2/8 - Alan Dershowitz

• Reference to Low-Fat Diet Study. A major study by the National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative found that low-fat diets did not significantly reduce the incidence of breast cancer, heart disease or stroke in healthy women aged 50-79 (release on-line here). The study tracked 48,835 women who were followed for an average of 8.1 years.

• Reference to Gonzales. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended President Bush's authorization of the National Security Agency to intercept what Gonzales called "communications where one party to the communication is outside the U.S. and the government has “reasonable grounds to believe” that at least one party to the communication is a member or agent of al Qaeda, or an affiliated terrorist organization" in a February 6 Senate hearing (prepared remarks on-line here).

• The Word: Eureka. President George W. Bush called for greater focus on math and science education in his State of the Union address (on-line here), proposing to train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science and to encourage more professionals in the sciences to visit classrooms.

• Better Know a District. Rep. Chaka Fattah is on-line here.

• Reference to Khan. Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan admitted in February 2004 that he and other scientists sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya in the late 1980s and early 1990s, acts that U.S. intelligence apparently missed for years. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf subsequently pardoned Khan, saying that Khan was still his "hero" for helping Pakistan become a nuclear power in 1998. Musharraf later said that the amnesty was conditional and would not cover any additional acts not yet disclosed.
  The revelations about Khan raise many questions about a black market in nuclear technology. "What we are seeing is a very sophisticated and complex underground network of black market operators not that much different from organized crime cartels," top UN nuclear weapons inspector Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on February 3, 2004.
  Pakistani officials reportedly began investigating Khan in late 2003 after evidence emerged that Pakistani technology appeared to be connected to Iran's and Libya's nuclear weapons programs. Such evidence emerged as Iran and Libya provided greater access to the IAEA, developments that the Bush administration has hailed as a consequence of the war in Iraq.

posted by Stephen Lee @ 2/09/2006 08:45:00 AM