"Civic Progress, a St. Louis-based group made up of the heads of the region's largest corporations, is paying Jay Lawrence, who is co-chairman of Fleishman-Hillard's corporate reputation management unit, to play a behind-the-scenes role in the city school reform effort," O'Dwyer's PR reports.

"As frustration over their lengthening deployment grows among troops in Iraq, soldiers are smacking head-on into limits on their public speech," writes Steve Liewer, a correspondent for the European version of Stars and Stripes magazine. Troops interviewed in Germany and Iraq say they have been briefed to refer questions to a public affairs specialist and that soldiers have been getting in trouble for speaking out. "I'm not comfortable telling you what I really think, and I'm not going to lie to you, so it's better if I just don't say anything," said one soldier.

"In England, they shot the messenger," the Los Angeles Times' Robert Scheer writes, referring to the apparent suicide of British biological weapons expert David Kelly. The scientist, who worked for the British Ministry of Defense, found himself at the center of a battle between the British government and the BBC over a BBC report that the government "sexed up" a September 2002 intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons.