Bravo to the Lewiston police officers who quickly stopped a woman who could easily have killed someone early Tuesday evening.

Police say Kristy Cookson, 28, of Manchester refused to stop after she was seen driving a pickup truck erratically in the densely populated area of Walnut and Howard streets. She raced down Central Avenue, finally losing control and striking a parked car.

But Cookson still wasn’t giving up, and reportedly tried to use her vehicle to strike an officer and escape again.

There are reasons cops carry guns, and this was one of them. Cookson was shot in the neck and then pulled from her truck. Fortunately, her injuries were not life-threatening.

As it turns out, she has twice previously been charged with driving under the influence in Lewiston in 2007 and 2008. Allowing her to leave the scene could have put innocent drivers and pedestrians in danger. Quick thinking prevented that.

Jeers to America’s largest poultry producers for their embarrassing inability to deliver a clean chicken to American consumers.

Consumer Reports’ latest tests of grocery store broilers found that two out of three were contaminated with salmonella or campylobacter, two forms of bacteria that cause human illness.

About 2.4 million Americans get a food-borne sickness each year, some 25,000 are hospitalized and about 500 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so food poisoning is no small problem.

Meat is commonly contaminated by sloppy handling and insufficient washing in processing. The best idea is to treat every piece of raw meat as if it’s contaminated. It probably is.

Jeers to Brian Andrews of Old Orchard Beach who used a pickup truck stolen in Auburn to yank an ATM machine out of a convenience store in Scarborough.

An officer in Gorham spotted Andrews driving away with the cash machine in the bed of the truck, according to the Portland Press Herald.  Thinking that suspicious, he gave chase. After backing into one cruiser, Andrews finally crashed into a guardrail near Prouts Neck.

Say what you want about Andrews, but he picked the right truck for the job — a new Ford F-250 valued at $52,000.

Bravo to the state of Maine’s unemployment insurance program, which is helping see our state and its workers through this recession. While other states are now borrowing from the federal government to meet their unemployment insurance obligations, Maine’s program has built a buffer against hard times.

According to a story in the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s system was restructured about 10 years ago to build an 18-month cushion.

What’s more, it automatically adjusts to stabilize itself in tough times. As many as 40 states are expected to take out federal loans to meet the crisis, according to the story.

Maine’s system automatically triggers a tax increase for employers, which is a tough pill to swallow in tough times. Yet, it beats borrowing … we get enough of that from the federal government.

Cheers to Tiger Woods for finally coming clean about the personal problems that culminated in his mysterious late-night crash and jeers to the pro athlete for cheating on his wife. He’s an icon and hero to many, and his fans deserved an explanation. The American public is remarkably forgiving of public figures who make mistakes. Now we’ll see if his wife is as forgiving as his gallery.