Flu Comes Early to Alabama
Experts Predict Bad Flu Season
Have you gotten your flu vaccine yet? Officials at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the flu season is starting earlier this year (the earlier start in a decade), and they predict it will be a bad flu year. Alabama and four other southern states are seeing the most flu activity right now.
The strain of flu that’s most prevalent this year is H3N2, not to be confused with the H3N2v that sickened kids at county fairs over the summer. Just how do they name these viruses? Here’s an explanation. There are 17 “H”s (#1-7 and #9 are all found in humans; the rest are found in birds, swine or other animals). There are 9 “N”s (#1 and 2 found in humans, the rest in various animals species). In 1918, H1N1 (aka Spanish Flu) killed up to 50 million people worldwide (many of them young, healthy people), making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.
Officials say this year’s vaccine is a good match. Each year in the United States there are 15M – 60M cases of seasonal flu. There are 54,000 – 430,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 – 49,000 deaths, depending on the size and severity of the outbreak.
Early-season heat dome brings highest temperatures in years to parts of Eastern U.S.
An intense and nearly historic weather pattern is cooking much of America under a dangerous heat dome this week with triple-digit temperatures in places that haven't been so hot in more than a decade.
Russian attacks on Ukraine kill 14 civilians as Zelenskyy travels to UK
The attacks came as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy began a visit to the United Kingdom, where he met privately with King Charles III.
Last body found after boat capsizes on Lake Tahoe in storm, bringing death toll to 8
Ten people were on board the 27-foot (8-meter) vessel when it flipped Saturday afternoon on the lake's southwest edge, as the storm whipped up high waves, U.S. Coast Guard officials said.
Trump to rescind ‘Roadless Rule’ which protects 58 million acres of forest land
Speaking in New Mexico, President Trump's Secretary of Agriculture announced her intention to roll back a landmark 2001 conservation rule passed in the late hour of the Clinton administration.
Does Congress or the president hold war powers? Here’s what to know
President Trump's decision to launch airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities without first consulting Congress has drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers who say the move bypasses their constitutional authority to declare war.
U.S. Supreme Court allows — for now — third-country deportations
A federal judge had previously said people must get at least 15 days to challenge their deportations to countries they're not originally from.