Countdown's Countdowns

Countdown’s Top Five

2. The California Supreme Court in San Francisco ordered officials there to Massachusetts lawmakers today gave preliminary approval to a constitutional amendment to ban them and to allow civil unions.
3. The National Hockey League makes .

• Literally one day after the head of the Baseball Players Union defended his membership's use of the steroid-like substance androstenedione in front of Congress because it's legal, the federal government finally inched towards

• in the news again.

• Henry G. Reid, the director of the UCLA's body donor program, who was caught running a virtual chop shop in body parts, lied in a deposition in 2002 about his professional and academic qualifications. So, reports
• COUNTDOWN's top four ways human cadavers are recycled.

• The question is not whether it was al-Qaeda or Spain`s long-standing Basque separatist movement or some other purveyor of more horror. On this day exactly two-and-a-half years since 9/11 the real question is, ?

• White House chief
• "The president's feet are not to
• Just outside the site, dozens of Mr. Bush's opponents
• The president may have stepped in something and it is not dirt. His first choice for a new assistant secretary of commerce to thwart the outsourcing of jobs had, while still running his own private company,

Five numbers that shape this day

1. Thirteen, the largest amount of bombs used in one terrorist attack. Before today it occurred in Bombay in 1993.
2. Two hours, 28 minutes, the elapsed time of those Bombay explosions.
3. Fifteen, the number of bombs used in today's attack in Madrid, 13 of them exploded.
4. Twenty minutes, the time that it took for today's 13 explosions in Spain.
5. One thousand, five hundred, and ninety-five, if today's attack is indeed attributed to it, this is now the number of deaths from al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda-sponsored terrorist attacks since 9/11.

Today’s Top Three Newsmakers

1. arrested for trying to sell crack.
2. No for you.
3. of Stanford, Connecticut, arrested for trying to sell narcotics to cops wearing their raid jacks, the ones with -- on the back, on the sleeves, and on the front -- big letters that spell out "police."
   

Let's Play 'Oddball'!

1. She tried to spend $1 million bill at Wal-Mart, but today she explained it was just a , Alice Pike said she thought it was real.
2. Have you ever heard the one about how ?
3. Spacecraft engineer Alexander Lavrynov tells the news agency "Interfax" that he has patented a device for .

Keeping Tabs

1. The Steve Bartman baseball, Cheyenne Kowtzer, the bear who fell to earth. And tonight, we honor a new inductee enshrined among our immortals, Mr. Ben Affleck, TV news critic, in the COUNTDOWN Hall of Fame.

• If women are OK with Kidman and Walters and Spears as lovers for their husbands, who would they pick as lovers for themselves?

• Top two men that the husbands would pick for their wives to be unfaithful with?