Briefly

Washington: Americans prefer paper to coins, study finds

Gold dollar coins weigh down the pockets. They are costly to ship. And few Americans think they’re better than the good old greenback.

Dollar coins are a flop before their third birthday, even after a $67.1 million, three-year marketing campaign by the U.S. Mint, a government report says.

While initial public awareness generated by the advertising was strong, the new dollar coin, like the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, “has failed to achieve widespread use,” the General Accounting Office reported Friday.

According to July 2001 statistics from the U.S. Mint, people use the dollar coin in just 1 percent of dollar transactions, the report said.

U.S. Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore acknowledged her agency had yet to overcome public and commercial resistance to using the coin dollar and generally concurred with the report’s findings, she wrote in response.

South Carolina: Father executed for killing daughter

A 40-year-old inmate was executed by injection Friday for burning his daughter to death nearly four years ago to get back at his estranged wife.

Michael Passaro had pleaded guilty to murder and a judge sentenced him to death. He never appealed, telling his lawyers and judges a trip to the death chamber was better than spending the rest of his life in a cell.

Passaro was in the midst of a custody dispute in November 1998 when he parked the family minivan in front of his estranged wife’s Myrtle Beach condominium, doused the inside with gasoline and set it on fire with their 2-year-old daughter, Maggie, strapped in her car seat.

Passaro planned to die in the blaze, but jumped from the van when it exploded. The Navy veteran and former nurse technician left behind a suicide note.

“Whatever anyone does, please make sure that Karen doesn’t kill herself over this,” Passaro wrote. “I want her to live in pain for the rest of her life.”

Washington: Doctors give Cheney clean bill of health

Vice President Dick Cheney said he received a clean bill of health Friday after a routine cardiovascular exam.

“Given my history, they watch me very closely, but about every six months … they download my defibrillator that’s implanted in my shoulder, and make sure my heart is OK and give me a going over,” Cheney told “The Rush Limbaugh Show.”

Cheney has had four heart attacks, none as vice president. “Everything is fine,” he told Limbaugh.

Cheney spokeswoman Mary Matalin said the vice president’s high-tech pacemaker “continues to function flawlessly and has not detected nor treated any arrhythmia.”

The device, implanted in June 2001, is designed to monitor his heart and if necessary adjust its rhythm.

Cheney had been staying at a secure undisclosed location since President Bush put the nation on high alert earlier this week, but resumed a normal schedule Friday.