"The Kerry campaign has enlisted congressional Democrats to play down expectations of the challenger's performance in the first presidential debate this Thursday, and then flood the airwaves with jubilant analysis that he has won it." Kerry campaign officials asked press secretaries of Democratic members of Congress "to schedule their bosses on television and

"Moblogging - short for 'mobile blogging' - will have a bigger impact on the public relations industry than any other technological change in the past five years," writes Steve Rubel. As weblogs begin to broadcast content from "an intelligent arsenal of millions of connected mobile devices ... suddenly the PR professional is faced with an entirely new set of challenges and opportunities." One of the threats, Rubel warns, is that corporate secrets and intellectual property are bound to leak onto the internet.

U.S. lawmakers blocked a proposed "covert CIA operation to aid [Iraqi] candidates favored by Washington" - suggested because their opponents might have "covert backing from other countries, like Iran." Leading up to Afghanistan's October 9 elections, U.S.