Ahead of the World Cup draw on Friday the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Football Supporters Federation (FSF) are teaming up to urge England fans to do their homework before booking travel to Brazil.
“Unthinkable, unacceptable and unsupportable” was how Joanisval Brito Goncalves, Senior Legilslative Counselor for International Affairs and Defence Issues at the Brazilian Senate, described the Argentine government’s attitude to the Falkland/ Malvinas Islands in a press conference held in Stanley on Wednesday afternoon.
Fifa has admitted that not all of the stadiums for the Brazil World Cup will be ready in time for its original deadline of January. But Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, said he was confident all 12 stadiums would be ready when the tournament kicks off in June following a meeting with the local organizing committee.
A delegation of political advisors from the Brazilian Congress is currently in the Falkland Islands. The group is accompanied by Andrew Ford First Secretary FCO Brasilia.
A safety engineer at the World Cup stadium where a giant crane collapse killed two workers allegedly warned his supervisor of possible problems with the operation, only to have his concerns brushed aside, a labor union leader charged on Thursday, as sniping over the accident heated up.
Corruption is not new in Brazil nor does it surprise public opinion but the magnitude of such extended practice is only coming to light with a recent study from the powerful manufacturing lobby, FIESP (Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo State) which states that the average annual cost of corruption in the country is between 1.38% and 2.3% of GDP, which the World Bank in 2012 estimated at 2.3 trillion dollars.
Mining giant Vale has agreed to pay the Brazilian treasury 9.6 billion dollars to settle a decade-long dispute over back taxes, after the country’s tax authority offered to reduce the corporation's original 14.1bn debt.
Brazil's state-owned telecom provider Telebras signed a 560m dollar contract to deliver a satellite for secure communications on Thursday, following months of outrage over revelations of US cyber spying. A statement said a joint venture between Telebras and Embraer would deliver the geostationary satellite for strategic communications by late 2016.
A truck with fourteen cameras with a 360 degree angle and a range of eight kilometers plus a fourfold increase in police numbers has been displayed along Rio do Janeiro most iconic beaches following an outbreak of 'arrastraos' or dragnets in which tens of teenagers stampede on to beachgoers to steal whatever they can get hold off.
As was anticipated Brazil raised its benchmark interest rate to 10% from 9.5% on Wednesday lifting borrowing costs back to double-digit territory to battle high inflation in Latin America's largest economy.