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Latin American stocks extended Wednesday's (March 29) gains, with Brazilian shares getting a boost from improved hopes for an acceleration of the Brazilian central bank's monetary easing cycle.
Brazil's Bovespa Index rose 285.19 points, or 0.76%. Mexico's benchmark Bolsa Index climbed 81.66 points, or 0.43%, while Argentina's Merval Index added 6.18 points, or 0.34%. Brazilian stocks climbed, as investors grew more hopeful for a deeper cut in local interest rates in April. Boosting optimism about interest rates, Brazil's central bank said in its quarterly inflation report this Thursday, March 30, that Brazil will likely end 2006 well within the government's inflation target for the year of 4.5%. Brazil's IPCA consumer price inflation should end 2006 at 3.7% and accelerate through the end of 2007 to 3.9%, the bank said. The monetary authority also maintained its forecast for Brazil's 2006 economic growth at 4%. Adding to positive sentiment, the Getúlio Vargas Foundation reported that the Brazilian General Price Index (IGP-M) dropped 0.23% in March, compared with a rise of 0.01% in February. In other economic news, Brazil's gross domestic product in nominal terms in the fourth quarter of 2005 rose to 521.855 billion reais from 497.356 billion reais in the third quarter, the government's statistics institute IBGE said. Helping to ease concerns about the future of Brazil's economic policies, newly-appointed Finance Minister Guido Mantega said that the government will meet ambitious fiscal austerity goals in 2006 under the guidance of a new economic team. Brazil's government has targeted a primary budget surplus in 2006 equal to 4.25% of gross domestic product. "We will meet the goals with the utmost rigor," Mantega said. In related news, Mantega announced two key appointments to the government's economic team. Government economists Bernard Appy and Carlos Kawall were named to the posts of deputy minister as treasury secretary, respectively. Mantega said he will announce more key appointments next week. In other developments, Social Democracy Party Congressman Rafael Guerra said a group of Brazilian lawmakers, known as the Pro-Congress Movement and affiliated with opposition parties, will file a petition next week calling for the impeachment of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The move is based on Lula's alleged participation in breaking the confidentiality of bank records of a congressional witness that testified against former Finance Minister Antonio Palocci earlier this month. Mexican shares continued to rebound today following weakness earlier this week. Meanwhile, U.S. markets turned mostly lower today. U.S. fourth-quarter GDP was revised higher to 1.7% from 1.6%, in line with targets, and compared with growth of 4.1% in the prior quarter. Closer to home, mining firms advanced on stronger copper prices. Workers continued to strike at Grupo Mexico's La Caridad copper mine for the seventh day. Yesterday, the Labor Ministry rejected the National Mining and Metal Workers Union's ratification of leader Napoleon Gomez Urrutia. The ministry said that the union's extraordinary general convention held earlier this month did not meet attendance and other requirements within the union's own statutes. A major investment bank upgraded homebuilder Urbi to "buy" from "hold," while lifting price targets for several other developers in the sector. The broker cited the builders' more aggressive expansion plans over the next few years as part of the reason for its bullish research note. Argentina also headed higher today; although, investor enthusiasm was more muted compared to the broader regional markets. A price hike for gas received mixed reactions. Enargas, the country's natural gas regulator, has authorized gas distributors to lift rates for industrial and commercial users by 20%, on average. The move should help normalize prices within the gas market. In economic news, the national statistics agency Indec said that Argentina posted a US $706 million trade surplus in February, slightly less than the US $734 million surplus posted a year ago. In January, the surplus arrived at US $837 million. Thomson Financial - www.thomsonfinancial.com
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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.