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Ricardo de Melo Martins, professor of medicine at the University of Brasília (UnB), in the Brazilian capital, recommends that the Brazilian Bird Flu Containment Plan be fully implemented after Carnaval in order to prevent the disease from entering the country.
"Things are calm now. If bird flu arrives, it will be in the winter, during the months of July and August." That is why he thinks it is so important to act right away. Martins, who contributed to the plan as an outside expert, said that greater intensity is needed in getting information out to the population and the press. "The distribution of pamphlets to tourists and the installation of barriers in ports and airports can also help keep the disease from entering Brazil," he observed. According to the professor, the country has a natural "safety shield" against the disease. The migratory birds potentially infected by the H5N1 virus come from Asia and Europe and first pass through North America. Most of them will die before arriving in Brazilian territory. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Agriculture has installed surveillance posts in the regions where migratory birds usually enter the country, and the Ministry of Health has transferred US$ 1.451 million (3.1 million reais) to the Butantã Institute to manufacture vaccines against the virus. Bird flu is a severely contagious disease transmitted by one of the most virulent subtypes of the influenza virus, the H5N1. 83 of the 152 human victims of the disease have already died. The incidence has been greatest in Asia. Up to now there has been no evidence of transmission among humans. Transmission has been limited to avian vectors, among birds and from birds to humans. 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. 
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.
And now to a cat, apparently, according to the BBC and CNN yeasterday. This, of course, raises the spectre of transmition to domestic amimals generally, which in turn increases the potential for human contraction of the virus.
It is good that Brazil is taking this matter in hand promptly, even though migration patterns in the Americas (north to south) offer some protection.