Brazil launches shantytown works program
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva travelled to a notoriously lawless shantytown to launch a public works project Friday, seeking to improve housing, roads, schools and sewage systems. The nearly $1 billion program aims to wrest control of slums from heavily armed drug gangs by creating thousands of jobs and bringing an official presence into the squatter settlements that cover most of Rio de Janeiro’s hillsides.
Associated Press/Google, March 7, 2008

Eleven killed in Brazil shootings
Eleven people, including a bodyguard to the Rio de Janeiro state security chief, were killed in three shootings in the crime-ridden Brazilian city, police say. The 44-year-old police sergeant was going to work at the residence of the security chief, Jose Beltrame, when a group of criminals stopped his car and tried to rob it.
The Age/Reuters, March 1, 2008

Global urbanisation trends unstoppable, UN report says
Half of the world’s 6.7 billion people are expected to live in urban areas by the end of 2008 for the first time in world history, the United Nations said Tuesday [February 26]. The world population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion by 2050, to 9.2 billion. By that time, urban population is expected to rise from nearly 3.4 billion in 2008 to 6.4 billion in 2050.
The Earth Times, February 26, 2008

Vigilantes take over Rio shanty towns
The sprawling favelas of Rio de Janeiro are home to more than a million of Brazil’s poorest citizens. Many of these shanty towns are controlled by drug gangs, and there are regular and violent confrontations with the police. But a growing number of these neighbourhoods are being taken over by what are known here as militias, complicating an already difficult security situation.
BBC News, March 8, 2008

Favela Faces is a bilingual website that uses photographs and short video interviews to tell the stories behind the faces of four people living in or around the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These four stories relate the problems facing favela residents, the ways in which they are working to overcome them, and how they have and continue to improve their communities with the limited resources available to them. Find out about the lives of Tio Souza, Tiana, Zé Cabo, and Paulinho.

www.favelafaces.org

Cutting Edge: The Indian Miracle?
One of the best known UK news journalists, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, reveals the dark side of modern India - discrimination against Muslims, a rise in Hindu nationalism, farmers driven to suicide by debt and a caste system which prevents those at the bottom from securing any but the most menial and humiliating jobs. As the gap between rich and poor turns to a chasm, Guru-Murthy questions the social stability of a country that will soon enter the top five of the economic giants. This is a program that delivers the answer to a question we should all be asking ourselves - what is the real cost of an economic boom?
SBS TV, Tuesday March 11 @ 8:30 pm

Poverty, Peace and Justice
O Lord, God of life,
who cares for all creation, give us your peace.
May our security not come from arms, but from respect,
May our force not be of violence, but of love.
May our wealth not be in money, but in sharing.
May our path not be of ambition, but of justice.
May our victory not be from vengeance, but in forgiveness.
Open and confident, we want to defend the dignity of all creation, sharing, today and forever, the bread of solidarity and peace.
In the name of Jesus, your holy son, our brother,
who, as victim of our violence, even from the heights of the cross gave us all forgiveness. Amen

A prayer from an ecumenical conference in Brazil, calling for an end to poverty as the first step on the path to peace through justice.

www.cafod.org.uk