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Industrial sales in Brazil grew 2.03% last year, less than in 2004, when the sector increased its sales by 15%. The figures that register this slowdown appear in the National Industrial Confederation's (CNI) study, Industrial Indicators.
The CNI's executive secretary of economic policy, Flávio Castelo Branco, attributes the slowdown to high interest rates and the appreciation of the real in relation to the US dollar. Castelo Branco also suggests that sales growth in 2005 was disappointing compared with what was expected. "We began 2005 with very high expectations, generated by the growth in 2004. Over the course of the year, the economy cooled, and, despite the positive figures, there is an air of frustration," he affirmed. Despite the weak sales performance, the industrial job market did not mirror this trend. Employment was up 4.18% in 2005, in comparison with 2004. Moreover, industrial workers' purchasing power rose 8.10%, in comparison with 2004. According to CNI economist Paulo Mol, workers are able to buy more as a result of the drop in inflation. "Salaries were readjusted in 2005 in line with a high inflation rate [that of 2004], and since inflation [in 2005] was less than the salary readjustment, the hike in purchasing power was not wiped out. This difference is what leads to gains in purchasing power," he observed. Industrial employment is expected to grow in 2006 as well, but at a lower rate than in 2005. The CNI expects that industrial growth will accelerate in 2006, stimulated by lower interest rates. "In 2005 the economy was mainly affected by the monetary policy practiced in 2004. What basically restrained the economy were the high interest rates. This was the chief factor that caused the currency to appreciate and the economy to decelerate. "If the decline in interest rates intensifies in the early part of this year, it may begin to produce positive results in the second and third quarters of 2006," Castelo Branco commented. Agência Brasil
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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. 
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When things go right it is because they did the right things.
When things go wrong it is because of ...whatever...but certainly not themselves !
That is not how one learn from his own mistakes !