Washington, D.C.

Dole fund-raiser pleads guilty to fraud

A former consultant to a fund-raising committee for North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s 2002 election campaign pleaded guilty Wednesday to mail fraud in an embezzlement scheme involving more than $174,000 of political contributions.

Earl Allen Haywood, 40, entered the guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington. Haywood, an assistant treasure to campaign committees that raised money for Dole, faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced May 26 and has agreed to make full restitution, prosecutors said.

In addition to his work on the Dole North Carolina Victory Committee, Haywood also raised money for an entity known as North Carolina’s Salute to George W. Bush that spread its funds among Dole, the North Carolina Republican Party and Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C.

The Dole campaign’s former general counsel, Washington lawyer Cleta Mitchell, said the embezzlement came to light after an internal review of the books following Dole’s 2002 victory over Democrat Erskine Bowles.

Georgia

Eight injured in parade car crash

A convertible sped through an intersection during the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade Wednesday, slamming into three members of a marching band and spectators who lined the parade route. Eight people were injured.

Most of the injured were treated for broken bones, cuts and bruises, but none suffered life-threatening injuries.

The car apparently failed to brake and sped through the marching band and into a crowd of parade watchers in downtown Savannah, said Bucky Burnsed, police spokesman.

The driver was questioned by police, Burnsed said. Investigators determined the driver was not intoxicated, and had not suffered a health condition.

The vehicle, a Chrysler Sebring, was being examined for any possible mechanical defects, police said.

Boston

Study touts benefits of bone-saving drug

The widely used osteoporosis drug Fosamax keeps strengthening bones for at least a decade, a study found, easing fears that the medicine might eventually boomerang and start making hips and spines brittle and prone to break.

The study is the longest test yet of Fosamax, which was approved in 1995. It has gained quickly in popularity as an alternative to hormone supplements, which have been linked in recent years to heart disease and cancer.

“This is a chronic condition and requires long-term treatment, so it’s really important to have the data,” said Dr. Henry Bone, the study’s lead author at St. John Medical Center in Detroit.

The results, collected by an international research team, were published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. The group had reported previously on the first several years of findings in the 10-year experiment.

California

Gates giving millions to Oakland schools

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday it would provide a $9.5 million grant to create smaller high schools in a financially troubled school district in Oakland, Calif.

The grant will fund the ongoing transition of three high schools into clusters of small academies and open five new small high schools by 2007. This is the second grant the Oakland Unified School District has received from the foundation since 2000, when it was awarded $15.7 million.

The 47,000-student Oakland district acquired a $100 million loan bailout from the state last year. The district has laid off 85 people, including members of the clerical and administrative staff, and eliminated 339 of its 2,807 teaching positions. It plans to close five schools with declining enrollment.

Washington, D.C.

White House endorses Medicare investigation

White House officials on Wednesday endorsed plans for an investigation into whether administration officials withheld cost information from Congress to downplay the expense of prescription drug coverage in Medicare.

“Obviously, it’s a serious allegation,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at a morning briefing.

McClellan gave the White House’s blessing to plans by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct an internal investigation into whether a top agency analyst was threatened with dismissal if he gave Congress an up-to-date estimate of the cost of adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The analyst, Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for the Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the threat came from then-Medicare administrator Thomas Scully.

Foster concluded that the drug benefit could cost at least $100 billion more than the $395 billion that Congress was told when it approved the bill in November.