Texas: Mother, five children die in SUV crash

A sport utility vehicle smashed into a flatbed tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder of an interstate Monday, killing a woman and five of her children, authorities said.

The woman’s husband, who was driving the SUV, was seriously hurt; a sixth child was critically injured.

Relatives said the family left a reunion in the southeast Texas city of Beaumont about 2 a.m., fire department spokesman Mark Noble said. The accident occurred about six hours later in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, about 40 miles from their Fort Worth home.

The drivers of two 18-wheelers were looking at one of the trucks carrying roofing materials. The SUV struck the back of the trailer of the second truck.

Both trucks had pulled over about 15 minutes before the wreck and were parked legally, police Sgt. William Artesi said. According to witnesses, the SUV crossed all three lanes of the interstate before it crashed into the truck, he said.

Massachusetts: Town changes ruling on smoking in bars

In Oak Bluffs, a town on Martha’s Vineyard famed for celebrities and gingerbread cottages, an ill-fated cigarette ash flicked onto a child’s ice cream cone has launched its own counterrevolution.

On May 29, the Oak Bluffs Board of Health lifted a one-year smoking ban in bars that don’t serve food, after dozens of drinkers spilled out of bars looking to light up. That’s when the ashes and foul language started to fly.

Unassuming families strolling Oak Bluffs’ main strip for dessert soon encountered drinkers lounging and smoking on their cars and dropping ashes into children’s ice cream cones, health board members say. Smokers left behind more than 500 cigarette butts for cleanup crews each morning.

“It’s just messy, very messy,” said health board member Sari Budrow, who saw ashes landing on a cone. “It’s just a bad atmosphere. You need to keep that stuff in the bar.”

Washington: Missing 68-year-old found after 2 weeks

A 68-year-old woman with a mild case of dementia apparently survived nearly two weeks in the woods alone by nibbling on candy.

Vernita Frazier was listed in good condition Monday at Harrison Memorial Hospital in Bremerton, where she was treated for hypothermia, cuts and scrapes.

Police said Frazier endured temperatures as low as 37 degrees in a dress, vest, stockings and shoes.

“This is amazing,” said Kitsap County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cameron Mandeville. “I think it’s the closest thing to a miracle we’ve seen in a while, because she’s actually in fairly good condition, considering how long she’s been gone.”

Frazier “apparently left home with some candy in her purse, and she’d been eating a little of it every day,” hospital spokeswoman Patti Hart said. “She had some left over.”

Washington, D.C.: Addiction-drug trial victim of own success

The clinical trial of a drug that helps people quit heroin by easing the withdrawal symptoms is being halted because the drug, BritLofex, works so well.

Since it exceeded the criteria to show it worked, it would have been unethical to subject those study participants receiving a dummy comparison drug to withdrawal, said Frank J. Vocci, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuses’ treatment research and development division.

BritLofex was as effective in reducing withdrawal symptoms as a dose of morphine, but is not addictive, Vocci said.

However, the success doesn’t mean the drug will be on the market anytime soon.

Studies are still needed to determine the best dose and the minimum effective dose, Vocci said, as well as to see if it works as well in outpatient use as it did in clinics.