On July 15, "an unlikely alliance" rallied in Washington DC to "stop the war on the poor" by increasing U.S. domestic oil and gas production. The rally was organized by the self-described civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the pro-drilling front group Americans for American Energy and the conservative group High Impact Leadership Coalition. Rally speakers stressed "the need to expand domestic oil and gas production with the goal of reducing fuel costs for low-income households that feel a disproportionate pinch from rising energy prices," reports Jenny Mandel. Signs at the rally included "My family needs affordable energy" and "Environmental groups don't feed my family." CORE has received funding from ExxonMobil. CORE's Niger Innis said the group favors "government spending on oil shale, coal and drilling on the continental shelf and throughout Alaska," because "when these resources are developed ... that is going to have a direct impact on the price of fuel." While some rally attendees told Mandel about their difficulties "budgeting around today's gasoline prices," others "backed away from a reporter with a notebook. ... One woman, who declined to give her name, said she was demonstrating at her boss's behest."

"Two cups of McDonald's iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk" during Las Vegas station KVVU's morning news show, writes Abigail Goldman. It's a "punch-you-in-the-face product placement" that will last six months. KVVU's news director says the "nontraditional revenue source" won't impact his station's reporting. But an executive with the marketing firm that negotiated the deal, Omnicom's Karsh/Hagan, said "the coffee cups would most likely be whisked away if KVVU chooses to report a negative story about McDonald's," reports the New York Times. McDonald's has similar product placement arrangements with "WFLD in Chicago, which is owned and operated by Fox; on KCPQ in Seattle, a Fox affiliate owned by the Tribune Company; and on Univision 41 in New York City." Other stations owned by KVVU parent Meredith Corporation, "including WFSB, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, Conn., and WGCL, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta -- are also accepting product placements on their morning shows." The Writers Guild of America West recently urged the Federal Communications Commission to require "real-time disclosure" of product placements and to ban video news releases, calling VNRs "an attempt to trick the viewer to think that a paid advertisement is actually news."

Ads from groups weighing in on the U.S. presidential campaign "have begun getting sharper and more numerous," reports NPR's "All Things Considered." The conservative pro-war group Vets for Freedom has already spent $1.5 million on ads in such "key presidential states" as Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with plans to "spend exponentially more." Their ads show military veterans supporting Senator John McCain's stance on Iraq, claiming, "The surge worked." Ads from the AFL-CIO labor union also feature veterans, who express respect for McCain's war record while questioning his plan "to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq." Religious groups are also getting into the act. The Chicago-based political action committee Matthew 25 Network is supporting Senator Barack Obama with ads on Christian radio stations, which tend to draw conservative listeners. On the other side, the Christian Defense Council is distributing a poster that calls Obama the "abortion president."

Asked why people like Patrick Moore and Stewart Brand, who made their name as environmentalists are now nuclear power advocates, the highly regarded energy efficiency analyst Amory Lovins was blunt: "I think they haven't done their homework. And I keep asking for their analysis and not getting it, because I don't think they have one." Nuclear power, he argues, is no solution to global warming. "If you buy more nuclear plants, you're going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar, and you'll get it about twenty to forty times slower" than efficient use of electricity, renewables and micropower, he said. Lovins is also dismissive of claims that a "nuclear renaissance" is sweeping the world. "It's a very carefully fabricated illusion. And the reason it isn't happening is there are no buyers. That is, Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies," he told Amy Goodman.

The Swiss drug company Roche has been suspended from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) after adverse findings over its promotion of the weight-loss drug Xenical. The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority, the body created by ABPI to handle complaints over its self-regulatory code of conduct, found that an agreement by Roche to invest £55,000 in a weight loss clinic that would prescribe the company's drug "brought discredit upon, and reduced confidence in, the pharmaceutical industry." The authority also found that by selling Xenical to the clinic owner, who posed as a pharmacist, Roche "had sold a prescription only medicine to a member of the public." The complaint was brought by Ryta Kuzel, the former head of UK regulatory affairs for Roche, who argues that she was fired because the company feared she would blow the whistle on the Xenical scandal.

"The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a recently created front group for pharmaceutical interests, has been churning out industry-funded propaganda that demonizes evidence-based medicine, universal health care, the government, and all critics of pharma while attempting to portray industry as a selfless provider of cures and education," write Norman Kelley and Adriane Fugh-Berman. CMPI's Peter J. Pitts has written opinion pieces for publications including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which fail to mention that Pitts is a senior vice president at Manning, Selvage and Lee (MS&L), a leading PR firm for the pharmaceutical industry.