Three years from now, Beijing will host the Olympic games, giving the "Chinese superpower-in-the-making" an opportunity to "present a progressive, urbane and open face to a world increasingly nervous about its growing might," writes Catherine Armitage. However, the Beijing Olympics organizing committee (BOCOG) isn't taking phone calls from reporters, for fear that they might get a call from the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong.

We first wrote about the PR campaign to market sewage sludge as fertilizer in our 1995 book, Toxic Sludge is Good For Your. Now Florida Power and Light, the operator of a Florida nuclear plant, "appears to have shipped radioactive waste to ordinary landfills, municipal sewage treatment plants and some unknown locations in the 1970's and early 80's," reports the New York Times. "The contaminants were then hauled away with sludge. ...

"On the issue of the Iraq War, the disconnect between the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party establishment and political reality in America is growing by the day," writes David Sirota.