The World Just Lost One Of Its Biggest Oil Plays To Low Prices

Energy analysts Wood MacKenzie said last week that low oil prices have now caused the delay of 68 planned petroleum projects globally. Representing $380 billion in frozen capital expenditures.

And news late last week shows it’s not just the private sector shutting things down in oil development. 

Brazil’s economy tanks as multibillion-dollar corruption scandal expands

Rodrigo Muchinelli, owner of a computer sales and repair store in Rio, said his business was in the red for the first three months of this year and is still limping. “It is a fight, daily,” said the 38-year-old businessman.

A woman shouts slogans and bangs on a pan last month during an anti-government protest demanding the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. (Leo Correa/AP)

Laercio Soares closed a lucrative deal with a Rio samba school for his embroidery company in December. He used the money to close a family business whose workforce had fallen from 60 to eight. “We saw the perspective was bad,” said Soares, 65. “That’s why we took this drastic decision.”

Brazilian infrastructure 2.0: Can Rousseff rouse the private sector?

Dilma Rousseff will visit the U.S. this month to attract private sector financing for her new infrastructure investment proposal. She made similar plans in 2012. Will investors bite this time? And will this help turn around the lagging Brazilian economy?

On Tuesday, June 30, Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, met with 400 US and Brazilian investors in New York with the purpose of boosting investment in Brazil’s infrastructure as part of a large public concessions project, announced in the early days of June.

Recession ahead for Brazil?

With fiscal adjustment in progress, Brazil’s new Finance Minister announces a trimester of negative growth. However, adverse conditions in the international economy and a severe energy crisis raise concerns over whether 2015 is bound to be a year of recession for the country.

Brazil’s fiscal adjustment under way

Just weeks after the start of Dilma Rousseff’s second mandate, Brazil’s new economic team has already provided signs of commitment to carrying on the much needed fiscal adjustment in 2015.

Drought Forcing Brazil To Turn To Gas

Brazil is dealing with one of its worst droughts in years, causing the city of Sao Paulo to suffer through rolling blackouts.

Blistering heat and scant rainfall have depleted reserves at Brazil’s hydroelectric plants, leaving power generation at precariously low levels. On January 19, Brazil’s national grid operator ONS cut power to several major Brazilian cities, including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Commuters on the subway in Sao Paulo even had to disembark from a train and walk along the rails after power to parts of the subway system went out.

Corruption Scandal Threatens Brazilian Oil Developments

Petrobras looked like a model for transparency in the energy sector and, with a recent discovery of large offshore deposits, was poised to make Brazil a regional energy superpower. However, a corruption scandal clouds the company, leaving the future of Brazil’s pre-salts in doubt.

Brazil’s pre-salt deposits are the largest deep-water oil reservoirs globally with unparalleled revenue potential for operators with the adequate technological capacity. But foreign operators interested in developing pre-salt blocks are subject to a special set of rules in accordance with the Brazilian government’s “Three Systems Model”.

How to Bring Brazil's Economy Back to Life

As Brazilians went to the polls on Oct. 5 to choose their new president, Aécio Neves, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) presidential candidate, surged dramatically into the run-off election against the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff -- taking almost all observers and polling companies by surprise. The twisting campaign remains unpredictable, but two things are certain. The first is that the Brazilian electorate faces a very distinct choice between two candidates with completely different economic philosophies and policies. The second is that the Brazilian economy is desperately weak. Brazil, which suffers from serious macroeconomic imbalances, fell into recession in the first half of this year. Whoever wins in the final stage of the election on Oct. 26 will face the daunting task of restoring dynamism to a slow-moving economy.

Brazilian president: US surveillance a 'breach of international law'

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff speaks at the United Nations general assembly. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, has launched a blistering attack on US espionage at the UN general assembly, accusing the NSA of violating international law by its indiscriminate collection of personal information of Brazilian citizens and economic espionage targeted on the country's strategic industries.

Rousseff's angry speech was a direct challenge to President Barack Obama, who was waiting in the wings to deliver his own address to the UN general assembly, and represented the most serious diplomatic fallout to date from the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The underappreciated tensions between China and Brazil

By Ian Bremmer

(Reuters) - If you believed the conventional wisdom, this week's meeting between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was bound to be fraught. The leaders of the world's two largest countries, only a month removed from a standoff in the Himalayas, were meeting. Acrimony was sure to follow, right?

No. Instead, Li said he offered India a "handshake across the Himalayas" and mused about how China and India could increase their trade to $100 billion by 2015. China and India, you see, aren't as antagonistic as pundits make them out to be.

Rio’s Exploding Manholes Menace Residents and Highlight Aging Infrastructure

David McLaughlin was thrilled to be in Brazil. He had arrived here from Ohio State University on a Fulbright grant to research Brazilian hip-hop music with his wife, Sarah Lowry, a scholar of Russian literature. The graduate students, newlyweds, set out one morning in June 2010 to search for an apartment in the beachfront neighborhood of Copacabana.

Then, while crossing a bustling avenue, the asphalt under their feet started to tremble. A fireball surged suddenly from a manhole, enveloping Ms. Lowry in flames. Mr. McLaughlin leapt on her and extinguished the fire. But Ms. Lowry had burns on 80 percent of her body and spent 70 days in the hospital here. Mr. McLaughlin was burned on 35 percent of his body.

Brazilian cities hit by crack epidemic

Glassy-eyed, rail-thin and filthy, hundreds of addicts emerged from doorways and alleys as dusk came to the once-grand Luz district in the heart of this city.

After quick transactions with crack dealers, they scrambled for a little privacy to light up their pipes and inhale tiny, highly addictive rocks that go for about $5 each. The image was reminiscent of Washington or New York in the 1980s, when crack cocaine engulfed whole neighborhoods and sparked a dizzying cycle of violence.

But this time, the crack epidemic is happening in Brazil, alarming officials and tarnishing the country’s carefully cultivated image ahead of two major sporting events to be staged here: soccer’s 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Ρωσία: Υπό κράτηση τρεις ηγέτες της αντιπολίτευσης

Οι ειδικές δυνάμεις της ρωσικής αστυνομίας συνέλαβαν και έθεσαν σήμερα υπό κράτηση τουλάχιστον τρεις ηγέτες της αντιπολίτευσης όταν προσπάθησαν να συμμετάσχουν σε απαγορευμένη διαδήλωση κατά του προέδρου Βλαντιμίρ Πούτιν, σύμφωνα με αυτόπτες μάρτυρες.

Ο Σεργκέι Ουντάλτσοφ, που ηγείται του Αριστερού Μετώπου, ύψωσε την γροθιά του στον αέρα την ώρα που αστυνομικοί τον απομάκρυναν σηκωτό και τον έβαζαν μέσα σε φορτηγάκι που ήταν σταθμευμένο κοντά στην πλατεία Λουμπιάνκα στην κεντρική Μόσχα, όπου εκατοντάδες άνθρωποι είχαν συγκεντρωθεί για την διαδήλωση.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest hits record low

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has dropped to its lowest level in 24 years, the government said Tuesday.

Satellite imagery showed that 1,798 square miles (4,656 square kilometers) of the Amazon were deforested between August 2011 and July 2012, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said a news conference. That’s 27 percent less than the 2,478 square miles (6,418 square kilometers) deforested a year earlier. The margin of error is 10 percentage points.

Brazilians dare to hope crackdown on corruption is real

Normally, live coverage of events in Brazil is reserved for football matches.

But in recent weeks, the law professors at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a Brazilian educational institution, have been running live commentary on something entirely different – the Mensalão (or big monthly allowance) case in the Supreme Court.

Could drug decriminalization save Brazil’s slums?

Brazil has been struggling with drug violence for years. The problem got so bad that the country passed a law in 2006 to distinguish between dealers and users in handing out sentences, meant to reduce the overwhelming pressure on the justice and jail systems and to better single out dealers. But since then, the number of Brazilians in prison for drug charges has more than doubled and its total prison population has grown by 37 percent, according to official statistics.

Brazilian troops patrol a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro. (CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images)

Now, a prominent Brazilian think tank called the Igrapé Institute has released a surprising list of policy proposals to address the problem. The think tank had organized a special committee called Pense Livre (“think free” in Portuguese) to rethink the country’s drug policy. Its four-point plan, translated by the folks at Riorealblog and flagged today by GlobalVoices, starts with drug decriminalization:

Brazilian newspapers pull out of Google News

Newspapers accounting for 90% of the circulation in Brazil have abandoned Google News.

Brazil's National Association of Newspapers says all 154 members had followed its recommendation to ban the search engine aggregator from using their content.

The papers say Google News refused to pay for content and was driving traffic away from their websites.