HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS: Emergency rooms in some parts of Pennsylvania are getting backed up with people sick with the flu, and doctors are warning of the possibility an unusually high number of flu deaths.

For more than 100 years, people such as Vaglio’s survivors couldn’t win medical malpractice lawsuits against cruise lines because of exemptions created through a series of court decisions.

We wonder what is LNP’s criteria for omitting articles from LancasterOnLine , often important ones, from the web site? Is it policy or just lack of care?

“In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the federal government put together a disaster relief program that included about $600 million for increasing multi-family housing in areas of New Jersey hit by Sandy…

The civilian labor force – those working or looking for work – continued to improve last month, however slightly, increasing to 6,368,000 last month. It has been higher during the last four years, but its high-water mark was 6,484,171 in November 2008 …

“Mr. Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, has set off a prairie fire of rank-and-file conservatives urging him to run for the Republican nomination. He liked the think tank’s idea, but he knows that he excites supporters because he is an unscripted outsider.

USA TODAY: Pennsylvania is home to some of the top colleges in the country, including College Factual’s #1 ranked school in the country, the University of Pennsylvania. The state is home to many historic educational institutions, as well as newer colleges, both public and private.

And as much as White House aides gloat about the recent run of good news that’s fed the sense of a turnaround — “It gets better,” was the year-end message Obama stressed as he closed up the press conference and got ready to head to Hawaii for two weeks — they admit that they’ve gotten lucky in the timing.

NEW YORK TIMES: When a retired Chinese general with impeccable Communist Party credentials recently wrote a scathing account of North Korea as a recalcitrant ally headed for collapse and unworthy of support, he exposed a roiling debate in China about how to deal with the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un.

The informant for the Attorney General’s Office, Tyron Ali, a native of Trinidad, was smooth talking and savvy. He owned a day care center in Philly. Investigators busted him for fraud, first estimated to total nearly a half-million dollars but eventually determined to be less than $100,000.

Francesca Barnett, who runs the Portland, Ore., residential mental health and addiction treatment facility where Ayala works, says she has never seen anyone seek treatment for drug addiction who didn’t also have underlying mental health conditions.

NEW YORK TIMES COLUMN: …in normalizing relations with Cuba, on a surprising climate change initiative with China, on an immigration gamble that’s working, and executive orders to protect the world’s greatest wild salmon fishery in Alaska or try to root out gender pay disparities, Obama is marching ahead of politicians fighting yesterday’s wars. In setting an aggressive agenda, he has forced opponents to defend old-century policies, and rely on an aging base to do it…

The bank acted as the crisis in Russia and plummeting oil prices have caused a run on emerging market currencies. Switzerland, known for its fiscal rectitude and banking secrecy, tends to attract capital inflows as money flees chaos elsewhere