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RIO DE JANEIRO — Officials say the cost of building a huge dam in Brazil's Amazon has jumped $2 billion because of new environmental protections.

The Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the Amazon river will be the world's third largest.

Environmentalists are sharply opposed to its construction. They say it will devastate wildlife and the livelihoods of 40,000 people in the area to be flooded.

Brazil's environmental protection agency gave preliminary approval to the dam last month, but added several additional environmental regulations that must be followed.

Energy Minister Edison Lobao said Thursday those will raise the cost from $9 billion to $11 billion.

The Associated Press: Brazil: Cost of Amazon dam jumps $2B

Hundreds of passengers aboard an international cruise ship were stricken with vomiting and diarrhea, prompting a temporary quarantine of the vessel in southeastern Brazil, health authorities said Thursday.

At least 310 people suffered "some kind of food poisoning aboard" the Vision of the Seas, operated by Royal Caribbean International, a spokeswoman for the National Agency for Sanitary Vigilance said. She spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with department policy.

She said the first case was detected on Wednesday, prompting the agency to order all 1,987 passengers and 765 crew members to remain on the ship anchored at Buzios, near Rio de Janeiro.

She said it was unclear how many of those stricken were passengers or crew members, "but most were passengers."

The ship left the port of Santos on Monday for a four-day tour with scheduled stops in the coastal resorts of Buzios and Ilhabela.

It was allowed to leave Buzios Thursday afternoon and was expected to arrive in Santos around midnight. The agency spokeswoman said passengers who showed no symptoms would be free to leave. Those still ill would be taken to hospitals for treatment, with expenses paid by Royal Caribbean.

A breakdown of the nationalities of the passengers was not immediately available, but Royal Caribbean spokesman Alexandre Raith said "the vast majority are Brazilian."

The agency spokeswoman said doctors collected blood and urine samples and inspected food supplies to determine the cause of the food poisoning. Results won't be ready for a few weeks she added.

In January last year at a port in Salvador in northeastern Brazil, hundreds of passengers on a Swiss-owned cruise ship were also stricken with severe vomiting and diarrhea caused by food poisoning.

Brazil Quarantines Cruise Ship Over Food Poisoning - ABC News

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Bovespa stock index retreated from a two-week high as drop in transportation companies on speculation the global economic recovery will slow offset a rise in Petroleo Brasileiro SA on higher oil prices.

ALL America Latina Logistica SA tumbled 2.5 percent on concern Latin America’s biggest railroad operator will say earnings were hurt by rains. LLX Logistica SA, the port company controlled by Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, fell the most on the Bovespa. Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, rose as oil climbed above $81 a barrel.

Stocks erased gains after shares in the U.S., Brazil’s second-largest export market, pared their rise as the Federal Reserve said commercial real estate and loan demand stayed weak and the government moved closer to limiting banks’ trading.

“The impression we’re getting is that it’s going to be really difficult for the recovery in the American economy to get off the ground,” said Guilherme Sand, who helps manage the equivalent of $400 million at Solidus Brokerage in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The strengthening of the U.S. economic recovery is among the most important elements for improving investor sentiment in Brazil and globally, he said.

The Bovespa lost 0.2 percent to 67,641.34 after climbing as much as 1.5 percent earlier. Thirty-four stocks fell on the index while 26 gained. The BM&FBovespa Small Cap index lost 0.8 percent to 1,173.54. The real strengthened 0.1 percent to 1.7915 per U.S. dollar.

Greece Deficit

Stocks rose earlier as signs the job market in the U.S. is improving and plans to reduce the deficit in Greece spurred investor appetite for higher yielding assets.

The Bovespa had slumped as much as 11 percent from a 19- month high in January as China curbed bank lending to slow its economy and concern mounted that European nations would be unable to pay their debts.

Curitiba-based ALL lost 2.5 percent to 16.05 reais. The company is scheduled to report earnings next week and “investors are expecting a very bad fourth quarter,” said Fernanda Marques, an analyst at Banco do Brasil SA. “Rains paralyzed some operations.”

Petrobras increased 0.1 percent to 35.15 reais. Oil rose to a seven-week high after a U.S. government report showed that refinery operating rates climbed to the highest level since October, bolstering demand. Petrobras’s biggest minority shareholder said the state-controlled company may issue up to $40 billion in shares, less than some analysts forecast, as part of a plan to swap stock for oil off Brazil’s coast.

Bovespa Index Drops as Economic Concern Offsets Petrobras Gain - BusinessWeek

Brazil will not bow to pressure from the US to support further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear work, the country's foreign minister has said.

Celso Amorim told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Brazil wanted to see further negotiations on the issue before it would support sanctions.

Mrs Clinton said that sanctions had to be passed first in order to persuade Iran to "negotiate in good faith".

The US fears Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

At a news conference with Mrs Clinton in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, Mr Amorim said: "We will not simply bow down to an evolving consensus if we do not agree.

"We have to think by ourselves and with our values and principles," he said.

'Door open'

Washington wants Brazil, which enjoys good ties with Iran, to support its push for a fourth round of UN sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium - a possible step to building atomic weapons.

Tehran says the uranium is being enriched to provide fuel for nuclear power reactors it envisages building.

Brazil is currently a member of the UN Security Council.

"I think it's only after we pass sanctions in the Security Council that Iran will negotiate in good faith," Mrs Clinton said.

"The door is open for negotiations. We never slammed it shut," she said. "But we don't see anybody, even in the far-off distance, walking toward it."

Even before talks with Mrs Clinton began, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva repeated his stance that isolating Iran's leaders is counter-productive.

"It is not prudent to push Iran against a wall. The prudent thing is to establish negotiations," he said.

"I want for Iran the same thing as I wish for Brazil: To use the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. If Iran is in agreement with that, Iran will have Brazil's support."

President Lula said he did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons and would raise the issue in a visit to Tehran in May.

Mrs Clinton is visiting South America at a time when there is a sense in the region that President Barack Obama's administration, distracted by so many other issues, has not lived up to expectations, says the BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo.

The US state department has said if Brazil uses its relationship with Iran to press the country to fulfil its international obligations then that would be an important step, but if it did not do that, Washington would be "disappointed".

BBC News - Brazil rebuffs US pressure for Iran sanctions

With public funding approved by the Ministry of Culture and the government of São Paulo, the NGO E-Jovemwill be opening the first gay school in the country in Campinas this coming March. The idea is to provide a safe place for gay teenagers to express themselves, while also learning and promoting gay culture.
The school will offer free extracurricular courses on dancing, TV and web, and editorial production of fanzines. Dozens of students, homosexual and heterosexual, have already applied for the courses this year, which will all be taught by volunteers selected by E-Jovem. A drag queen course and other programs are already in the works for next year.
While certainly controversial to some, I love the project and hope that it proves to be very successful in Campinas so that other cities may follow. Would such a school every be possible in the US?

http://offthehypoten... l-opens-in.html