Halliburton

WASHINGTON - Pentagon auditors said Halliburton Corp. might have overcharged by more than $100 million on a contract to deliver fuel to Iraq in the early days of the war, according to a report released yesterday. Among other items, the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency said Halliburton charged $27.5 million to deliver $82,100 worth of liquefied petroleum gas. It called that "illogical." The report also faulted Halliburton for misleading auditors, poorly managing multimillion-dollar subcontracts and failing to deliver key documents to justify prices paid for fuel.

Can an investor make a buck by investing in the stock of one of the rapidly growing dollar-store chains? My recent visit to one of the more than 16,000 dollar stores that dot our land found many items we've come to expect from these stores that aggressively have picked up where the old F.W. Woolworth & Co. dime stores left off. I carefully examined but did not buy the party cups, clothesline, makeup brushes, laundry detergent, paint scraper set, toy...

NATIONALLY Diebold Inc.Shares of the company, whose electronic-voting machines were criticized as vulnerable to hacking and breakdowns, rose $1.72, or 3.5 percent, to $50.39 yesterday, after computerized ballots showed few signs of trouble in the presidential election. Halliburton Co. Shares of the world's largest oilfield-services company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, jumped $1.54, or 4.3 percent, to $37.08.

WASHINGTON - Army Corps of Engineers commanders awarded a lucrative contract extension to Halliburton Co. this month by circumventing the corps' top contracting officer, who had objected to the proposal, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Bunnatine Greenhouse, the organization's top contracting official, questioned a decision by Corps of Engineers commanders to award a contract extension to Halliburton, the oil-services company run by Dick Cheney until he became vice president, without the competitive bidding designed to protect U.S. taxpayers.

NATIONAL Halliburton contracts probed The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co. The line of inquiry expands an FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq. [Page 3a] Seeking flu vaccine imports The Bush administration said yesterday that it is working to buy 5 million doses of flu vaccine from manufacturers in Canada and Germany, mixing the issue of prescription drug imports with the flu shot shortage.

SUNRISE, Fla. -- President Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry directly challenged each other's credibility as they stumped yesterday in the two big swing states that each believes could deliver the election -- Florida, with its trove of 27 electoral votes, and Ohio with 20. Sweeping through South Florida, Bush delivered a blistering -- and familiar -- attack on Kerry's foreign policy, saying he wanted to mark the one-year anniversary of Kerry's "no"...

CLEVELAND -- For 90 minutes last night, Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards blistered each other in a highly acrimonious and sometimes personal debate that mirrored the harshly negative tone of the tight 2004 presidential contest. Edwards, a freshman North Carolina senator in the biggest moment of a brief political career, tried to put Cheney, one of the most experienced men in government, on the defensive over the Bush administration's leadership in Iraq and domestic policies that, he said, favor powerful interests over the needs of ordinary people.

Taking the profit out of drug trade is cure for killing Why is the Baltimore homicide rate so high ("Homicides on pace for nearly 300 by year's end," Oct. 2)? Why are so many young black men being murdered by other young black men? The reason seems pretty obvious. Directly or indirectly, it can all be traced back to the illegal drug trade. Street drug dealers in poor black neighborhoods are the role models. They are the ones with money in their pockets. They set the fashions. It's their values that spread through the neighborhoods: Take no stuff and get quick revenge.

Halliburton Co. said yesterday that it might shed the subsidiary being investigated for possible overcharges on a huge military services contract in Iraq because the business is a drag on its share price and profit. A sale or spinoff of KBR would end Halliburton's business in Iraq, where at least 45 employees supporting U.S. troops have been killed. Iraq contracts worth as much as $18.6 billion have made Halliburton and its former chief executive, Vice President Dick Cheney, a target for criticism by Democrats, including presidential candidate John Kerry.