The global mining giant Rio Tinto is lobbying the Australian government to amend draft legislation to ensure individual common law agreements with its workers override collectively bargained labor awards and certified agreements.

William Greider meditates on the multiple scandals now roiling Washington, comparing the situation to prerevolution France. Traditional broadcast media, he observes, are among the institutions whose credibility is rapidly disppearing: "Heroic truth-tellers in the Watergate saga, the established media are now in disrepute, scandalized by unreliable 'news' and over-intimate attachments to powerful court insiders. The major media stood too close to the throne, deferred too eagerly to the king's twisted version of reality and his lust for war.

In a scathing column, journalist Neil Shoebridge wrote that if marketers "knew how hard some [PR] firms work to pump up the billable hours they charge back to their clients ...