
Brazilian oil workers and oil giant Petrobras were locked in a power struggle over the company’s privatization plans, with the union saying thousands of employees are on an indefinite strike.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday he wants a good relationship with Argentina and it is up to the foreign ministers of both countries to agree on a meeting with his peer Alberto Fernandez, since the announced summit scheduled for March first in Montevideo, had fallen through.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro celebrated Friday after a crime index showed homicides fell to their lowest level in more than a decade during the first year of his term.

Argentine president Alberto Fernández said he was not sure to attend the inauguration of Uruguayan president Luis Lacalle Pou, next March first, when he was expected to meet his Brazilian peer Jair Bolsonaro. Anyhow Fernandez insisted he was most willing to have an interview with Bolsonaro whenever possible.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has proposed a meeting with his Argentine peer Alberto Fernandez on March first in Montevideo when Uruguayan president-elect Luis Lacalle Pou takes office. The information was announced by Argentine foreign minister Felipe Solá, after meeting president Bolsonaro for fifty minutes at his office in Brasilia.

A suspect in the 2018 assassination of an outspoken Afro-Brazilian member of Rio de Janeiro's city council was shot dead on Sunday after he fired on police sent to arrest him, Brazilian authorities said.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro introduced a controversial Bill that opens up indigenous lands, many of them in the Amazon, to mining, agricultural activities and hydraulic energy production. The conservative president described the measure, which still needs approval in Congress, as a “dream” while indigenous leaders have labelled it a “genocide Bill.”

Brazil posted a trade deficit of US$1.745 billion in January, official data showed on Monday, the first shortfall for the month of January in five years and an indication that trade might continue to be a drag on overall economic growth.

The number of Americans booking flights to Brazil has jumped 39% since the government of President Jair Bolsonaro waived a visa requirement for U.S. citizens in June, according to its official tourism agency, which is devising plans to draw more.

Brazil’s government will submit a bill that would reduce public sector costs and benefits and make it easier to fire workers to Congress “in a week or two,” Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said on Thursday.