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National police confirmed that several South African companies and businessmen were being investigated by SAPS Crimes Against the State Unit (CASU) detectives for recruiting former specialised policemen and soldiers to work in Iraq.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and chairman of Senate Finance Committeem, sends Feb. 17 letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting update on Bush administration's position regarding legal status of the Coalition Provisional Authority and questions of contract fraud in Iraq.

Though contractors can use lethal force, the U.S. government does not vet who is hired. The Pentagon says it does watch how companies perform and investigates any alleged misconduct.

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations.

The U.S. government hired South-African mercenaries as bodyguards and police trainers. The contract later proved embarrassing when two of the former bodyguards were arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea.

The U.S. government assumes no responsibility for the professional ability or integrity of the persons or firms whose names appear on the list.

The prospect of supplying the nation with the world's fifth-largest military budget is enough to make any European defense contractor take notice. Beijing's defense outlay has been growing by 10% to 12% a year for the past decade, to an estimated $151 billion.

Franklin Willis, a former official with the Coalition Provision Authority, told the Senate Democratic Policy Commmittee that after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was "like the Wild West -- awash in $100 bills." One contractor, Custer Battles, was paid with $2 million in fresh U.S. bills, stuffed into a gunnysack, he said.

A U.S. State Department official said that Washington had earmarked $35 million to recruit and train a new army in Liberia and Dyncorp was ready to start the project within the next few weeks.

In this 50-mile-long stretch of rural India west of Hyderabad, the country's fifth largest city, almost 40 percent of the country's bulk pharmaceuticals are produced (a large proportion of them for export). The progress the the people of Digwal have made in protecting themselves against the industry's wastes puts them in a league of their own.