Johnnie Thomas, a seventy-year-old African-American woman, can't board an airplane these days without a lengthy hassle. Her name appears on a "master terrorist list" because it happens to resemble one of the aliases used by a blond, blue-eyed man accused of murdering his wife who has already been captured and is sitting in jail. She has spoken with the FBI, FAA and other government acronyms, and no one knows how to take her name off the terrorist list.

Stephen J. Hedges profiles the Rendon Group, the PR firm now working for the Pentagon in the "war on terrorism." Company owner John Rendon, who calls himself "an information warrior and a perception manager," has gotten rich working in places like Panama, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the secrecy surrounding his work makes it difficult to assess what, if anything, Rendon is actually accomplishing. "They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor at O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

In mid-April, Citigroup launched a $100 million global ad campaign titled "This is Citigroup." Using images of elderly people, and people from Hong Kong to Brazil, the ads portray a caring bank, committed to local communities. But the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which has waged a boycott against Citigroup for the past two years, says the bank completely ignores environmental and social concerns and is one of the biggest contributors to global warming.