The Wall Street Journal reports that Public Interest Watch (PIW), a non-profit 'watchdog' group which sucessfully lobbied for an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax audit of Greenpeace, has been heavily funded by ExxonMobil. Two years after PIW urged an IRS investigation, Greenpeace was subjected to a three-month long audit.

The Government of Sudan -- tired of international media focusing on the country's ongoing genocide -- paid for an upbeat eight-page advertising insert in Monday's New York Times. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports that Summit Communications prepared the insert which "extols the investment opportunities in the energy-rich state" but "has no rebuttal to United Nations and U.S.

A soldier who blogs from Iraq is upset that he didn't hear the country was on the brink of civil war until he happened to phone home to his parents. "That was the first I’d heard about the mosque getting blown up and this was two or three days after it happened," he writes. "I’m IN Iraq and have no idea what’s going on.