Two advertising executives turned novelists have launched a new company that plans to pay established authors to write specially commissioned fictional books on demand for government departments and businesses seeking to convey "difficult ideas" to the public. "Already there are takers," reports the Independent of England.

The prominent Patton Boggs PR firm is distributing a document on Capitol Hill on behalf of its client, Saudi Arabia. The document portrays the Saudis as partners in the "war on terror" and victims themselves of terrorism.

During the 1950s and 60s, FBI agents kept a file on Mad Magazine, worrying that its wisecracks about J. Edgar Hoover and spoofs about the John Birch Society and draft dodgers might be communist propaganda. Thanks to the Freedom of Information-Privacy Acts, the FBI-MAD files are now available online, accompanied by an interview with Mad editor Al Feldstein.