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Brazilian investors were encouraged by a strong day on Wall Street and new economic data while Mexican stocks closed higher for a second- consecutive session, as investors took advantage of recent weakness to go bargain hunting.
Brazil's Bovespa Index surged 914.50 points, or 2.72%. Mexico' benchmark Bolsa gained 374.93 points, or 2.11%, while Argentina's Merval rose 29.15 points, or 1.88%. Brazilian stock prices increased their gains today, as investors reacted positively to current-account figures released by the Brazilian Central Bank (BC). Brazil posted a May current-account surplus of US$ 475 million, up from US$ 241 million in April. The central bank said foreign direct investment in May was US$ 1.58 billion, up from US$ 790 million in April. Amid the volatility in global stock markets in recent weeks, Wall Street tends to influence the Ibovespa strongly. Despite today's gains, analysts expect investors to remain cautious ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee meeting next week. In corporate reports, airline Varig canceled more than a third of its daily flights yesterday, following the approved sale of the firm to the TGV consortium this past Monday. Elsewhere, Mexican stocks were higher, alongside upbeat economic data. After a bout of selling that knocked 24% off the IPC in just over a month, the market has fluctuated on modest volume. In economic headlines, the National Statistics Institute, or Inegi, said that unemployment declined to 2.9% in May, compared with 3.3% in April and 3.3% a year ago. Meanwhile, shares of media group Televisa ended higher; the company is among concerns planning to bid, along with several partners, for U.S. Spanish- language broadcaster Univision. Elsewhere, Argentine shares tracked other Latin American issues higher today on Wall Street's strong performance, as investors greeted positive earnings reports that eased recent interest-rate and inflation woes. Meanwhile, French retail group Carrefour has filed a complaint in Argentina against the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and others, claiming it paid too much for the supermarket chain Norte Supermarkets in 2001 as the result of fraud. Carrefour and its Argentine unit alleged Norte's accounts were inflated by at least US$ 120 million, raising the acquisition price of US$ 253 million by 40%. Thomson Financial - www.thomsonfinancial.com
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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.