Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is opening a lobbying firm, the Ashcroft Group, to provide "strategic consulting, security and internal investigative services, and crisis counseling" to countries, corporations, and industry and political associations.

"The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias," reports the New York Times.

On World Press Freedom Day, Amnesty International celebrates "the mighty blog" as having "profound implications for press freedom and human rights." The organization states, "People in Iran and China have used blogs to expose violations by their governments and provide the outside world w