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A new, two-man crew of the International Space Station (ISS) and a Brazilian astronaut were greeted by the current crew on the ISS on Saturday, April 1st, when they arrived at the space station after two days of hurtling in space.
The Soyuz TMA-8 ship carrying Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Brazilian astronaut Marcos Pontes docked with the ISS two days after it streaked into the sky over the Central Asian steppe. They brought a fresh load of supplies, equipment and experiments. Pontes, Brazil's first astronaut, entered the orbiting laboratory first, followed by Vinogradov and Williams, after the hatches between the spacecraft and station were opened more than one and a half hours after the docking. At the Mission Control outside Moscow, families of the astronauts and space officials offered their congratulations as the astronauts from the spaceship and space station greeted one another. Dozens of Brazilian, American and Russian officials fell into hushed silence at Russia's Mission Control Center in Korolyov, outside Moscow, as the capsule neared the station, then broke into applause when contact was made. "Well, gentlemen, I congratulate you," a Mission Control announcer said. "This is the international space station. The train does not go any further, please leave the cars," he said, imitating the announcement made at the end of each line on the Moscow subway system. Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who will replace the current crew for six months on the orbiting station, were joined on the trip by Brazil's first man in space, Marcos C. Pontes, who will return to Earth on April 9. Marcos Pontes, Brazil's first astronaut, has won the global attention that he feels his country deserved a century ago. Pontes, who docked with Russian Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams at the international space station on Saturday, dedicated his flight to the memory of Brazilian inventor and aviator Alberto Santos Dumont, who is called Aviation's Father in Brazil. Pontes planned to take with him a Panama hat used by Santos Dumont, the Brazilian who as all schoolchildren here learn was said to have invented the airplane but didn't get credit for it. "At the moment of takeoff, I want to recall that 100 years ago another Brazilian took off, also outside Brazil, in France, for another important mission," Pontes told local media in an interview before his Soyuz TMA-8 took off Thursday from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Pravda - www.pravda.ru
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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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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.
Is the Brazilian society going to hear what Santos Dumont's living family have to say on this matter or is this really about promoting Brazils image?