Countdown's Countdowns

Countdown’s Top Five

1. Rimonabant, the that promises to treat America`s top two causes of preventable death at the same time.

• The most prescribed drug in America,

• Martha Stewart's speaks out.

• The company's
• The two women in the running to replace Martha:

• Kids and their health:

1. Evidence that teens pledging abstinence are
2. A disease so rare, only a dozen people in the world have it,

• in Chicago

1. To be fair, it was just one presidential
2. Senator John McCain says he'd be willing to
3. A new
4. The President and the First Lady have invited at least 270 people to stay

• Violence and performance-enhancing drugs in the world of professional sports.

1. A hockey player's neck broken by a
2. The U.S. Congress looks to stop steroid abuse, or keep talking about it.
3. A professional football player, who wanted to be traded to one team and wound up being traded to another, announced that his civil rights have been violated and he compared himself to
4. The owners of the prized Doberman Kerri, have accused rivals of

Five numbers that shape this day

1. 5048,62, the NASDAQ composite index, highest ever closed four years ago, this day.
2. 1964.15, the NASDAQ close tonight.
3. 237 days remaining until the 2004 presidential election.
4. Four, as in "the big four," Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and Earthlink, they`ve all teamed together today to fight the common enemy. They sued over spam.
5. And final, one, that would be the number of keystrokes it take to actually delete a piece of spam from your inbox. Step 1, click delete. Step 2, there is no step 2, this can be resolved. We have the technology.

Today’s Top Three Newsmakers

1. of Glencoe, Illinois. Aboard United Flight 620 from Chicago to D.C., he decided to try to figure out which of the other passengers was the air marshal.
2. , the single biggest winner in America lottery history. Already, he has been robbed, arrested for threatening to kill people. Now he`s being sued by two employees at a casino in Charleston for sexual harassment.
3. of Medfield, Massachusetts, born Andrew Greenbaum (ph), the former very confused leader of a neo-Nazi group in Massachusetts, one of those people sued today by those big four computer corporations for having sent -- millions of spam e-mails.

Let's Play 'Oddball'!

1. We are in Tokyo and we assume that none of zoo employees we see staging an emergency drill today, realized that they were, in essence, re-enacting the plot of Eugene Ionesco`s play, "," but they were. They thought they were merely planning for the nightmare of a .
2. Two of the burger flippers at a Wendy's at Advance, North Carolina, decided to take a in the kitchen.

Keeping Tabs

1. It turns out