12-Year-Old Boys Arrested for Allegedly Dropping Shopping Cart on NYC Mother

Two 12-year-old boys were in police custody after allegedly dropping a shopping cart four stories onto a New York City mother who was out buying Halloween candy for underprivileged children.

Marion Salmon Hedges, a wealthy Manhattan real-estate agent, was struck in the head by the falling cart on Sunday while walking outside a Target store with her 14-year-old son in East Harlem, the New York Post reports.

Raising the Chance of Some Cancers With Two Drinks a Day

A burgeoning body of research links alcohol to cancers of the breast, liver, colon, pancreas, mouth, throat, larynx and esophagus. A large new study last week added lung cancer to the list—even for people who have never smoked cigarettes.

Deaths from OD of Rx Painkillers Triple in 10 Years

Deaths caused by overdoses of prescription opioid painkillers more than tripled over a decade, to nearly 15,000 in 2008, CDC researchers found.

That's up from 4,000 in 1999, Len Paulozzi, MD, of the CDC, and colleagues reported in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and in a Vital Signs brief.

"These increases occurred despite numerous warnings and recommendations over the past decade for voluntary education of providers about more cautious use of prescription opioid painkillers," they wrote.

U.S. Schoolchildren Don’t Make Grade on Reading, Math Tests

Only three in 10 U.S. schoolchildren make the grade in reading, the U.S. Education Department said today. Four in 10 passed muster in math.

About half of fourth-graders knew that a right triangle and a rectangle each had at least one right angle, according to a federal test, known as the Nation’s Report Card. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which measures fourth- and eighth-grade knowledge, scores rose from 2009 except in reading at the lower level. The score for younger readers was unchanged.