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Like almost anything involving Wal-Mart these days, the dispute has less to do with specific legal or regulatory questions than it does with the deep rift the company has opened across the American landscape.

A prominent former insider is criticizing the administration's handling of Iraq's reconstruction. And there's more to come.

Two and a half years ago, Public Interest Watch, a self-described watchdog of nonprofit groups, wrote to the Internal Revenue Service urging the agency to audit Greenpeace and accusing the environmental group of money laundering and other crimes. What is clear is where PIW has gotten a lot of its funding: Exxon Mobil Corp., the giant oil company that has long been a target of Greenpeace protests.

A House committee said Monday it would review several post-Katrina hurricane contracts for waste and abuse, citing recent concerns about limited oversight and the haste in which they were awarded.

In the past decade, according to a private water suppliers trade group, private companies have managed to extend water service to just 10 million people, less than 1 percent of those who need it. Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to clean water, the United Nations says.

By using contract employees for intelligence work, government agencies lose control over those doing this sensitive work and an element of profit is inserted into what is being done. Also, as investigations have revealed, politics and corruption may be introduced into the process.

Water rights groups say transnational corporations are increasingly sinking their teeth into Latin America's water services, but studies by the United Nations and other experts point to the contrary: these companies are backing off, and may not come back any time soon.

The pain and suffering of victims of toxic agrochemicals invaded the international negotiations on biosafety in Curitiba, Brazil this week with the accounts of a Paraguayan mother whose son died from herbicide poisoning and local residents of a neighbourhood in Córdoba, Argentina facing a severe health crisis caused by the fumigation of surrounding fields.

Police and rock throwing demonstrators clashed during a protest against the American mining company, Freeport-McMoRan, today leaving three policemen and one Air Force officer dead in the remote province of Papua, witnesses and officials said.

Facing increasing congressional scrutiny, Google Inc. has hired a lobbying firm that includes the son of U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.