Faced with a "mounting public relations disaster" over its attempt to sue the famine-stricken country of Ethiopia for $6 million, the Nestle corporation has promised to donate the money to hunger relief. But Justin Forsyth of the hunger organization Oxfam calls the offer a "half measure" and calls on the company "unambiguously to drop the claim and allow the Ethiopian government to spend the money on famine relief. ... Nestle has had lots of opportunities to back down over the last year.

"The momentum that ended in Trent Lott's resignation yesterday as the Senate majority leader did not, primarily, come from the traditional behemoths of the US media - the New York Times, the Washington Post and the main TV news networks," observes Oliver Burkeman. Those publications initially failed to report on Lott's racist comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. "In the interim, writers on numerous weblogs, or 'blogs,' were condemning the remarks - and swiftly uncovering evidence of a pattern in Mr.

A whistle-blower's lawsuit has unearthed documents showing that the Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company circumvented the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval process through a PR and advertising campaign. The company's internal memoranda show that it avoided the large clinical trials needed to gain government approval of off-label uses for Neurontin, an epilepsy medicine. Instead, the company paid for small studies and had the results published in medical journals. "The company also hired advertising agencies to help write the medical journal articles," reports Melody Petersen.