Preview -- World News Tonight 08/20/01
Aug. 20 -- Peter Jennings is on the road. Elizabeth Vargas anchors the broadcast tonight and World News Tonight writer Alex Travelli has our preview.
Good afternoon.
The economy dominates the headlines today, as further evidence trickles in to the effect that national economies all around the world are slowing in tandem. And today more than ever, economic conditions abroad are bound to affect adversely America's own situation. Tomorrow the Federal Reserve holds a scheduled meeting on the state of the dollar, and everyone is expecting it to cut interest rates even further — for the seventh time this year — in hopes of stimulating growth. Terry Moran covers the field.
Just two weeks after the popular cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol was yanked off the shelves for having deadly side effects, a consumer-advocacy group warns that five similar drugs cause the same destruction of muscle tissue … and that 81 people have died as a result of their use. The millions of Americans who use these medicines, called "statins," are now advised to stop using them at any sign of muscular pain or weakness. This is very bad news for patients and it's also bad news for the drug companies: Bayer, who manufactured Baycol, has seen its stock fall 25 percent since the first reports about the dangers of statin-based medications. John McKenzie takes a look at the drug and at the danger.
In the Western states, the wildfires burn on. As of today, 40 large fires are still going strong in nine states. For a change, it seems, the 28,500 firefighters at work there may have the weather on their side. Bill Redeker is in Leavenworth, Wash., and he keeps us up to date with the effort there.
Tonight we'll be taking a Closer Look at a pair of the summer's biggest and scariest stories. And we won't just be covering the topics — shark attacks and the national heat wave — we'll also be covering some of the coverage that has defined the season. To do this, we look back a year in time, to compare this year's shark activity and heat-related deaths to last year's. In recent months, there have been a pair of horrifying and incredible instances that have captured everyone's attention: the attack by a bull shark in Pensacola that severed the arm of 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast; and the death of Minnesota Viking Korey Stringer, from heat exhaustion. But the results of a nationwide, year-by-year comparison are shocking in their own way, and it's likely to leave you wondering. How much in these stories is real, and how much is hype?
