Geisy Arruda
Brushing back freshly dyed blond hair as she posed for pictures, the Brazilian woman whose short pink dress got her kicked out of college said Tuesday she’s enjoying her newfound fame, but wants go back to school - with a security guard.
Just the day before, 20-year-old took her first trip on an airplane so she could relive her experience in a comedy skit on one of Brazil’s most popular television shows.
Star-struck business executives on the flight to Rio de Janeiro asked if she really was Geisy, then used their cell phones to snap pictures of themselves with her.
It was heady stuff for a 20-year-old freshman from a blue-collar industrial suburb who says she just wants to get a tourism degree so she can fulfill dreams of working for a resort or a cruise line someday.
She’d already appeared on two of Brazil’s top interview programs, recounting how she was hounded from the campus of Bandeirantes University in October by male students yelling “Whore! Whore!” and was then expelled by school officials. (more…)
People gather rubbish to re-sell from a giant rubbish dump in Rio
As the United Nations food agency meets in Rome to discuss ways to combat global hunger, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacia Lula da Silva can tout the success of his country’s “Zero Hunger” program.
While the country still faces major challenges, including massive economic disparities, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates malnutrition has been reduced by 73 percent in the last six years.
According to the organization, which opened a three-day meeting in Rome on Monday, Brazil has also managed to reduce infant mortality by 45 percent in the same period.
The “Zero Hunger” program began in 2003, in the early days of Lula’s presidency, and combines dozens of social programs ranging from the construction of water tanks in dry regions to agricultural loans and food aid.
Key to the efforts has been the “Family Purse” program, which has been adopted in several African and Latin American countries.
The program allots 55 dollars a month to poor families on the condition their children go to school, and distributes food to some 37 million children while they are at school. (more…)
The Government of Brazil has announced that it will earmark 100 million reais to launch a “roll back malaria” project in the Amazon region in the next five years.
The money will benefit local communities in 47 municipalities in six states, said Jose Gomes Temporao, the country’s health minister, at the project’s inauguration ceremony in Manaus, Amazonas state.
These communities account for 70 percent of some 458,000 malaria cases registered in Brazil in 2007, he added.
He said the project’s goal is to reduce by 50 percent of malaria cases there.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will finance Brazil in implementing the project which will go into operation in 2010.
He said the Global Fund’s financial assistance will help Brazil improve medical care in areas with higher malaria incidence.
The minister said Brazil has made remarkable achievements in rolling back malaria in the past few years, reducing malaria cases by 150 percent from 2005 to 2008.
“Our goal is to cut the incidence of malaria cases down to no more than 150,000 in 2014, an important and significant reduction,” he said.
Xinhua
With its “main target” being the recovery of a bi-national hydroelectric dam that has fallen into the hands of an enemy country, Brazil launched a military exercises involving Army, Navy and Air Force in three states next to Paraguay
According to the NGO “Defesa@net - Defense, Strategy and Intelligence,” the purpose of such a huge mobilization of personnel and resources in such a hypothetical scenario is to send “a strong message to Paraguay.”
“The exercise will be the greatest simulation of a major conventional conflict in Latin America. The strategic hydroelectric dam ‘Itá’ has been occupied by strategic forces in a conflict between a “green” and a “yellow” country,” points out Kaiser Konrad in the portal.
A total of 8.000 men from the Brazilian Army, Navy and Air Force will be deployed until November 27th under Army General Carlos de Nardi, commander of the CMS (Southern Military Command).
“We are training our people for dissuasion, so that nobody trespasses our frontiers,” General de Nardi was quoted.
Under the conflict hypothesis the Green Country (allegedly Brazil) and the Yellow Country (allegedly Paraguay) are forced into conflict. The leaders of the yellow nation are facing an energy crisis, their oil wells have dried up and all the energy they have come from a binational plant built in partnership with the green nation. (more…)
President Lula vowed to uncover the “truth” of what caused a massive blackout across half of Brazil last week, and said everything would be done to avoid a repeat outage.
His comments, made in his weekly radio address and given from Rome, where he was attending a UN summit on hunger, underlined the mystery surrounding the blackout on Tuesday.
Up to 70 million people suddenly found themselves without power, creating widespread traffic difficulties and concerns over a surge in crime.
With international media questioning Brazil’s energy stability for the 2016 Olympics, Lula’s government initially blamed the incident on a storm, saying lightning must have shorted out transmission lines from the country’s biggest power plant. (more…)
The recent blackout in Brazil, which left over 50 million people without power across 18 states, raised questions about whether the country is sufficiently prepared to provide secure energy when it hosts the World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The city of Rio de Janeiro, which will host the Olympics was one of the most affected by the power outage. As for the World Cup, 5 of the 12 cities that will be venues for soccer events were hit by the electricity failure.
“FIFA (International Federation of Football Association) demands that there is primary and secondary supply of energy, as well as generators inside the stadiums. If the primary and secondary services fail, we need to guarantee at least the minimum of minimums, i.e., the holding of the match and its broadcasting,” says Robson Calil Chaar from the consultancy firm Deloitte.
“Imagine what it would be a mob of foreigners getting out of the stadium and having to face complete darkness. It will be chaos and it will cause irreparable damages to the country’s image.” (more…)
About 1,500 people took part in a protest in Sao Paulo against the visit to Brazil of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scheduled for November 23. The demonstration occurred in Arcos square and reunited several social movements and religious groups.
One of the event’s organizers in São Paulo, Boris Ber, president of the São Paulo State Israelite Federation, told reporters that the demonstration was not against the people of Iran, but a protest against its president “who deliberately denies the Holocaust” and defends the end of the state of Israel.
“Someone who denies history and someone who does not talk about the future, as Shimon Peres [president of Israel, who just visited Brazil], does not add up anything to Brazil,” said Ber, emphasizing that even a strictly commercial relation with Iran would not represent a big deal to Brazil.
Another criticism of the protesters on Ahmadinejad’s visit to Brazil is his statement that there is no homosexuality in his country. According to attorney Eduardo Piza Gomes de Melo, a member of the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) Edson Néris Institute, Ahmadinejad ” institutionalized homophobia”, making homosexuality into a crime in Iran and punishing it with the death penalty. (more…)
Lee Ardern, 26, a British citizen was taken into custody by the Brazilian police in the Rio de Janeiro international airport, Wednesday night, after customs randomly checked his luggage and found out that he was carrying about 900 live bird-eating spiders of four different species, which he was trying to smuggle out of Brazil.
Initially, the Brazilian Federal Police that made the arrest at the airport refused to give the man’s name. Apparently the spiders were hidden in air boxes camouflaged at the bottom of the two pieces of luggage he was carrying.
Ardern told authorities that he had bought the animals for US$ 5 each and his intention was to resell them for ten times that price or US$ 50 a piece in the United Kingdom. He was fined US$ 871,000 (1.5 million reais) and was released on bail but had to promise to continue in Brazil.
The penalty for that kind of environmental crime can vary between six months and a year in prison. The man has 20 days to present his case and try to avoid prison and the payment of the fines. (more…)
