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In one instance, investigators found that mathematical errors contributed to $3 million in overbilling by a private contractor providing food and lodging at base camps across Louisiana.

Now those promises -- and the public's perception of the Air Force's ability to spend its money prudently -- are being tested by new contracting and public relations challenges. The Air Force is about to award two key contracts worth a total of about $55 billion, and Boeing is in the running for both deals.

The Army is expected to cancel a Lockheed Martin Corp. contract to build a new spy plane, according to industry and Pentagon officials, despite efforts by the defense contractor to solve problems that include lightening the plane's weight.

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 prominent U.S. Senator and other government officials from both Washington and Bogotá stood on a Colombian mountainside above fields of lime-green coca -- the plant sacred to Andean Indians, but also the source of the troublesome drug cocaine. They were awaiting a demonstration of aerial herbicide spraying, part of the U.S. drug war in Colombia.

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.

The industry grew rapidly when the government and corporations paid hundreds of millions of dollars for armed guards after Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq. Now many industry insiders reason that demand for private security in Iraq will begin to decline, and they want to expand beyond just toting guns.

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.

This detailed report provides data on Canada's military exports (between 1990 and 1999) and documents some of the ways in which the federal government is actively encouraging domestic corporations to export a wide range of military equipment to many of the world's most violent and abusive regimes.

Attorneys argued in federal court on Thursday over whether homeowners whose property fell victim to an oil spill from Hurricane Katrina can band together and sue Murphy Oil Corp in a class-action lawsuit.

The federal government has sent nearly 600 auditors and investigators to the Gulf Coast region to monitor $8.3 billion in contracts awarded to help victims of last year's hurricanes, according to year-end figures released by the Department of Homeland Security.

Richard Jones, a former ambassador to Kuwait and deputy of the Coalition Provisional Authority who has been linked to the Halliburton Iraq contract inquiries, has been selected by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as her new coordinator for Iraq.

But the Clinton administration quietly has hired a high-level group of former U.S. military personnel whose job far exceeds the narrow focus of the drug war and is intended to turn the Colombian military into a first-class war machine capable of winning a decades-old leftist insurgency.

Lockheed Martin of Florida and the Federal Laboratories of Pennsylvania have made quite a contribution to life in the municipality of Bethlehem. Or, in the case of Lockheed, death. Pieces of the US manufacturer's Hellfire air-to-ground missile lie in the local civil defence headquarters in Bethlehem less than two months after it exploded in 18-year-old Osama Khorabi's living room, killing him instantly.

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.

While the dead and missing toll rose toward 7000 people and the stock market suffered it's largest week's loss since the great depression due to the terrorist attack on the symbols of U.S. economic and military power, the stock of the weapon and surveillance industries zoomed. The 401 (k)retirement plans of U.S. citizens took their biggest one week hit ever as the Dow Jones fell 14.3% last week, but the big winners of the week were the weapons industry, who were the top eight corporations in percentage increase in the price of their stock.

Eli Lilly, an Indianapolis based company, that has sold insulin products to diabetes patients since 1921, has quietly raised some U.S. prices 700 percent in the last 20 years by marketing so-called improved versions to consumers. Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, has also profited handsomely from this practice.

Six executives of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis have been indicted in a South Korean bribery scandal. The indictments follow similar charges in China, Turkey and the U.S. and allegations of falsifying drug trial data in Japan. Korean prosecutors have recommended that Novartis sales be suspended for six months.