The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the National Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco Prevention, and Floridians for Youth Tobacco Education warn that the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting Latino children. Not only do Latino communities have relatively low smoking rates - making them "ripe for an industry seeking to boost sagging sales" - but Spanish-language marketing often "goes under the radar of the Federal Trade Commission." The advocacy groups pointed to R.J. Reynolds' "Kool be true" campaign, which recently ran an eight-page color ad in Latina magazine with pictures of musicians and the line, "It's about pursuing your ambitions and staying connected to your roots." The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids wants data to be collected on tobacco ads targeting different ethnicities. An RJR spokesperson called their cigarettes "multicultural," saying, "Do we want adult Hispanics to smoke our brand? Yeah. Just like we want African-Americans and whites to smoke our brands."

"The U.S. State Department has set up a rapid-response office dedicated to countering international news reports about the U.S. in the Middle East and the Muslim world that diverse from the ideas and values the Bush administration is seeking to export." The office, under PR czar Karen Hughes, "monitors global news stories and distributes a one-page report each morning to administration officials and policy makers in Washington." Hughes is also expanding the State Department's speaker's bureau and encouraging ambassadors and public affairs officers "to become more vocal on major issues and do more speeches and TV interviews." "Regional Arab speakers" are being recruited, "to speak on behalf of U.S. interests on the Al-Jazeera TV network," an outlet previously shunned by the Bush administration. Lastly, the department's new technology initiative uses "web chats, streaming video, and text messaging to amplify the government's message and make it relevant to younger audiences."

The economy is booming in the Arab emirate of Dubai, and so is the public relations industry. "Someone recently remarked that anyone who could rent a space at Dubai Media City was opening a PR agency," jokes John Badenhorst, director-in-charge at Landmark PR & Events. But according to Tim Burrowes, editor of Dubai-based Campaign Middle East (a weekly newspaper for the advertising and media industries), "The major problem for the PR industry is that there are a lot of crooks and charlatans operating here – and standards are often woeful."

"CBS affiliate WUSA-TV was charging the [Washington] DC government as much as $100,000 annually to promote breast cancer awareness during newscasts." From 2002 to 2004, anchors at the Gannett-owned station were required to encourage viewers to go to the station's website for information about breast cancer - next to a banner ad for the city's Human Services Department. Through their "Buddy Check 9" program, the TV station also encouraged viewers to remind women friends or family members to perform self-exams for breast cancer. The city's contracts with the station, obtained by The Washington Times, specify payments were for "on-air mentions ... of the Buddy Check 9 program" and of the station's website, "for the Department of Human Services' banner." The station's manager said, "We did not sell news time," but the chair of the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee said the "line between what's news coverage and what's paid advertising" needs to be "fairly distinct."

"DuPont Co. hid studies showing the risks of a Teflon-related chemical used to line candy wrappers, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and hundreds of other food containers," according to a former employee and leaked company documents. The chemical, Zonyl, degrades into perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the safety of which is debated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. The leaked documents describe "laboratory tests showing [Zonyl] came off paper coating and leached into foods at levels three times higher than the FDA limit set in 1967." Another test showed rats and dogs fed Zonyl for three months "had anemia and damage to their kidneys and livers." The EPA has accused DuPont of repeatedly failing "over a 20-year period to submit required data about PFOA," and will hold a hearing on the issue this month. DuPont settled one PFOA contamination class-action lawsuit for $107.6 million but faces another.

“It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how (the Iraq) war began,” Bush scolded his critics in his Veterans Day speech on November 11. But as Robert Parry observes, Bush is the one doing the rewriting. "Bush’s argument is that he didn’t lie the nation into war; he and his top aides were just misled by the same faulty intelligence that Congress saw," he writes. In reality, however, "the White House sees far more detailed intelligence than what is shared with Congress." Parry adds that "perhaps the strongest evidence of Bush’s proclivity to lie about Iraq came after the invasion, when he began falsifying the record – rewriting history – with claims that Saddam Hussein had barred U.N. weapons inspectors from entering Iraq. ... The significance of this provable lie to the other Iraq War falsehoods is that it demonstrates Bush’s intent to deceive."

An anti-war poster by Kelly Griebl, from MiniatureGigantic.com

"The internet has added a whole new dimension and level of artistic sophistication to anti-war and anti-imperialist art and propaganda during the Iraq war and surrounding events," writes Kari Lydersen. On websites such as PeacePosters.org, MiniatureGigantic.com, AnotherPosterForPeace.com and OverMyDeadBody.org, "graphic designers and grassroots propagandists from far-flung corners of the globe (though most heavily concentrated in Europe and the US) have posted their work on web sites and circulated it by email in the hopes that others will reproduce and display it freely."