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 Bovespa, Brazil's main stock market, ended an exceptional 2007 with a turnover of US$ 570 billion and its biggest annual gain in four years, over 40%. The São Paulo stock exchange closed Friday, December 28, at 63.774 points, accumulating 43.4% gain over the closing of 44.473 points a year ago.
Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, the world's biggest iron ore and nickel miner, and Petrobras, the government controlled oil company, paced this year's advance ranging between 150% and 90%.
However the stock index is likely to increase less in 2008 because of slowing growth in the United States, Brazil's largest trading partner, according to strategists at Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.
But UBS Pactual and Spinelli forecast a 33% advance this year to 85.000 points, based on Brazil's economy growth of 5%, low inflation, strong local currency and the awarding of "investment grade" to the country's sovereign debt.
The overall turnover of Bovespa in 2007 was above the trillion reais, equivalent to US$ 570 billion, compared to the 530 billion reais of 2006, up 92%, according to Economática, a São Paulo financial investment advisor.
The three shares with the largest turnover were Petrobras (13.8% of total business); Vale do Rio Doce, 11.4% and Bradesco bank, 3.3%.
Ibovespa's 20 main shares in 2007 represented 60% of all operations totaling 596 billion reais, greater than the whole of 2006. For investors operating in US dollars this year's advance in Brazilian stocks was magnified by the more than 21% currency gain against the dollar.
Performance in other Latinamerican stock exchanges was more modest: Argentina's Merval index had its smallest annual gain in six years. Chile's IPSA index slipped, paring its fifth straight yearly increase to 13%.
In Colombia, the IGBC index was little changed and had its first annual decline in six years. Peru's Lima General Index gained 36% in 2007, its sixth straight annual gain.
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. 
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.
Fruits are low in calories and highly nutritional already grown on public places at increasing ratios to face obesity trends. Tree climbing also can be a body exercise for kids harvesting fruits.
Fruits have around four times more water content than cookies and easily satisfy hunger taking less energy. Refrigerators full of fruits easily beat junkies.
In Brazil we are increasing fruit trees in the public areas changing the country to a large tropical orchard. Then, sidewalks, squares, parks, roadsides will be plenty of free fruits bearing appropriate food to fight spreading obesity. Free fruits are protected from the power of the economic system pursuing profitability.
Other countries are invited to join us on a fight against global obesity toward a Public Fructification. Brazil intends to become a developed country without common problems of a superpower.
We intend the rural area to conquer public areas making it full of fruits.
http://revver.com/watch/225528
http://revver.com/watch/529604
Even carnivores can be convinced to eat more fruits why not humans?
http://revver.com/watch/218695