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Despite extensive media coverage of the kidnappings, beheadings and suicide attacks on civilian workers, one in ten applicants for jobs with the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, remain willing to take those well-paying truck driver, food service, laundry and maintenance positions in Iraq.

The U.N. oil-for-food program chief under scrutiny for alleged corruption and mismanagement blocked a proposed audit of his office around the same time he's accused of soliciting lucrative oil deals from Iraq, according to investigators.

With South African mercenaries having shown up in civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, and, now being active in Iraq, South Africa will review tough new laws to try to dissuade citizens from becoming embroiled in war zones.

Nearly 40% of start-ups in a new USA TODAY study employ engineers, marketers, analysts and others in jobs created in India and other nations. The study found that many U.S. start-ups, speeding the pace of globalization, now bypass the USA for nations where customers and cheap labor are plentiful.

"Private soldiers" have been operating in a legal limbo, with precious few rules governing their activities. However, a handful of legal cases in the U.S. are beginning to define the legal boundaries under which these companies can operate.

In a little-noticed shift, for-profit outfits have replaced the Pentagon as the chief trainers of the country's fledging police force. Just over 700 contractors -- more than previously disclosed -- are now training more than half the Iraqi Police Service.

The difference between Kroll and DynCorps, two private security companies is night and day. Kroll was like commuting to the office. We generally obeyed simple traffic laws. A trip with DynCorps is the proverbial "E-ticket" ride.

Public relations giant Omnicom has received almost a quarter of a billion dollars in contracts from the federal government for public relations work. At least one has been labeled "covert propaganda," another involved paying off a journalist and opinion-maker.

Kimberly-Clark is a tissue product manufacturer that relies on massive amounts of virgin fibre to produce its products - it uses over 2.5 million tonnes of virgin tree pulp each year and less than 19% of its fibre in North America comes from recycled sources.

O Globo newspaper says that more than 500 Brazilians have been hired as mercenaries to watch US military facilities in Iraq and the Brazilian Labor Ministry will investigate whether there were irregularities or not in the employment of Brazilians.