
The first decline in food prices in two years provided temporary assistance to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s efforts to tame inflation. Prices as measured by the benchmark IPCA index rose 0.03% in July and more encouraging with prospects for prices to remain unchanged.

Mercosur has become characterized for “bad leadership and worse presidents” of the countries that make up the block, since there is no incentive for the regional organization and it has become “an ideological battle political field”, said Cesario Ramalho da Silva, president of the Brazilian Rural Society.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff officially confirmed her attendance to the inauguration ceremony of Paraguayan president-elect Horacio Cartes next 15 August, according to the Transmission Committee that is coordinating the event

Bribing a public official in Brazil could become a very onerous mistake for local and foreign businesses under a law enacted that for the first time makes companies liable for bribes paid by their employees.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff moved quickly this week to improve bus services in the metropolis of Sao Paulo, where protests over a fare increase in June triggered an outburst of national discontent that battered her popularity and questioned the country’s infrastructure for two major world events in 2014 and 2016.

Influential Latin American newspapers have been extremely critical of Brazilian diplomacy in its unsuccessful attempts to ‘subdue Paraguay’, while at the same praising the landlocked country’s dignity in demanding from Mercosur respect and compliance with the rule of the law.

Responding to claims that former president Lula da Silva ‘is returning to politics’ and thus conditioning her re-election bid next year, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said the former trade union leader ‘never left politics’ and their relation ‘can’t be dissociated’. She also ratified Finance minister Guido Mantega.

Paraguayan president-elect Horacio Cartes declined a personal invitation from his peer Dilma Rousseff to attend Francis mass on Sunday in Rio do Janeiro, the closing event of the pope’s visit to Brazil, according to one of his top foreign policy advisors.

International issues helped Mercosur to close ranks and give a false image of unity during the last summit held in Uruguay, according to diplomatic sources in Montevideo that are surfacing details of a bitter exchange behind doors between Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff.

Brazil is cutting spending for the second time in two months to help meet its fiscal target as it forecasts slower growth this year which was also confirmed according to the latest Central Bank survey. The economic data was announced while Brazil had its eyes and ears in Rio do Janeiro to receive Pope Francis.