Our podcast is available on: On October 7, around 147 million Brazilians are expected to head to their polling station, show their I.D. and then get into a booth to choose our leaders for the next four years. We will elect a new president, 27 new governors, 513 congressmen, and over 1,000 state lawmakers.… Read More »
2018 Election
Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. In October 2009, the historian Luiz Felipe de Alencastro wrote that it was a risk for Dilma Rousseff to have Michel Temer as her vice president. Mr. Temer embodies the gargantuan appetite of his pork barrel Brazilian Democratic Movement party. It would be, as Mr. Alencastro asserted,… Read More »
In the morning of February 16, 2015, a 19-year-old woman checked into a hospital in São Bernardo do Campo, on the outskirts of São Paulo, suffering from internal bleeding. She would leave the hospital later that same afternoon, in handcuffs, arrested. The young woman had performed an illegal abortion at home – and was reported… Read More »
In 2001, former Goldman Sachs executive Jim O’Neill created the term “BRIC” to identify Brazil, Russia, India, and China as the world’s top emerging powers. South Africa would later join the group, in 2010, thus giving the acronym its final letter. This week, the leaders of the five countries meet in the 10th BRICS Summit,… Read More »
Two years after the World Health Organization declared the Americas free of measles, it could (along with other diseases) be about to make a comeback. An outbreak in the North of Brazil has infected nearly 500 people and placed authorities on alert. Besides the confirmed infections, there have been an additional 1,500 suspected cases. In… Read More »
On Sunday, Brazil witnessed a struggle between supporters of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the judges who sentenced him to 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering. One group tried to free Lula, taking advantage of the judiciary’s July vacations, while the other reacted quickly to prevent Lula from… Read More »
When the media talks about LGBTQ rights in Brazil, the focus is usually on violence rates. Brazil, after all, has arguably the highest murder rate against these populations, with approximately one LGBTQ person being killed every day. For this week’s podcast, however, we want instead to shed light on initiatives that fight for the social… Read More »
The Brazilian Report published an article this week, signed by journalist Austin Andru, which explores how Brazil has become a target for major pharmaceutical companies. As regulations in North America and Europe are causing profits from the sales of opioids – powerful painkillers which are the chemical cousins of heroin – to shrink, these large… Read More »
The 2018 FIFA World Cup kicked off on June 14. One week later, Brazil still doesn’t seem to be in the mood for football. Unlike other editions of the event, you don’t see many Brazilian flags waving from windows, or many people dressed up in yellow and green. Why is that? In decades prior, the… Read More »
When Brazil published a document called National Defense Strategy in 2008, it established the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine as a priority. The project was budgeted at BRL 31.8 billion (USD 8.4 billion), with its conclusion expected to be in 2027. In 2012, the Brazilian Armed Forces published its white paper on national defense, making… Read More »