
China and Europe take centre stage at Davos on Wednesday, a day after Brazil's hard-right President Jair Bolsonaro promised reform and respect for the environment to the world's business elite.

Brazil's newly-elected populist President Jair Bolsonaro addressed the world's business elite in Davos on Tuesday, vowing to transform Latin America's largest economy into a more investment-friendly country. On his first international trip since becoming president, Bolsonaro delivered the keynote speech at the World Economic Forum.

Police and soldiers are being deployed in large numbers to Brazil's northeast to fight a wave of gang violence fueled by the overloaded, collapsing prison system. More than 400 elite federal troops have been sent to the city of Fortaleza and the rest of Ceara state to reinforce overwhelmed local cops, who face a dramatic rash of attacks on government buildings, buses, police stations, banks and bridges by well-armed gang members.

Brazil is moving toward a self-monitoring system for food processors, Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina Dias said on Friday, including meatpackers still recovering from an inspection scandal that hurt trade with key markets. Dias said in an interview that Brazil's new business-friendly government plans to send draft legislation on self-monitoring to Congress in the first half of this year.

A trip to China by lawmakers from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's party has stirred anger in the far-right leader's entourage, partly because of his wariness of the Asian power but also because of the group's stated mission. The delegation of eight members of Bolsonaro's ultraconservative Social Liberal Party (PSL) said it was on the visit to check out Chinese facial-recognition technology, with a view to it maybe being used in Brazil to combat crime.

Brazilian and US officials met Venezuelan opposition leaders in Brasilia on Thursday to discuss the political crisis in the oil-rich country ruled by president Nicolas Maduro, Brazil's foreign ministry reported.

Brazil plans to eliminate visitor visas for Americans, the country's tourism minister said on Wednesday, as President Jair Bolsonaro seeks to turn around the lagging tourism sector and engineer cosier relations with the United States.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s president Mauricio Macri said they agreed to continue integrating their economies (number one and two in South America), as strategic partners, by “perfecting” the Mercosur trade block and pressing ahead with negotiations that are already underway, such as the ongoing free trade and cooperation agreement with the European Union.

The Bolsonaro family is using social media to present their life as a reality soap opera. The carefully crafted, highly-watched presidential telenovela (soap-opera) is setting the narrative and circumventing traditional media. On the sixth day, the Messia[s] reclines barefoot on the sofa of the Granja do Torto presidential residence. Next to him sits the faithful family dog, Beretta. His glasses casually perched upon his nose, the master browses social media on his smartphone.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday signed a decree that will temporarily make it easier for Brazilians to buy guns, despite fears the move could aggravate already staggering violent crime.