CBS News
How America’s oldest newlyweds found love at 96
Olathe, Kansas — The Good Samaritan Society-Cedar Lake Village senior living community in Olathe, Kansas, isn’t exactly known for its singles’ scene.
But widowers Doris Kriks and Carl Kruse, both 96, found love nonetheless, and just last month became America’s oldest newlyweds.
It’s a relationship that started one year earlier, on cue.
Kruse was one of the best billiard players in the building, until Kriks moved in and started beating the socks off him.
“Yes, I was definitely surprised,” Kruse told CBS News of Kriks’ billiard skills. “She’s a hustler.”
“It’s a good feeling to beat men,” Kriks said.
Eventually, rivalry led to romance. Kriks and Kruse, both musicians, started exploring their shared interests. Carl thought they made beautiful music together and proposed. However, Doris responded with a firm no.
“But I thought that the way she said it was not that it will never be,” Kruse said.
“I wasn’t looking for a man,” Kriks explained.
Kriks may have said no, but Kruse was a stubborn beau. So, a couple months later, he asked again, only this time he tried a whole different approach — showing her the larger apartment he had in mind where they could live.
“So up we go to the second floor, and went to this room, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty nice,'” Kriks said. “And then he showed me the walk-in closet.”
Kriks said that sealed the deal, and she told him “yes” right on the spot.
“It’s OK,” Kruse admitted of being loved for his walk-in closet.
Of course, Kriks said Kruse also made more room in his heart.
“He told me he was dedicated to making this a happy marriage,” Kriks said. “It warms my heart.”
Chalk one up for true love.
CBS News
JPMorgan Chase denies Trump’s claim that CEO Jamie Dimon has endorsed him
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has not endorsed Donald Trump, the financial giant said Friday after the former president claimed in a social media post that the executive, America’s most prominent banking industry leader, was supporting him.
“Jamie Dimon has not endorsed anyone. He has not endorsed a candidate,” Joe Evangelisti, a spokesperson for the New York-based bank told CBS News in a statement.
The denial came after the Republican presidential nominee posted a screenshot on his Truth Social account falsely stating, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for president.”
Trump told NBC News he didn’t know about the post, which was still visible on his account as of 5:10 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Seemingly coming from a verified account on X earlier in the day, the post swiftly drew attention from various pro-Trump accounts before Trump weighed in.
Before Trump won the Republican nomination for president, Dimon had expressed support for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley during the party’s primaries.
Friday’s Truth Social post is not the first in which Trump incorrectly suggested winning support by a high-profile person. The former president in August posted AI-generated images claiming that Taylor Swift was backing him. The superstar endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris a few weeks later.
CBS News
CDC launches new way to measure trends of COVID, flu and more for 2024
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a new way for Americans to look up how high or low levels of viruses like COVID-19 and flu are in their local area for 2024.
This year’s new “community snapshot” is the CDC’s latest attempt to repackage its data in one place for Americans deciding when to take extra precautions recommended in its guidelines, like masking or testing, going into the fall and winter.
It centers around a sweeping new weekly metric called “acute respiratory illness.” The metric’s debut fulfills a goal laid out by agency officials months ago, aiming to measure the risk of COVID-19 alongside other germs that spread through the air on a single scale from “minimal” to “very high.”
“The biggest thing we’re trying to do here is not just to have a dashboard. It’s not just putting a bunch of information in front of people and kind of expecting them to navigate all of that,” the CDC’s Captain Matthew Ritchey told CBS News.
Ritchey, who co-leads the team that coordinates data fed into the snapshots, said the CDC gathers experts from across the agency every Thursday to walk through the week’s data coming from hospitals and emergency rooms, wastewater sampling and testing laboratories.
“All those groups come together, talking through their different data systems and their expertise to say, ‘this is what’s catching my eye.’ And then that’s what we want to tee up for the public,” he said.
Ritchey cited early signs of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, starting to increase this season as expected in Florida, which is called out at the top of this week’s report.
Behind the CDC’s new “respiratory illness” metric
Based on emergency room data, the “acute respiratory illness” metric, grades overall infections in each state or county from “minimal” to “very high.”
That is defined broadly to capture infections from COVID-19 and influenza, as well as a range of other diseases that spread through the air like whooping cough or pneumonia.
A previous definition the agency had relied on called “influenza-like illness” had been too narrow, Ritchey said, with requirements like fever which excluded many patients.
A separate set of standalone levels is still being calculated each week for COVID-19, influenza and RSV.
The formula behind those levels is based on historical peaks and valleys in emergency room trends, which were analyzed from each state.
“We’ve looked over the last couple of years and understand the low points of the year, based on our lab testing, and at that point we say, that’s the baseline or ‘minimal’ category,” said Ritchey.
How to see what COVID variants are dominant
Not all of the CDC’s data made the cutoff to be included on the first layer of the agency’s new snapshot.
For example, while the front page for the general public does mention current SARS-CoV-2 variants like XEC, details about its prevalence remain on a separate webpage deeper into the CDC’s website.
“That whole jumble of lots of acronyms or letters and things like that just don’t overly resonate with them,” he said.
For flu, the CDC is still publishing more detailed weekly updates designed for experts, through the agency’s “FluView” reports.
Those include a weekly breakdown of the “type” – influenza A or B – and “subtype” – like H3N2 or H1N1 – that is being reported to the agency from testing laboratories.
Health authorities closely watch trends in flu subtyping as well, since they can help explain changes in the severity of the virus as well as vaccine effectiveness.
Future changes to come
The snapshot remains a work in progress as the CDC gathers feedback from the public as well as local health departments.
“We have a continuum of users, from the public health practitioner to my parents, providing feedback on how they’re using it. More often, the feedback we get is, ‘hey, I use this to help inform how I work, or talk with my elderly parents,'” he said.
One big change coming later this season is the resumption of nationwide hospitalization data, after a pandemic-era requirement for hospitals to report the figures to the federal government lapsed.
A new rule by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to start collecting the data again for COVID-19, influenza and RSV is due to take effect in November.
“As that data starts to come in again and gets to a robust enough level, the plan is that it would be incorporated on the site as well,” he said.
Another long term goal is to add information specific to other respiratory illness culprits beyond COVID-19, influenza and RSV.
“We want to be able to talk about maybe some of the other things that are not the big three as well, like mycoplasma and some of those other things too, that we know peak during certain parts of the season,” he said.
CBS News
Obama campaigning for Harris, Musk will join Trump
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