Today's Globe: cord-blood pitch, Novak brain tumor, Medicaid waiver extension, impotence drugs and brain cancer

On a recent evening, at an event billed as the "Ultimate Baby Shower," two dozen pregnant women and a few male partners mingled at the Wellesley Club. Before a raffle began, the expectant parents got a sales pitch from Kimberly Dever, a South Shore obstetrician. Hired by ViaCord, Dever said cord blood, a source of stem cells harvested after birth from the umbilical cord, could be used to save their children's lives should they develop some life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia.

Conservative political commentator Robert Novak (left) was awaiting the results of a brain tumor biopsy at Brigham and Women's Hospital yesterday. The Chicago Sun-Times columnist, perhaps best known for outing CIA agent Valerie Plame, was taken to the hospital by ambulance Sunday from Cape Cod, where he and his wife were visiting their daughter.

The Bush administration has given Massachusetts a third two-week extension on a critical Medicaid waiver that girds the state's new universal healthcare law (second item).

Impotence drugs may help carry cancer-fighting drugs through the brain to treat malignant tumors, US researchers reported yesterday (second item).