California

18th-century penny sells for $437,000

A copper penny minted in 1792 and kept in a tobacco tin for decades was auctioned Monday for $437,000.

Anthony Terranova of New York City was the highest bidder, said Donn Pearlman, spokesman for Beverly Hills auction house Ira & Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles Inc.

The penny’s owners were descendants of Oliver Wolcott, the governor of Connecticut in the 1790s and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, according to auctioneer Ira Goldberg.

“The historical importance of this coin cannot be overstated,” said Michael Sherman, vice president of Professional Coin Grading Service, which directed a team of experts who authenticated the coin.

The penny bears the date 1792, an inscription “Parent of Science & Industry: Liberty,” and the likeness of a woman’s head representing Miss Liberty, Goldberg said.

Washington, D.C.

Postal workers criticize anthrax crisis response

Employees at a U.S. postal facility that processed anthrax-laced letters told researchers they failed to get adequate information during the 2001 attacks, several comparing themselves to blacks who were denied treatment during the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiments.

A Rand Corp. study released Tuesday found public health officials gave “very little useful information” to employees at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington and to U.S. Senate staff members who might have been exposed to anthrax spores.

Senate staffers reported they got reliable information from Capitol physicians, but at least some Brentwood workers said they believed government officials were more interested in observing the effects of the anthrax exposure than in treating them.

Government researchers withheld syphilis treatment from 399 black study participants in the Tuskegee experiments of the 1930s, and there were 128 related deaths.

Washington, D.C.

RNC has six times the Democrats’ cash

The Republican National Committee began the month with a 6-to-1 financial advantage over its Democratic counterpart, with $16.5 million in the bank compared to the Democratic National Committee’s $2.6 million.

The RNC raised $10.5 million in January, according to its monthly report to the Federal Election Commission. The GOP spent $8.7 million, including a $1 million transfer to Senate Republicans’ fund-raising committee and nearly $1 million in telemarketing, according to an analysis by Political Money Line, a nonpartisan campaign finance tracking service.

The DNC raised $4.1 million last month, based on its FEC report. It spent $7.6 million, including a donation of $1.5 million to Virginia Lt. Gov. Timothy Kaine’s campaign for governor and a $1 million transfer to the Senate Democrats’ fund-raising committee.

Howard Dean, new chairman of the DNC, will be in Lawrence, Kan., on Friday for a sold-out rally at Liberty Hall.

Chicago

Discovery shows water might still exist on Mars

European scientists have found what they believe is a dust-covered, frozen sea near the equator of Mars, raising the possibility that liquid water may still exist on Mars, locked under 90 feet of ice.

Scientists long have known that there is water ice at the poles, but found only hints that it once existed near the equator. This discovery shows it may have existed there recently, that the ice could still remain, and that liquid water from underground aquifers may lurk somewhere under it still.

Attention was drawn to the region, roughly the size of the Great Lakes, by formations near the equator that look like pack ice near the Earth’s poles.

Cracked and drifting beneath a dusting of orange soil, floes of what could be water ice range from plates the size of suburban back yards to enormous chunks 18 miles across.

The way that the floes drift, breaking into pieces and forming pressure ridges as they grind into each other, suggests characteristics similar to ice moving on fluid water.

The findings emerged in three-dimensional images taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter last year.

The paper announcing the findings was released Monday.

California

University auditing medical school dean

The University of California has launched an audit of UC San Francisco’s School of Medicine and its renowned dean, Dr. David Kessler, after an anonymous complaint was circulated about his financial stewardship of the school.

The university auditor is examining the salaries Kessler pays his senior staff and the financial commitments he has made to researchers, as well as the amount of money he earns from outside consulting and speeches.

Kessler, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said there’s no merit to the complaint. When he became dean in September 2003, he said, he asked detailed questions about the school’s financial resources.

“And I have stayed within that almost exactly,” Kessler said.

Pittsburgh

Priest pleads guilty in death of athlete

A Roman Catholic priest pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation Tuesday for giving alcohol to a college football player who died after falling through a church ceiling while drunk.

The Rev. Henry Krawczyk was the only adult of legal drinking age at a cookout he had in the hours before the death of Billy Gaines, 19. A witness said Gaines had eight glasses of rum and Coke plus a shot of liquor at the party, which took place on church grounds.

Krawczyk, 52, entered his guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and furnishing alcohol to minors on the day his trial was to begin.

Gaines, a wide receiver on the University of Pittsburgh football team, and another team member had been exploring an attic crawl space at the church when he fell onto his head from a height of more than 20 feet.

Chicago

Study: Hormone pills worsen incontinence

Researchers have found yet another problem that hormone pills taken at menopause seem to make worse, not better: incontinence.

The findings came from the same landmark government study that in the past few years linked the widely used supplements to a higher risk of heart attacks, stroke, dementia and breast cancer.

Estrogen and progestin have long been thought to help prevent or lessen urine leakage in menopausal women.

The findings, published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn., come from research on 27,347 women, ages 50 to 79, participating in the Women’s Health Initiative study.

Compared with women taking dummy pills, those on estrogen pills for one year were 53 percent more likely to develop urinary incontinence by year’s end.