News stories by Fabiana Frayssinet, page 11

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 09 (IPS) - Bus lanes, cycle paths and pedestrian walkways are viable solutions to the transport collapse in Brazil's big cities. But economic interests, red tape and the lack of strategies for an integrated system are delaying a process that the protests raging across the country for the last few weeks have made an urgent issue.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 06 (IPS) - The street marches in Brazil, initially non-party-political, have begun to take on the hues of leftwing political and social groupings, which are now trying to set the course of the movement that emerged from online social networks.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (IPS) - Children of a generation that fought for basic rights like having enough to eat, learning to read and being treated in safer hospitals, the over 300,000 students protesting on the streets of Brazil want more from a democratic and economic system that no longer represents them and is beginning to show its limitations.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (IPS) - The bold strategy implemented by the Brazilian government has achieved an 84 percent reduction in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in the last eight years. But when the natural resources and pesticides used in agricultural production are taken into account, the environmental progress made is not so impressive.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 12 (IPS) - Happiness, the subject of endless philosophical discussions, has now become the focus of controversy in an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign aimed at prostitutes in Brazil. The campaign chief has been booted out and a further question has been raised: What are the limits of popular participation in the definition of public policies?

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 19 (IPS) - Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, a leading exponent of liberation theology, the progressive current in the Latin American Catholic Church, does not believe reports that depict the new Pope Francis as collaborating with Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship.

PARACAMBÍ, Brazil, Mar 12 (IPS) - Separating Maria Gomes Morais' farm and a school in Rio de Janeiro are fields, hills and dirt roads that are impassable when it rains. But a school meal programme has forged a path linking the fresh produce harvested by small farmers like her with the need to provide nourishment to 45 million schoolchildren around Brazil.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 11 (IPS) - The story generally begins in Brazil's hinterland, with a pretty, young woman from a disadvantaged background and with little formal education, who is drawn in by false promises and ends up in a sex trade network that stretches overseas.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 21 (IPS) - A transnational pesticides manufacturer is sponsoring the Vila Isabel samba school, which won the main contest in Rio de Janeiro's carnival this year, raising questions about financing mechanisms for "the greatest show on earth", as carnival is described in Brazil.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 15 (IPS) - The only difference the resignation of Benedict XVI as head of the Catholic Church will make in Brazil will be the name changes needed on posters advertising his coming to this city in July for World Youth Day, jokes Frei Betto.