Next Sunday Brazilians will be going to the polls to elect mayors and councilors in 5.570 cities and towns across the country in what is the first test of the mood of voters since the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff last month.
When opposition party Senator Aecio Neves officially kicked off his presidential campaign last week, he posted a video on Facebook calling for a “fairer, more efficient, and more generous Brazil”. However the word ‘efficient’ struck some as an odd rallying cry in a tropical country known for its, well, un-Swiss-like approach to time.
An unusually heavy hailstorm in Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, has brought residents out onto to the streets to play with the ice it left behind. For many of them, it was the first time they had seen huge ice balls littering the streets of the subtropical city.
Brazil's government has unveiled plans to invest 54.2 billion Reais (approx 26 billion dollars) over the next four years to modernize the country's ports, whose high costs and notorious delays are eroding the country’s competitive edge.