The ad's reach -- it has received more than 1.7 million hits on YouTube in just a few days -- and the unmasking of its maker offer a glimpse of the changed media landscape of a nascent presidential campaign that is bitterly competitive 10 months before first voting.

The new popularity of web video allows broad distribution of clever political messages, which are often negative attack ads that may not readily be traced to their creators.

Phillip de Vellis, a strategist with the Washington-based consulting firm Blue State Digital, which hosts the Obama campaign web site, said he made the ad.

"I did it. And I'm proud of it," Mr de Vellis said in a response posted on a website site this week.

Mr de Vellis said he had acted on his own, without the knowledge of the Obama campaign or his employer.

P&G won the $19M lawsuit when the court concluded that the four had spread a false accusation that P&G subsidised Satanic cults.

The rumour had proved popular with evangelicals in the US. During the 1960s, a story began circulating that the corporation was controlled by Satan worshipers. A moon-star symbol was used by the company on many of its products from 1882 to 1985, which was considered suspect.

The stars in fact stand for the thirteen original American colonies. But the arrangement of stars in the symbol was said to secretly spell out the Revelation 13:18 "number of the beast": 666.

Without examining the facts, many people, most notably evangelicals, signed petitions against Procter & Gamble and boycotted their products in the 1980s and 1990s.

This latest case is one of several unfair competition suits P&G has brought refuting the Satanism slurs.

According to P&G, the four distributors had passed on to customers the notion that its logo - featuring a bearded man looking over a field of 13 stars - was a symbol of Satan.

"This is about protecting our reputation," said Jim Johnson, P&G's chief legal officer.

Amway pointed out that it had successfully defended itself in an earlier case brought by P&G that had been connected with the rumours.

It had also, it said, done everything it could to get the rumour stamped out.

The Community Rights Counsel (CRC) said Wednesday that the new Judicial Conference Policy on Judges' Attendance at Privately Funded Educational Programs has not yet produced any public disclosures of travel expenses on judicial websites. According to the Judicial Conference:

The Judicial Conference adopted a private seminars disclosure reporting policy that requires educational program providers and judges to disclose certain information relevant to judges' attendance at privately-funded educational programs.

The disclosure policy takes effect on January 1, 2007. This means that any organization covered by the policy that issues an invitation on or after January 1, 2007 (for a program commencing after that date), to a federal judge to attend an educational program as a speaker, panelist, or attendee and offers to pay for or reimburse that judge, in excess of $305, must disclose financial and programmatic information.

The policy requires disclosure within 30 days, but CRC, a judicial ethics watchdog group, conducted a review and found that "80 days after the January 1, 2007 effective date of the new policy, not a single junket has been reported." The CRC criticized the Administrative Office for the US Courts for "applying the policy in a way that seems designed to delay the reporting of information as long as possible" by determining that the policy only applies to invitations issued on or after January 1, 2007.

The Judicial Conference of the United States is the policy-making body of the federal court system and is led by Chief Justice John Roberts. A court spokesperson said Wednesday that effective implementation of the new system could take some time.

Inmate Kenneth Biros had waited for the decision hours past his 10 a.m. scheduled execution time at Ohio's death house.

Prisons director Terry Collins said the execution would not happen Tuesday.

The execution team had been waiting in a holding pattern while the court decided, ready to administer the lethal injection if the court had granted to the state's request to go ahead with the execution.

The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that had ruled to delay the execution, including the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that refused earlier Tuesday to allow a hearing before the full court to consider a state appeal.

During arguments, the Missouri Attorney General argued that while the prosecutor's statements may have been improper, they did not influence the fairness of the guilt phase of Weaver's trial. Justice Souter seemed to agree with Weaver's counsel, indicating that some of the statements made by the prosecutor had no relationship to the facts and evidence presented during Weaver's trial; Justice Scalia noted that the guilt and sentencing phases of trials are "quite different."

The law firm of Dilworth Paxson LLP has signed a 16-year lease for 72,000 sf in the East Tower of Centre Square. Executives of Comcast Corp. currently occupy the space on the three top floors and will vacate on completion of Comcast Center, now under construction at 1600 JFK Blvd.

Comcast now occupies approximately 400,000 sf in the 1.8-million-sf, two-tower Centre Square property, which is located at 1500 Market St. The Dilworth Paxson lease absorbs nearly 20% of that pending vacancy. The aggregate value and rent rate of the new lease are undisclosed. According to a report from the local office of CB Richard Ellis, the average asking rent rate in the Market West submarket closed 2006 at $25.10 per sf.

"The Center City office market is rapidly changing in a positive direction," Christian Dyer, a first VP in the local CBRE office, tells GlobeSt.com. He, EVP David Jarjisian, and first VP Nick Gersbach, represented the owner, HRPT Properties Trust, in the lease negotiations.

Of the entire Center City office market, Dyer adds, "In contrast to a couple of years ago, there are now very few large blocks of space available. Overall rent rates have increased about 10% within the past 12 to 18 months, and we expect another 10% increase over the next 12 months."

He says Center Square is currently 85% occupied, which includes the Comcast occupants. "Net, net, we’re already doing deals for that space," he says. Lincoln Financial, which now occupies two floors aggregating 58,000 sf in the complex, has announced that it will relocate some offices to suburban Radnor, but Dyer says the net loss is still unknown.

Newton, MA-based HRPT acquired Centre Square from Met Life for $183.5 million in 2002. A $25-million renovation is reaching completion at the complex, which is often called "the clothespin building," in reference to the Claus Oldenburg Clothespin sculpture at the front plaza that links the 40-story and 32-story, class A properties. They were built in 1973.

Dilworth Paxson will relocate from its current quarters at Mellon Bank Center, which is also owned by HRPT. Dave Campoli, HRPT VP, who is located here, says the law firm "has always been an important tenant in our Center City portfolio. We’re pleased that they elected to relocate to another HRPT building."

A law firm that is suing the tobacco industry over the marketing of "light" cigarettes said Wednesday it will not oppose plans by Philip Morris USA''s parent company, Altria Group Inc., to spin off its Kraft Foods business.

The law firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld and Toll has filed a class action suit against several tobacco companies in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, alleging they deceived smokers about the safety of their "light" cigarettes.

Attorney Michael Hausfeld previously said he would consider filing an injunction to stop Altria from divesting Kraft if it would leave the company unable to pay the $200 billion in damages he is seeking for his clients.

Hausfeld''s firm said Wednesday that the spinoff could actually strengthen Altria financially, and thus "may prove in the best interests of our clients."
New York City-based Altria Group Inc. plans to spin off packaged food maker Kraft next week. Altria currently owns 88.9 percent of Kraft''s outstanding shares.