter and absolute disgrace,” said Gil Castello Branco, director of Contas Abertas, a watchdog group that scrutinizes government budgets.

Privileged public employees, once called maharajahs in a nod to the opulence of India’s old nobility, have long existed in Brazil. But as Brazil nourishes ambitions of climbing into the ranks of developed nations, a new freedom of information law requires public institutions to reveal the wages of their employees, from rank-and-file civil servants like clerks to cabinet ministers.

Though some officials are resisting the new rules, new disclosures at public institutions have revealed case after case of public employees earning more than Supreme Court justices, who made about $13,360 a month in 2012, an amount established in the Constitution as the highest salary that public employees can receive. In the Senate and Chamber of Deputies alone, more than 1,500 employees earned more than the constitutional limit, according to Congresso em Foco, a watchdog group.

State judges can do even better. One in São Paulo recently pulled down $361,500 in a month. That is not a typo: some judges in Brazil are paid more in a single month than their counterparts in high-income countries earn in an entire year. (The top annual salaries for judges in New York State are climbing to around $198,600.)

The recent revelations, including of an auditor in Minas Gerais State who earned $81,000 in one month and a librarian who got $24,000 in another, have spurred a strong reaction in some quarters. Joaquim Barbosa, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, revoked the super-salaries of the 168 employees in São Paulo’s auditing court in December. Another fed-up federal judge issued an injunction in October suspending payments to 11 cabinet ministers, but the attorney general said he would seek to overturn the ruling.

Some historians blame Portugal, the former colonial ruler, for creating a powerful public bureaucracy in which mandarins wield great influence and earn outsize salaries. Brazil’s byzantine judicial system also provides ways for certain senior civil servants to circumvent constitutional pay limits. Some collect pensions from previous stints in government — often their full salary at the time of retirement — after shifting into another high-paying public job.

Then there are the extra allowances for housing and food, the generous reimbursement rates for distance driven on the job and, of course, the loopholes. One provision dating to 1955 enables some public employees to take a three-month leave every five years. But those who forgo the leave, now intended to encourage workers to take postgraduate courses, can seek to collect extra money instead.

Some high-ranking members of the governing Workers Party, including Finance Minister Guido Mantega, have been able to get around the constitutional limit by receiving an extra $8,000 a month for serving on the boards of state enterprises, and many legislators are entitled to annual bonuses of more than $26,000 so they can purchase attire like business suits.

Still, in the developing world, Brazil’s Civil Service is envied in some aspects for its professionalism. Rigorous exams for an array of coveted government jobs generally weed out unprepared applicants. Pockets of excellence, like some public research organizations, have won acclaim in areas like tropical agriculture.

Lis Horta Moriconi and Taylor Barnes contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

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Kelly Clarkson Shouts Out 'Sexy' Fiancé in Grammy Acceptance Speech

Kelly Clarkson took home best pop vocal album – and possibly best acceptance speech of the night at Sunday's Grammy Awards.

Clarkson, 30, made her way to the stage, explaining why it took her so long to get up there.

"So sorry, I got stuck to Miranda Lambert ... there's a story and a song, for later ... after alcohol, I'm just kidding, children," she said with a laugh.

Despite admitting, "I get nervous speaking in front of people," Clarkson was charming at the podium, holding her Grammy for Stronger.

"I didn't know I was gonna win because I literally – I was so excited to be in a category – fun., I have been covering you all summer. I'm sorry, I love that song. I think it's so awesome. I love Pink, everyone – Adele – that I was in the category with," she said shouting out her fellow nominees.

"Miguel? I don't know the hell you are but we need to sing together, I mean good God that was the sexiest thing I've ever seen. WHAT!?" she said as the audience laughed, referencing the singer's performance of "Adorn" with Wiz Khalifa earlier in the show.

But Miguel wasn't the only sexy man to be mentioned in Clarkson's speech. She managed to squeeze in a nod to her fiancé Brandon Blackstock, too.

"Anyway thank you so much friends family label my manager, thank you so much, my fiancé who is sexy tonight, y'all," she said. "I did not think I was gonna win, thank you!"

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

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Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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