After terrorists besieged the Beslan school, a "semiofficial" document circulated among Russian networks demanded "media self-censorship ... 'Special operation' was prohibited, as was 'shahid' [suicide martyr] - a word that, along with the phrase 'war in Chechnya,' has already been prohibited on state TV for a year. ...

The presidential campaign trail offer lessons to the "public affairs community, the PR people paid to push the issues. But what they're watching isn't so much who wins, but how they do it," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua writes. "Nearly every technique for moving public opinion, every tactic employed by public affairs people to get an issue on the radar or to get legislation passed, traces its roots back to a political campaign - usually a presidential one.

A former farm lobbyist will become California's top pesticide regulator, despite complaints from environmentalists. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Mary-Ann Warmerdam, who worked for the California Farm Bureau Federation from 1981 to 2001, to head the state's Department of Pesticide. Warmerdam currently is a lobbyist for Pacific Gas & Electric.