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 Cuba's President Raul Castro says he is willing to discuss the 50-year-old US trade embargo against Cuba with President-elect Barack Obama. Castro made the announcement on arrival in Northeastern Brazil for a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders.
Raul Castro arrived at Brazil after his stopover in Venezuela. The Cuban leader also said this Monday, December 15, that it's becoming more difficult to isolate Cuba and that the summit in Brazil could result in a declaration condemning the blockade
Castro arrived from Venezuela, his first overseas visit as president since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro. In Venezuela Castro was given a hero's reception by President Hugo Chavez and signed several cooperation agreements.
These include expanding the capacity of two refineries in Cuba and building a third one. This will help Cuba's refining capacity increase to 350,000 barrels a day (b/d) from the current 87,000 b/d, according to a statement from Venezuela's state-owned gasolineeos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
Under the agreements, the capacity of Cuba's Cienfuegos refinery will be stepped up to 150,000 b/d from the current 65,000 b/d, while the Hermanos Diaz refinery in Santiago will rise to 50,000 b/d from 22,000 b/d.
PDVSA said the proposed refinery in the port city of Matanzas will have a capacity of 150,000 b/d, and is to be managed by Cuvengasoline SA - a new joint venture of PDVSA and Cuba's state-owned Cupet.
However, the Venezuelan firm said that Cuvengasoline will control all refining interests in Cuba being pursued by the two countries, including the design and construction of an LNG regasification plant, gas pipelines, and other facilities.
The Cienfuegos refinery is expected to close 2008 with production of 20 million bbl of fuel, according to deputy director, Raul Perez, who said the plan for the refinery envisaged output of 19.4 million bbl for the year.
Cuba imports 100,000 b/d from Venezuela in oil and products under special financial conditions that include bartering for Cuban goods or services such as doctors, teachers, and athletic trainers.
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
BUT......BUT........is Obama willing to take up this issue as one of his first priorities? I have a strange feeling that Obama will lose his popularity among the " Latin Rulers" by mid 2009. Only the time will tell.
Regardless, welcome to Dr.Raul Castro and lets hope he enjoys his stay in Brazil and the hospitality of our "Rulers".