In Brazil, law enforcement officers boast on social network sites about committing violence against suspects, and show off the results for all to see.
Source: FOLHA DE S. PAULO
Founded in 1921, the “Sao Paulo Gazzette” became Brazil’s leading daily in the 1980s
by applying standards of openness and objectivity to its coverage of the country and
Latin America as a whole.
Brazil has utterly failed to find an environmentally friendly response to waste disposal. The struggling economy makes change unlikely, meaning ever more garbage “pickers” making modest livings sifting through the dumps.
SÃO PAULO — Israel Afonso Lima, a janitor in this Brazilian city, suffers from Down syndrome. But that didn’t stop him, at the age of 36, from deciding to go back to school to learn Brazilian sign language. And it’s for a very good reason: to be able to communicate with his wife, 37-year-old Eliene […]
Today’s generation of university students are the children of so-called “helicopter parents,” particularly coddled and worried about in the US. And they can’t seem to cope in the face of adulthood.
A showdown over Israel’s choice for ambassador to Brazil, pro-settlements leader Dani Dayan, shows the Netanyahu government may be set to abandon the two-state solution that has promised Palestinians a homeland.
When Rio de Janeiro won its Olympic bid back in 2009, Brazil was hailed as a nation on the rise. Now, it is the wrong place at the wrong time to host the 2016 Summer Games.
SAO PAULO — João Batista, a 45-year-old builder, has been unemployed since December. Jailson de Lima, 46, is luckier: He still manages to find construction work from time to time but doesn’t earn enough to pay rent, which has been on a relentless rise. Cristiane dos Santos, 27, lived in a hostel for some time […]
Of all the milestones along the road to human civilization, none is more profound than the advent of reading and writing. But in the name of interactivity, the 21st century is marked by the shallow language of social media that risks burning all our acqui
The 2016 Summer Olympic Games start next Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro with too many projects behind schedule. One particular environmental hurdle looks insurmountable.
The world’s second-largest economy is now Brazil’s top customer for oil, but also its most important buyer of soybeans, iron ore and cellulose.
CARUARU — For months now, water taps in some of northeastern Brazil’s cities have been running dry. Not during certain hours of the day. Or certain days of the week. But all the time. Morning and night. Day after day, with the exception of just two days per month. And it’s not just residents being […]
After doing business with both Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and China, Brazil’s space program is going back to where it started: NASA.
The number of Brazilians living and working in the United States is growing fast, yet neither government has taken the steps necessary to mobilize this community.
SAO PAULO — Cemeteries are rarely considered places of beauty and pleasure. The one in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Jardim Angela was also grim for another reason, considering that in 1996 the UN ranked it the most violent urban region in the world. But now a part of this graveyard is bringing some smiles […]
-Essay- SAO PAULO — It’s the future here, writing with a warning to brace yourself. How I would love to tell you that in 35 years you’ll be able to go back in time, fix your mistakes and change history. Sadly, you won’t be able to do that. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in […]
-Op-Ed- SAO PAULO — Two studies published in recent months show how inequality around the world is becoming even more obscene than before. One such study is the UBS report on the rich that focuses on capital. The figures involved are predictably shocking, but one element in particular caught our attention: The wealth owned by […]
-OpEd- SAO PAULO — The just-concluded Summit of the Americas in Panama was hailed as historic because it was the first time since the gathering began that both Cuba and the United States were present. And yet, there’s plenty of room for disappointment. The gathering of heads of state could have been even more significant […]
SALVADOR — There’s nothing quite like a barbecue with friends and beer, lots of it, to go down cool and easy with the sizzling steaks — and of course the photos to brag about the good time. The scene would be nothing remarkable if it wasn’t for its location: Lemos Brito Penitentiary, in Salvador, one […]
From Greece and Spain, to Brazil and beyond, people are no longer convinced that politics is working for the greater good.
BRASILIA — Not so many months ago, pollsters were saying she’d be Brazil’s next president. But now, three months after failing to make it to even the second round of the election, former Sen. Marina Silva is nowhere to be seen. The once high-flying candidate seems to have lost more than just a presidential race. […]
What used to be simple outdoor fun is now considered real child therapy in our hyper-connected world.
-OpEd- SÃO PAULO — The ongoing corruption and money laundering scandals at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras have badly tarnished the image of the company. Once considered as a sort of national treasure, the public firm faces almost daily revelations about kickbacks paid to politicians from oil sales as part of a scheme to buy […]
-OpEd- DOURADOS — Large imposing walls and fences have become a compulsory part of construction plans for the luxury gated communities mushrooming all around Brazil. But there is one particularity about the Ecoville Residence in Dourados, in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul. On the other side of its three-meter electric fence sits […]
SAO PAULO — During my time in the early 1980s as a correspondent for Folha de S. Paulo in Buenos Aires, I covered more demonstrations of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” — and then of the “Grandmothers” — than I could count. Brave women, their faces furrowed by time and pain, their heads […]
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff edged out reelection, thanks in part to her charismatic predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. What role will he seek in her second term? Is he preparing to run in 2018?
Categories
What Brazil Owes Its Indigenous Aikewara
A Brazilian Justice Ministry committee has officially apologized and offered reparations to the Aikewara, decimated in the early 1970s by army soldiers. But one more step is still needed.
SÃO PAULO — When it comes to freshwater, Brazil, home to somewhere between 12% and 16% of the world’s total supply, is a very wealthy country. Inhabitants only use 0.7% of the 43,000 cubic meters of water per year that could, theoretically, be available to each and every one of them. In this regard, Brazil […]
Will Divine Providence, or “Bible roulette,” play a role in the outcome of next month’s Brazilian elections?
SAO PAULO — Vitamin D was named as such when it was first discovered in 1910, but it wasn’t until two decades later that its real structure was identified. In fact, it is a steroid hormone. Even today, the use of the term “vitamin” is a source of debate among health professionals. Vitamin D deficiency […]
Can Brazil apply the successful “Copa template” to everyday life and political leadership? Too often, the country tends to disappoint when the rest of the world isn’t watching.
BRASILIA — What will be the political and economic reverberations of Tuesday’s historic humiliation of Brazil’s soccer team? The government of President Dilma Rousseff is already on alert, fearing that the national bad mood left by the 7-1 defeat at the hands of Germany may deepen the already rather bleak Brazilian economic forecast, and have […]
SAO PAULO — Asking “How are you?” in English was the way Igor Mendes, a 26-year-old car dealer, approached Marcela Paes one night in Vila Madalena, the “in” district for Brazilians and foreigners enjoying La Copa in Sao Paulo. Unaware that Marcela is a reporter and fluent in English, he presented himself as a Scot. […]
Juliano Alves Pinto hadn’t walked since a 2006 car accident. Then, just a few days ago, the world watched as he wore a mind-controlled exoskeleton to make the opening kick of the World Cup in Brazil.
Many outsiders regard Latin America as monolithic about soccer. But as the World Cup begins in Brazil, a closer comparison of the region’s top two teams might surprise you.
Brazil’s national sport of ‘futebol’ is the expression of all that is right in a sometimes troubled country. Plans by protestors to take out their anger on the World Cup are destined to fail.
The Brazilian Congress has passed a new law that requires no fewer than 20 percent of its civil service employees in the public sector to be of African origin. Good motives, bad policy.
An experiment in the Amazon forest will test a hypothesis that higher levels of CO2, due to climate change, can avert the drought and high temperatures it was supposed to cause.
SÂO PAULO — The Chinese government is already making its first plans to celebrate the centenary of two momentous events in the country’s history. Seven years from now, in 2021, the nation will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Then in 2049, the country will celebrate the creation […]
-Op-Ed- SAO PAULO — Brazil’s military rule, which began 50 years ago with the coup on April 1, 1964, and lasted until 1985, has since been the target of well-deserved and widely-shared aversion. The solid establishment of a modern democracy over the last three decades helped shine a light on all that was wrong with […]