New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent has critiqued the practice by his newspaper and others of relying on information from "expert analysts" without informing readers that many of the experts represent the interests of their financial sponsors. "Bad reporters find experts by calling up university press relations officials or brokerage research departments and saying, in effect, 'Gimme an expert,'" he writes. "Really bad reporters, paradoxically, work a little harder: knowing the conclusions they want to arrive at, they seek out experts who just happen to agree with them.

"As part of the Bush administration's effort to boost the nuclear power industry, physics students at Langley High School will become the first in the country to use a new curriculum from the U.S. Department of Energy that promotes nuclear energy," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The debate around genetically modified organisms "is fragmenting global food markets and putting political pressure on food exporters to choose between producing natural" or GMO crops. As "big biotech companies ... are looking for growth opportunities in Asia to compensate for the problems they have encountered in European markets," Thailand developed "a seven-year plan to ... [become] a regional biotech hub." The Thai government "commissioned a team of U.S.