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Police captured Rio de Janeiro’s most wanted alleged drug trafficker…as they prepared to occupy the city’s largest slum.

Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alleged drug lord of the teeming Rocinha slum, was found in bizarre circumstances – in the boot of a car belonging to a man who claimed to be a senior diplomat from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

TV images showed the suspect, known as Nem, looking close to tears after his arrest.

There are diplomats with all their “respect” and power, immunity and hypocrisy, who would probably carry a thug like this to safety in their briefcase – if they could fit him inside. Along with the profits from their own crimes.

Democracy manages to slip into the U.S. Senate

Lael Brainard won Senate confirmation today as the Treasury Department’s top financial diplomat, giving her a key role in U.S. efforts to persuade China to adopt a more flexible currency.

The Senate approved President Barack Obama’s nominee in a bipartisan 78-19 vote that was stalled more than a year by Republican concerns over Brainard’s tax payments.

That’s a year of stalling, hemming and hawing by crap moralists like Jim Bunning of Kentucky. One of the Republican thugs who specialized in blocking unemployment checks.

Nineteen Senate Republicans joined 57 Democrats and two independents in confirming Brainard Treasury Department under secretary for international affairs…

The timing of the confirmation vote is significant as it occurs before meetings this week of the Group of 20, the smaller Group of Seven and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank…

As well as holding a key position in talks with China, Brainard would help shepherd U.S. official positions through the global lending agencies that are being urged to take on a stronger role in monitoring global currency policies.

The Party of NO continues their favorite folk dance – Blocking the Road.

A Qatari diplomat who was questioned by federal investigators after an in-flight disturbance has been released and will not face charges, officials said.

Mohammed Al-Madadi has “been given clearance to travel back to Washington,” said Alison Bradley, a spokeswoman for the Brown Lloyd James public relations firm, which represents the Qatari Embassy. A federal law enforcement official told CNN Al-Madadi will not face charges…

The passenger was in a lavatory for a long time and may have been smoking, a U.S. official told CNN. He also may have made an “unfortunate comment” referring to a shoe bomb when questioned on the plane, the official said.

Fran Townsend, a homeland security official in President George W. Bush’s administration, told CNN that the person involved was a Qatari diplomat and that her sources said the incident may have been a misunderstanding. She said law enforcement officials examined the man’s shoes and were satisfied there were no explosives.

Dealing with an uptight air marshal in the middle of a flight – and making a smart-ass joke about how “I couldn’t get my shoe to ignite” is not the brightest decision – even with a diplomatic passport.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter (.pdf) to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end…”

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer,” Holbrooke said in an interview. “We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him.”

RTFA. The breadth and range of questions being asked publicly is an indication of the transparency gained in the last election.

Support for agreement – and disagreement – with administration policies in the region are stoked by a thoughtful political act. Again, something missing in recent years.

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The United States and Cuba should show some flexibility and take steps to improve relations, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday during a weeklong trade mission to the island nation.

“There is a good atmosphere [between the two countries],” he said at a news conference in Havana on Friday. “It is the best atmosphere I’ve seen in many years…”

In his first trip to Cuba in 13 years, when he negotiated the release of three political prisoners in 1996, Richardson said he is not in Cuba as a special U.S. envoy.

“My main objective is trade and to improve commercial ties with Cuba,” he said, though he acknowledged plans to report recommendations to the Obama administration early next week…

The governor also called on the Obama administration to ease restrictions of biotechnology products, allow Cubans to travel to the United States for academic and cultural exchanges, and implement the changes to Cuban-American travel and remittances announced in April…

Richardson…met with Cuba’s National Assembly president, Ricardo Alarcon, and received a personal letter from former President Fidel Castro.

Governor Bill has always been skilled at diplomacy. He also has a long, consistent history of following through on positive solutions to difficult tasks. Time to utilize his stature in Latin America.

And restoring commerce and normal relations with Cuba is overdue.

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The Senate confirmed veteran diplomat Christopher Hill as U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Tuesday, voting 73-23 to put Hill in chargeof the largest U.S. embassy in the world.

Hill, a career Foreign Service officer, was the lead U.S. negotiator in the now-stalled North Korean disarmament talks. He will take over the Baghdad post at a time when President Barack Obama is attempting to wind down the 6-year-old war in Iraq.

His nomination made it past a key Senate test Monday as opponents failed to block the nomination. All 23 votes against the nomination Tuesday came from Republicans, several of whom argued that the nominee has no hands-on experience in the Middle East and speaks no Arabic.

But Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that Hill had great experience “in negotiating complex, high-stakes, multilateral deals in conflict zones.”

“The entire resolution of Iraq as a success will revolve around the diplomacy that we apply to it and our ability to seek political reconciliation, which will be implemented by that diplomacy,” said Kerry, D-Massachusetts. Hill replaces Ryan Crocker, who was the top American diplomat in Baghdad from March 2007 until February.

Chris Hill has always been an honest man and a conservative. Qualities which didn’t used to be considered contradictory. Especially for a New England Yankee like Hill.

The honesty surely is what confounded both McCain and Brownback – prompting them to lead an attempt to stonewall Hill’s appointment,

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Chris Hill, a career U.S. diplomat who has been Washington’s lead negotiator with North Korea, is expected to be named U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

Hill has extensive experience in Europe. If formally nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate, he would replace Ryan Crocker, an Arabic speaker who has served as U.S. ambassador to Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. Crocker just retired.

“For the secretary and, of course, for the president, Iraq is a high priority and they are looking at Iraq policy and when we have a nomination to put forward, the White House will make that public,” said State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid.

Hill has spent the last four years as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and as the senior U.S. official in multilateral talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear programs.

Earlier in his career, he served as ambassador to South Korea, Poland and Macedonia and as special envoy to Kosovo. He speaks Polish, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian.

I was wondering what would be the next post for Chris Hill. I have no idea what changes he’s gone through in recent decades; but, as a young conservative, his intellectual honesty was praiseworthy.

He’s had the same vaguely middle-aged look since he was 25.

UPDATE: Confirmed, today – 27 February – Chris Hill will be our ambassador to Iraq.