Thanks to Molly Ivins for mentioning our work in her recent column about "strategic lawsuits against public participation" (SLAPPs), in which corporations file harassment lawsuits to silence their critics. Ivins cites the experience of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which "has already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd.

Following the revelation that British police gave out false information about the shooting of a terrorism suspect who turned out to be innocent, Simon Hattenstone urges greater skepticism about official police accounts. After the shooting of Brazilian student Jean Charles Menezes, police claimed that he had been wearing an unseasonably bulky, padded jacket that might be concealing a bomb, and that he ran from police and vaulted a ticket barrier at a subway station before being shot dead.

Public relations "is coming of age" in India, writes Ramesh Narayan, the founder of an advertising agency in Mumbai. Its emergence has been accompanied by some shady practices, such as press confererences where reporters receive a "press kit which contained relevant material and a gift. ... Considerable time was spent in deciding what gift should be purchased.