The CDC said 18 children have died from the flu so far this season. While the CDC doesn't keep a tab of deaths overall from the flu, it estimates that 24,000 Americans die each year.
Give a piece a chance
PAWTUCKET, R.I. - Hasbro is holding a Facebook contest to eliminate one of eight Monopoly tokens that identify the players and to introduce a new one. Possible new tokens include a cat, a diamond ring, a guitar, a toy robot and a helicopter.
It's the latest effort by the toymaker to jazz up the game, which debuted almost eight decades ago. Up for elimination: the battleship, iron, race car, dog, shoe, thimble, top hat and wheelbarrow.
Monopoly Facebook fans can vote on which piece to eliminate and which to add until Feb. 5.
In brief:
* SACRAMENTO, CALIF. - The nation's largest teacher-pension fund, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, took the first step Wednesday toward divesting from companies that make guns and high-capacity ammunition magazines that are illegal in California.
* PHILADELPHIA - Krause Publications says that it is folding the long-published Comics Buyer's Guide with the March issue, blaming a decline in advertising and free content online for the demise of the magazine titles that began reporting on the comic-book industry in 1971.
* NASHVILLE, TENN. - Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan, who helped develop the public-choice theory of economics, has died. He was 93.
* NEW YORK - Stocks rose on Wall Street on Wednesday after U.S. corporate earnings reports got off to a good start. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 61.66 points to 13,390.51, its first gain of the week. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 3.87 points to 1,461.02, and the Nasdaq composite rose 14 to 3,105.81. Boeing was the biggest gainer of the 30 stocks in the Dow. It jumped 3.5 percent, up $2.63 to $76.76, following two days of sharp declines triggered by new problems for its 787 Dreamliner.
- Daily News wire services
