Summary

Refugees – Brazil has become a safe haven for thousands of refugees, people who emigrate from countries ridden with conflict and where their lives are seriously at risk. With the help of friends and relatives, churches, mosques, NGOs and, most often, at their own expense, they keep coming. Syrians are at the top of a list that includes, among others, Afghanis, Colombians, and Congolese.

Economy – In these times of crisis and a sinking GDP, exports are bound to become an excellent solution for companies to offset declining domestic sales. According to data by the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brazil), in the first semester of 2015 alone there was a 13% increase in the number of companies entering into some form of contract abroad.

Careers – Dissatisfaction and disappointment with the career chosen is one of the main reasons for people to change jobs, a decision that is no longer so common today in face of unemployment. According to polling institute Datafolha, 22% of Brazilians consider themselves unhappy or little happy with their occupations.

Climate – If meteorologists are right, the planet’s climate will go through a turbulent phase during the first semester of 2016, all thanks to El Niño. A natural phenomenon that takes place at irregular intervals, ranging from 2 to 7 years and lasting from 6 to 18 months, El Niño is caused by the warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean along the line of the Equator, between the western coast of South America and eastern Oceania.

Interview – From 2002 to 2012, Brazilian commercial airlines saw the number of passengers reach the impressive 100 million-a-year threshold. Blue skies, however, are long gone. Eduardo Sanovicz, chairman of the Brazilian Airline Association (Abear), says today the sector faces several challenges, and names two of them: to urgently reduce the price of aviation kerosene and to remove the VAT from the cost structure of tickets.

Agriculture – With an annual supply estimated at 7.2 million tons in 2015 and among the sector’s top five worldwide, Brazil accounts for 7% of the world’s production of banana. Still, the foreign market represents a minor share for Brazilian growers. “About 95% of the fresh produce is consumed by Brazilians”, reports the Fruit Commission of the Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA).

Track and field – They already number 30 million worldwide, 4 million in Brazil alone. This is the number of amateur and professional athletes who nurture a true passion for running, a sport that is attracting an ever-increasing number of followers in our country. Running, say specialists, fights sedentary lifestyles and makes people happy.

Cities – The former capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro and a vantage point from where to admire, even if from a distance, the beauties of the ‘Wonderful City’, Niterói, with 496,000 inhabitants, occupies a prominent position among the state’s cities. It ranks first in the state, and is the top seventh in the country’s Municipal Human Development Index (IDHM).

Childhood – Slowly but steadily, the role of social mother – Brazilians who provide foster home care to abandoned children– grows in the country. The aim of this legally regulated activity “is to provide the child with family conditions ideally conducive to his or her development and social reintegration”.

Health – A body without identity, without memory, a discouraging outlook that makes of Alzheimer’s disease one of the most feared these days. It also makes it a main focus of research for scientists worldwide. Its causes, however, are still little known, with patients left with the possibility of treating its symptoms with medication that also acts to slow down its progression.

Memory – For three years, Zélia Gattai strived to find breaks in her everyday life of housewife, mother, photographer, and secretary to her husband and writer Jorge Amado to go over her drafts and begin, at the age of 63, a career as memorialist. And the first work of a string of ten that would come to public over three decades (from 1979 to 2008) was the acclaimed Anarquistas, Graças a Deus, freely, Anarchists, Thank God.

Drama – Sixty years ago debuted the Auto da Compadecida, a widely known dramatic comedy by Ariano Suassuna that has been staged an incalculable number of times. Considered by many as one of the most popular texts of modern Brazilian drama, Suassuna’s work, set in Brazil’s northeast, was strongly influenced by string-hanging cordel literature.

Books – The book by Marianne Peretti, A Ousadia da Invenção, freely, The boldness of Invention, a bilingual edition (Portuguese and French) with 348 pages with interviews, drawings, sketches, and photos, has the merit of bringing to the knowledge of French and Brazilian readers the existence of the “stained-glass windows of the tropics”, term adopted by the editors to describe the sculptress’s style. French-born (Pernambuco-born father and French mother) but living in Brazil, Marianne is responsible for important works as, for example, the Brasília Cathedral stained-glass windows, one of the best known.

Thematic panel – Economist and political scientist Marcos Troyjo discussed, with the members of the Economics, Sociology and Politics Council of the São Paulo State Federation of Trade in Goods, Services and Tourism, and of Sesc and Senac, the future of the BRICS. In his opinion, to assert itself in the bloc, Brazil needs, above all, a thorough restructuring of society.