An elderly northeast Houston woman escaped possible death when an out-of-control big rig plowed through her front yard but was stopped short of her house by a tree she planted half a century ago.

Police said the accident occurred around 5 a.m. Thursday when the driver of an 18 wheeler carrying frozen food from Arkansas to a nearby Walmart store apparently had a heart attack. The big rig veered off the road and onto the property of Alice Wright and her grandson in the 5500 block of Live Oak. Read more »

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Some Houston-area drivers — and perhaps drivers in Dallas, San Antonio and other Texas cities — must think law officers are dummies. If so, they are wrong.

Harris County Precinct 5 deputies confiscated an upper-torso male mannequin late Thursday afternoon from a motorist who’d tried using the dummy to drive uncontested on an HOV or high-occupancy vehicle lane of the Katy Freeway. Read more »

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The Wall Street Journal reports that at least 20 deaths have occurred due to defective heart defibrillator wires produced by St. Jude Medical Inc. These involved “high-voltage failures,” says cardiologist Dr. Robert G. Hauser of the Minneapolis Heart Institute. Read more »

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Accidents happen, as they say. But when a big company knows its product can harm innocent people, yet sells it anyway, that’s no accident. That’s willful negligence to make a buck, and it’s not acceptable.

This is what has happened with defective medical devices known as DePuy ASR hip implants. Used in hip replacement surgery and sold to 93,000 persons globally — about a third of them Americans — many such metal-on-metal hip implants quickly failed, forcing sudden “revision” surgeries to replace the hip replacement. Read more »

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Disgraced British energy corporation BP, formerly British Petroleum, is finally paying up for inflicting horrific devastation on America via its 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and the ensuing 87-day oil spill which ruined fishing and tourism along the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and ravaged the environment in the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, BP is starting to pay, anyway. But it’s not the end. Read more »

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As many American women know, being pregnant isn’t necessarily the best of times. In fact, around 10 per cent of all pregnant women suffer from depression, which can be due to a variety of factors, including weariness, discomfort and hormonal imbalances.

Whatever the cause, depression isn’t just a mood, but a medical condition, and it should be treated. Unfortunately, some women are prescribed drugs which can do more harm than good — and the harm goes to their unborn children. Read more »

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A motorcyclist was killed in east Harris County when an oncoming pickup truck crossed into his lane and crashed into the two-wheeler Thursday night, according to Harris County Sheriff’s deputies.

Dead is the driver of  a black 2003 Harley Davidson motorcycle headed east on FM 1942 when he was hit by a 1993 Chevrolet pickup headed west. Deputies said the pickup crossed the center stripe and hit the motorcycle, throwing the motorcyclist from his motorcycle and into a ditch. Read more »

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William C. Weldon will step down as Johnson & Johnson’s chief executive, the company says, with the post being taken by Alex Gorsky, head of its diagnostics and medical device business. Weldon will still be chairman when the change takes effect in April.

Weldon’s move came after Johnson & Johnson was wracked by scandals in recent years, from government probes to lapses in manufacturing to a flood of recalled products. These included millions of bottles of children’s Tylenol and thousands of metal-on-metal hip implants. Read more »

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Emmy-winning Fox TV series Glee ended its third season’s winter finale Tuesday night with a shocking cliffhanger, as pretty cheerleader Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) was hit broadside by a truck when she took her eyes off the road repeatedly to drive while texting.

Whether the character lives or dies won’t be revealed until the musical about a high school glee club returns on April 10. But given reactions on Twitter, some Glee fans are in an uproar and are extremely upset.

Perhaps they should be, because today’s teens need more and louder wake-up calls about the horrific dangers of distracted driving, whether it’s due to texting, making cell phone calls or cavorting with friends who are also in the car. Read more »

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A Houston Police Department officer making a traffic stop was injured and taken to a local hospital Tuesday afternoon when a vehicle struck the rear of his police car on southbound State Highway 288 near Reed Road.

The officer has not yet been identified for the public by the police. His injuries are believed to be minor. He was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital for treatment. Read more »

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