News stories by Fabiana Frayssinet, page 17

The government of the state of Rio de Janeiro is unveiling a battery of creative tactics to engage the population in the battle against dengue fever, which is threatening to reach unprecedented epidemic proportions as a new virus strain hits Brazil.

Brazil, for decades a source of migrants to the United States and Europe, is now facing its own humanitarian challenge: applying the international solidarity it trumpets to the Haitians who are arriving in the thousands, in search of a better life.

A new paediatric formulation developed in Brazil holds out hope for a cure for over 90 percent of newborn babies infected with Chagas disease, a parasitic infection endemic in 21 Latin American countries, where it kills more people every year than malaria.

Nearly a month after the start of the offshore oil spill, authorities in Brazil have not yet been able to determine the causes of the accident, how much oil was leaked at a Chevron platform, the size of the oil slick, or the extent of the environmental damage.

The 'take-over' of Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro's largest favelas, by heavily armed police and military units was seen by some as a media spectacle and by others as part of a successful strategy of regaining state control over an area ruled by armed drug gangs.

Representatives of the Brazilian federal and municipal governments and of indigenous, black and riverbank communities and other groups that make the population of this country so diverse assumed a commitment to fight for 'the human right to an adequate diet.'

Fighting malnutrition is not just about putting food on everyone's table every day, according to Brazil's Fourth National Conference on Food and Nutrition Security, meeting in the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia.

The Brazilian government is extending its fight against hunger to the world stage, by inaugurating a Centre of Excellence Against Hunger to transmit its positive experiences to other developing countries with the help of United Nations agencies.

Environmentalists criticised the lack of concrete proposals in the Brazilian government's submission to the preparatory process for the Rio+20 conference, to be held in this city in June 2012.

When state legislator Marcelo Freixo received death threats for combating militias made up of off-duty police in Rio de Janeiro, his real life took on the form of the character portraying himself in the Brazilian Oscar hopeful 'Tropa de Elite 2'.