The headline could have read BRAINLESS MAN IN TOPLESS BAR. How did an Orthodox Jewish lawyer and family man fall so hard for a Scores stripper that he invited her to his kids' bar mitzvahs? There's more -- and less -- to this story than meets the eye.

When 20-year-old Lindsey Vuolo decided to pose for Playboy, she worried that telling her parents wasn't going to be easy. But she knew she was going to have to answer to perhaps an even higher authority: her rabbi.

Some fourteen years after the Libby Zion case changed the way hospitals are run—and medicine is taught—it’s clear that residents are getting more sleep. But many doctors say that patients—and even the residents—are being shortchanged.

Some investigators make a point of being inconspicuous. Not Bill Stanton. In the past he's hung out with Bruce Willis and Sly Stallone, and now he's a fixture at Elaine's and the China Club. His nightlife, he says, is for his business -- it's not a bad way to make a living.

In the backwash of the Clinton scandal, voters are more interested in the messenger than in the message, and that's made the freewheeling, straight-shooting John McCain a contender, even among Democrats. He may be against abortion and gun control -- but at least he believes in something.

Seven years ago Detective Zack Zahrey walked into a station house to look into the murder of a schoolyard hoops pal -- and walked out a suspect. The victim of an overzealous investigator and a crooked informer, Zahrey has aimed a $40 million lawsuit squarely at the way cops -- and prosecutors -- play the game.

Thanks to a revolution in the understanding of cell biology, leading doctors predict that cancer and other killer diseases will be highly treatable in as little as five years. Can you hold on that long?

Ehud Barak tried to negotiate peace with the Palestinians at Camp David. Now he believes peace could be created unilaterally -- with a wall.

News of Al Gore's mitzvah sent a joyful shock wave through the city's Jewish circles. And New Yorkers' confident answers to the inevitable worries (is the country really ready? Is Joseph Lieberman somehow too Jewish?) show a community in vigorous (if very contentious) health.

The Diallo case is making even moderate black leaders like Calvin Butts sound like radicals. How the mayor could mend fences -- and why he must.