News stories by Mario de Queiroz

PETROLANDIA, Brazil, Jan 13 (IPS) - Valdenor de Melo has been waiting for 27 years for the land and cash compensation he is due because his old farm was left underwater when the Itaparica hydroelectric dam was built on the São Francisco river in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast.

While the shadow of a speculative assault looms over Portugal, similar to the economic crises that hit Greece and Ireland, this Iberian nation manages to hold up the beacon of renewable energy.

Helicopter gunships patrolling the skies, missile launcher ships in the Tagus estuary, police with heavy machineguns and armoured cars deployed on the main streets of the Portuguese capital have created a warlike ambience in the city hosting the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Summit.

With the announcement that his country is ready to buy Portuguese debt, the president of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, set a precedent in international economic relations that was universally praised in political and financial circles in this southern European country.

Over the centuries, racism in the Americas has targeted indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, while in Europe, secular racism has long centred on its once-enslaved gypsies, as their recent persecution in France and Italy confirms.

A trial that dragged on for six years amidst public outrage ended Friday in Portugal with the unexpected sentencing of prominent personalities, found guilty in a child sex abuse scandal that shook the nation.

Environmentalists are alarmed: fires have destroyed close to 100,000 hectares of forest in Portugal this summer, releasing one million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Worst of all, the forests are losing their ability to absorb carbon.

Football functions on so many levels. It can be big business, moving astronomical quantities of cash, with obscene salaries for owners, coaches and star players. And it can be a widely played sport, found in every park, street or vacant lot. And it can be the common ground for multicultural coexistence.

First Angola, and now Brazil, Portugal's two largest former colonial possessions, are extending a helping hand to the battered Portuguese economy.

Pope Benedict XVI began a four-day visit to Portugal Tuesday in an uncomfortable scenario for himself and his followers, amidst accusations that the Catholic Church leadership protected pedophile priests, and the free distribution of condoms by hundreds of protesters here.