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Dilma Rousseff has squandered Brazil's commodity boom, but the country is not in meltdown and is unlikely to set off an emerging market crash Brazil’s currency plummeted to all-time lows and borrowing costs have tightened viciously after Standard & Poor’s slashed the country’s debt to junk status, warning that the budget deficit has reached danger levels. The downgrade is a painful blow to a nation that thought it had finally escaped the Latin American curse of boom-bust cycles and joined the top league of rich economies. It is the second of the big emerging market economies to be stripped of...

Some pre-Hispanic cultures in South America had elaborate celebrations at their cemeteries, complete with feasting and drinking grounds much like modern barbecue pits, according to a new archaeological study. Excavations of 12th- and-13th-century burial mounds in the highlands of Brazil and Argentina revealed numerous earthen ovens. The finds suggest that the graves were also sites of regular festivals held to commemorate the death of the community's chief.

Washington - There has been an astounding 32 per cent increase this year in the number of students flocking to American universities for higher studies. It is the biggest increase from any single country for the year, although in overall terms, China still tops the table in a big way. Figures just released by the US Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVP) indicate that 149,987 Indian students are currently enrolled in American universities of a total of 1.05 million. Chinese students number 301,532. When it comes to the highly-coveted STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) stream, it is Indian students...

Anti-Marxist Conscience of the Brazilian Evangelical By Julio Severo A people with no memory is not able to build a good future. So it is fundamental to remember those who played a vital role in the formation of the anti-Marxist conscience of Brazilian evangelicals. Even though many American missionaries had a significant influence in this formation, the most important impact came from American televangelists, who had a vastly higher reach of audiences, both evangelical and non-evangelical. Pat Robertson in 1978 In 1978, Brazilian TV Tupi broadcast, from Monday to Friday, “The 700 Club,” hosted by charismatic televangelist Rev. Pat...

Understanding Anti-Government Protests in Brazil By Julio Severo Economic crisis produces protests. In Brazil, at least, the motivation behind protests has been, as reported by Reuters, “a sluggish economy, rising prices and corruption.” Sadly, the protests have not been against the abortion and homosexual agenda, whose government obsession to impose it should be a top priority in the concerns of a Christian people. In the early 1980s, Brazil had one of the biggest debts in the world and the commonest word in the Brazilian news was IMF (International Monetary Fund). Prices were skyrocketing. Inflation was the daily friend of...

Watching the end of the trading day on Fox Biz when the market dropped from 300 to 103 in two minutes. Trader told Liz Claman that the rumor is going around the trading floor that there may be a coup underway in China, and troop movements are being reported in Beijing. It was funny watching a trader hand news to a journalist. Claman was caught flat-footed. Fox hasn't done anything about the rumor in the five minutes it was reported. Nothing on Drudge about China yet.

The manufacturer of Oreo cookies recently announced plans to move production of Oreos from Chicago to Mexico, resulting in a loss of 600 U.S. jobs.This should be a wake-up call to defenders of the U.S. sugar program and other job-destroying trade barriers.The leading ingredient in Oreos is sugar, and U.S. trade barriers currently require Americans to pay twice the average world prices for sugar.Sugar-using industries now have a big incentive to relocate from the United States to countries where access to their primary ingredient is not restricted.If the government wants people making Oreo cookies and similar products to keep their...

RIO DE JANEIRO — The Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa calls Donald J. Trump a “racist imbecile.” In Mexico, people are gleefully bashing Trump piñatas after his caustic remarks about Latino immigrants in the United States. In Guatemala, a liquor company is putting up posters of Mr. Trump using a term that, when translated charitably, describes him as a jackass. Then there is Brazil, where Mr. Trump’s new 171-room stamp on the Rio de Janeiro skyline has generated so little uproar that his business partner feels perfectly comfortable trumpeting his contentious stance on immigration. “I’m a Latin and I...

Intelligence officials are comparing a newly discovered secret Islamic State document to Hitler's "Mein Kampf," as it blames Israel for the rise of the Islamic State and crowns U.S. President Barack Obama as the "Mule of the Jews." Found in Pakistan's remote tribal region by American Media Institute (AMI), the 32-page Urdu language document promotes an "end of the world" battle as a final solution. It argues that the Islamic leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world's 1 billion Muslims, under a religious empire called a "caliphate." ...Retired U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn...

Protests are underway in Brazil as hundreds of thousands take to the streets to call for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Here's Bloomberg: An estimated 25,000 protesters in Brasilia marched toward Congress, chanting against Rousseff and corruption, carried a long banner demanding “Impeachment Now.” Rouseff monitored proceedings from her official residence, due to meet with some of her cabinet in the afternoon, said Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo. Protest in #Rio #Brazil: "Military intervention is not a crime" via @tariqpanja UNBELIEVABLE. pic.twitter.com/S8kcJmUJnq— juliana barbassa (@jbarbassa) August 16, 2015 Background: was chairwoman from 2003 to 2010. When the world’s foremost...

Looking to cut costs and prune military imports, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has halved its demand for Russian-built fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA). It now wants just three squadrons of the fighter jets which are to be inducted into the Russian Air Force in 2016. Sources say the IAF has scaled down its needs and now indicated that just three squadrons (around 18 planes in each), besides a few more for training of the pilots, will be enough for now. This works out to be 65 planes, almost half from the earlier projection of 127 FGFAs to be jointly...

Citizens of Brazil who were born in Jerusalem will have their passports amended to eliminate “Israel” from the line denoting place of birth. Existing passports are to be reissued with the “offending” term deleted, and passports that are not changed will be invalid at the end of the year. While the rule change would appear to have been influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that Americans born in Jerusalem could not have their birthplace listed as Jerusalem, Israel—but rather would be listed as Jerusalem alone—Brazil had apparently made the decision on dropping Israel a year ago,...

Mackenzie Presbyterian University and Its Pro-Abortion Professor By Julio Severo Abortion legalization in Brazil was discussed in a Senate hearing on August 6, 2015. Among the debaters were pro-abortion feminists. The big surprise was that the Senate introduced one of them as “Márcia Tiburi, professor at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University.” Mackenzie is the highest Calvinist educational institution in Brazil. Tiburi’s pro-abortion discourse, recorded by TV Senado (the official TV of the Brazilian Senate), began by saying that whenever she travels throughout Brazil in her pro-abortion activism she takes the name Mackenzie with her, stressing that she is not the...

Alberto Youssef, a convicted money launderer and former bon vivant, sat in a Brazilian jail cell in March of last year, getting ready to tell his lawyers a story. It was about an elaborate bribery scheme involving Petrobras, the government-controlled oil giant. He opened with a dire prediction. “Guys,” Mr. Youssef said, “if I speak, the republic is going to fall.” To those lawyers, Tracy Reinaldet and Adriano Bretas, who recently recounted the conversation, this sounded a tad melodramatic. But then Mr. Youssef took a piece of paper and started writing the names of participants in what would soon become...

Armed robbery in a pizzeria in Brazil

"The document warns that 'preparations' for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America," the report said. The ISIS is preparing to attack India to provoke an Armageddon-like confrontation with the US, according to an internal recruitment document of the feared group which also seeks to unite the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror. An investigative story published yesterday by the USA Today and reported by American Media Institute refers to a 32- page Urdu document obtained from a Pakistani citizen with connections inside the Pakistani...

The Pope and the Vatican Should Be Confronted about Traditional Catholic Stances against Israel Instead of rejecting Israel as the Vatican does, evangelical leaders should do what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did By Julio Severo WorldNetDaily chief Joseph Farah accurately pointed the latest Vatican tragedy against Israel by saying that it is a “one-sided hostile action against Israel.” He said, Pope Francis announced an agreement had been reached with the barbaric leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization recognizing “Palestine.” It’s a barbarous act of political and historical tone deafness by the pope that puts the beleaguered Jewish state,...

RIO DE JANEIRO - More than a thousand taxi drivers protested in Rio de Janeiro on Friday against ride-sharing company Uber [UBER.UL], blocking roads and stalling traffic during morning rush hour as tensions rise in the city over the mobile app ride service. Uber Technologies Inc responded by offering free rides to customers to help alleviate transport issues on what it called a "difficult day for getting around." The company has come under fire in countries around the world, with local taxi drivers complaining that Uber drivers are not properly regulated and have fewer overhead costs, which makes them unfairly...

Leading anti-discrimination campaigners issued a stinging attack on Russia’s racism record on Saturday night and said England should boycott the 2018 World Cup if they qualify unless the situation improves. Brazilian striker Hulk, Russian football’s record signing, was pulled out of yesterday’s draw ceremony for what organisers said were ‘purely sporting reasons’ in order to play for Zenit St Petersburg. But just days earlier, Hulk said racism happens at ‘almost every game’ in the Russian league and was a genuine threat to the World Cup. Meanwhile, Ghanaian officials condemned the ‘vile racist abuse’ meted out to former Arsenal midfielder Emmanuel...

In a grassy meadow where eons ago some of America's first settlers camped and chipped stone tools, a precisely dug dirt pit, four yards square, is sinking steadily into the dark soil. And as it descends at a rate of an inch or two a day, the remote excavation northwest of Austin is also traveling backward through the millennia toward the continent's first native people... If all goes well, perhaps quite soon, primitive stone tools, similar to those discovered here a few years ago, will again be unearthed, reinforcing an emerging, if once controversial theory, about when the first humans...