John D. Graham founded the industry-funded Harvard Center for Risk Analysis that last week issued a whitewash report on mad cow risks in the US. Now Graham has a new government post at the Office of Management and Budget where he is leading the Bush administration's assault on environmental, health and safety regulations. The secret plotting between business lobbyists and Graham has even angered a lobbyist who leaked information to the Washington Post. The documents "provide another glimpse of behind-the-scenes strategy-setting by business lobbyists" such as the U.S.

Western media accounts have generally offered sketchy details about last week's bloody prison riot in in Qala-i-Jhangi, a fort on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. In most reports, the riot is described as an unprovoked uprising by suicidally fanatical Taliban soldiers.

Journalist Richard Lloyd Parry visited the village of Kama Ado, which has ceased to exist after "American B-52s unloaded dozen of bombs that killed 115 men, women and children." According to the US Department of Defense, however, nothing happened there. "A Pentagon spokesman, questioned about reports of civilian casualties in eastern Afghanistan, explained that they were not true, because the US is meticulous in selecting only military targets associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network.