Brazil Senators Call For Senate President Sarney To Step Down

Gerald Jeffris-The Wall Street Journal, 06/25/2009
High-profile Brazilian senators from both government-allied and opposition parties Thursday called on former Brazilian President and current Senate President Jose Sarney to step down from the Senate presidency, at least temporarily, in the wake of a series of recent scandals involving mismanagement and appointments of relatives to key Senate administrative [...]

Amazon bill controversy in Brazil

Gary Duffy-BBC News, 06/23/2009
The president has to decide by 25 June whether to veto parts of a bill that is due to transfer an area of public land – estimated to be around 670,000 square kilometres (259,000 square miles) – into private hands.
The government originally introduced what is called “Provisional Measure 458″ as a way [...]

Lula to Send Brazil Oil Bill to Congress in July, Bernardo Says

Jeb Blount-Bloomberg, 06/22/2009
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will present a bill aimed at increasing government control of offshore oil reserves to Congress in July before an annual legislative holiday.
Under the proposed new law, Brazil will divide oil output with companies that agree to develop blocks and give Brazil’s government a share of production, [...]

Brazil to pay Amazon small farmers to plant trees

Stuart Grudgings and Brian Ellsworth-Reuters, 06/19/2009
Brazil will pay small farmers to plant trees in deforested Amazon areas to slow rain forest degradation, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Friday as he unveiled a broad plan to protect the region.
The effort may help stave off growing international pressure on Brazil to reduce deforestation that [...]

Not just straw men

The Economist, 06/18/2009
The inaugural summit of the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India, China—came and went in Yekaterinburg this week with more rhetoric than substance. Although Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, called it “the epicentre of world politics”, this disparate quartet signally failed to rival the Group of Eight industrial countries as a forum for economic discussion.
Read more…

Tight rules helped mitigate crisis in Brazil

Financial Times, 06/16/2009
If Bernard Madoff had tried to run his Ponzi scheme in Brazil, it would never have got off the ground.
“There could never be a Brazilian Madoff,” says Paulo Oliveira, director for new business at BM&F Bovespa, the multi-asset exchange formed last year by the merger of the São Paulo derivatives and stock exchanges. [...]

Emerging Economic Powers Meet in Russia

Clifford J. Levy-The New York Times, 06/16/2009
The first summit meeting of the so-called BRIC group — Brazil, Russia, India and China — was intended to underscore the rising economic clout of these four major developing countries and their demand for a greater voice in the world. And Russia, the group’s host and ideological provocateur, was [...]

BRIC to discuss alternative response to crisis

Gleb Bryanski-Reuters, 05/31/2009
Brazil, Russia, India and China will seek alternative solutions to the global economic crisis and are dissatisfied with the way developed countries have focused on helping the financial sector, a senior Brazilian official said on Sunday.
The leaders of the four countries, known by the BRIC acronym, are due to meet in the Russian [...]

French Jet Vanishes on Flight From Brazil to Paris

Caroline Brothers and Sharon Otterman-The New York Times, 06/01/2009
An Air France passenger jet traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared after its electrical systems malfunctioned during a storm with heavy turbulence on Sunday evening, and officials said Monday that a search had begun for the wreckage near a small archipelago off the Brazilian coast.
“We [...]