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 The Defense minister of Brazil, Nelson Jobim, announced Monday, December 22, an agreement with France for the construction of a nuclear submarine. Jobim said France would help build a yard in Rio de Janeiro, in southeast Brazil, for the assembling of four conventional Scorpène submarines and one nuclear powered.
The announcement coincides with President Nicholas Sarkozy two-day visit to Brazil in his double role as EU rotating president and leader of France.
"In twenty years time we will be receiving the nuclear submarine with full technology transfer and with Brazilian engineers trained in French factories and yards," said Jobim.
The Brazilian navy has been working for almost three decades in the development of a nuclear powered submarine.
The purpose of the submarine is to patrol the coastline between the cities of Santos, Sao Paulo's main port and Brazil's largest and Vitória in the state of Espírito Santo, an area where in 2007 was discovered an oil and gas basin estimated to hold reserves equivalent to 50 billion barrels.
Jobim said the yard in Rio do Janeiro will be privately built and managed and 20 years later will be handed over to the government.
Defense issues are top of the agenda of Tuesday's bilateral meetings between presidents Sarkozy and Lula. On Monday both leaders also met but in the framework of the EU-Brazil summit.
Besides submarines the Brasilia-Paris agreement includes 50 helicopters for which Brazil is expected to pay US$ 1.9 billion, revealed Jobim.
At the beginning of the year Minister Jobim traveled to Paris to begin talks on a strategic agreement in Defense issues, which was later advanced during a bilateral meeting of Lula and Sarkozy at the French Guyana.
Lula said on Monday that Brazil's Defense industry "had been dismantled and must be reorganized. It's a long term project, not something to be achieved in two days or two years."
The recovery and reactivation of Brazil's Defense industry with French technology is one of the goals of Brazil's Strategic Defense Plan which was presented last week.
"A country with the dimension of Brazil, which has discovered huge oil reserves, that must defend its Amazon, must have a Defense strategy, not thinking about war, but thinking of guaranteeing and protecting its patrimony," said Lula da Silva.
The Submarine
France promised earlier this year to help Brazil build the Scorpène attack submarine, a conventional diesel-powered vessel that Brazilian officials hope will help them develop Latin America's first nuclear-propelled submarine.
They said it would protect Brazil's large offshore oil reserves and exploration platforms. In South America Chile already has two Scorpène submersibles.
Brazil in 1979 began a formal program to develop a nuclear submarine and the administration of Lula last year announced US$ 540 million in new funding for the program and for uranium enrichment efforts.
Brazil's Foreign Ministry said the two presidents will also sign agreements on sustainable development and protection of the Amazon rain forest and in education, science and nuclear energy.
European Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso told the private Agência Estado news agency that the leaders also should discuss ways to revive the Doha Round of world trade talks that collapsed in July after countries such as India and Brazil rebuffed an offer by the U.S. and Europe to gradually reduce farm subsidies in exchange for lower tariffs on food imports by developing countries.
Barroso is also expected to give his support for Brazil's push for larger emerging economies to have a greater say in building the world's future financial architecture, according to a commission spokesman.
Another issue in the EU-Brazil agenda is bio-fuel of which Brazil is the world's second producer, behind the US, particularly in light of Europe's drive to increase the proportion of its vehicles powered by ethanol.
On a more political level Brazil's goal of joining the UN Security Council as a permanent member is expected to be addressed. Brazil counts with the support from Britain, France and Germany, but also has to contend with opposition from Italy and Spain.
Mercopress
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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.
the money should be spent on the school system .
better roads , sewer systems .
not some boat for a show of brasil so called force to hold the rest of SA
at the point of a gun ,
and what type of arms will it carry ?
brasil will yet again make yet another deal for arms for there big gun