The Week
Time for A Change?
Iranians flocked to the polls last week to vote in one of the closest presidential races since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It didn't appear that any of the seven candidates would get the 50 percent margin required, setting the two top vote-getters up for a runoff election Friday. Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, president from 1989 to 1997, went in as the front-runner; reformist Mostafa Moin and former police chief Muhammed Bagher Qalibaf, backed by conservatives, were in a contest for second.
Tyco Execs Found Guilty on All Counts
Former Tyco International Ltd. CEO Dennis Kozlowski and CFO Mark Swartz last week were found guilty of grand larceny, securities fraud, conspiracy, and other charges for stealing more than $150 million in bonuses from the company they built into one of the world's biggest manufacturing empires. The two men were also accused of defrauding shareholders by selling $430 million in Tyco stock while misrepresenting the company's financial health. The verdict culminates a four-month trial during which Kozlowski, 58, and Swartz, 44, were accused of misusing company funds to finance lavish lifestyles.
They each face a maximum of 30 years, but their lawyers plan to appeal.
Autopsy: No Way Out for Schiavo
Nothing--not even a mother's soothing voice--would have gotten a response from Terri Schiavo, the comatose Florida woman whose right-to-die case entangled the courts and mesmerized America for weeks, according to an autopsy report released last week. Any message would have to travel the neural pathway to a part of her brain called the neocortex. But that incoming route was destroyed some 15 years ago when, her brain deprived of oxygen, she slipped into a coma. Examiners said that Schiavo was blind, and, also, that they found no evidence of strangulation or abuse as alleged by her family in court efforts to prevent her husband from removing her feeding tube. "They did an extremely thorough job," says Karen Weidenheim, chief of neuropathology at New York's Montefiore Medical Center, "of ruling that out. "Schiavo's death on March 31 ended a legal and political struggle over her fate.
The autopsy revealed that Schiavo's brain was half the normal weight. "No amount of therapy or treatment," said examiner Jon Thogmartine, "would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
Getting to the Heart Of the Matter
Health officials last week advised the Food and Drug Administration to OK a new drug that's specifically designed to treat blacks with chronic heart failure. The move marks the first time race has come into play in such decisions and prompted debate over whether it should be a factor. The FDA advisory panel unanimously voted to recommend that the agency approve BiDil, found in a clinical trial to be successful in treating blacks with heart failure who were not helped by other meds. The panel of outside experts agreed with manufacturer NitroMed Inc. that the label should specify that the drug is intended for blacks. Controversy has swelled around BiDil since last fall, when a study in the New England Journal of Medicine said that it reduced death in black patients with heart disease by 43 percent. BiDil enhances nitric oxide, a compound that dilates vessels, allowing the free flow of blood. Some doctors have speculated that black patients have lower levels of nitric oxide than other racial and ethnic groups. Critics say BiDil could open the door to racial stereotyping.
In other heart news: A new study shows that fish oil may increase life-threatening abnormal heartbeats in patients with defibrillators implanted to regulate them.
Will Tobacco Fines Go Up in Smoke?
Democratic lawmakers have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to hold off settling the government's racketeering case against Big Tobacco until the Justice Department completes an internal probe into whether politics played a role in the feds' sudden move to reduce the penalty they are seeking from $130 billion to $10 billion. Internal memos obtained by the New York Times show that senior Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers running the case, ordering them to lop a whopping $120 billion off the fine being sought. At issue: the price tag for the tobacco industry to implement nationwide smoking cessation programs. A Justice Department spokesman says the stunning reversal was designed to comply with court limits on penalties sought by the government. But antismoking advocates don't buy it.
"I think this is political interference," says William Corr of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, "from the Bush administration out of concern for the financial interests of the tobacco industry."
Club Gitmo--or Hell? Ask the Lawmakers
Leading congressional Democrats are pushing for an independent investigation of allegations of detainee abuse at military-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. House Dems this week plan to introduce a measure that calls for creation of an independent panel a la the 9/11 commission. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans and Democrats last week clashed over the future of the lockup at Guantanamo Bay. Democrats charged the detention center is an "international embarrassment" that should be shuttered, but many Republicans pooh-poohed complaints of detainee abuse. "The inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better. They've never been treated better, and" said Rep. Duncan Hunter at a news conference, "they've never been more comfortable in their lives . . . ."
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy hit Republicans for portraying Gitmo as "more a Club Med than a prison."
Deep Pockets: No More Secrets
After years of keeping mum, the king of whistle-blowers, Mark Felt--aka Deep Throat--has inked a deal to tell all. Universal Pictures and Public Affairs Books have, respectively, bought the film and literary rights to Felt's life story for a movie to be developed by actor Tom Hanks's production company, Playtone. Felt, now 91, is the G-man who helped topple President Richard Nixon by feeding Washington Post reporters inside info.
So much for silence is golden.
This story appears in the June 27, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.