The Bush administration has announced that an eight-year-old, $2 billion federal program to create high-mileage gas vehicles was being scrapped and a new program -- focusing on hydrogen fuel-cells -- was being created. According to Jack Doyle, author of Taken for A Ride: Detroit's Big Three and the Politics of Pollution, this new fuel-efficiency initiative is more PR than progress.

Burson-Marsteller's hiring of Lord Melchett is the focus of professor George Monbiot's weekly column in The Guardian: "Because regulation works, companies will do whatever they can to prevent it. They will threaten governments with disinvestment, and the loss of thousands of jobs. They will use media campaigns to recruit public opinion to their cause. But one of their simplest and most successful strategies is to buy their critics.

Theta Davis chronicles the rise of the Independent Media Center (IMC) movement, which sprang to life in Seattle, during protests there against the World Trade Organization in the fall of 1999. "After Seattle, IMCs began to pop up around the world, from South Africa to New York City. At current count there are more than 60 centers in 25 different countries. Some, like Seattle and New York, have permanent, physical offices.