'Drunk, Cell-Chatting' Driver Charged in Texas Kid Deaths

Cards' Hancock was speeding, talking on phone before fatal crash

(NEWSER) - Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock was drunk, speeding, talking on the phone and not wearing a seatbelt when he died in a traffic accident, officials announced today. The St. Louis medical examiner said the 29-year-old right-hander's blood-alcohol level was 0.157, nearly twice the legal limit, when he crashed his SUV early Sunday morning. More»

Jackie Hance recounts grief over Taconic Parkway accident

(NEWSER) - "Our baby is due in the fall" is how Jackie Hance ends her Ladies' Home Journal essay. The otherwise unremarkable line is anything but, considering that the Long Island woman is the mother of three young girls killed in a horrific accident on New Jersey's Taconic Parkway in 2009. Five others also died in the crash, when Hance's sister-in-law crashed head-first into an SUV. Toxicology reports showed high amounts of alcohol and marijuana in her system, notes ABC News . More»

Sixteen-year-old driver only had learner's permit

(NEWSER) - A 16-year-old driving more than twice the speed limit crashed into a Brooklyn home yesterday, killing his 13-year-old passenger. Eric Hakimisefat has his junior driver's permit, but seemingly wasn't following two of the permit's regulations as he drove the victim and her brother home: There was no adult in the car with them, and there was more than one passenger younger than 21. Sarah Erdan died of head injuries shortly after the 1:45pm crash, the New York Daily News reports. More»

Family hopes testing will prove Diane Schuler wasn't drunk

(AP) - The body of Diane Schuler will exhumed in a bid by her family to disprove findings that the 36-year-old was drunk when she drove her minivan the wrong way on a New York freeway last month, causing a crash that killed eight people, said the family's lawyer on Larry King last night. Testing will focus on the theory that an abscess in Schuler’s mouth could have caused a stroke. More»

(NEWSER) - Diarrhea kills 1.6 million children under 5 every year—more than AIDS or malaria—and gets a fraction of the funding. But a deceptively simple new treatment may mark a breakthrough, Time reports. Zinc supplements appear to dramatically decrease diarrhea-related deaths—one afflicted village in Mali hasn’t had a single death since the pills arrived. Zinc “has totally taken off,” a researcher says. “It looks like real medicine and is not given out for free.” More»