Washington, D.C.

Ashcroft has surgery to remove gallbladder

Surgeons successfully removed Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s gallbladder on Tuesday to prevent a recurrence of the gallstone-caused pancreatitis that sent him to intensive care.

Ashcroft came through the minimally invasive surgery well but was being monitored closely for complications, said Dr. Bruce Abell, who performed the procedure at George Washington University Hospital.

Ashcroft probably will remain in the hospital four or five more days, typical for a pancreatitis patient who undergoes the gallbladder procedure, he said.

Severe pancreatitis is a serious and painful abdominal condition that sometimes is fatal. Ashcroft, 61, was diagnosed with the condition, triggered by a gallstone, on Thursday.

Los Angeles

UCLA suspends program for cadaver donors

The UCLA medical school announced Tuesday it would indefinitely suspend, and perhaps permanently close, its body-donor program in response to a burgeoning scandal over the allegedly illegal sale of hundreds of cadavers.

The decision by top medical school and university administrators came amid a court hearing in which lawyers representing relatives of cadaver donors sought to force the closing of the program, arguing that it was in such disarray it could not function properly.

UCLA had contended that closing the program, the oldest in the nation, would impair medical education and research. But officials abandoned that position as disclosures mounted about the scope of the scandal.

Vatican City

Pope names U.S. woman to science advisory post

Pope John Paul II Tuesday named Mary Ann Glendon, a female law professor at Harvard University and a bioethics expert, to head the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. She assumes the highest Vatican advisory post held by a woman.

The appointment of Glendon, who belongs to the U.S. Presidential Council on Bioethics, apparently fulfills a drive by the pontiff to raise the profile of women in church affairs.

The appointment comes days after the Vatican named two women to its International Theological Commission. The appointees, an American nun, Sara Butler, and a German nun, Barbara Hallenstein, are activists in promoting relations among different Christian religions — Butler with Anglicans and Hallenstein with the Orthodox.

Kentucky

Court-martial set in attack on soldiers

A judge in Fort Knox set a July 12 court martial date Tuesday for an Army sergeant charged in a grenade attack in Kuwait that killed two officers a day before they were to move into Iraq.

Sgt. Hasan Akbar, 32, of the 101st Airborne Division, is charged with two counts of premeditated murder and three counts of attempted premeditated murder for the attack on a group of fellow 101st Airborne Division soldiers and others on March 23, 2003. If convicted, he could receive the death penalty, life in prison without parole or life with parole.