What do the Olympics mean for Rio’s environment?

David Cleary-The Miami Herald, 11/09/09
Naturally we in the Cidade Maravilhosa are delighted to have beaten out the Windy City and snatched the 2016 Olympics from under the nose of the not-quite-glamorous-enough first couple of the United States: even Obama can’t compete with Copacabana when it comes to wowing Olympic committees.
But now that the cheering has [...]

Brazil’s Olympic Run-Up

Oxford Analytica-Forbes, 11/09/09
Preparations for hosting the World Cup and 2016 Games will face municipal and bureaucratic challenges.
Brazil has long been a candidate to host the World Cup, last held there in 1950, as well as the Olympic Games, never before held in South America.
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Interview transcript: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Financial Times, 11/08/09
Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, and Jonathan Wheatley, Brazil correspondent, interviewed President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in London on November 4.
Financial Times: Mr. President, tell me, how is it that Brazil has come out of this global financial and economic crisis so quickly?
President Lula: Well, first of all, I believe [...]

Senate Approved Valenzuela, Shannon’s Confirmation Remains Stalled

The Senate confirmed Arturo Valenzuela, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, for  Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.
Valenzuela’s predecessor, Thomas Shannon, still awaits confirmation to become U.S. Ambassador to Brazil.
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Lula gives state heavier hand in Brazil economy

Raymond Colitt-Reuters, 11/03/09
Emboldened by emergency measures that helped pull Brazil out of a brief recession, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is intervening more aggressively in the economy and betting on big government.
While many governments in the world are plotting exit strategies from the crisis measures adopted over the last year, the center-leftist Lula is [...]

French Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Dies at 100

The Associated Press, 11/03/2009
PARIS — Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about commonalities between tribal and industrial societies, has died. He was 100. The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism — concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially [...]

The U.S. Reinforces Compensation for Fighter Jet Sale

Patrícia Campos Mello-Estado de São Paulo, 11/02/09
The United States improves its proposal to sell 36 F-18 Boeing fighter jets to the Brazilian Air Force (Força Aérea Brasileira). If the Brazilian government buys the 36 jets from Boeing, Embraer will automatically receive a contract to produce and assemble the wings for 58 Super Hornet [...]

Did Brazil make the right choice to tax foreign inflows?

The Financial Times released an article this week, “The Fund should help Brazil to tackle inflows,” criticizing the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) negative reaction against Brazil’s foreign inflow tax. The contributors, senior scholars Arvind Subramanian and John Williamson from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote:
“This response is disappointing not because it is wrong, but [...]

Brazil to probe its military past

Jan Rocha-BBC News, 10/27/09
Twenty four years after the military left power in Brazil, the government is to create a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed by the security forces between 1964 and 1985.
Brazil is the only country in Latin America which has not investigated deaths, disappearances and torture which took place during its dictatorship, or [...]

Brazil keeps economic excitement in check

Lionel Barber-Financial Times, 10/25/09
It is the kind of news that would normally spook investors: Henrique Meirelles, the governor of Brazil’s central bank, is preparing to go into politics.
The threat of political interference used to hang over Brazil’s economy like a black cloud. Yet Mr Meirelles explains with customary aplomb that by joining the centrist PMDB, [...]