To Rid Slums of Drug Gangs, Police in Rio Try War Tactics

Joshua Partlow-Washington Post, 01/06/2009
From the school balcony, Marcos Cunha had an unobstructed view of Santa Marta, the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood that had been giving his fellow police officers so much trouble.
Looming above him was the rocky peak that police once rappelled down to raid the shantytown. At eye level sat the bullet-pocked Church of [...]

Brazil industrial output falls 6.2%

John Rumsey-Financial Times, 01/07/2009
Brazil’s industrial output dropped 6.2 per cent in November year-on-year, the biggest drop since December 2001, indicating a far faster economic slowdown for the economy than was expected even weeks ago.
The dire numbers are just the latest in a string of miserable data that have led economists to trim gross domestic product [...]

For Brazil’s Stock Market, 62815 Is a Long Way Off

Wall Street Journal, 01/07/2009
Struggling credit markets and flagging global growth are expected to undercut Brazilian stocks in the first quarter of 2009, and perhaps longer, likely extending what turned out to be a brutal 2008.
After five consecutive years of big share-price gains, the Brazilian stock exchange’s bellwether index plummeted in 2008. The benchmark Ibovespa stock [...]

Brazil to issue U.S. dollar-denominated treasury bonds

Xinhua, 01/06/2009
Brazil’s Finance Ministry announced on Tuesday the country will issue U.S. dollar-denominated bonds with maturity in January 2019. It is the first issuance by the Treasury Department in international markets since May 2008.
Brazil managed to raise 525 million U.S. dollars on May 7, 2008, of which 500 million originated from the U.S. and European [...]