News on the go: Nov. 13, 2013

Carrie Blazina

As the Philippines continued Tuesday to pick up the pieces from Typhoon Haiyan, thousands of victims filled the airport of the hard-hit city Tacloban seeking evacuation. Aid has started to arrive in the Philippines five days after the deadly typhoon, but the aid is not being delivered properly yet because of problems with communication, debris and transportation. The storm’s official death toll rose to 1,774, but estimates continued to say at least 10,000 people have died.

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New guidelines released Tuesday from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology for preventing heart attacks and strokes recommend that one-third of all adults be on cholesterol-lowering drugs. The new formula they recommend to calculate risk includes factors such as age, gender, race and smoking, all new categories to consider, on top of cholesterol levels, the current determiner. The lower thresholds for needing medicine are partially related to including for the first time the goal of reducing strokes, not just heart attacks.

Hawaii’s state Senate passed a gay-marriage bill Tuesday legalizing same-sex weddings in the island state. Gov. Neil Abercrombie has said he will sign the measure, on which he called a special session for lawmakers to vote. An estimate from a University of Hawaii researcher said making gay marriage legal will make Hawaii a wedding destination and boost tourism by $217 million in the next three years.

The United States Justice Department said Tuesday it would allow a merger between US Airways and American Airlines that would create the world’s biggest airline. A federal judge needs to approve the settlement, which would preserve hub airports in Phoenix, Philadelphia, Charlotte and other cities for the next three years. A series of recent mergers has already eliminated four U.S. airlines and stoked fear of rising travel prices.

Information is from the Associated Press. Contact Carrie Blazina at [email protected].