Month: February 2014

ATLANTA (AP) — Flu season seems to be winding down, and it's been an odd one.

By David Beasley ATLANTA (Reuters) – Hardest hit this U.S. flu season are adults, from younger to middle-aged, in part because fewer have been vaccinated, a federal health agency said on Thursday as the season enters its final weeks. An estimated 60 percent of those who have died from influenza this season were 24 to 64 years old, compared with 18 percent last season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. People ages 18 to 64 have accounted for 61 percent of all hospitalizations due to the flu, up from about 35 percent in the three prior seasons, the CDC said. This season’s dominant flu strain is the H1N1 virus, the same one that struck in 2009, with high rates of hospitalization and death among young adults and the middle aged, the CDC said.

The world's top deal adviser for nine of the past 10 years, Goldman Sachs Group Inc has been notably absent on 2014's largest mergers and acquisitions, including Facebook's $19 billion deal to purchase mobile messaging service WhatsApp. Normally the go-to-banker for big deals, Goldman has missed out on the top five transactions in the young year, according to Thomson Reuters data. Facebook Inc relied on boutique investment firm Allen & Co to help with its offer to buy startup WhatsApp, which in turn chose Morgan Stanley . Typically, Goldman Sachs starts out slowly and still land at the top of the league tables by the end of the year.

By Julian Linden SOCHI, Russia, Feb 20 (Reuters) – The fairytale princess that Russia had been craving finally came to life on Thursday when teenager Adelina Sotnikova won the women’s individual figure skating title at the Sochi Olympics. Sotnikova produced the skate of her life to win the gold medal ahead of South Korea’s Kim Yuna with an energetic routine that had the crowd on their feet and judges’s hearts melting. In fact, I smashed my highest score for my whole career and I did it at the Olympics,” said the jubilant 17-year-old. I just couldn’t skate badly.” Incredibly for a country that has produced so many great figure skaters, Sotnikova become the first Russian woman to win the individual title.

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