VBVW for April May 2, 2008: Mayday! Mayday!

• The Very Best

Stimulus checks arrive in your mailbox as tax rebates this week, and Wal-Mart is cashing them for free. Want to help stimulate the economy? Spend your check on goods made in the U.S.A. or sold at a locally owned store instead of at Wal-Mart.

The FDA rejected Cordaptive, a cholesterol drug developed by Merck. A “not approvable” letter doused billion-dollar dreams for the Rx company but encouraged the public that FDA regulators don’t always do their work while zonked on Ambien.

George Bush has said that the American economy was in a “slowdown” and not a recession. According to the Commerce Department, he’s right: the economy grew at .06 percent. George has got to be feeling pretty pumped at being right for the first time in the past 48 months.

• The Very Worst

A man in Austria has confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years. He kept her in an underground room with three of the seven children he fathered with the woman, now 42. None of the 3 children had ever seen sunlight. And father/grandfather/husband Josef Fritzl should never see the sun again.

Chinese authorities are trying to send an Olympic torch up Mount Everest, where it stands slightly less chance of being extinguished by protesters. While the torch awaits clear weather, all other climbing expeditions have been blocked from the Tibetan side of Everest, and teams at southern base camps have had communication gear confiscated.

The 81 deaths attributed to Heparin may have been the result of intentional contamination, according to the FDA. This would make Heparin the biggest drug tampering case since the Tylenol scare of 1982. Or the since the production of Vioxx.