LITTLE ROCK — Dr. Allen Taylor, cardiology chief at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, said it was unlikely that former Vice President Dick Cheney got special treatment when he was given a new heart at age 71 after spending about 20 months on a wait list, adding, “You can’t leapfrog the system. ... It’s a very regimented and fair process and heavily policed.”
Peter Cruddas, co-treasurer of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, resigned after the Sunday Times newspaper published secretly filmed comments in which Cruddas appeared to offer private meetings with Cameron in exchange for donations of $397,000.
Elizabeth Itta, a 12-year-old from the North Alaskan city of Nuiqsut, traveled to Port Fourchon, La., to christen a 360-foot long icebreaker “Aiviq,” which means “walrus” in the Inupiat language, after winning an essay contest to name the ship.
Leung Chun-ying, 57, was declared the next chief executive of the semi-autonomous territory of Hong Kong after securing 689 votes from a 1,200-seat committee of business leaders and other elites.
Linda Bryant, 55, was sentenced by a Colorado district judge to 42 years in prison for pocketing more than $150,000 in government support for her adoptive sons, Edward Dylan Bryant and Austin Eugene Bryant, after the two boys disappeared in 2003, when Austin would have been 7 and Edward 11.
Bertie Ahern, 60, a former Irish prime minister, chose to resign from the Fianna Fail party rather than be expelled after a 15-year investigation found he received $260,000 in secret payments while in office.
Nolan Turner, a 12-year-old in Cary, N.C., who was raising money to fund a visit by his wheelchair basketball team to his elementary school, said he yelled and screamed but couldn’t stop a man who grabbed his money bucket and unhurriedly walked away with more than $250 that Nolan had already collected.
Aung San Suu Kyi, a 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, suspended her extensive campaign tour of Burma after exhaustion and hot weather caused her to fall ill.
Sandra Jessee, 60, formerly of Placentia, Calif., was sentenced to life in state prison without the possibility of parole for orchestrating the 1998 murder of her husband, Jack Jessee, because she worried his battle with colon cancer was eating up their nest egg.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/26/2012