Brazil

• Saturday, April 4th 2009 - 09:43 UTC

  With tax breaks, March auto industry sales in Brazil are record

  

  Auto industry sales in Brazil soared in March as consumers flocked to dealers to benefit from government tax breaks, according to data from the national dealers’ association Fenabrave.

• Saturday, April 4th 2009 - 02:18 UTC

  A Brazilian oil carnival?

  

  How much access western energy firms win to Brazil’s vast offshore oil fields hinges on complex political currents in the country – and how well the companies navigate these, argues Juliet Hepker.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2009 - 10:58 UTC

  Brazilian inmates use pigeons to smuggle cell phones

  

  Brazilian police have discovered inmates using carrier pigeons to smuggle cell phones onto a prison farm in the south eastern state of Sao Paulo.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2009 - 10:50 UTC

  Tepid isolated signs of recovery from Brazil

  

  Brazil’s latest statistics revealed some encouraging numbers. The foreign trade surplus in March was 1.77 billion US dollars, the same as the February surplus and slightly higher than forecasted. Although expected, industrial production rose 1.8% in February over January boosted by a slight recovery in credit availability and the automotive sector.

• Sunday, March 29th 2009 - 16:16 UTC

  Lula da Silva blames US, UK and Spain for current crisis

  

  Brazilian President Lula da Silva on Saturday at the Progressive Governance summit in Chile told representatives of the United States, Britain and Spain they had a major responsibility for causing the global economic crisis.

• Sunday, March 29th 2009 - 16:05 UTC

  Brazilian minister fails geography test and is sacked

  

  The governor of Brazil’s richest state Sao Paulo sacked the Secretary of Education following the printing of thousands of school books with maps of South America which ignored the existence of Ecuador, inverted geographically Uruguay and Paraguay and showed Bolivia sharing territory with Paraguay.

• Saturday, March 28th 2009 - 08:31 UTC

  Paraguay-Brazil Itaipú energy dispute is “like Panama Canal negotiation”

  

  Paraguay rejected this week Brazil’s proposals regarding the non renegotiation of the Itaipú treaty which regulates energy production from South America’s largest hydroelectric dam shared by the neighbouring countries.

• Friday, March 27th 2009 - 07:47 UTC

  UK and Brazil call for 100 billion USD trade-credit stimuli

  

  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Brazilian President Lula da Silva agreed to call on G-20 to provide 100 billion US dollars in trade credit, a quick completion of global trade talks and for countries breaking free-trade agreement to be named.

• Thursday, March 26th 2009 - 17:58 UTC

  UN underlines HIV-tuberculosis link

  

  The head of the United Nations agency charged with coordinating the fight against HIV/AIDS is in Brazil this week promoting awareness of the link between the epidemic and tuberculosis and the necessity to address discrimination in the South American country’s response to HIV.

• Wednesday, March 25th 2009 - 07:57 UTC

  Brazil begins to cut natural gas dependency from Bolivia

  

  President Lula da Silva said that Brazil can’t depend for its natural gas solely on Bolivia and anticipated that with the recent opening of a liquid gas plant, the fuel can be imported from the Caribbean. Anyhow “we will continue to purchase Bolivian gas until at least 2019”.