Protects shipments from water, dirt and damage caused by excess movement.

Among the accords was an agreement on ways to protect shipments of nuclear materials and to cooperate on Russia's lagging program to destroy its stocks of chemical weapons.

The Justice Department said the officers "used their official positions to protect shipments of cocaine."

Prosecutors said the 12 officers had taken a total of $73,400, in payments of between $2,000 and $25,400, to protect shipments of cocaine and money belonging to what they thought was an illegal trafficking operation.

Among them is Global Risks Strategies, a British company that hired Fijian troops to help protect armored shipments of the new Iraqi currency around the country.

In Brussels today, military authorities of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization completed a plan to protect such shipments by deploying 6,000 to 11,000 troops.

Business records are now the mainstay and the vault door, with plate glass revealing its locks and gears to view, now protects daily shipments of computer tapes.

In the largely unregulated money-courier industry, the operations of these two companies illustrate the wide range of methods used to protect shipments and also underscore the disagreements within the industry as to what constitutes security.

There can be no doubt that piracy has grown beyond a joke, and that in this time of grain shortages we must protect shipments of grain from the east to Italy.

A small United Nations force is already on the ground, but it has proven unable to protect shipments of food and medicine from pilfering by rival Somali clans.