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The Jordanian businessman at the centre of claims that George Galloway secretly bought oil from Saddam Hussein has a major contract to sell US military technology in Iraq, The Independent reveals.

For years, Target has cultivated an image of itself as the "anti-Wal-Mart," a retailer that refuses to sacrifice workplace standards in the pursuit of higher sales and stock prices. But now, after a decade of meteoric growth at both Target and Wal-Mart, labor groups say the two retailers are no longer very different in the way they treat their workers.

"It's not just a problem of the farmworkers in Immokalee. It's not just a problem for immigrant workers in Florida," say representatives of Coalition of Immokalee Workers, "The problems in the agriculture industry are problems for all of American society."

As much as 16 percent of the $21 billion reconstruction budget would be spent on providing security for its projects and workers -- roughly double the original estimate.

An April report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office found that monitoring of civilian contractors in Iraq was so poor that there was no way to determine how many contractors are working on U.S.-related security and reconstruction projects in Iraq or how many have been killed.

Ceaseless attacks on contractors and facilities have also increasing security demands, with up to 16 percent of all project costs now being spent on hiring armed guards, improving site protection and providing equipment like hardened vehicles and telecommunications systems.

Ugandan graduates left the country for Iraq in spite of protests from Members of Parliament. Special Operations Consulting Security Management Group (SOC-SMG), a Nevada-based security firm, engaged Kasango to recruit people for non-combat security jobs in Iraq and other countries.

Ben & Jerry's "Lick Global Warming" campaign. Last month, in protest against the US government's proposed drilling for oil in Jerry Greenfield -- co-founder of Ben and jerry's is serious about preventing climate change. To protest the Arctic National Wildlife Park, the company made a 1,000lb Baked Alaska and left it to melt outside the Capitol. They've also has set up a Climate Change College, which, each year for three years, will train six spokespeople for the cause.

Police dealing with civil unrest during the G8 summit in Scotland will have controversial weapons that have been blamed for the deaths of 104 civilians in the United States and Canada.

More than 1,000 contracts were issued by U.S. officials in June, about double the usual number. This apparent indifference toward accountability in spending Iraqi money was common among American officials last year as they rushed to sign contracts in the waning days of U.S. control of Iraq, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.