August 20, 2005

A Texas jury said the widow of a man who died in 2001 after taking the pain drug Vioxx should be awarded $253.5 million.

As a mother, Stephanie Harris seemed hopeless. She was 29 and a determined crack addict back in 1993, when she was sent to prison for neglecting her six children, including infant twins. The authorities had little choice, she now agrees, but to give custody of her children to relatives. ''It didn't bother me,'' she recalled in a recent interview. ''All I wanted to do was get high.''

Federal regulators proposed new rules yesterday to bolster car and truck roofs, an area of increasing concern because of the rising number of deaths in vehicle rollovers. But the proposal appears to fall short of requirements in recently passed highway legislation and is far less than what many safety advocates had hoped for. The proposed rules would subject large sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans to roof integrity regulations for the first time. And they would bolster current testing procedures.

Mechanics at Northwest Airlines walked off the job early Saturday, after their union and the airline failed to agree on the company's demand for $176 million in wage and benefit cuts. The strike was the first major labor disruption in the airline industry since 1998. About 4,430 members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which represents mechanics, cleaners and other employees at Northwest, struck the airline at 12:01 a.m., when a 30-day cooling-off period in the negotiations expired.

It might have been a preseason game, but Jets fans knew better. They saw quarterback Chad Pennington's start Friday night against the Minnesota Vikings for what it really was: a rehabilitation assignment. Pennington, owner of the most precarious right arm in New York this side of Yankees pitcher Jaret Wright, had not taken a snap in a game in seven months, since the Jets' American Football Conference divisional playoff loss at Pittsburgh on Jan. 15.