Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim
Brazil has suggested that world leaders meet to give a final push to long-stalled negotiations for a global trade pact, World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy said Saturday.
“During the course of the discussion, (Brazilian Foreign Minister) Celso Amorim put this option on the table,” said the director-general of the WTO.
“Nobody said no, but we all said during the course of the discussion that if that was to happen, what remains to be done — which is a list of 12-13 fairly technical questions — will need to be simplified,” he added. (more…)
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
I’m in perfect health,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Saturday, following medical tests and a blood pressure scare that forced him to cancel a trip to Davos, Switzerland.
“I’m going to improve the quality of my diet,” the 64-year-old leader told reporters outside a Sao Paulo cardiac clinic that carried out the tests.
But, he insisted, “I’m going to keep traveling” as planned throughout the rest of the year — his last months in power before handing over the reins to a successor to be chosen in October elections. (more…)
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Guido Mantega
Brazil’s top finance official painted a rosy picture of an economy that was growing strongly enough for the government to remove some stimulus measures but was not getting so overheated that inflationary pressures were becoming a problem.
Talking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Finance Minister Guido Mantega also said that he was pleased that the real currency had fallen about 7 percent against the U.S. dollar this year, though he indicated he expected a further decline.
“The Brazilian economy is undergoing growth which is sustainable growth and is not going to generate inflation. I don’t see any signs of inflation,” he told a news conference. (more…)
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Manuel Zelaya
Honduras’ new government fired its top immigration official Friday after a Brazilian diplomat was denied entry into the country.
The government offered apologies to Brazil after immigration officials gave “undignified treatment” to consul Francisca Francinette Melo when she arrived in Honduras earlier in the day.
The interior and justice minister, Africo Madrid, said the Brazilian diplomat arrived on a flight from Miami but was denied entry and put on another flight back to the United States. (more…)
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President Lula
The president, will undergo a series of exams on Saturday at the Sao Paulo Heart Institute, a spokesman at the president’s press office said.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is doing well but must undergo more medical exams at the weekend, his press office said on Friday, a day after he was briefly hospitalized for high blood pressure.
Lula, aged 64, canceled his trip on Thursday to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, after he was briefly taken to hospital due to unusually high blood pressure. (more…)
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