Archive for November, 2019

Walgreens, UnitedHealthcare team up to open in-store Medicare centers

Walgreens and UnitedHealthcare have signed a multi-year agreement to open 14 Medicare service centers in select Walgreens stores across five metropolitan areas starting next year. The centers will allow Walgreens customers to inquire about and even enroll in UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage plans. For those who are already UnitedHealthcare MA members, they will serve as a […]

US life expectancy down in recent years after increasing for decades

Life expectancy in the United States has fallen since 2014 after six decades of increasing. The driving force is in middle-aged deaths from drug overdoses, suicides and organ system diseases, according to a wide-reaching report published Tuesday in JAMA. The findings shows disparities in mortality trends across races and geographic locations. The largest increase in […]

CDC officials worry E. coli outbreak could spread over Thanksgiving

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning consumers to check the labels of romaine lettuce and salad mixes they plan to serve at Thanksgiving dinner, worrying that an E. coli outbreak that has made 67 people sick across 19 states could get worse over the holiday. The CDC has identified romaine harvested in […]

U.S.D.A. announces refined sugar import increase

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Nov. 25 announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce, at the U.S.D.A.’s request, approved an additional 100,000 short tons, raw value, of refined sugar imports from Mexico during 2019-20 (October-September marketing year).

Google Photos finally lets you manually tag people in pictures

Google is finally adding the ability to manually tag someone in Google Photos, as reported by Android Police. Google Photos has always been able to automatically recognize faces and sort them for you, which makes managing your library far easier than having to tag people manually. But the system misses faces sometimes, and there’s never […]

U.S. consumer spending climbs again in October even as incomes fall flat

U.S. consumer spending rose in October for the eighth month in a row, a potentially good sign for the holiday shopping season that gets underway after Thanksgiving with Black Friday specials. Consumer spending increased 0.3% last month, the government said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 0.2% increase.

East Coast Ports Gain Market Share

Ports on the East Coast are enjoying an uptick in volume thanks to infrastructure improvements, expanded sea routes and the positive effects that the United States’ ongoing trade war with China are having for other countries, while these same factors are contributing to drop-offs for West Coast ports that as recently as last year were […]

AAR: U.S. Rail Traffic Sees Huge Gain

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ended Nov. 23, 2019, and for the first time in a long time traffic saw a healthy uptick. For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 521,927 carloads and intermodal units, up 10.6% compared with the same week last year.