Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The operator of an 18-wheel semi truck has been cited for reckless driving after causing a multi-vehicle traffic accident in Virginia on Monday. According to authorities in Carroll County, Virginia, 46-year-old Marco Tulio Carta Jena of Morgantown, North Carolina, crashed his rig into other vehicles that had become backed up along I-77 as another accident further up the interstate was being cleared. Investigators say that the driver was not paying attention to the road when he collided with the other vehicles.

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The Department of Transportation has announced on Tuesday new rules that ban commercial truck and bus drivers from texting while driving. The new rule is part of a growing national effort to crack down on the epidemic of distracted driving that kills 6,000 people every year and injures 500,000 more.

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The federal government has launched a new section of its web site called the Drywall Information Center. The agency developed the section in an effort to field consumer questions and complaints about the influx of tainted Chinese-made drywall to the U.S. that occurred in 2006 and 2007 when domestic drywall supplies ran low.

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More than a half million pounds of ground beef have been recalled by the New York manufacturer after one person died and others were sickened after consuming the meat, which was possibly contaminated with E.coli. The recall was initiated by Fairbanks Farms and includes ground beef, meatloaf and meatball mix with the sell-by dates from September 19-28 and sold under brands such as Trader Joe’s Butcher Shop Fine Quality Meats, Giant Meatloaf & Meatball Mix, and BJ’s Lean Ground Beef, contains 7 percent fat.

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“A solid and growing body of studies shows that texting, conversing on hand-held phones or even chatting hands-free … make us dangerous drivers, as likely to get into an accident as if we were legally drunk,” says a Los Angeles Times editorial published last week. Many states and municipalities have tackled the scourge of cell phone-talking drivers with legislation aimed at reducing the rising tide of cell-phone related driving accidents, but what to do with cell phone-texting drivers?

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A freelance photographer was working on assignment for the New York Times, covering an H.I.V. scare at a St. Louis high school and trying to build a rapport with teenagers involved with the story. Sitting in the back seat of a car, photographer Dan Gill happened to snap a picture of the teenage driver texting on her cell phone while driving about 60 miles per hour, both hands off the wheel, as someone in the front passenger seat steered. Gill didn’t intentionally seek such a controversial picture. It was just one of the scores of photographs he took in documenting the daily lives of some teenagers.

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A California produce grower has recalled romaine lettuce that was distributed throughout 29 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico because of salmonella contamination. Tanimura & Antle, Inc. of Salinas, Calif., issued the recall after the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture detected salmonella on the lettuce in a randomized test.

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Another salmonella-related recall was announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this time for a brand of sauce and gravy mixes manufactured by the C.F. Sauer Company of Richmond, Virginia.

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Food safety authorities and microbiologists arrived at Nestle’s Danville, Virginia plant to investigate the likely presence of E. coli bacteria in refrigerated cookie dough products. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been baffled by the bacteria’s presence in the cookie dough because it is a type of food unlikely to contain E. coli.

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Peanut Corporation of America has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Virginia following the recall of peanut products produced in the company’s Blakely, Georgia, and Plainview, Texas, facilities.

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