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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Wall Street edges up, Dow nears all-time high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher on Tuesday, putting the Dow within striking distance of all-time highs as investors looked ahead to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, which is expected to focus on the economy.

Jobs and economic growth are seen as major themes of Obama's speech, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday). Investors will also listen for any clues on a deal with Republicans to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1, including the tone of the speech.

The S&P 500 has risen for the past six weeks, putting it up 6.7 percent so far this year, while the Dow is about 1 percent away from its all-time intraday record of 14,198.10, reached in October 2007.

But gains have been harder to come by since the benchmark S&P index hit a five-year high on February 1. The market has had to consolidate strong gains at the year's start while investors search for reasons to drive stocks higher.

"We're likely to settle in for a period and digest the gains we've had, though there's still a bias towards positive momentum," said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Questions over government spending are the big overhang, and we're looking for Obama to inspire some confidence over that tonight."

The White House has signaled Obama will urge investment in infrastructure and clean energy, suggesting companies in those sectors may be volatile in Wednesday's session.

"Gun makers could also see a reaction if Obama talks about anything with respect to gun control," said Teal, who helps oversee $5 billion. Shares of Smith & Wesson were flat at $9.13 while Sturm Ruger was up 0.5 percent at $53.96.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 58.06 points, or 0.42 percent, at 14,029.30. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 3.34 points, or 0.22 percent, at 1,520.35. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.91 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,190.09.

Housing shares were among the strongest of the day, led by a 14.4 percent jump in Masco Corp to $20.35 after the home improvement product maker said it expects new home construction to show strong growth in 2013. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> rose 4.3 percent.

Avon Products Inc surged 23 percent to $21.25 as the S&P 500's top percentage gainer after the cosmetics company reversed sales declines and cut costs.

On the downside, Coca-Cola Co fell 2.7 percent to $37.58 and were the biggest drag on the Dow after reporting revenue that was below estimates, hurt by a weaker-than-expected performance in Europe.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber shares slipped 0.4 percent to $13.86 after it posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit but cut its 2013 forecast due to weakness in the European automotive market.

Michael Kors Holdings shares jumped 10.8 percent to $63.18 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.

With earnings season starting to wind down, Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning shows of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Rabbi David Hartman, 81, Champion of an Adaptive Judaism

JERUSALEM — Rabbi David Hartman, an American-born Jewish philosopher who promoted a liberal brand of Orthodoxy and created a study center that expressed his commitment to pluralism by bringing together leaders from all strains of Judaism, died on Sunday at his home here. He was 81.

His son Donniel said the death came after a long illness.

Rabbi Hartman, who was a professor at Hebrew University for more than 20 years, was a leading advocate of the idea that Jews are partners with God in a covenant, and that they should therefore adapt religious observance to modern values in a multicultural world.

A charismatic teacher and prolific author, he encouraged students to question tradition and urged people of different backgrounds and ideologies to pore over Jewish texts together, a practice more common in his native United States than his adopted country.

“At the center of his thinking was a kind of counter-religious idea, where religious life is a life of affirmation, not a life of denial,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University and Rabbi Hartman’s former son-in-law. “If human life is not denied by the force of revelation, but it’s actually a participant in revelation, then human life has to come to its full fledge, with its moral convictions, with its encounter with the world.”

The Shalom Hartman Institute, which Rabbi Hartman founded in his father’s name in 1976, has become a theological and cultural landmark, particularly for the thousands of Diaspora Jews who attend frequent conferences or spend summers studying there. With an annual budget of $18 million and a staff of 125, the institute has sponsored two Jerusalem high schools, runs a research center, opened a branch in Manhattan and trained more than 1,000 Israeli military officers. In the last year, according to the institute, more than 5,000 people across North American participated in a Hartman learning series called iEngage.

But Rabbi Hartman’s progressive, universalistic approach was embraced more in the United States than in Israel, where some challenged his status as Orthodox and shunned his open-mindedness as heresy. He received honorary doctorates from Yale and Hebrew Union College, a Reform institution with three branches in the United States and one in Jerusalem, but not the coveted Israel Prize. His never receiving it was a source of painful regret, several people close to him said.

In recent years he had been highly critical of the growing influence of the ultra-Orthodox on public life. He described as “insane” an ultra-Orthodox boycott of a military ceremony in which women sang.

“What is happening today with religion is more dangerous than what’s happening with the Arabs — the Arabs want to kill my body, the Jews are killing my soul,” Rabbi Hartman said in a 2011 interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharanot. “I want to return the Torah to the Labor Party, to the entire people of Israel. I don’t want religion to be the private property of certain people. I don’t want the length of the sidelocks to be the determining factor.”

David Hartman was born on Sept. 11, 1931 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, one of six children of Shalom and Batya Hartman, Hasidim who had moved to New York from Israel. Donniel Hartman said that the family was poor — Shalom peddled sheets and pillowcases door to door — but that the four boys became rabbis and the two girls married rabbis.

Rabbi Hartman was ordained by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, perhaps the most important Orthodox thinker of the 20th century, and received a doctorate of philosophy from McGill University in Montreal. He was a pulpit rabbi in the Bronx and Montreal before moving to Israel in 1971 as part of a generation of Zionists inspired by the Israeli victory in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

Rabbi Hartman published several books in English and Hebrew, including two about Maimonides, the Torah scholar of the Middle Ages; one on the theological legacy of Rabbi Soloveitchik; and two about his own spiritual evolution. He was an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister; Teddy Kollek, the longtime mayor of Jerusalem; and Zevulun Hammer, Israel’s education minister from 1977 to 1984.

“He was a public philosopher for the Jewish people,” said Michael J. Sandel, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard who has written about Rabbi Hartman’s work. “As Maimonides drew Aristotle into conversation with Moses and Rabbi Akiva, so Hartman renovated Jewish thought by bringing the liberal sensibilities to bear on Talmudic argument.”

Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, described the Hartman Institute as “a little island of pluralism amidst a sea of what was often religious fanaticism,” but noted that “he had to establish his own institutions precisely because, unlike Soloveitchik, he was not really welcomed” by Israel’s religious establishment.

Avi Sagi, a professor at Bar Ilan University and a Hartman fellow who edited a two-volume set on the rabbi’s work, said of him, “He gave me the opportunity to think without any limitation.”

Besides his son Donniel, who replaced him as president of the Hartman Institute, Rabbi Hartman is survived by four other children, including a daughter, Tova, who helped found Shira Hadasha, a feminist Orthodox congregation in Jerusalem; 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He is also survived by his former wife, Barbara; the couple had married twice and were divorced twice.

Yedidia Z. Stern, a law professor and vice president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said Rabbi Hartman’s charisma and curiosity were apparent even a few weeks before his death, during a Sabbath meal at Donniel Hartman’s home.

“He was ignoring the adults at the table; he was talking to my kids,” Professor Stern said. “He was asking them about school: Do they like the curriculum, what do they think should be different? Even when he was very sick, you can see the life coming out.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 11, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the number Hebrew Union College branches in the United States.  Hebrew Union College has three branches in the United States and one in Jerusalem, not four in the United States.

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Ahmad Rashad Divorcing Sale Johnson

02/11/2013 at 03:45 PM EST

Sale Johnson and Ahmad Rashad

Charley Gallay/Getty

Ahmad Rashad and Sale Johnson are ending their marriage.

The sportscaster, 63, and Johnson, who wed in 2007, confirmed the news to PEOPLE in a joint statement on Monday.

"This process, while difficult, is and has always been amicable – despite erroneous press reports to the contrary – and we remain committed to jointly raising our daughter," they say. "We appreciate the respect of our privacy during this trying time."

This will be the fourth divorce for Rashad, while Johnson was previously married to Johnson & Johnson billionaire Woody Johnson. Rashad inherited three stepdaughters from his ex's former marriage, including the late Casey Johnson.

• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The pope's announcement that he will resign has taken many people by surprise, but experts on aging say perhaps it shouldn't.

They say that as people live longer, the physical and mental challenges of old age are catching up with more of those in positions of power. Many are choosing to step down instead of continuing in jobs traditionally held until death.

Justices appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court used to serve until death. But since 1955, 21 justices have retired and only one, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, died in office.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix just announced she would pass the crown to her son in April. And 20 percent of U.S. senators are now 70 or older.

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Wall Street ticks lower, investors seek new catalysts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell modestly on Monday as investors found few reasons to keep pushing shares higher following a six-weeks-long advance that has taken the S&P 500 index near record highs.

The benchmark index is up more than 6 percent so far this year after a steep rally in January that has stalled as the S&P and Dow industrials near multi-year highs.

"This is still a market that looks terrific, but when you're up for six weeks in a row, everyone is going to want to take a pause going into the seventh week even if there is no bad news out there," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago.

The S&P 500 would need to rise 3.9 percent to reach its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, which was hit in October 2007.

Google Inc shares fell 1 percent at $777.67 after the company said in a filing former chief executive Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in the Internet search giant, a move that could potentially net him $2.51 billion.

But the decline was offset by gains in Apple , up 1.4 percent at $481.73 after a New York Times report that the iPhone maker is experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch.

The Federal Reserve's Vice Chair Janet Yellen, seen as a potential successor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke next year, said the Fed is still aggressively stimulating an anemic U.S. economic recovery that has failed to bring rapid progress on employment.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 31.05 points, or 0.22 percent, at 13,961.92. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 1.80 points, or 0.12 percent, at 1,516.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.25 points, or 0.16 percent, at 3,188.62.

Upbeat U.S. and Chinese data last week helped the S&P 500 extend its weekly winning streak to six. The index gained about 8 percent over that period.

Equities have been strong performers lately, rising 6.3 percent so far this year. Many investors have used any declines in the market as opportunities to buy.

"Everyone wants to buy on a dip in this market, but if you're on the sidelines right now, the decline we're seeing today just isn't the kind you would jump in on," Kuby said.

President Barack Obama will describe his plan for spurring the economy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He is expected to offer proposals for investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education.

Opposition has grown to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc , the No. 3 personal computer maker, as three of the largest investors joined Southeastern Asset Management on Friday in raising objections. Dell said in a regulatory filing it had considered many strategic options before opting to go private in a buyout led by Chief Executive Michael Dell.

Dell shares hovered near $13.65, the buyout offer price.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc shares rose 1.6 percent at $168.72 after it said longtime drug development partner Sanofi plans to boost its stake.

Moody's Corp was one of the strongest percentage gainers on the S&P 500, rising 3.9 percent to $45.06. Last week the stock plunged 22 percent after the U.S. government launched a civil lawsuit against the company. The sell-off marked the stock's worst week since October 2008.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Militants Battle Malian and French Troops in Liberated Town

DAKAR, Senegal — Gunfire rang out in the streets of the strategic city of Gao in northern Mali on Sunday, two weeks after French troops appeared to have chased radical Islamists out of the city, which is at the edge of the desert and is the largest population center in the north.

The gun battle between Islamist militants and a force of Malian and French troops, which continued for much of Sunday afternoon, suggested that the quick French campaign against the local Al Qaeda affiliate and its allies was not over but had entered a new phase of guerrilla warfare.

Sunday’s attack by the Islamist fighters was the most serious escalation in the fighting since the French ended over six months of brutal Islamist occupation in Gao at the end of January. That victory came after a quick French bombing campaign and with barely a shot fired.

Continuous bursts of gunfire were heard around the police station, in the city’s center and in southern districts as French helicopters hovered overhead. Malian soldiers fought back against Islamists armed with AK-47 rifles as the streets cleared of residents. French troops were also patrolling the city, which has a population of about 86,000, including its surrounding areas.

By late Sunday afternoon, the Islamist fighters had been encircled by French troops, according to Gao’s municipal councilor, Abdheramane Oumarou, who said the situation was under control.

The attack appeared to have begun with an attempted suicide bombing late Saturday night, when an Islamist militant on foot blew himself up at a Malian Army checkpoint outside of town, in the second such episode in two days. The bomber’s attack, which wounded a Malian soldier, was merely a ruse to allow an Islamist commando unit to enter the city, Mr. Oumarou said.

“The Malian soldiers panicked; that’s how the MUJAO got into town,” Mr. Oumaro said, referring to the Islamist group, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda and controlled Gao from May to January. Mr. Oumarou said that the fighters who penetrated Gao were aided by local sympathizers, and that caches of armaments had been discovered by the local authorities.

A Malian Army spokesman said that the bomber was part of a commando team of about 20 Islamist fighters who assaulted a bridge in marshland linking Gao to neighboring villages.

The spokesman, Capt. Daouda Diarra, said the bomber appeared to be of Arab ancestry. He tried to penetrate the army checkpoint, the captain said, setting off his explosives as he did so.

“It’s pretty hot in the town right now,” said the mayor, Sadou H. Diallo, who was reached by phone on Sunday afternoon. “I can’t talk now.”

Though the French appeared to be leading the fight on Sunday, primary responsibility for patrols had been handed back to the Malian Army, still shaky after the defeats of last month that led the French to intervene, and which is still plagued by the internecine squabbles that led to a gun battle at a barracks in the capital, Bamako, on Friday.

Embarrassed by the recent events, Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, apologized to the country’s foreign partners in a statement to the state news media. Mali is dependent on large-scale military assistance and other aid from overseas.

The explosion on Saturday night rocked the neighborhood. “We were very scared,” said a resident, Halimatou Touré. “There are lots of mujahedeen who come from this area,” she said. The bomber’s remains were later removed in a wheelbarrow, and French armored vehicles took up positions at the checkpoint.

While Sunday’s clashes showed that the northern cities are still vulnerable to attacks from Islamists, the bulk of their force is thought to have taken refuge in the Adrar des Ifoghas, a remote mountain range near Algeria and hundreds of miles to the north of Gao. Troops from France and Chad, supported by French aircraft, are pursuing the Islamists in this redoubt as well.

Adam Nossiter reported from Dakar, and Peter Tinti from Gao, Mali.

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John Mayer: My Relationship with Katy Perry is 'Very Human'

By Maggie Coughlan

02/10/2013 at 03:45 PM EST

Katy Perry and John Mayer

Larry Busacca/Getty

Although they've previously dated, this time around might be the real thing for John Mayer and Katy Perry.

"I don't feel like I'm in a celebrity relationship," Mayer, 35, told Anthony Mason during an interview on CBS Sunday Morning of his romance with Perry, 28.

"For the first time in my life I don't feel like I'm in a celebrity relationship. I really don't. I'm not in a high profile – I know it's high profile. It's hard to explain ..." he said.

"For me it feels like something that's very human" he added.

When asked if he sees himself getting married, Mayer responded, "Of course. I mean, I'm still the kid from Connecticut. That's what you do."

The couple have made their affection public, holding hands while Patti Smith performed at Clive Davis and The Record Academy's Annual Pre-Grammy Gala at the Beverly Hilton on Saturday.

Last month, they attended President Obama's inauguration together.

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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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G20 to skirt potholes and follow growth signposts

LONDON (Reuters) - With the road ahead looking a bit smoother, G20 finance ministers will be happy to ignore the wreck in the rear-view mirror when they meet this week to steer a course for the world economy.

The euro zone as a whole and a clutch of its members, including France, Italy and the Netherlands, are expected to report that their economies shrank last quarter - joining Germany and the United States - while Japan's barely grew, according to economists polled by Reuters.

But the Group of 20 leading economies, which meets in Moscow on Friday, should be able to take heart from a pair of more timely indicators - a New York Fed manufacturing survey and a University of Michigan poll on consumer sentiment.

Economists expect both to show an improvement, despite the gnawing uncertainty of how long-running U.S. deficit reduction negotiations will affect taxes and spending.

Luca Paolini, chief strategist at Pictet Asset Management in London, said he was more positive on the global outlook on balance but a sense of perspective was needed. Buoyant markets risked getting ahead of themselves.

"Our own leading indicators are going up, but we don't think we're in a strong growth environment. We see weak growth, and that's not going to change this year," he said.

PASSING THE GROWTH BATON

Simon Hayes, an economist with Barclays Capital, broadly agreed. "On the whole, recent activity data have been encouraging of our view that the global economy is improving, albeit slowly," he said in a report.

January U.S. retail sales figures are likely to underline this point. Hobbled by the January 1 increase in payroll taxes, economists expect a rise of just 0.1 percent on the month.

By contrast, U.S. capital spending is finally perking up from a low level as corporations, realizing that protracted cost-cutting is hurting productivity and growth prospects, give the green light to pent-up investments, Paolini said.

"But we're not overly optimistic because investment is based on confidence. You can have all the money you want, but you're not going to invest if you expect growth to be weak. So if we have any kind of shock - it can be politics or something else - investment will fall again," he said.

China delivered a boost to confidence on Friday with a batch of strong trade and money data for January.

Economists are wary of reading too much into China's figures at the start of the year because of distortions due to the variable timing of the long Lunar New Year holidays.

But Ting Lu, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's chief China economist, said they supported his view that gross domestic product growth could accelerate to 8.3 percent in the first half of this year from 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

China is not the only developing economy that is doing its bit for global growth.

Mark Williams, chief Asia economist with Capital Economics in London, said there had been signs of a rebound across the emerging world in the past month. Goldman Sachs, too, said there had been a marked improvement in consumer confidence across emerging markets coming into 2013.

"It had been the case that Latin America and Asia were looking up at the end of last year but emerging economies in Europe were still looking very weak. But even they are now joining in the recovery. So it's looking increasingly broad-based," Williams said.

CURRENCY SKIRMISHES

One obvious pothole on the road to recovery is the threat of a spate of competitive devaluations, as growth-hungry countries seek to give their exporters an edge by talking down their currencies or actively pushing them lower by bold monetary easing.

Japan has come in for fierce criticism in some quarters for that very reason, but Finance Minister Taro Aso sought to restore calm on Friday by saying the recent slide in the yen had gone too far.

His emollient words reinforced expectations that the G20 will not point the finger at Tokyo.

At the same time, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi's success in reversing the euro's climb with a few well-chosen words last Thursday has eased the worries of France and others for now that the single currency was approaching levels that would do real damage to the euro area.

So, although Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega fears global currency wars could intensify, the betting is on an anodyne statement from the Moscow meeting that avoids rattling confidence.

"There will be something very vague reminding everybody that if you start getting into currency wars everybody is going to lose," Paolini with Pictet said.

(Editing by Toby Chopra)

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