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An investigation has been launched into the fortune of one of the Brazilian president's sons, Fábio Luiz Inácio da Silva, who from being virtually unemployed has accumulated in four years several million dollars.
Veja magazine reported that young Silva, a trained biologist was making a living from teaching English and computer lessons until his father took office in January 2002. By December 2003, the son of the president and two partners had started three companies providing public relations services and producing video games. Apparently the seed capital, according to weekly magazine Veja, came from Telemar, a telecommunications company in which government owned development bank BNDES has a 25% stake. At the same time public pension funds own 19% of Telemar. Brazilian federal authorities find the intertwining of events and financial success, even for corruption laissez faire Brazil "a bit too excessive," according to the Brazilian press. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is seeking a second four-year term, is steadily gaining support as October first presidential election draws closer, according to two public opinion surveys released Tuesday, August 8. The latest poll from Sensus and contracted by the CNT transportation association shows President Lula with a vote intention of 47.9% up from 44.1% in early July. His main rival, social democrat and former governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin comes in a distant second with 19.7% followed by Marxist Heloísa Helena Lima, with 9.3%. However Mr. Alckmin's support actually dropped 7.5 points in the last month while Ms Lima almost doubled her share of the vote. Those who remain undecided or saying they will cast blank or null ballots total 20.9%, which means Lula could easily win the first round with 60% of the vote, according to Sensus. Ricardo Guedes from Sensus said the drop in support for Alckmin was as a consequence of the wave of violence hitting São Paulo, Brazil's most populous and richest state. Alckmin was governor of São Paulo until last April. Guedes added that Heloísa Helena was benefiting at the expense of Alckmin, picking up the support of those who oppose Lula. The Sensus poll interviewed 2,000 registered voters and was conducted between August 1 and 4 with a plus/minus error margin of 3 points. In a second survey, this one by DataFolha, Lula's lead over Alckmin grew to 23 percentage points. According to the findings by DataFolha, Lula could win the election by a landslide, with 60% of the votes, still on the first round. The president's strong performance in the polls comes in the wake of allegations of corruption against his party and government officials. Lula's Workers Party, or PT, and some of his close associates have been embroiled in a briberies and corruption scandal for over a year, although the president has remained unscathed. Mercopress
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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. 
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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.