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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited two municipalities in the state of Pernambuco, Friday, December 16. First, in Ipojuca, where the industrial center and port of Suape are located, he joined the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to lay the cornerstone for the petroleum refinery General José Ignácio Abreu e Lima (a Brazilian who participated in the South American wars of independence).
It is estimated that the cost of new refinery will be US$ 2.5 billion, with the funding to be equally divided between Brazil's state-run Petrobras, and Venezuela's PDVSA. The refinery, the first to be built in Brazil in 20 years, is scheduled to begin operations in 2011 with a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day. Later, Lula inaugurated a professional training school in Garanhuns, the President's hometown. The school cost US$ 1.3 million (3 million reais) and has a capacity for 240 students. The school is named Euridice Ferreira de Melo Lindú, in honor of the President's mother. IMF Payoff Speaking to Armed Forces generals at a traditional year-end lunch, the Brazilian President declared that the decision to anticipate paying off an IMF debt of US$ 15.5 billion shows that the country can control its own destiny. "We are making this payment because we want to show the world and the market that we are in charge. When we do things we might make mistakes or we might get things right, but we decide," said the president. Brazil is paying off an IMF debt which was to have been paid in installments between now and December 2007. ABr
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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. 
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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. 
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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.