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 Brazil's share of foreign direct investment (FDI) stood at US$ 886 million last December, having totaled US$ 34.616 billion in 2007. FDI reached US$ 2.487 billion in December 2006, and US$ 18.782 billion in the whole of 2006. The data were disclosed this Monday, January 28, by the Brazilian Central Bank.
The annual FDI was below the estimate presented three weeks ago by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), which was US$ 37.4 billion, but still it was almost twice as much as the total for 2006. The figure was also slightly lower than the projection of the Central Bank, which was US$ 35 billion.
The current account surplus, which includes the balance of trade, services, income and unilateral transfers, posted a US$ 699 million deficit in December, but ended the year at a surplus of US$ 3.555 billion. In the previous year, the country had run a current account surplus of US$ 13.621 billion.
The balance of trade ran a surplus of US$ 3.636 billion in December, and ended the year at US$ 40.040 billion; the income and services account ran a deficit of US$ 4.795 billion and accumulated US$ 40.570 billion during the year; unilateral current transfers ran a US$ 460 million surplus in December and a US$ 4.086 billion surplus in the year.
Foreign reserves stood at US$ 180.334 billion in 2007, as against US$ 85.839 billion in 2006.
Lower Trade Surplus
Foreign sales of Brazilian products totaled US$ 3.284 billion last week, at a daily average value of US$ 656.8 million, whereas national purchases of foreign products stood at US$ 2.932 billion, at a daily average of US$ 586.4 million.
The balance of trade ran a surplus of US$ 352 million between the 21st and 25th this month, according to a bulletin disclosed this by the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.
In the accumulated result for the month, the balance of trade is running a US$ 748 million surplus, as a result of US$ 10.858 billion in sales and US$ 10.110 billion in purchases. Exports have decreased by an average of 15.2% compared with the previous month, whereas imports have grown by 6%.
Thus, the average daily surplus for the 18 business days in January, until last Friday (25th), is just US$ 41.6 million, which is 63.7% less than the average for January last year, and 77.1% lower than the average recorded last month.
ABr
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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.
I would dare say its passive all having to do with Bovespa and the buying of Brazilian govt debt.
We all know what happens when those investores pull the plug. PFfuuuut....!!