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Federal authorities in New York today charged David B. Chalmers, a Houston oil trader, and his company, Bayoil, with making millions of dollars in illegal kickback payments to Iraq while trading oil under the program. Separate charges were brought against Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman who figured in a Washington influence-peddling scandal some 30 years ago, accusing him of acting as an unregistered agent for Iraq in behind-the-scenes negotiations in the United States to set up and administer the program.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that still permits
agricultural uses of the pesticide lindane. More than 50 countries--including
all of Europe, Canada, and most recently Mexico--have phased out lindane use in
agriculture. Ninety-nine percent of remaining lindane use in the U.S. is for
seed treatment of a handful of grain crops.

The Defense Department is unable to track how it spent tens of millions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. war on terrorism, Congress's top investigator said. While there was no doubt that appropriated funds were spent, "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth," he said, referring to an accounting effort that is under way for Congress.

Pentagon auditors have questioned $212.3 million of $1.69 billion that a Halliburton subsidiary charged the government over the past few years, mostly for importing fuel to Iraq under a no-bid contract. Halliburton spokeswoman Beverly Scippa said in an e-mail that the questioning by auditors "is all part of the normal contracting process."

In the thick of the reconstruction effort, American Energy Association's representative Charles Ebinger proposed, Afghanistan should jack up power tariff with a view to speeding up the revival of its economy hit by decades of war.

Maurice R. Greenberg, a former titan of the insurance industry who is at the center of a wide-ranging investigation into possible financial manipulation, will not answer regulators' questions today, his lawyer said yesterday.

Until now, ads have appeared occasionally and haphazardly in video games. But a new advertising agency hopes to bring a more aggressive marketing approach to interactive media. The aim is to put up billboards and make product placements for mainstream advertisers in the cyberworlds of sports, shooting and strategy games.

From research patents to high-stakes partnerships, Jennifer Washburn spent years researching the links between industry and the American University. In this exclusive interview with CorpWatch's Jennifer Borden, Washburn talks about what she found, why it matters and what you can do about it.

Many of the 800 U.S. military advisors in Colombia are assigned to Arauca where California-based Occidental Petroleum in a joint partnership with the Colombia state company Ecopetrol runs the main oilfield. Occidental lobbied heavily for this project, which marks a departure from the erstwhile U.S. policy of only assisting ostensible narcotics enforcement operations in Colombia.

Iraqi officials have crippled scores of water, sewage and electrical plants refurbished with U.S. funds by failing to maintain and operate them properly, wasting millions of American taxpayer dollars in the process, according to interviews and documents.