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A leading advocacy group has taken the Bush administration to task for failing to include human rights considerations in its new national energy plan, according to a letter obtained by Reuters yesterday.

The largest retailer in the world has 3,000 stores in the U.S. as well as chains in Britain, Germany, China, Korea, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. It opens a megastore every two days. It is the U.S.'s largest private employer, with 925,000 people on the payroll, and the second largest employer in general after the Federal government. The company also boasts the largest computer, surpassing the Pentagon's, and the world's largest fleet of trucks. Wal-Mart might as well appear in the dictionary under the word huge. I know the above statistics because I just watched ''Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town,'' a documentary film by Micha Peled that will air on PBS in early June. ''Store Wars'' is not exactly a critique of Wal-Mart's business practices, but it is hard to come away with a favorable view of the company.

The Chiefs, the Elders, and tribal members met for the first time in hundreds of years back in June of 1988 with one goal in mind. They united in solidarity and in one voice to protect the Porcupine River Caribou Herd calving area in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil development and exploration.

A U.S.-made Huey II military helicopter manned by foreigners wearing U.S. Army fatigues crash lands after being pockmarked by sustained guerrilla fire from the jungle below. Its crew members, one of them wounded, are surrounded by enemy guerrillas. Another three helicopters, this time carrying American crews, cut through the hot muggy sky.

Corpwatch has acquired a copy of a $600 million dollar contract between DynCorp and the U.S. State Department. The company carries crop fumigation and eradication against coca farmers in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. In Colombia it is also involved in drug interdiction, transport, reconnaissance, search and rescue missions, medical evacuation and aircraft maintenance, among other operations.

A federal land agency on Monday upheld billionaire Philip Anschutz's right to drill an exploratory oil well in an area of south-central Montana where Native American tribes want to preserve sacred rock drawings.

George Bush has made no secret of the primary mission of his presidency: to remunerate the companies which supported his bid for power. To the oil industry he has given the Arctic wildlife reserve and the abandonment of American action on climate change.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that ''rogue regime'' for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

As U.S. efforts to reduce drug trafficking out of the Andes escalate, more U.S.-supplied equipment is flowing into the region and more Americans are becoming involved -- and occasionally coming under fire. But because of the growing privatization of U.S. military efforts abroad, their presence is often unseen.

The World Bank on Saturday said it had canceled a conference on how to fight poverty due to take place in Spain next month because of concerns anti-globalization groups would try to disrupt the event.