|
 The Brazilian government informs that Egypt will soon start receiving images from the Cbers satellite, which is jointly owned by Brazil and China. A memorandum for expanding the satellite's reception to three stations in Africa was signed last week, during president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's trip to China.
In addition to the one in Egypt, stations in the Canary Islands and in South Africa will also receive the signal. Images from the Cbers are distributed free of charge, but require a reception system in order to arrive in the countries.
According to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), China and Brazil's decision of distributing the images to Africa is a recent one, and will enable African governments and organizations to monitor natural disasters, deforestation, threats to agricultural production, and hazards to public health. Brazil and China use the data for environmental monitoring, agricultural development, urban planning and water management.
The images and information are available to all users, however, according to the Inpe, South American countries benefit the most, as they get the data from the Inpe's receiving antennas in the city of Cuiabá, capital of the state of Mato Grosso. Since 2004, over half a million images have been broadcasted from Brazil to 20,000 users. In China, 20,000 images have already been distributed, according to the Inpe.
In Brazil, for example, the images are used by organizations such as the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), for updating maps in soil systematization, and by the National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform (Incra), for processes linked to land reform.
The Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petrobras, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and the Brazilian Environment and Renewable Natural Resource Institute (Ibama) also use images from the Cbers.
The images used are broadcasted by the Cbers 2-B satellite, which was put into orbit in September 2007. Two other satellites, Cbers 1 and Cbers 2, were previously launched but are currently inoperative. With the launch of the Cbers, Brazil made its debut in technology for supplying remote sensing data. In the past, the country used to depend on images from foreign equipment.
The agreement between Brazil and China was signed in 1998. Ever since, the two countries have invested US$ 350 million. The initiative, according to the Inpe, has made Brazil into one of the world's leading distributors of orbital images.
The policy of free access to the images was also followed by other countries, such as the United States. Alongside the United States' Landsat, the French Spot and the Indian ResourceSat, the Cbers has become one of the world's main remote sensing programs.
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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.