In crushing defeat, Brazil’s Rousseff moves close to impeachment

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s leftist President Dilma Rousseff suffered a humiliating loss in a crucial impeachment vote in the lower house of Congress on Sunday and is almost certain to be forced from office months before the nation hosts the Olympics.

Fireworks lit up the night sky in Brazil’s megacities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro after the opposition comfortably surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to send Rousseff for trial in the Senate on charges of manipulating budget accounts.

The floor of the lower house was a sea of Brazilian flags and pumping fists as dozens of lawmakers carried in their arms the deputy who cast the decisive 342nd vote, after three days of a marathon debate.

WHO says Zika virus spreads explosively, four million cases forecast

The Zika virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is “spreading explosively” and could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Director-General Margaret Chan told members of the U.N. health agency’s executive board the spread of the mosquito-borne disease had gone from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions. The WHO would convene an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response, she said.

“The level of alarm is extremely high,” Chan told the Geneva gathering.

How China Is Building the Biggest Commercial-Military Empire in History

 

China’s outsized latticework of global infrastructure is said to be rooted in a fierce sense of competitiveness which they claim they learned from 19th century America.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the sun famously never set on the British empire. A commanding navy enforced its will, yet all would have been lost if it were not for ports, roads, and railroads. The infrastructure that the British built everywhere they went embedded and enabled their power like bones and veins in a body.

Great nations have done this since Rome paved 55,000 miles (89,000 km) of roads and aqueducts in Europe. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia and the United States established their own imprint, skewering and taming nearby territories with projects like the Trans-Siberian and the Trans-Continental railways.

Now it’s the turn of the Chinese. Much has been made of Beijing’s “resource grab” in Africa and elsewhere, its construction of militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea and, most recently, its new strategy to project naval power broadly in the open seas.

Brazil to get its first nuclear subs

AFP – Brazil is set to join the select group of countries that have nuclear-powered submarines, President Dilma Rousseff said Friday.

Rousseff stressed Brazil was committed to peace but also needed its defense deterrent, as she inaugurated a naval shipyard in Rio de Janeiro state where the country’s first nuclear-powered sub is set to be built in partnership with France.

“We can say that with these installations we are entering the select club of countries with nuclear submarines: The United States, Russia, France, Britain and China,” said Rousseff.

Known as the Metallic Structures Construction Unit, the factory in the city of Itaguai near Rio de Janeiro is part of the ambitious ProSub program launched in 2008.

China gets jump on U.S. for Brazil’s oil

You can’t just be making all these bad decisions, one after the other, accidentally; but rather by design. It’s clear by now that the oil and gas industries (nor oil independence) are not a priority as Obama’s financial and political backers (i.e. Soros, Solyndra et al) within the green movement instead need to be rewarded for their loyalty during the 2008 and upcoming 2012 presidential election. You might even be shocked to know that the only oil businesses making large headway are backed by George Soros, drilling and exploring in Brazil — and only for Brazil’s benefit.

BUENOS AIRES — Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40 percent of that coming from the seabed. One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.

The United States wants it, but China is getting it.

Less than a month after President Obama visited Brazil in March to make a pitch for oil, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was off to Beijing to sign oil contracts with two huge state-owned Chinese companies.

Continue reading article: China gets jump on U.S. for Brazil’s oil (Washington Times)

See also: Obama’s Keystone Denial Prompts Canada to Look to China Sales (Bloomberg)

See also: Up Next… Obama’s New Energy Regulations Will Put 32 Coal Plants Out of Business (Gateway Pundit)