BrazzilMag

Lula is cured from cancer! That was the note in a respected news site in Brazil. Although no confirmed the news brought about a wave of reactions and expectations. Sources close to the medical team treating former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for a throat cancer said he is free of the disease, revealed the site. 

For the Brazilian government the privatization of three airports turned into a more than pleasant surprise. The auction for the airport terminals in Guarulhos (São Paulo), Campinas, (interior of São Paulo), and Brazilian capital Brasília at the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa), ended with winning proposals totalling over R$ 24.5 billion (US$ 14.3 billion).

Brazilian Army troops locked down the northeast Brazilian city of Salvador on Sunday as an elite unit prepared to besiege the legislature and arrest armed police officers whose strike action has sent homicides spiraling.

The number of weekly murders in the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, Salvador, since the beginning of a strike by the Military Police, on February 1, has doubled, rising from 41 to 83. During the same period, robberies rose from 78 to 150.

Shopping Iguatemi, the most popular shopping center in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. 3rd floor in front of Mc Donald's. I close my laptop while my two small children start fighting each other as usual. I tell them to stop. Finally they do. I put my laptop in the case. All at a sudden my wife starts shouting. "Let's run, get a kid and run, now".

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, a communist guerrilla in her youth, who is visiting Havana for the first time as a chief of state, refused to criticize Cuba's human rights record on Tuesday, saying the issue should not be used to score ideological points. 

During an interview today in Havana, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff told reporters that the problem of human rights is an issue that affects every country and that the subject shouldn't be used as a weapon of ideological struggle.

Held once again in the south of Brazil, this year's World Social Forum is being called a Thematic Social Forum with the central theme: Crisis of Capitalism, Social and Environmental Justice. The idea dominating the gathering is: We Need to Reinvent the World because that is the only way to achieve sustainable development, protect the environment and respect the rights of different social groups, mainly those who are most vulnerable.

In Rio, last night, at around 8:30 pm, a 21-story building collapsed following what eyewitnesses described as two or three loud explosion-like sounds. A bystander claimed that plaster fell off the building just before it came down.

The international freedom of press organization Reporters Without Borders has placed Brazil in the 99th position in the 2011/2012 ranking of press freedom, which evaluates the working conditions of journalists in 179 countries. This was a drop of 41 places when compared to the previous report in 2010. 

Brazil, on January 13, announced measures to limit the number of Haitians entering the country. Among the new rules: a visa requirement. The Ministry of Foreign Relations reports that a total of exactly two visas have been issued to Haitians since the new rules went into effect. The visas issued are temporary work visas valid for five years.

Brazil posted a record-high current account deficit in 2011 on rising profit remittances by multinational companies and massive spending abroad by Brazilian tourists, but the deficit was more than covered by another record, this time for foreign direct investment, the central bank said Tuesday. 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's former president, currently undergoing treatment for throat cancer, returned Tuesday to Brazilian capital Brasília and the political stage after three months of absence, for the inauguration ceremony of two new ministers from the cabinet of President Dilma Rousseff.

Brazil's state-controlled oil and gas multinational Petrobras, the sixth most profitable company in the world in 2009 and one of the fifty biggest, is going to have a new president. And for the first time, the president will be a woman.

More than half of the Brazilian population now belongs to the middle class or at least that's what Brazilians are being told. According to a recent report, the middle class in Brazil during the last decade expanded to reach 90 million out of a population of almost 200 million, according to DataFolha.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and seven ministers of state will participate on Thursday, January 26, in a special session at the World Social Forum in the capital of Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul.

FIFA's president Sepp Blatter is not hiding his displeasure at the way Brazilian are getting ready for the next World Cup. Blatter let it be known that Russia is already better prepared to host the 2018 World Cup than Brazil, which will stage the 32-team soccer competition in 2014.

Brazilians should be the beneficiaries of a less severe policy to allow their entrance in the United Sates. According to an official release, the US Department of State is committed to improving the visa process, decreasing interview wait times in Brazil and increasing the number of visas issued.

Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, will have a very busy month of March since she should be meeting her US peer Barack Obama in Washington, DC, that month, when she is also scheduled to hold talks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and attend a BRIC group summit.