HISTORY PROFESSOR CLAYBORNE CARSON and Hoover Senior Fellow ABRAHAM SOFAER criticized the Bush administration's decision last week to give FBI agents broader domestic spying powers. The new rules relax restrictions imposed by the agency itself, including some adopted a quarter-century ago in the wake of criticism of FBI spying on political and civil rights groups, including slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Today's war on terrorism is a modern-day version of the fight against communism, Carson told the Palo Alto Daily News May 31. "There was a reason why the FBI was restricted from engaging in domestic spying," Carson said. "The threat of communism was used to justify the invasion of [King's] privacy. It killed him." Sofaer told the San Francisco Chronicle that the new rules are an attempt "to distract attention from a failure that had nothing to do with the collection of information." The FBI's problem, he said, "has to do with proper utilization of the information they had."

USA TODAY AND THE WASHINGTON POST last month reported on lecturer JAMES STEYER's new book, The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on our Children. Apart from its newsy theme, the book attracted public attention because its two-page afterword is by alumna CHELSEA CLINTON. The book discusses the media's negative effect on children. Clinton took a class co-taught by Steyer in 1999, and later helped research the book, particularly the subjects of violence and commercialism.

THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE REPORTED June 4 that researchers at the University of Texas-Austin have developed a genetically engineered antibody to anthrax. The research, published this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology, was carried out in part by JENNIFER MAYNARD, now a Stanford graduate student in microbiology and immunology. According to Maynard, the antibodies work in the same way as people who are bitten by a snake are given antibodies from a horse that has been injected with snake venom.

PRE-MED STUDENT WILLSON KIMELI NAIYOMAH was in New York last Sept. 11 to visit Kenya's ambassador to the United Nations. As a Maasai warrior raised to respond to every emergency, Naiyomah said he felt helpless as he witnessed people dying in the streets following the terrorist attacks. When he returned last month to his village of Enoosaen, 250 miles southwest of Nairobi, he told his elders about the tragedy. To show their solidarity, on June 2 the village presented the American people with 14 cows, the most prized and sacred possession in Maasai culture. ABC News and the Associated Press reported that acting U.S. Ambassador William Brencick accepted the gift. The diplomat said it would be difficult to ship the cattle to the United States, so he returned them in exchange for a beaded American flag and traditional goods made by local women that will be displayed at a Sept. 11 memorial in New York.

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