The cover of the upcoming issue of the New Yorker magazine bears a satirical cartoon that incorporates practically every jab the right wing has taken at Barack Obama and his wife Michelle: the couple is pictured standing in the White House Oval Office dressed in Muslim garb. Barack is wearing a turban, Michelle has an "Angela Davis"-type afro hairdo and is shown toting a machine gun. An American flag burns in the fireplace as the couple engages in a "terrorist fist-bump." A portrait of Osama bin Laden hangs over the fireplace. The cover is titled, "The Politics of Fear." Both presidential campaigns quickly condemned the lampooning cover as "tasteless and offensive." Jeffrey Goldberg, a blogger at the Atlantic.com laments the whole situation as "the death of humor."

Nuclear advocates often point to France as a success story, with 80% of the country's electricity coming from nuclear power. But a recent leak at the Tricastin plant in Bollene, near Avignon, has raised concerns about health, safety, and transparency. The site houses both a nuclear reactor and a radioactive treatment plant. "Approximately 30 cubic metres of liquid containing unenriched uranium spilled from an overflowing reservoir at the Tricastin facility, which handles liquids contaminated by uranium, into the ground and into the Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers." The public was not warned of the breach until the day after it occurred, nor was the government notified in a timely fashion. The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) inspected the Tricastin plant after the leak and "found that existing prevention measures were deficient." Until more testing can be done, "People in nearby towns have been warned not to drink any water or eat fish from the rivers ... Officials have also cautioned people not to swim in the rivers or use their water to irrigate crops." An anti-nuclear non-governmental organization is planning legal action against the plant's operator, Societe Auxiliaire de Tricastin (Socatri), over its delay in informing the public.

As CMD recently reported, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, have instituted a voluntary, and therefore unenforceable, code to guide drug makers' relationships with doctors. Now, thanks to pressure from Congress, most notably by Senator Charles Grassley, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) needs to respond to concerns about the influence drug company money has on the association and its members. "In 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the association's $62.5 million in financing." There are serious questions about the association's leadership as well. "One of the doctors named by Mr. Grassley is the association’s president-elect, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg of Stanford, whose $4.8 million stock holdings in a drug development company raised the senator’s concern." The New York Times analyzed Minnesota data from last year on drug company funding of doctors, finding that "on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none."

Former Congressman Curt Weldon's employer Defense Solutions got a good deal in Iraq. So good, that "the deal, for decades-old, equipment, included terms so lopsided, they likely would have been illegal under U.S. law." Defense Solutions got a contract with the Iraqi government in 2005 to refurbish obsolete Soviet-era Hungarian tanks. While U.S. law would dictate that the company's fee be tied to performance, Defense Solutions' contract not only ensures payment, it also gives them a percentage of the total cost. Even the Pentagon admits that "A cost plus percentage of cost type arrangement would encourage the contractor to experience as much cost as possible to receive a greater amount of fee." The status of the tanks is not known, and the amount paid to Defense Solutions is confidential. The contract was signed on the Iraqi side by Ziad Cattan, who was put in place by the U.S. to oversee Iraq's defense procurement. During his time in Congress, Weldon was on the House Committee on Armed Services and chaired the Military Procurement Subcommittee under Armed Services.