"US military personnel at Guantanamo Bay called Fidel Castro a transsexual and defended the prison for terrorism suspects in anonymous web postings," according to a new report. The report "tracked web activity by service members with Guantanamo email addresses and also found they deleted prisoner identification numbers from three detainee profiles on Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that allows anyone to change articles." Guantanamo personnel also commented on news stories online, "using apparently fictitious names. ... A comment on a Wired magazine story about a leaked Guantanamo operations manual ... urged readers to learn about Guantanamo by going to the [base's] public affairs website, adding that the base is 'a very professional place full of true American patriots.'" Army Lt. Col. Ed Bush "said there is no official attempt to alter information," but "the military seeks to correct what it believes is incorrect or outdated information about the prison." The anonymous edits were mapped to Guantanamo personnel by Wikileaks, a project that publishes government documents.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree where NLC released their reportThe National Labor Committee (NLC) has released a report on sweatshop conditions in China which pinpoints holiday items being made at Guangzhou Huanya Gift Ltd. Company for Wal-Mart, as well as for other U.S. companies, including Christmas House and Gerson Co. European clients of the factory include Christmas Elements (England), Santini Christmas (Italy), Miro (Spain), and Kugelkette (Germany). NLC director Charles Kernaghan released "A Wal-Mart Christmas Brought to You from a Sweatshop in China" in the shadow of the Christmas tree towering over Rockefeller Center in New York City. "Far from kindling the holiday spirit, the conditions under which the mostly young women workers in China produce goods for Wal-Mart are dehumanizing," the report said. Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota is now calling for trade regulation of items produced under improper work conditions. "There is nothing in the law that prohibits against imports of products made from sweatshop labor, and I think that needs to change," Dorgan said at a press conference. Dorgan added, "Chinese sweatshops now produce not only the toys under our Christmas trees, but even the ornaments that hang on those trees. It is completely against the spirit of Christmas to produce ornaments in sweatshop factories where the workers are physically abused and financially cheated. We need to get serious about keeping the products of foreign sweatshops off American shelves." Wal-Mart's spokesperson, Richard Coyle, stated that "As soon as Wal-Mart learned about the Christmas tree ornament report, we contacted the National Labor Committee and they have not returned our call. Now that we have a copy of their report, we have launched an immediate investigation." Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and the world's second-largest corporation in revenue, behind ExxonMobil.

Mike HuckabeeBaptist preacher and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee denies knowing about a financial boost he received from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company back in 1994, when RJR donated $40,000 to a secretive organization called Action America. The front group, set up by paid RJR lobbyists J.J. Vigneault and Greg Graves, worked to foster grassroots opposition to a national health care plan then being advanced by the Clinton Administration. RJR funded Huckabee to fly around the country persuading other evangelicals to oppose the health care plan proposed by Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Clintons' plan was to be funded through an additional federal excise tax on cigarettes, which explains cigarette company opposition. Mr. Huckabee, now a Presidential hopeful who is running on morals and ethics, asserts that he was unaware of the donation, but Vigneault claims Huckabee was present at the meeting with the RJR representative where the idea for Action America was hatched. Vigneault even recalls that Huckabee made the rep step outside to smoke.

"Meta-analyses," or reviews of several studies' worth of data on a single drug, influence patient care and healthcare policy. Increasingly, the people carrying out these meta-analyses have financial ties to drug companies. So researchers at Stanford and the University of California, San Francisco set out "to determine whether financial ties to one drug company are associated with favourable results or conclusions in meta-analyses on antihypertensive drugs," which are taken to lower blood pressure. They found a connection between drug company ties and meta-analyses with favorable conclusions, but not favorable results. That means that -- regardless of what the data actually showed -- meta-analyses done by people with financial ties were more likely to interpret the data as favorable to the drug. The researchers conclude that "meta-analyses, as with other study types, are open to the influence of systematic bias." Their findings also suggest "a failure of peer review," since "editors and peer reviewers must have read manuscript versions of those meta-analyses containing discordant results and conclusions, yet they did not prevent publication of biased conclusions."

Placement of proposed liquid gas terminalsExxonMobil is moving forward on its plans to build a liquid gas terminal off the northeast coast of the U.S. The proposed site for the project, called BlueOcean Energy, is about 20 miles off the New Jersey shore and 30 miles south of Long Island. Reporter Jad Mouawad describes the offshore placement as "a move meant to deflect safety and environmental concerns about proximity to populated areas." Ron P. Billings, Exxon's vice president for global liquefied natural gas, said, "We have tried to learn from our past experiences and that of the industry in general." The offshore neighborhood is getting crowded since "the Atlantic Sea Island Group, plans to build a terminal for liquefied natural gas on an artificial island about 14 miles south of Long Island, a project called Safe Harbor Energy." CMD reported earlier this year on Shell's successful efforts to co-opt local non-profits through grantmaking. The Shell project, Broadwater Energy, is a joint venture by Royal Dutch Shell and TransCanada.

Major food companies are planning "to halt advertising junk food to children under 12 throughout Europe," but in the U.S., McDonald's has found "a nifty way to reach kids ... advertise on report cards." The fast food giant "picked up the $1,600 cost of printing report-card jackets for the 2007-2008 school year in Seminole County, [Florida], in exchange for a Happy Meal coupon on the card's cover." The promotion is an apparent violation of the Better Business Bureau's Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which McDonald's joined last year. Initiative members agree "to limit advertising to children under 12 and focus on better-for-you options." In other advertising news, a New York billboard for an A&E television show "uses technology ... that transmits an 'audio spotlight' from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium." A&E deemed the "creepy" voices-in-your-head effect perfect for the show, which is about ghosts. But Gawker asked, "How soon will it be until in addition to the Do Not Call list, we'll have a Do Not Beam Commercial Messages Into My Head list?"