Brazil

• Wednesday, May 11th 2011 - 01:30 UTC

  Brazil expects a new record crop totalling 158.7 million tons

  

  Brazil will harvest this year a record crop of 158.7 million tons, 6% higher than last year’s 149.7 million tons, according to the latest release from the country’s Geography and Statistics Institute, IBGE.

• Tuesday, May 10th 2011 - 09:55 UTC

  Brazil considering leasing farm land to foreigners to circumvent sales restrictions

  

  Brazil may start leasing farm land to foreigners to find a way around new legal restrictions on land sales and attract more foreign investment, the agriculture minister said.

• Monday, May 9th 2011 - 19:09 UTC

  Brazil plans to send thousands of students to learn abroad on scholarships

  

  Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that Brazil is the seventh economy in the world and announced that the government is to finance scholarships abroad. “We are the world’s seventh economy and this is due to the effort and sweat of those who made this country grow,” she claimed.

• Monday, May 9th 2011 - 05:57 UTC

  Second body recovered from Air France mid Atlantic wreckage

  

  French police said a second body has been removed from the underwater wreckage of the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean nearly two years ago. A remote-controlled submarine raised a body that was still strapped into an airline seat some 3,900 metres to the water's surface Friday.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 17:29 UTC

  Brazil’s inflation peaks in April, but prices should begin slowing down in May

  

  Brazil’s benchmark consumer price index in April exceeded the upper limit of the government’s target range for the first time since 2005 but officials are confident April was a peak and during May the tendency is for inflation to decelerate.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 17:26 UTC

  Brazilian automobile industry, still strong, begins to feel the tight money pinch

  

  Automobile production in Brazil fell 4.9% and sales dropped 5.5% in April from March, the national automakers' association said on Friday.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 17:24 UTC

  Top US grain processors join the ‘bio-fuel refineries rush’ in Brazil

  Cargill Inc and the world’s largest grain processor Archer-Daniels-Midland Co, are planning to invest about 560 million US dollars in new bio-fuel refineries in Brazil.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 06:17 UTC

  Brazil’s high court unanimously recognizes rights of same-sex couples

  

  Brazil's Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the nation should recognize same-sex unions. The court voted 10-0 in favor of recognizing the unions. One justice abstained because he had spoken publicly in favor of same-sex unions when he was attorney general.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 02:42 UTC

  First body recovered from Air France wreckage in seabed four kilometres deep

  

  An undersea recovery team has retrieved a first body from the wreck of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 with the loss of all 228 on board, French police said on Thursday.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 01:42 UTC

  Boosted by bio-fuels Brazil increases soy bean and oil processing-refining capacity

  

  Brazil’s soy bean processing volume increased 7% in 2010 over 2009 while at the same time reducing idle capacity given the larger crop and a jump in the production of bio fuels, according to a release from Abiove, (Brazilian association of vegetable oil industries).