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A Senate Democratic committee heard testimony Monday alleging fraud and waste by the Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq, Kellogg Brown and Root, or KBR. KBR denied all the allegations. It used to be a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Pushing beyond the corporate corrupting frontiers blazed by the Clinton administration, the Bush team is making clear that it intends to deliver on its campaign promises to strengthen Big Business's grip over government policy-making.

President Gloria Arroyo has ordered an investigation into reports that Filipino workers were forced to go to Iraq to work on the U.S. embassy there despite a ban on them traveling there. A report from the watchdog organization CorpWatch said that "other South Asians" were indeed working for First Kuwait Trading and Contracting in Iraq.

The U.S. Congress and the mainstream media are picking up on some of the issues that CorpWatch has been digging into over the last couple of years. Namely, trafficking of workers to Iraq; coal power plants on Diné land; and Iraq reconstruction.

The tobacco industry exerted pressure in Switzerland throughout recent decades to prevent the approval of stricter measures against smoking, says a study sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO).