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A company controlled by Democratic Party donor Norman Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing.

Political fortunes and high costs have forced some presidential candidates to switch from using chartered private jets to those of corporations, including John McCain, who had previously sponsored a bill limiting use of corporate jets by candidates.

European commissioners, the continent's regulators, have been criticised by their own watchdog for refusing to divulge details of meetings they and their staff have held with lobbyists.

An Alaskan Inupiat Eskimo firm has been awarded a multi-million dollar no-bid contract to feed Bolivian soldiers and police in that country's continuing drug war, raising questions concerning the firms on-going relationship with former Halliburton subsidiary KBR and the US Senate's Alaskan Native Corporation privilege.

Two investors in Reed Elsevier have sold their shares as a protest that the publishing giant runs arms fairs which have included the sale of torture equipment.

A so-called "vulture" fund has been given permission by a British court to enforce a claim for tens of millions of dollars theoretically owed by Zambia.

If the European Union's eight-year effort to tighten laws governing chemicals testing has spawned one of the biggest and most costly industry lobbying campaigns that Brussels has ever seen, it has also given new impetus to efforts to regulate how lobbying is done at the European Commission.

In order to influence the new laws that encompass the 25 countries of the European Union, now the world's largest single economy, some 15,000 lobbyists have flocked to Brussels, its political heart. The public relations firm Burson-Mastellar is one of the most active among them.

Tony Blair admitted yesterday that there was a direct link between donating large sums of money to the Labour Party and being nominated for a seat in the House of Lords.

Mexico's most powerful business group is putting its money where its mouth is only days before Sunday's presidential vote, with thinly-veiled TV ads critical of the leftist front runner.

Did you hear the one about how the Bush Administration only awards federal contracts to sycophants?

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Alphonso Jackson suggested at a forum in Dallas that federal contracts would not be awarded to those who have political disagreements with President Bush.

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