Today the two leaders, often partners but sometimes rivals, offer starkly different paths toward development, and it is Brazil’s milder and more pragmatic approach that appears ascendant. Amid the decline of American influence in the region, the Brazilian president is discreetly outflanking Chávez at almost every turn in the struggle for leadership in South America.
Chávez [...]

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If you’re looking for a job then head to Brazil. That’s where the action is.
From the article:
The engineering shortage here is spreading across industries. The lack of civil and construction engineers threatens infrastructure projects; areas like banking, aircraft manufacture, petrochemicals and metals are all competing for the same top graduates. In the booming oil and [...]

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As commodity prices soar, South America’s agricultural giant steps up to feed a needy world
The Brazilians still call these lightly wooded plains the cerrado—or “closed” or “inaccessible” land. But nowadays the cerrado is very much open for business, its fertility a springboard from which the world’s newest superpower in agriculture is emerging. “We have been [...]

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Record spending on infrastructure will help to sustain rapid growth in emerging economies
THE biggest investment boom in history is under way. Over half of the world’s infrastructure investment is now taking place in emerging economies, where sales of excavators have risen more than fivefold since 2000. In total, emerging economies are likely to spend an [...]

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The creation of a South American Security Council, which would include oil-rich Venezuela, Chile and Argentina, was proposed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a meeting of 11 Latin American countries held in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, in May.
The security council would be part of an even larger effort led by Brazil to [...]

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BRIC shows signs of emerging as an alliance in an exercise seen as a challenge to the U.S.-dominated unipolar world order.
BRIC, an acronym coined by Goldman Sachs a few years ago to define a group of large emerging economies with fast growth rates, was born in May this year as a formalised grouping aspiring to [...]

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In effect, the BRIC countries collectively took the place of the United States as the locomotive of the global economy, helping to haul the rest of the planet along.
But there is a problem. They may not be able to keep it up, because just as it looked like the world had found a new economic [...]

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The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are emerging as the new powers destined to inherit world economic leadership by the middle of the 21st century.
With China and India combined representing more than one-third of the world’s population (2.4 billion) and undisputed leaders in converting raw materials into finished goods, these Asian giants are headed [...]

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Are the BRIC countries an emerging threat?
From the article:
The concept of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — was coined five years ago in a research paper from the Goldman Sachs investment bank.
This week, reality takes over from theory as the foreign ministers of the BRIC countries hold their first formal meeting [...]

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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 62, talks to SPIEGEL about why Brazil wants to join OPEC, his country’s biofuels program and Europe’s fear of Latin America’s shift to the left. more…

Photo Gallery: Brazil’s Popular President
A New Energy Leader: Brazil Wants to Join OPEC
Brazil’s Rainforests: Is Cheap Meat Bigger Threat to Amazon than Biofuels?
From [...]

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Brazil is a rising power politically, economically and militarily. Not only is it South America’s largest country in terms of population, economic heft, military strength and land area, its geopolitical power is expanding while most of its traditional competitors — namely Argentina and Venezuela — are contracting.
But while Brazil is almost certain in the next [...]

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Oil could transform Brazil’s economy. But not necessarily for the better
THE legend is that Brazil never lives up to its vast potential. When Stefan Zweig, an exiled Austrian writer, said in 1941 of his new home that it was the “country of the future”, popular humour quickly added the rider “and it always will be”. [...]

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Entrepreneurs in Brazil - A different kind of risk-taking
SETTLE down at one of São Paulo’s sushi bars and before long you will overhear a discussion about a start-up business making energy from obscure weeds, or some other bright idea for relieving members of the country’s growing middle class of their disposable income. A field study [...]

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The recent discovery of offshore energy reserves and the diminishing sway of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez have been a boon for Brazil’s regional influence.
Initial euphoria over the magnitude of the oil discovery, located in the offshore Tupi field, led Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to announce his intention to join OPEC, the Organization of [...]

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Argentina and Brazil are to jointly build nuclear-powered submarines by pooling their expertise in atomic technology, Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said in an announcement published Sunday. The project will also involve France, which is to contribute to the non-nuclear side of building the vessels, he told the Argentine newspaper Clarin. The plans were revealed [...]

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Argentina and Brazil have agreed to build a joint nuclear reactor to address looming energy shortages.
The agreement came as part of a plan by South America’s two biggest economies to extend defence and energy projects.
Read More…

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Brazil is seeking to buy military technology from France that could help it become the first country in Latin America to have a nuclear submarine, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Defense Minister Nelson Jobim traveled to France last week to discuss the possible purchase of a diesel-powered Scorpene class submarine that would “serve as a [...]

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Not only is Brazil going to be an oil powerhouse, it’s working on becoming a farming powerhouse, too. It has developed its own Uranium enrichment technology and is working on a nuclear powered submarine.
How Brazil out-farmed the Americans
Fortune Magazine has an interesting article about how the Brazilian farmers are catching up fast to the American [...]

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Stratfor.Com just provided their 2008 forecast. Below is a longer-term forecast that will allow you to put things perspective.
Overall, I think that giving us general trends for the next five to ten years, then giving us the 2008 forecast in context with the larger trends would be better. Although, this might lead to different conclusions [...]

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First it was Venezuela, spending $4 billion on Russian fighter planes, Kalashnikovs and perhaps even submarines. Then it was Brazil, in August announcing a 53% increase in its military budget for 2008, the biggest such increase in more than a decade. The competition is still in the early stages but when two of Latin America’s [...]

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State-run Petrobras’ “monstrous” new oil find has wide-ranging implications for the South American country, the oil majors, oil services providers, and beyond
Petrobras announced Nov. 8 it has found between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of light oil and gas at the Tupi field, 155 miles offshore southern Brazil in an area it shares with [...]

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