1. Superintendent says CR skin infection scare over

2. According to school district superintendent Mark Klein students and staff at C. R. High School South are now “completely safe” after a skin infection scare forced the postponement of a Friday night football game. The school district received confirmation of two cases of the skin disease impetigo Thursday. One affected a football player and the other a boys soccer player. Subsequent screenings by family physicians revealed four more CR South athletes with impetigo and 13 who needed further evaluation. All 19 have been cleared to return to school and participate in athletics. Impetigo is a contagious, superficial infection of the skin caused by staph and strep bacteria. It is most commonly spread by close contact, is not serious, and is easily treated with oral or topical antibiotics. Impetigo is fairly common in high school athletic programs. In a matter not related to the recent impetigo outbreak, a CR South football player with a more serious skin disease called MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) has been out of school the past nine days and has not yet been cleared for school or athletics. There are no other cases of MRSA within the district. Council Rock South was cleaned and sanitized over the weekend.

3. In Other News The once am­bi­tious Amer­i­can plans for end­ing the war are now be­ing re­ placed by the far more mod­est goal of set­ting the stage for the Afghans to work out a deal among them­selves in the years af­ter most West­ern forces de­part, and to en­sure Pa­ki­stan is on board with any even­tual set­tle­ment. Mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic of­fi­cials here and in Wash­ing­ton said that de­spite at­tempts to en­gage di­rect­ly with Tal­iban lead­ers this year, they now ex­ pect that any sig­nif­i­cant progress will come on­ly af­ter 2014, once the bulk of NA­TO troops have left. Several decades after hurricanes first got formal names, some blizzards in the USA this winter will get their own names, too. The Weather Channel will assign the monikers, "the first time a national organization in North America will proactively name winter storms," the network reports. Most of the names on the list have a Greek/Roman theme -- the first three are Athena, Brutus and Caesar. Unlike with tropical storms, which have specific naming guidelines based on wind speed, the criteria for winter storms will be flexible. The most important weather factors will be expected snowfall and/or ice accumulations and wind speed. Population will play a big role, too. It is expected that an average of about eight to 10 storms will probably get a name each winter.