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 American company Continental Airlines announced that it has received tentative approval from the Department of Transportation (DOT) to operate daily year-round service between its Houston hub at Bush Intercontinental Airport and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and through flight service between New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro beginning summer 2009, pending final government approvals.
"Continental is delighted to receive tentative authority for this route, which links two important energy markets," said Jeff Smisek, Continental's president and chief operating officer. "We thank our co-workers and our corporate and agency clients, as well as the many federal, state and local officials who wrote letters in support of the application.
"We also are grateful to the City of Houston and Houston Airport System and the City of New Orleans and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, which filed exhibits in support of Continental's route proposal."
Continental plans to operate the daily service using a Boeing 767-200 aircraft, with 25 seats in BusinessFirst and 149 seats in economy. The proposed nonstop flight will be timed to offer convenient flight connections at Continental's Houston hub to cities throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
The airline currently operates daily nonstop service between Continental's New York hub at Newark Liberty International Airport and São Paulo's Guarulhos International Airport and between Houston and São Paulo, with continuing service to Rio de Janeiro.
Continental Airlines, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, is the world's fifth largest airline. Together with Continental Express and Continental Connection, the company has more than 2,800 daily departures throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, serving 135 domestic and 132 international destinations.
Gol Gets Capital Increase
Brazilian airline Gol has approved a capital increase of the Company in the amount of 203,531,031.60 reais and the issuance of 26,093,722 shares, comprising 6,606,366 common shares and 19,487,356 preferred shares.
The issuance price to common and preferred shares is fixed in 7.80 reais per share, according to the quotation of the shares in the São Paulo Stock Exchange on March 20, 2009, verified after the closing of the trading session.
The issuance price is equivalent to 90.9% of the average closing price of the preferred shares during the last 30 trading sessions, which was 8.58 reais, and to 83.2% of the average closing price during the last 60 trading sessions, which was 9.37 reais.
Gol offers nearly 800 daily flights to 49 destinations connecting the most important cities in Brazil and ten major destinations in South America. The Company operates a fleet of Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft.
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Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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.
GOL re-fi, interesting, using round numbers lets say it's subsidizing 1000 R$ per day for each of the 800 daily flights to get them by for about the next 254 days - then what will you have??