News stories by Fabiana Frayssinet, page 22

No longer is the image of women trudging through fields carrying heavy water vessels on their heads just a 'quaint' scene of Brazil's semiarid northeast, for outsiders.

The issue of abortion has turned into a weapon that threatens to take away votes from the candidates in the campaign for the second round of presidential elections in Brazil, with conservative religious groups using it as a bargaining chip in exchange for their support.

The huge gap between the poorest and richest neighbourhoods of Brazil's most famous city shrank between 1996 and 2008. But the news is not as good as it sounds, because the decline in inequality was due to lower incomes in the richer zones, rather than to an increase in wealth in the 'favelas' or shantytowns.

Experts from 13 Latin American countries called for a shift in counter-drug policies from a punitive to a public health-based approach for users, in order to reduce drug-related violence, on the argument that the current 'war on drugs' has been lost in the region.

An average of 100 people go missing and between 40 and 50 unidentified bodies are found every month in this Brazilian city -- mysteries that could be cleared up simply with the sharing of information across agencies, a task that judicial and forensic experts have begun to successfully implement.

Computer game technology can have an impact on the way we view the world. In a new video game developed in Brazil, a young indigenous boy named Jeró helps break down the stereotypes of the worldwide video game industry while teaching about the history of colonialism.

Clay or earthen bricks could help to alleviate the housing shortage in Brazil because of the lower cost of brick buildings, while an innovative process for producing what are known as 'ecological bricks' can avoid the environmental harm arising from more usual building materials.

It’s Friday night, and in a 'favela' (shanty town) in this Brazilian city, a group of men relax with a beer after a hard week, while a song can be heard above the rowdy chatter.

'You can only have one mother,' as the saying goes, but in Brazil there are 215 ways of becoming a mother, one for each of the ethnic groups in this South American country. Promoting maternal health while respecting cultural traditions is a major health challenge.

The Statute of Racial Equality, soon to be signed into law in Brazil, is at the centre of a controversy between those who consider it a historical achievement, like the abolition of slavery in 1888, and those who see it as failing to satisfy the demands of the black movement.