tagged w/ Brazil
-
There are no roads, no major industry and no historical landmarks in Otjivero, a village about 150km east of Windhoek, the Namibian capital and previously known for little more than its poverty. But in January 2008 it became part of one of the world's first basic income grant (BIG) projects, and now stands the chance of setting an international precedent in the fight against poverty.
There are no roads, no major industry and no historical landmarks in Otjivero, a... more
-
-
Brazil's Labour Ministry's website recently put up tips for sex workers, a trade that is legal. The suggestions included knowledge of foreign languages, how to negotiate with customers about condoms, and information about HIV. The site has been up since 2002 but has recently been under fire for its explicit language, and is due for a makeover before the end of the year.Brazil's Labour Ministry's website recently put up tips for sex workers, a... more
-
-
The Briton held a seven-point lead over rival Felipe Massa going into the final race of the season, knowing he only had to finish fifth to win his first drivers' title.
And the 23-year-old McLaren driver drove a mature race to earn the necessary points, despite Massa crossing the line in first.
The start of the race was aborted for 10 minutes as a torrential downpour hit the Interlagos track.
Sunshine had primarily dominated the day in Sao Paulo, although heavy rain had been forecast.
The fact it arrived three minutes before the official start merely added to the drama for title hopefuls Hamilton and Massa.
With the majority of the grid having switched to wet-weather tyres, they eventually filed away for their formation lap, during which it was clear parts of the track were already starting to dry.
It was a clean start at the front but at the rear there was disaster for David Coulthard, whose final grand prix ended after just 300 metres when he was hit from behind by Williams' Nico Rosberg.
With the track drying, it was all a question of when the drivers would start to come in and switch to dry tyres.
Eventually, at the end of lap 10, Massa made his first stop, then it was the turn of Jarno Trulli, Kimi Raikkonen and Hamilton.
Hamilton then found himself held up by Giancarlo Fisichella, although that was not unsurprising as getting past him meant committing to an overtaking manoeuvre off the dry line.
Finally Hamilton went for it at the start of lap 18, taking the Italian on the inside at the entry to the Senna S.
After 40 laps Alonso and Hamilton then took on more fuel and fresh tyres.
After the shake-up of the second stops, Massa had returned to the lead, comfortably so by 8.1secs from Sebastien Vettel, followed by Fernando Alonso, Raikkonen and Hamilton, the latter 2.8secs behind the Ferrari.
It was a question now of Hamilton keeping his cool, especially after dropping to sixth, and he achieved his aim on the final bend after overtaking Timo Glock at the death. The Briton held a seven-point lead over rival Felipe Massa going into the final race... more
-
-
Brazil's state-run oil company signed an agreement Friday to explore for oil in deep Caribbean waters north of Cuba that officials in Havana say could contain 20 billion barrels of crude.
Under the deal, Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA would spend seven years on exploration and—if the reserves are confirmed—25 more producing oil and natural gas recovered at a site north of the world-famous beach resort of Varadero, 80 miles from Havana.
The agreement calls for an initial investment of $8 million by Petrobras. After an exploration phase of 18 to 24 months, more funds from Petrobras and its Cuban counterpart, Cuba Petroleo, could come, depending on how much oil can be exploited.
"I don't understand why it took so long to sign this agreement," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who presided over a signing ceremony for the deal with Cuban President Raul Castro.
The agreement gives Petrobras control of one of about 60 offshore plots in the Gulf of Mexico that Cuba has established for exploration by international companies.
Cuba suggested earlier this month that its offshore reserves potentially could produce 20 billion barrels of oil, more than double previous estimates.
Castro joked Friday that "God would not be so unfair to us as to not let us hit anything" while exploring in the Petrobras block.
Silva also said that Castro will travel to Brazil in December, a trip that would be his first official overseas visit since succeeding his older brother Fidel as Cuba's president in February.
Brazil is Cuba's second-largest Latin American trading partner, behind Venezuela.
Silva left Cuba on Friday afternoon, but told reporters at the airport that he met for two hours with Fidel Castro, 82 and ailing, who has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.
"I'm leaving happy having seen Fidel," he said.
In comments released later by the Brazilian government, Silva said he thought the older Castro brother "is of an extraordinary mind, as lucid as he ever was."
Fidel Castro called the meeting "friendly and respectful" in an essay published online Friday night by Cuban state media.
Cuba's government did not immediately release images of the encounter.Brazil's state-run oil company signed an agreement Friday to explore for oil in... more
-
-
"Under the shade of ficus trees stands the stone burial chapel that 73-year-old Freud de Melo built. Wind chimes tinkle above the wrought-iron door.
But it isn't a conventional final resting place. Inside the crypt, there's a TV, also a water pitcher and a fruit pantry. Fresh outdoor air flows in through four vents from the chapel roof. Within reach of the coffin are two makeshift megaphones -- plastic cones attached to tubes running out through the wall.
One Saturday recently, Mr. de Melo lay in the coffin, shouting into the cones in a voice that echoed into the countryside. "Help me! Come quick! I've been buried alive!"
See Mr. de Melo's burial vault, outfitted for survival in case of being buried alive.
It was only an equipment check -- not an actual emergency. Mr. de Melo, a resort operator and politician, built a burial vault he could survive in because he's gripped by a rare condition called taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive. "I have awful, awful nightmares of trying to dig myself out from underground," says Mr. de Melo, whose physician father named him, presciently, for the pioneer of dream analysis.
Mr. de Melo's life-affirming burial chapel has become one of the most talked about features of the eccentric tourist park he operates in Brazil's central hinterlands.
While Mr. de Melo's phobia may be over the top, fear of premature burial is one of the most chilling and persistent terrors. Fans of Halloween movie thrillers and people who relish a classic buried-alive story like the 1988 Dutch film "Spoorloos" ("The Vanishing"), have something in common with the ancient Greeks and Romans, who repeated tales of warriors and consuls, mistakenly thought dead, who rose up during their own funerals.
Fear of live burial crested in the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when medicine was comparatively unsophisticated and diseases like typhoid, cholera and plague sometimes caused people who were still alive to appear dead, says Melanie King, author of "The Dying Game: A Curious History of Death."
Overheated fiction stirred public fears about being buried alive. Edgar Allan Poe vividly evoked the claustrophobic terror of being trapped in a casket. "We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth -- we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost hell," he wrote in the short story "The Premature Burial."
See Mr. de Melo's spooky way of coping with his fear of being buried alive.
Such was his anxiety about waking up 6 feet under that George Washington left instructions that his body was not to be buried for three days after his passing, just to be safe. On foreign travels, the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen would leave a sign near his hotel bed reading "I am not dead" to make sure strangers didn't get the wrong idea.
In Germany around 1800, apparent death and premature burial were "given more attention than almost any other medical topic of the time," writes Jan Bondeson, author of the book "Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear." The Germans even set up a system of waiting mortuaries, or Leichenhäuser, where presumed corpses were laid out for observation for two or three days before burial, Dr. Bondeson writes. In one Munich mortuary, the bodies' fingers and toes were attached with strings to a great harmonium that would play if they stirred. The only time the bodies moved and the music sounded was when putrefaction set in and the corpses swelled up, he writes..."
Read the rest and see the video at link ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122540935432186161.html"Under the shade of ficus trees stands the stone burial chapel that 73-year-old... more
-
-
Oscar Niemeyer’s work continues to enchant and appall students of architecture and urban planning.Oscar Niemeyer’s work continues to enchant and appall students of architecture... more
-
-
A government website for Brazil's prostitutes that suggests they be prepared to perform fantasies and "offer specialties," among other tips, is going to be toned down, an official said on Tuesday.
Prostitution is legal in Brazil and sex worker advocacy groups say the Labor Ministry website aims to promote the human rights of prostitutes. But critics say the site goes too far, and its contents have become fodder for Brazilian newspapers.
The site contains such tips as: "demonstrate an ability to perform erotic fantasies", "seduce with affectionate nicknames" and, in a nod to the globalized marketplace, "demonstrate a capacity to communicate in a foreign language".
"The information was created with the help of NGOs and the prostitutes themselves," said a labor ministry spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to discuss the topic.
The spokeswoman said, however, that the language and some of the explicit tips on the site would be moderated. She said the changes would be made by the end of the year.
The site, which began in 2002, also gives prostitutes advice on how to negotiate condom use with customers and encourages them to denounce violence. It gives information on HIV.
Opponents had said the site should be changed so it doesn't appear to encourage prostitution.
"What is on the site gives the impression of an apology for sexual exploitation," law professor Luiz Flavio Gomes told the O Globo newspaper in its online edition.A government website for Brazil's prostitutes that suggests they be prepared to... more
-
-
This tiny-limbed Brazilian reptile finally has a proper name.
Bachia oxyrhina's very long body and tail lends it a legless look, and its short, rudimentary nubs serve no purpose, experts say.
The lizard was discovered in January in central Brazil's Cerrado, a wooded savanna being converted to ranch and cropland at twice the rate of the nearby Amazon.
Of the 14 new species found during the expedition, Bachia is the first to be officially named. Part of its moniker, oxyrhina, is derived from the Latin words for "sharp" (oxy) and "nose" (rhino). The creature uses its pointy nose to snuff out small bugs, termites, and ants in the sandy soil. This tiny-limbed Brazilian reptile finally has a proper name.
Bachia... more
-
-
A police marksman who shot an innocent Brazilian on a London underground train wrongly believing him to be a suicide bomber offered his regrets to the man's family on Friday.
The specialist firearms officer told an inquest into the death of electrician Jean Charles de Menezes he had been shocked and saddened when he discovered the mistake.
A police marksman who shot an innocent Brazilian on a London underground train wrongly... more
-
-
According to a new book, titled The Guyana Project: A German Adventure on the Amazon, the Nazis sent scientists to a remote region of the Brazilian Amazon to see if they could set up an outpost. Author Jens Gluessing says the Nazis believed they were destined to colonise and settle in parts of the world much like the pioneers of America's west.According to a new book, titled The Guyana Project: A German Adventure on the Amazon,... more
-
-
Human rights activists are planning to launch another major international campaign against De Beers, after receiving word that the world's largest miner and marketer of diamonds is once again operating in an area of Botswana from which local people have been evicted.
"We intend to do everything in our power," said Stephen Corry, director of the London-based group Survival International, in a statement denouncing De Beers' plans to re-start mining operations in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Survival and other indigenous rights groups say that diamond exploration in the Reserve has had a devastating impact on the life and the environment of the indigenous San people, also known as "Bushmen."
"We are dismayed that De Beers feels that it can now return to the Reserve whilst the situation with the Bushmen is still unresolved," Corry said. "Presumably it hoped no one would notice."
De Beers has made several attempts to mine the area for diamonds in recent years, but closed operations in the wake of intense calls for a worldwide boycott of its products.
The Reserve was created by the Botswana government in 1961, ostensibly to protect both the Bushmen and the animals living there. But one of the world's richest diamond deposits was discovered in the 1980s, and the eviction of the Bushmen began in 1997.
A major wave of forced relocations occurred in 2002, during which the Botswana government is said to have destroyed Bushmen villages and waterholes and even arrested and tortured some who resisted.
Another wave in 2005 forced almost all remaining Bushmen into relocation camps, where they began to experience -- for the first time in their history -- widespread depression, alcoholism, and diseases including AIDS, according to Survival, which is a nonprofit group that helps indigenous communities worldwide petition for their rights.
Despite strong opposition by the Botswana government, members of the Bushmen community won their case in a court battle some two years ago by successfully proving that they had been the rightful owners of the contested Reserve land for centuries.
Despite the High Court's recognition of the Bushmen's right to live on the Reserve and to hunt and gather on their ancestral land, hundreds of Bushmen are still languishing in relocation camps, and are unable to return to homes because the government won't let them hunt or use their water borehole, according to Survival's reports from the region.
Survival activists say they hope this latest boycott campaign against De Beers will be as successful as their previous one, which was joined by many celebrities, including supermodels and diamond spokespeople Iman and Lily Cole.
"[We will try] to persuade people to boycott De Beers until the Bushmen have access to their lands and water," said Corry. "The Bushmen cannot conceivably give their free and informed consent to mining whilst most of them cannot even go home."
Corry's group declared the end of its previous boycott campaign after De Beers sold its $2.2 billion deposit to Gem Diamonds for $34 million.
According to its 2007 financial report, the company's payment to its "partners, joint ventures, and suppliers" amounted to $4.9 billion. About $3.2 billion of this was paid for diamonds in Africa.
In defense of its business practices in Africa and elsewhere, De Beers claims on its Web site that it has more than 184,000 hectares of "our owned and managed property," which is set aside as "nature reserves that conduct research on biodiversity."
Campaigners say the boom in diamond exploration in the Reserve also threatens one of the largest environmentally protected areas in Africa.
Gold Mining Threatening Local Communities Too
Meanwhile, rights groups are also raising concerns about the adverse impact of gold mining operations on the living conditions of indigenous and local communities around the world.
*******CONTINUESHuman rights activists are planning to launch another major international campaign... more
-
-
Tuesday's edition of my three times a week talk show.Watch the show here on CURRENT TV on Tues, Thurs & Sats.
In today's show :
Ross P needs help with flossing.
We're doomed.
It's all being eroded.
Steam ironing.
A response from our young policeman.
£100 per hour !
A little puddle.
They cry !
The washing machine.
Anthony - have a pasty.
Dave Lynn & Patrick Duffy.
Say "NO".
Little Jade is 13.
Iceland's Prime Minister may be able to help.
The traffic police.
Florida on the cheap.
Someone returns to Brazil.
Ivona & Donald.
Has Bob got all the money ?
Is there enough water ?
Be positive.
Doug has trouble at work.
Keep your credit limit down.
James Dean is leaking.
An arm & a leg.
No injection.
chris@unitedkingdomtalk.co.uk
WWW.UNITEDKINGDOMTALK.CO.UKTuesday's edition of my three times a week talk show.Watch the show here on... more
-
-
Riot police clashed with striking ordinary police officers in Sao Paulo as they blocked the latter from forcing their way into the state government building, live television pictures showed.
Black-clad military police were seen on Thursday massed behind riot shields, occasionally firing teargas canisters and flashbombs to keep uniformed and plainclothes civilian state police from entering the building. Other military police arrived on horseback.
At least 22 people were injured in the clash, including a military police colonel with a gunshot wound to the leg, according to media reports.
Civilian police officers in the state of Sao Paulo have been on strike for a month to demand the governor, Jose Serra, meet them to negotiate a 15 percent pay rise.
Riot police clashed with striking ordinary police officers in Sao Paulo as they... more
-
-
Campesinos in the department of San Pedro occupied Brazilian-owned farms on Oct. 1 to block the entry of transgenic soy, and began planting other crops such as sesame and yucca on the plots.
Some 120 campesinos occupied two 600-hectare (1,480 acre) farms, according to local media reports.
Cristino Peralta, the San Pedro correspondent of the daily ABC Color, said that the farmers immediately began planting the sesame and yucca after occupying the plantations.
"There was no law enforcement intervention," he said. "The group's leader Florencio Martinez said that the occupation marked the start of the recovery of Paraguayan territorial sovereignty."
San Pedro is considered Paraguay's best farmland, but it is also the country's poorest department. President Fernando Lugo worked as a bishop there for a decade.
Land is concentrated in the fewest hands in Paraguay than in any other Latin American country. Only 351 landowners hold 9.7 million hectares (24 million acres), while, according to civil society organizations, there are more than 350,000 families with insufficient quantities of land or no land at all.
The demonstrators said that they took over the Brazilian-owned plantations in protest of what they called the government's failure to implement land reform. Paraguay has also seen other campesino protests against transgenic soy plantations and the indiscriminate use of farming chemicals.
Lugo had requested that the campesinos give his government 100 days starting Aug. 15 to seek financing for land reform. The period ends on Nov. 22.
According to campesino leader Elvio Benitez, the government "continues without finding a solution to the lack of land of thousands of our compatriots, while the Brazilian's presence is getting bigger and bigger. We can't do anything else but occupy the Brazilian-owned haciendas because the soy crops are causing deforestation, eliminating natural forests and contaminating people with its pesticides."
-Latinamerica Press
_______________
People are standing up worldwide to the hoax that is GM food. We have enough conventional NATURAL food to feed the people of this planet. Good to see people standing up to the fake unnatural test tube food these mutli nationals are trying to shove down their throats for profit.Campesinos in the department of San Pedro occupied Brazilian-owned farms on Oct. 1 to... more
-
-
Belgian Luc Costermans has broken the world blind road speed record, on an airstrip in France.
Mr Costermans topped 308.78km/h (192 mph) while driving a Lamborghini Gallardo supercar at Istres, near Marseille, in southern France.
Mr Costermans thanked his co-pilot Guillaume Roman, saying: ""I'm very, very happy. It's a team effort."
Mr Costermans took the record from Briton Mike Newman, whose BMW M5 reached 268km/h three years ago.
Dedication
Mr Costermans, 43, was blinded in an accident four years ago.
He hit the top speed in two runs in the borrowed car.
He dedicated his effort to the Formula 1 racing driver Philippe Streiff, who has been a tetraplegic since suffering an accident in a Grand Prix in Brazil in 1989.
Two years ago Mr Costermans completed a tour of France piloting a light aeroplane.
He was accompanied by an instructor and a navigator. Belgian Luc Costermans has broken the world blind road speed record, on an airstrip in... more
-
-
Brazil and Argentina have launched a new payment system in their bilateral trade, doing away with the US dollar as a medium of exchange.
The two Latin American nations started the Payment System on Local Currency (SML) on Monday following a last month agreement inked by their presidents to use local currencies in a bid to end transaction in dollars.
On Thursday, Argentine Central Bank President Martin Redrado and his Brazilian counterpart Henrique de Campos Meirelles signed the enforcement of the agreement for the SML, under which exports and imports between the two countries will take place with the Brazilian real (BRL) and the Argentine peso (ARS).
The new monetary system mainly favors small and medium industries in both countries because it will save them bank charges when averting their local currencies to dollars.
According to the Central Bank of Argentina, the trade between the two major South American economies stands at about 25 billion US dollars per year.
Although the SML seeks to gradually eliminate the dollar from the bilateral trade, the currency will continue its presence in transactions between Brazil and Argentina, as their central banks will set the exchange rate for the real and the peso with respect to the dollar.
Brazilian authorities said that the SML deepens the integration between Brazil and Argentina and hope it will serve as an example to be adopted by other countries of the Mercosur, like Paraguay and Uruguay.
Brazil and Argentina have launched a new payment system in their bilateral trade,... more
-
-
More than 370 young penguins, who were mysteriously washed up on tropical beaches in Brazil, have been airlifted to safety in cooler water.
A Hercules military aircraft flew the flightless birds to Pelotas, in south Brazil, where they were released to cheers from a group of spectators.
The young birds were among a thousand Magellanic penguins, which have appeared on Brazil's warm north-east shores over the last few months.
The other birds either died or were too unhealthy to send back.
The healthy penguins, which had been kept at an animal rehabilitation centre in Salvador, north-east Brazil, were flown 2,500km (1,550 miles) south on a plane usually used for transporting military hardware.
They were released with a smaller group of adult penguins that had been rescued after being caught in an oil slick.
Experts from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who helped organise the airlift, hope these older birds will guide young ones south to the Patagonia.
Magellanic penguins breed in large colonies in southern Argentina and Chile, and migrate north as far as south-west Brazil between March and September.
Environmentalists have said it is not known why the penguins were stranded so far north, but suggest they could have been carried beyond their usual range by a flow of warm water.
"We are overjoyed to see these penguins waddle back to the ocean and have a second chance at life," said Valeria Ruoppolo of IFAW.
"Hundreds of penguins died in this unusual event and while media reports have often linked global warming to the penguins' demise, at this point there is no way to know for certain why these animals stranded." More than 370 young penguins, who were mysteriously washed up on tropical beaches in... more
-
-
Forrest Hylton: There used to be a recognition of US spheres of influence - all that is over.
Russia and Bolivia strengthened their ties this week. With Moscow concluding a deal with La Paz to purchase five Russian civil defence helicopters. The deal also forms part of a strategy of Latin American integration, sidelining the United States, as countries like Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina among others, attempt to re assert control over their own progress. Forrest Hylton states that "there used to be a recognition of spheres of influence all that is over."
Forrest Hylton is the the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, co-author of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a regular contributor to New Left Review and NACLA Report on the Americas.
Forrest Hylton: There used to be a recognition of US spheres of influence - all that... more
-
-
"Brazil’s environment minister announced yet another series of measures to halt deforestation of the Amazon this week, but their impact was weakened not only by the fact that destruction had increased sharply once again but that the government itself was among the worst culprits.
A federal agency charged with implementing agrarian reform and giving land to the poor filled the top six spots on a list of the nation’s 100 worst deforesters since 2005, according to the list, published by the environment ministry on Monday. The top 100 deforesters cut down the equivalent of 160,000 soccer fields, said Environment Minister Carlos Minc."
The Agency of Land Reform (INCRA) was fined 264 million reais (about $137 million) but denied responsibility for the deforestation.
This list was released on the same day as deforestation numbers show a 134% increase for the month of August; the monthly total increased from 568 acres in 2007 to 1,868 acres this year.
Full story at link..."Brazil’s environment minister announced yet another series of measures to... more
-
-
SDLN
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
This week the BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme is in Brazil. Here the programme talks to a typical net user to get a sense of what Brazilians do online.
There is no doubt that the web has caught on in Brazil as its web-using population has doubled in just three years.
In July 2008 more than 23.7 million Brazilians went online according to figures gathered by web statistics firm IBOPE/NetRatings. The figure is up 28% on the same time in 2007 and continues the trend of booming net use.
Proof that it has caught on can be seen in statistics which suggest Brazilians spend the longest time surfing from home than any other nationality.
IBOPE/NetRatings figures, based on sampling home net use habits, shows that Brazilians spend, on average, 24 hours 54 minutes online per month.
By contrast, North Americans spend 20 hours 30 minutes and Germans 21 hours browsing the web every month.
Surfing Japanese
While net access is popular in the homes of Brazilians, with 35.4 million homes connected to the web in July 2008, internet cafes, or Lan houses as they are known in Brazil, are becoming hugely popular.
So popular that they are springing up in underground stations and fast food restaurants. "People mainly check their emails and sometimes work stuff, like CVs," said Gus Neto, a regular Lan house user and a listener of the Digital Planet programme.
"They also come here to do a bit of networking, some are using MSN, that's what they come here to do.
"I was talking to one of the ladies who work her and she said that people don't have that good of a connection at home.
"If the connection fails, they rush here and make sure they are not going to be out of contact from the people they are talking to," he said.
The dark side
The internet has a reputation for harbouring some dark areas and for that reason, a rigorous check is done before anyone can use a computer in a Lan house.
"At one point the government of Brazil was worried that a lot of people would come to Lan houses and do dodgy business, especially with paedophilia," said Mr Neto.
"If people want to use one of these Lan terminals, they have to show their ID, so that they can be traceable," he added.
continued on linkThis week the BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme is in Brazil. Here the... more
-
