Christmas season marks the 50th anniversary of Brasilia, the futuristic capital city designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, and magazines and online media are celebrating the event. Moving the seat of government inland was the beginning of the Bossa Nova (new wave) of president Juscelino Kubitscheck that started Brazil's transformation...

American football is becoming popular on Copacabana Beach. You can drink caipirinhas and watch the game as it was played a century ago when Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais perfected the forward pass on the sand at Cedar Point, Ohio, half way between Notre Dame's Golden Dome and Cleveland Browns...

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has pronounced an economic Dark Ages. Rupert Murdoch gives print media twenty years. Crossing the rubicon to the flat earth of government by feelings leaders are judged by popularity instead of effectiveness. Those who can afford to participate in the new digital economy are caught in...

Sao Paulo

While sharing his vision of a more peaceful world with the UN and demanding big Pentagon cuts, US president Barack Obama has also been lobbying Brazil to buy warplanes from shrinking defense giant Boeing. This latest chapter in the underreported arms race between Brazil and Venezuela is a...

Leading Argentina to the 1986 World Cup, football legend Diego Maradona scored a goal with his arm he attributed to the "the hand of God." As it often does, karma from that controversial score against England has caught up with the ex-superstar and with Argentina's football fortunes as well.

Having adding "widowed" as a status to Facebook's aging demographic profile Mark Zuckerberg brought his road show to Brazil recently to drum up young members. With security and PR support befitting the leader of a 200 million strong online nation the shy, 23-year old billionaire spoke with future entrepreneurs at...

Presidents Lula of Brazil and Bachelet of Chile have voiced concern that Washington's push for more bases in Colombia will drive armed conflict deeper into the rain forest. But global demand makes the drug trade too big to fail, credit markets are drained and narcodollars are the last mountain of...

The dramatic call for "insurrection" by deposed Honduran president Mel Zelaya and the 72 hour ultimatum issued by the Organization of American States (OAS) are reminders of how just much the stakes have escalated since negotiator Oscar Arias won the Nobel Prize trying to bring peace to his region a...

Fifty million Brazilian students will have Christmas in July when software Santa slips down the chimney to give them a free ticket on the information highway.

With Microsoft software licenses costing up to 1000 percent more in Brazil than in the US, the ProInfo program launched by the government of...

China has made a $10 billion investment in energy giant Petrobras strengthening Brazil's efforts toward sustainability and putting sugar based ethanol in the center of the geopolitical arena.

Using its own technology and just 1% of its arable land, Brazil efficiently produced 6.57 billion gallons of sugar ethanol last...

Rio de Janeiro

The International Olympic Selection Committee just completed a week long visit here and if the buzz at the Copacabana Palace Hotel is any indication, prospects seem good that the Olympics will come to South America for the first time.

Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid are competing...

As millions celebrate Earth Day, Brazil's national energy policy offers an example for nations seeking to do more with less. Brazil loves its Grand Prix auto racing, but biofuels and innovative public transportation systems provide the nation with energy independence.

In Curitiba, an industrial city of 3.7 million in southern...

Rio

Twitter, the trendy message service that can eat up your privacy faster than a school of piranhas, is flaunting Brazil's tough Internet laws in an effort to mine digital gold.

The powerful Globo media group gave Twitter a seven page cover story in its flagship magazine Epoca last...

Rio -- Brazil's president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva got free coffee from President Obama at the White House Saturday. But back home he'll pay $20 for a pound of Starbucks Brazilian blend, exported, processed in the US and imported back to Brazil. The same coffee in Miami runs half...

The World Economic Forum checked out of snowy Davos divided on helping the US and Europe. In tropical Brazil meanwhile, millions of citizens are shucking the pathology of underdevelopment. Central bank statistics indicate the world's 10th largest economy posted 5.6% growth last year, creating 1.9 million new jobs. Big box...

January in Brazil is like August in France. Shops shut down. Families head for the beach. In the land of Carnival, not even an economic crisis can stop the music...

Shored up by major offshore oil and natural gas discoveries, Brazil has more financial wiggle room than a bikini. But...