Brazil

• Wednesday, December 19th 2012 - 01:38 UTC

  Saudi Arabia joins Japan and China, suspends imports of Brazilian beef

  

  Saudi Arabia has suspended imports of Brazilian beef, Brazil’s agriculture ministry said Tuesday, and became the largest country to stop purchases after confirmation of a 2010 case of atypical mad cow disease.

• Tuesday, December 18th 2012 - 03:20 UTC

  Divorce rate soars in Brazil as new legislation makes it easier and faster

  

  Brazil had a record-setting 351.153 divorces in 2011, 45.6% more than in 2010 and the most since the annual statistic began to be kept in 1984, the government said Monday.

• Monday, December 17th 2012 - 21:15 UTC

  Brazil and Argentina bottom of the list in terms of competitiveness

  

  Brazil ranks near the bottom among fourteen emerging powers in terms of competitiveness, due to high capital and labor costs as well as inadequate infrastructure, according to a study commissioned by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) and published by the Folha de Sao Paulo daily.

• Monday, December 17th 2012 - 05:53 UTC

  Blatter warns Brazil about security in football fields and the coming World Cup

  

  The abandonment of last Wednesday's South American Cup final following shocking accusations police had pulled guns on players should serve as a warning for Brazil's World Cup organizers, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said this weekend.

• Saturday, December 15th 2012 - 20:59 UTC

  Petrobras selling its assets in Argentina; YPF one of the interested companies

  

  Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras is putting its Argentine assets up for sale and will start accepting bids from interested buyers as early as this week, Buenos Aires newspaper La Nacion reported Friday.

• Friday, December 14th 2012 - 07:36 UTC

  Banco do Brasil expects to open its first commercial branch in China early 2013

  

  Government owned and the largest in the country in assets, Banco do Brasil received this week approval from China’s regulator to open a commercial branch in the country which is Brazil’s main trading partner.

• Friday, December 14th 2012 - 07:07 UTC

  Brazil outbound travel, preferably Europe and US one of the fastest growing

  

  In terms of outbound travel South Americans are ahead of everyone else in the Americas. In 2012, they undertook 12% more trips abroad than last year, marking a new record. The country clearly driving growth is Brazil.

• Friday, December 14th 2012 - 05:01 UTC

  Brazil plans to build 800 regional airports linking cities with 100.000-population

  

  Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, told reporters in Paris her government intends to build approximately 800 regional airports in Brazil. The project considers that each city with over 100.000 inhabitants should have an airport within a 60-kilometer range.

• Friday, December 14th 2012 - 04:55 UTC

  World’s largest pulp and forestry complex begins operation in south Brazil

  

  Brazilian group JBS-Friboi, a leading global exporter of meat products, has inaugurated an industrial complex for pulp production with an investment of 6.2 billion Reais (approx 3 billion dollars).

• Thursday, December 13th 2012 - 23:39 UTC

  Brazilians dissatisfied with Judges and Police, trusts Armed Forces and Catholic Church

  

  A majority of the Brazilian population, 63% is dissatisfied with the performance of the police forces and 90% considers the justice system ‘too slow” according to a survey from the Getulio Vargas Foundation think-tank Law School, released this week.