BRASIL: Ouch! Rio/Sao Paulo Pricier...Than NYC.

WSJ/ J. Lyons

   Brasil's REAL at $1.57 per usd...is near a 3-year high.
   And Goldman Sachs still claims it is the world's most overvalued currency.
   But the REAL's new strength shocks new...and old...visitors with $16 caipirinhas.
   One night at Marriott's Renaissance hotel in Sâo Paulo can cost 50% more than a night at the Renaissance in Manhattan.
    "I don't remember prices like this in my whole 40 years covering Brazil and living there," said economist John Welch.
    Now some economists are wondering aloud...if an asset bubble...especially in real estate...is forming there.

BRASIL: Rio's Slums Make Way For World Cup Soccer And Olympics.

   

GUARDIAN / T. Phillips / with 2:18 video /

    A slum called Favela do Metrô is being levelled to redo Rio's infrastructure before the World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
    Located in north Rio, until recently,it was home to about 1,000 Brazilians.
    So far 358 families have been rehoused and about 320 remain.
   Locals believe the slum will be replaced by parking lots for the nearby stadium.
  "The World Cup is on its way and they want this area," said a resident. "I think it is inhumane."

BRASIL / USA: Google Changes Its Rio Maps... After Favelas Flap.

BBC/

   Google will change its maps of Rio de Janeiro after officials there said it gave too much prominence to favelas/slums.
   O GLOBO newspaper said favelas dominated Google's maps and neglected the wealthier districts and tourist sites...giving viewers a "false impression that the urban area is nothing more than an immense cluster of favelas".
    "The maps turns Rio into a favela," said one resident. "Anyone who doesn't know the city would be frightened."

BRASIL: 10 APRIL UPDATE: 2 Arrested For Selling Guns That Killed 12 Rio School Children and Wounded 12 More.

LINK CHANGE/ LAHT/ More New Details/

   Two men have been arrested for selling one of two guns used in the mass murder of 12 Rio school children and wounding a dozen more... by a 24-year-old gunman who then killed himself.
   The police report the two men accused sold a gun for 260 reais/some $165 usd, clearing 60 reais/ $38.
   Police say the morning massacre at the Tasso da Silveira school was committed by Wellington Menezes de Oliveira (pictured below), a former student. He reportedly left a rambling and incoherent letter saying he wanted to commit suicide.
  “It is a massacre, a true massacre,” said a fireman. “There is blood on the walls, blood on the chairs.... I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like something in the United States.”
  There were more than 400 students were in classes when the massacre began between 8:15 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. All the victims were 12-14 years of age.
    The GUARDIAN adds: Mateus Moraes, 13, told the O Dia newspaper that Oliveira had deliberately killed a number of girls but spared the boys. "He killed the girls with shots to the head," Moraes said. "The boys, he just shot to injure, in the arms or the legs.

   "This is completely outside of our reality. This gunman lived in his own sick world and unfortunately brought his ugliness into ours," said a Sao Paulo resident. "I'm certain he was sent straight to Hell."

     President Rousseff decreed three days of mourning for the victims.
    This school massacre is Brasil's first...and has shaken a nation where murders are common.
 

BRASIL: Rio's Mythic Slave Port Unearthed During Olympic Renovations.

GUARDIAN / T. Phillips

"... nearly two centuries after Rio's notorious Valongo wharf began operating, local archaeologists believe they may have located the slave port's ruins during a multibillion-dollar, pre-Olympic renovation of the city's harbour. "As soon as the discovery was made I went there," said Washington Fajardo, Rio's secretary for cultural heritage. "It is a moving experience, seeing an existing city and then another city two meters below. You feel a bit like Indiana Jones."

BRASIL: 08 Feb UPDATE: Fire In Rio's "Samba City" Destroys Many Carnaval Floats.

LINK CHANGE/ NYTIMES/ MORE DETAILS/

  An early morning fire in Samba City, near Rio’s port, destroyed floats and an estimated 8,400 costumes less than a month before 35 samba schools parade in the world famous Carnaval.
   Three of the12 samba schools selected for the famous Sambadromo competition on March 6 and 7 were seriously damaged by the fire: Uniao da Ilha, Portela and Acadêmicos do Grande Rio.
  Other samba schools said they would lend space, materials and professionals — whatever it took to see the rival schools through the competition
    Carnaval begins 4 March and attracts 700,000 tourists and visitors.
    Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, a samba group member, promised the city would help the groups recover and vowed that the Carnival parades would go on.
    "These people will put on a great Carnaval, and will show the energy and the optimism that Rio has," he said.

 TO SEE 1:54 ALJAZEERAENGLISH FIRE VIDEO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ1DfP0scqw&feature=player_embedded#

BRASIL: Billion Dollar Slums Renovations Planned.

GUARDIAN/ Long Feature/ Tom Phillips:
    "With the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics on the horizon, authorities are engaging in two simultaneous battles to improve life in the favelas: implementing "pioneering" pacification schemes in the slums and splashing out billions of dollars remodelling the favelas as part of an urbanisation initiative called Morar Carioca (roughly "Rio Living").
    The selection process, which ends next month, will see 40 architecture practices tasked with redesigning 582 inner-city slums that house around 1.2 million impoverished and excluded Brazilians."

BRASIL: 1ST UPDATE: 2 Bomb Scares As Police Launch 20 Favella Raids After Roadblocked Rio Drivers Are Robbed, Vehicles, Buses Burned.

LINK CHANGE/ AP/ 24 NOV/
  
     Rio police launched raids into 20 slums, looking for drug lords responsible for recent traffic violence, resulting in at least 12 people killed.
  Gangs of gunmen in Rio had set-up traps for 4 mornings, mostly on the outskirts of the city, to block and rob motorists just as the all-important tourist season is about to begin. One driver were killed after refusing to stop his car. Police have arrested 13.
   The thieves set at least 10 cars and 5 buses on fire to prevent drivers from fleeing and police from reaching the scene.
   It's not the first time that criminals have trapped drivers to rob them. They have also closed narrow streets or blocked tunnels. After 10 robberies in October, 19 police battalion leaders were fired.

       "The scary part is that now it's getting close to us. Before the violence was always far away," said a resident of  wealthy Ipanema. "Now we're feeling it on our flesh. The criminals have discovered the power they have and they want to show it."
FOR DETAILS ON POLICE SLUM RAIDS, BOMB SCARES, SEE:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/rio-faces-bomb-scare-cars-on-fire-as-police-steps-up-security-in-favelas.html

BRASIL: Police Try Peace In Rio's Slums.

NYTIMES/ By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO :
"For decades, the City of God (notorious Rio favela/slum) — whose brutal past was immortalized in a 2002 film — was one of the city’s most fearsome neighborhoods, so dangerous that even the police rarely dared to enter.
Those days seem long gone. Drug dealing remains, and in at least one area, outsiders can enter only with permission from local youths who patrol the streets.
Still, the men with the big guns are gone, or at least have been driven underground. And life is returning to the streets."
How is this done?
"The peace officers are central to that effort, flooding in after the military police clear the streets in gun battles that can last weeks. Their job is part traditional policing, part social work. They devote themselves to winning over residents scarred by decades of violence — some at the hands of the police."

BRASIL: Rio Gaining On S. Paulo As Financial Center.

BLOOM/         Rio has lured at least two dozen hedge funds in the past decade, the nation’s leading oil producers, the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 summer Olympics.“It’s in the midst of a major transformation,” said Christopher Palmer of London's Gartmore. “Rio has come back into the fold because of the Olympics and the development of the oil and gas industry.” “It’s becoming a virtuous cycle,” said Carlos Langoni, a former central bank president and finance chief of the organizing committee for the 2014 World Cup soccer games. “They’ve pacified favelas you would’ve thought were impossible to occupy. Real estate prices have surged, Rio’s seeing more royalties from oil production and it finally has good politicians.” Property values have risen as much as 47% in a year, while homicides have fallen 31% in May from a year earlier to a record low of 363. Vehicle theft is down 30 % and robberies of pedestrians fell 12%.

BRASIL: Huge Fire In Rio's Lagoa Neighborhood.

GLOBAL VOICES ONLINE/ Video :42 /    Saturday, the Lagoa neighborhood of Rio suffered a huge fire at Morro dos Cabritos, between Rua Sacopã and Parque da Catacumba, an area of Atlantic Rainforest filled with animals. Morro, where the Cabritos Slum is also located, was threatened by the fire, smoke and heat.

BRASIL: UPDATE: At Least 200 Feared Buried Under Mud In Slum As Death Toll Reachs 153.

AP/ GOOGLE/ UPDATE 08 ABRIL/    At least 200 people are feared to be burried under mud in a Rio slum. If confirmed, that would  raise the death toll sharply from the 153 people already known to have died this week after a historic 17 hour-long,  11 inch deluge in Rio de Janeiro city and state. Rio de Janeiro's governor declared a state of emergency while the city's mayor has told people to stay indoors. "The situation is chaos," Rio Mayor Eduardo da Costa Paes said. "All the major streets of the city are closed because of the floods." Most Rio victims died in landslides in two shantytowns near the city center. There were also many deaths in nearby Niteroi. Authorities report 104 people injured and 65 missing. Officials say mudslides threaten at least 10,000 houses in the city of 6 million people and 1,200 people were left homeless. Heavy rains are more common in January than in April.

BRASIL: 7-Year-Old Samba Queen Struts And Cries In Rio's Carnaval Parade.

NYTIMES UPDATE/ AM 15 FEB/  Seven-year-old Julia Lira  performed as Carnaval's youngest drum corps queen for the Viradouro samba group in Rio after a small breakdown. Some children's activists had complained about her prominent role but a judge ruled that Julia could assume the coveted position usually reserved for models and actresses.

BRASIL: Relentless Heat Wave Continues To Kill Elderly.

LAHT/  Continuing high temperatures - above 40 C (104 F)- killed 32 elderly people in two days in Santos in Sao Paulo state. In Rio, thermometers have reached 42 C (108 F) several times thus far in February.

BRASIL: New Blackout Hits A Sweltering Rio.

MIAMI HERALD/
Rio's power company, Light SA, reported that about 250,000 clients in Leblon, Copacabana, Ipanema and Lagoa lost all power at daybreak on what turned out to be a sweltering 95 degree day. The outage apparently began when power was cut-off to fix an underground cable.

BRASIL: Police Bonuses Encouraged "Wild West Tactics" And Death Toll.

MERCO PRESS/
An independent study claims that the soaring number of killings of suspected criminals (10,000+ in 12 years) by Rio's police is tied to bonuses. The study by the Institute for Studies on Religion (ISER) found that the ratio of dead to wounded climbed significantly after the city started offering bonuses to police in 1995 to particularly courageous officers.

BRASIL: TAM Passenger Robbed And Dies After Flight To Rio.

BRAZZILMAG/
Brasilian-American Maria Petrúcia Ribeiro da Silva, 68, died shortly after arriving in Rio from New York on TAM Airlines. Despite warnings from the plane, no medical help was waiting when the plane landed. Plus, someone stole $8,000USD she was carrying to pay-off her Rio home.

Gangs Still Control Rio's Slums.

AP Via MIAMI HERALD/
There are 2 million slum dwellers in Rio and they say that defeating the criminals is almost impossible.
"The police are playing a game they have already lost," said vegetable seller Roberto Lima. "They have to make their efforts, we understand. But they are working outside the reality that they don't control this place."

Lula Promises Rio Money To Fight Drug Gangs.

REUTERS/
Rio's police may get 100 million reais($58.3 million) after 17 died in weekend drug violence.
Two gangs battled on Saturday, shooting down a police helicopter and setting 8 buses set on fire.
The dead included three police officers, who were in the helicopter when it crashed into a soccer field.

View: Rio's Drug War Claims 2 Police And A Helicopter.

GUARDIAN/UK/10 Images/
A gun battle erupted in a Rio favela and a police helicopter was shot down, killing two officers.
The battle began in Morro dos Macacos in northern Rio, controlled by the Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends) drug faction.