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The Brazilian Minister of Communications, Hélio Costa, rebuffed criticism that he was "messing up" the selection process of Brazil's digital TV format.
"If you don't have a date for things, they don't happen," he said, explaining the announcement that Brazil would make a final decision this month so that experimental transmissions can occur in June when the World Soccer Cup takes place. "I think we should begin transmitting immediately. We need at least eight months to get our TV broadcasters to the point where they can handle digital transmissions," said the minister. Costa explained that other uses of digital transmissions, such as interactivity, would be dealt with later. He emphasized that the Brazilian government was interested in a digital format that was open, available to all, and could be used as a tool for both digital and social integration in areas such as health and education. Costa also pointed out that it is only now that financial resources for installing the new format are available. His ministry had US$ 6.32 million (14 million reais) for digital TV during all of the second half of last year, but in January the budget jumped to US$ 24.37 million (54 million reais). The government has set up an interministerial work group and given it a 72-hour deadline to analyze the three existing digital TV formats (American, European and Japanese). At the end of the 72 hours they are to recommend one of them to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The work group consists of the ministers of Finance, Antonio Palocci; Development, Luiz Fernando Furlan; Communications, Helio Costa; and the presidential Chief of Staff (Casa Civil), Dilma Rousseff. Costa declared that the tendency is to use the Japanese format which meets Brazil's four basic requirements on high definition, interactivity, mobility and transport. The Japanese, according to Costa, will also abdicate their right to royalties and are offering 300 million euros to assist in implanting the system. 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. 
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.
.....are freeing more money than ever just in time for the (re)election, after having had a budget austerity.....for other reasons as they say.
What they do is simply VOTE BUYING of the brazilian society after having done the same at the political levels. But this time the cost will be 100 times more !
Nothing will stop them !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!