US Military Bases in Brazil by ROBERT FISK

Strange things happen when a reporter strays off his beat. Vast regions of the earth turn out to have different priorities. The latest conspiracy theory for the murder of ex-Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri--that criminals involved in a bankrupt Beirut bank may have been involved--doesn't make it into the New Zealand Dominion Post.

And last week, arriving in the vast, messy, unplanned city of Sao Paulo, it was a Brazilian MP corruption scandal, the bankruptcy of the country's awful airline Varig--worse, let me warn you, than any East European airline under the Soviet Union--and Brazil's newly nationalised oil concessions in Bolivia that made up the front pages.