News stories by Fabiana Frayssinet, page 18

Activists opposed to the construction of the Belo Monte hydropower dam in the Amazon jungle say the Brazilian government's decision to boycott an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights hearing represents a 'radical' shift in the country's foreign policy.

The bill to establish a National Truth Commission in Brazil, which has made it through the lower house of Congress and is now in the Senate, is considered at least a start in clarifying, and preventing a repetition of, the abuses committed during the country's 21-year dictatorship.

Critics complain that a genetically modified bean developed in Brazil, resistant to one of the country's most damaging agricultural pests, was approved without enough debate or guarantees that the crop will not affect human health or the environment.

Bananas are harvested where apples used to grow; cassava, a traditional crop, is disappearing from the Northeast; and the southeast is losing the fragrance of good coffee. This is the science fiction of a new distribution of crops in Brazil, South America's agricultural powerhouse.

The arrest of the alleged killers of Brazilian judge Patrícia Acioli, known for her work against organised crime, is seen by analysts and legislators as a step in the right direction in the fight against corruption and impunity.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is starting to gain support for a war on corruption that she is quietly waging.

Almost a year and a half after floods wreaked havoc in a large part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, a group of women are struggling to rebuild their lives. They lost everything except their will to pick themselves up again and make the best of the aid they receive, to become self-sufficient again.

The assassination of Brazilian Judge Patrícia Acioli, who was investigating militias made up of off-duty police and death squads, points to a new stage of organised crime, which is expanding into the vacuum left by the impunity surrounding 90 percent of murders in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Civil society organisations in Latin America have begun to coordinate joint actions in the region to curb what they see as a tendency towards privatisation, while protesting what they call a range of 'subtle' ways of undermining public control of water.

Community organisations say the major infrastructure works for the 2014 football World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil do not reflect the spirit of the social legacy promised by the government and business community, which project 68 billion dollars in economic benefits from the first event alone.