Breathtaking views high above Rio de Janeiro’s beaches and mountains can be yours for just a few dollars a day – if you skip the pricey hotel favoured by the Rolling Stones and sleep in a slum.

Rio’s favelas are infamous for drug and gang violence. But a new hostel called Pousada Favelinha (“the little slum inn”), is attracting adventurous tourists, mainly from Germany, France and the US.

You can only get to the Pousada Favelinha, in the jungle-covered hillside slum of Pereira da Silva, on foot. Most of its 1,900 residents live in unpainted brick hovels they built themselves, but the hostel owners say staying in the slum is safe. It has gained a reputation as one of Rio’s calmest favelas since police killed a neighbourhood drug lord in a shoot-out seven years ago. A police squad also trains there, so criminal gangs avoid it.

Even though the tiny inn has no telephone and only accepts reservations by email, its five rooms were booked solid during Rio’s famous carnival. Each room in the white, three-storey inn has expansive terraces overlooking Rio’s bay.
independent.co.uk

The newest thrill in ‘adventure travel’: forget the wild; instead, visit exotic and dangerous locales where people actually LIVE. How about spending a few days with an Iraqi policeman? Make sure you have the unique and unforgettable experience of standing in line.

Firebrand director Spike Lee has found an unlikely new target for his latest spray: the secretary of state.

Says Lee: “I dislike Condoleezza Rice more than [President] Bush. The thing about it is that she’s gotten a free ride from black people.”

Oh no, he didn’t.

“People say, ‘She’s so successful’ and ‘Look at her position as a black woman.’ She is a black woman who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and said that she never experienced a day of racism in her life,” Lee tells the April issue of Stuff magazine.

“Condi, stop smoking that crack!”

“I know you love your Ferragamo shoes, but come on. While people were drowning in New Orleans, she was going up and down Madison Ave. buying Ferragamo shoes. Then she went to see ‘Spamalot.'”

You heard the man, Madame Secretary. Put down the crack pipe.
nydailynews.com

Around 500,000 Venezuelans will start a four-month military training programme today to turn them into members of the country’s territorial guard. They are the first group of a total of 2m Venezuelan civilians who have so far signed up to become armed reservists.

By the summer of 2007, Venezuela is likely to have the largest military reserve in the Americas, which is expected to be almost double the size of that in the United States.
guardian.co.uk

Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee’s lawyers described as “systematic torture.”

Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.

Bawazir’s attorneys contend that “extremely painful” new tactics used by the government to force-feed him and end his hunger strike amount to torture.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a hearing yesterday that she found allegations of aggressive U.S. military tactics used to break the detainee hunger strike “extremely disturbing” and possibly against U.S. and international law. But Justice Department lawyers argued that even if the tactics were considered in violation of McCain’s language, detainees at Guantanamo would have no recourse to challenge them in court.
washingtonpost.com

Pro-Israel Lobbying Group Roiled by Prosecution of Two Ex-Officials
WASHINGTON, March 4 — The annual gathering of the nation’s top pro-Israel lobbying group, which starts here on Sunday, will be addressed by Vice President Dick Cheney and United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton. Politicians are lined up to warn of the threat from Iran and Hamas. Workshops will offer advice on winning the legislative game on Capitol Hill.

But the official program omits a topic likely to be a major theme of corridor chatter: the explosive Justice Department prosecution of two former officials of the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that is ticking toward an April trial date.

The highly unusual indictment of the former officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, accuses them of receiving classified information about terrorism and Middle East strategy from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced based on his cooperation in the case.

The prosecution has roiled the powerful organization, known as Aipac, which at first vigorously defended Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman and then fired them last March. And it has generated considerable anger among American Jews who question why the group’s representatives were singled out in the first place.

Aipac would appear to be an unlikely target for the Bush administration; it is a political powerhouse that generally shares the administration’s hawkish views on the potential nuclear threat from Iran and the danger of Palestinian militancy.

It doesn’t simply ‘share’ the views, but in large part generates them.

Bush Plan Would Raise Deficit by $1.2 Trillion, Budget Office Says
WASHINGTON, March 3 — President Bush’s budget would increase the federal deficit by $35 billion this year and by more than $1.2 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Friday.

The nonpartisan budget office said that Mr. Bush’s tax-cutting proposals would cost about $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years and that his proposals to partly privatize Social Security would cost about $312 billion during that period.

The office also said Mr. Bush’s proposals to save money on Medicare, Medicaid and most nonmilitary programs would offset about one-third of the cost of his other proposals.

The Bush administration should stop pretending Russia is a genuine strategic partner and adopt a new policy of “selective cooperation” and “selective opposition” to the authoritarian government of President Vladimir Putin, a bipartisan task force has concluded.

In a grim assessment of the recent “downward trajectory” under Putin, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that in Russia democracy is in retreat, corruption on the rise and the Kremlin an increasing obstacle to U.S. interests. The goodwill that developed between President Bush and Putin, particularly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has eroded.

“U.S.-Russian relations are clearly headed in the wrong direction,” the task force wrote. “Contention is crowding out consensus. The very idea of ‘strategic partnership’ no longer seems realistic.”
washingtonpost.com

Leader of Pro-Kremlin Militia Is New Chechen Premier
MOSCOW, March 4 — The leader of a pro-Kremlin militia accused of major human rights violations was confirmed Saturday as the new prime minister of Chechnya, the strife-torn southern Russian republic that has been the scene of two brutal wars in the past 11 years.

Ramzan Kadyrov, 29, the son of an assassinated Chechen president, was unanimously approved by the republic’s People’s Assembly to replace Sergei Abramov, who was injured in a car accident in Moscow in November and resigned this week. The Chechen president, Alu Alkhanov, immediately signed a decree ratifying the appointment.

As first deputy prime minister, Kadyrov was regarded as the real power in Chechnya. He controlled local security services, disbursement of federal funds that support the republic, and its political institutions, including the newly elected parliament. He is expected to ascend to Chechnya’s presidency shortly after he turns 30, the minimum age for the office, in October.

…Q: The supporters of Israel, left supporters of Israel, basically say that the two-state solution is the only real possibility for Israel, and thatâ??s why they push its support in the US. What is your answer to that?

I can see a support for a two-state solution emerging, immediately after the Six-Day war, when Israel did not yet annex the East Jerusalem, did not yet build one Jewish settlement in it. There was a lot of logic of saying that despite, despite the fact that it is only 20% of Palestine could be a basis for a Palestinian state, next to Israel, and that these two states, in the future, would develop in such a way that they might turn it into one state, and even find a way of solving the refugees problem. But this is all water under the bridge.

In 2005, with the number of Jewish settlements, with the Greater Jerusalem becoming one third of the West Bank, and the local, and global, and regional balances of power, I think a two-state solution can only become an indirect way for continuing the Occupation. And as I said before, if we understand that the diplomatic effort has deepened the Occupation, has not brought an end to it, so in the case of the two-state solution we have to liberate ourselves from that paradigm. It can only help the Occupation and the Zionist colonization, and only the beginning of ideas of one-state solution can create a different future there.
informationclearinghouse.info

TEHRAN, March 4 — Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, whose foreign policy was defined by a quest for what he called a “dialogue between civilizations,” warned Saturday that tensions between the Islamic world and the West are taking the shape of a new Cold War.

Khatami, speaking at a government conference promoting interfaith dialogue, said the West was largely responsible. Islam was being cast as the “enemy of humanity” by governments reverting to the polarized worldview that divided the planet for 50 years after World War II, he said.

The West “needs an enemy, and this time it is Islam,” Khatami said. “And Islamophobia becomes a part of all policies of the great powers, of hegemonic powers.

“We are not very far from the era of the Cold War that inflicted a lot of damage on the world.”
washingtonpost.com

New US focus on promoting democracy in Iran
The US State Department has created an office dedicated to Iran to reflect the Bush administration’s new focus on promoting democracy in the Islamic republic, officials said on Thursday.

Establishment of the Office of Iran Affairs follows the request to Congress made by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, last month for an additional $75m this year to spend on influencing democratic change in Iran. The proposed spending has already triggered an internal struggle over who will control the $50m designated for a new Farsi-language television station.

KABUL, March 4 (Xinhuanet) — Four intelligence agents were killed Saturday in a bomb explosion in Afghan southern province of Helmand, a local official said.

“This morning at about 11:00 a.m. (6:30 a.m. GMT) when the intelligence department director of Nawah district traveled in Nadali district with three of his colleagues, their car was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb. All the four persons were killed,” Assadullah Shierzad, the provincial intelligence department chief told Xinhua.

“So far no one has been arrested for the accident, and the investigation is still going on,” he added.

Helmand, together with Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, the former stronghold of Taliban, has become the hotspot of the firefight since the beginning of this year.

Eight Taliban militants were killed, 10 of them were arrested, and four Afghan police were injured in a firefight Friday in Helmand.

After the loss, Taliban carried out several attacks to the official in one of which the district chief of Sangin in Helmand was killed by two militants Friday.
xinhuanet.com

SUSPECTED Sunni militants stormed a small town near Baghdad and executed at least 25 people, including a six-year-old girl, with a single bullet each to the forehead, police said yesterday as a curfew was re-instated in the Iraqi capital.

Most of the victims were poor Shiite labourers at a brick factory in the town of Nahrawan. At least nine others were killed during a gun battle that erupted around Nahrawan power station, which also came under mortar fire.
scotsman.com

SUSPECTED Sunni militants stormed a small town near Baghdad and executed at least 25 people, including a six-year-old girl, with a single bullet each to the forehead, police said yesterday as a curfew was re-instated in the Iraqi capital.

Most of the victims were poor Shiite labourers at a brick factory in the town of Nahrawan. At least nine others were killed during a gun battle that erupted around Nahrawan power station, which also came under mortar fire.
scotsman.com