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Anchored by Jake Tapper, The Lead airs at 4 p.m. ET on CNN.
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money lead
Why is there no Viagra for women?
For 15 years, Viagra has been a champion for its creator Pfizer; the little blue earned $2 billion dollars last year.
That got a rise out of the competition, and now there is a whole sub genre of Viagra copycat drugs.
It's been so successful, the movie "Love and Other Drugs" immortalized the Viagra salesman.
"Men without a useful erection for years. Boing! Minimum side effects. Long-term safety. This isn't a pill. This is a revolution," said the movie's character Jamie Randall, portrayed by actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
So if sex drugs for men are so profitable, why isn't anyone selling them to women? Women did try Viagra, by the thousands in clinical trials in the early 2000s, and it bombed. But that didn't stop other pharmaceutical companies from chasing chemical romance.
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national lead
3D gun printing possible "by the end of April"
By Gregory Wallace
Depending on your view of gun rights, Cody Wilson is either a genius or an evil genius.
The Texas law student leads Defense Distributed and its Wiki Weapons Project, with the goal to “create the world’s first 100% 3D printable gun” and to make those plans “freely available.”
“The assumption is one day the technology will become more ubiquitous and widespread,” Wilson said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”
“It will fall in price, and materials will be developed in a better place than they are now, so yes, if you were to have one in your home and you have the gun file, you can just click print and have the gun.”
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national lead
More than 30 homes threatened by landslide
A whole neighborhood block in danger of falling off a cliff in Coupeville, Washington. Our interview with Ed Hartin, the chief for Central Whidbey Island Fire and Rescue above.
world lead
Virtual nuclear bomb called biggest cyber attack ever
The internet was hit with the virtual equivalent of a nuclear bomb, and it's slowing down connection speeds all across the globe. Some are calling this the biggest cyber attack ever made public. But who's behind it? China? North Korea?
Would you believe it's the same people who allegedly fill up your spam box with weight loss ads, and offers from Nigerian princes?
On one side is a company based in Europe called Spamhaus, an internet spam watch dog. The company creates spam data filters so that 1.4 billion users, businesses and individuals alike, don't have their inboxes filled with unwanted ads.
On the other side is Netherlands-based Cyberbunker, a web hosting service black listed by a Spamhaus because Spamhaus said too many of the companies Cyberbunker hosts send too much spam.
Two companies are having a fight, and as long as it stays there, nobody cares.
But Cyberbunker struck back electronically, pouring data in on Spamhaus, trying to cripple its computers, or so it appears. Spamhaus has so many clients and connected people that there is a fear that Cyberbunk's attack is slowing down business in many places.
Check out CNN's Tom Foreman's story above for more on this virtual threat.
world lead
AMC cashes in on "The Walking Dead"
AMC's "The Walking Dead" is a smash hit. In just three seasons, a show about a police officer who wakes up from a coma to find a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies is taking over television.
Its average audience has doubled in just three years to more than 10 million viewers this season, helping the AMC network rise to the top of the cable heap. Advertising revenue jumped 16% to $157 million in the last quarter of 2012.
"I think that the show's ratings have increased exponentially in this past season both because the show itself has gotten better - it's gotten leaner and meaner and more efficient in the way it presents its adventure," says Ken Tucker, a media critic with Entertainment Weekly. "But I also think that it's offering something that neither the networks nor pay cable television is offering, which is just this spectacle of killing zombies."
You already know sex sells. Turns out the undead do too. Series star Andrew Lincoln, who plays Sheriff Rick Grimes, told CNN he's surprised by the success.
"I mean we're still pinching ourselves. And, I don't know. I mean, of course, you know, the apocalypse and that sort of theme is - seems to be around and in the air at the moment," Lincoln told CNN in 2012.
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