Posts tagged with "president"

On January 1st, Dilma Rousseff took office as Brazil’s first female president. In Brasília, she gave an inspiring speech and outlined her plans for her new administration.

Watch her speech below:

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Here are some excerpts:

“Continuaremos fortalecendo nossas reservas externas para garantir o equilíbrio das contas externas e bloquear, e impedir a vulnerabilidade externa. Atuaremos decididamente nos fóruns multilaterais na defesa de políticas econômicas saudáveis e equilibradas, protegendo o país da concorrência desleal e do fluxo indiscriminado de capitais especulativos….”

“…Queridas e queridos brasileiros e brasileiras,  considero uma missão sagrada do Brasil a de mostrar ao mundo que é possível um país crescer aceleradamente, sem destruir o meio ambiente. Somos e seremos os campeões mundiais de energia limpa, um país que sempre saberá crescer de forma saudável e equilibrada…”

“…Seguiremos aprofundando o relacionamento com nossos vizinhos sul-americanos; com nossos irmãos da América Latina e do Caribe; com nossos irmãos africanos e com os povos do Oriente Médio e dos países asiáticos. Preservaremos e aprofundaremos o relacionamento com os Estados Unidos e com a União Européia.”

You can also read the full text of her address here.

What types of verbs does she repeat throughout the speech? The answer after the jump.

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Last night Brazilians elected their first female president and outgoing president Lula’s hand picked successor, Dilma Rousseff. Although it’s a pretty epic event for the country, these elections have been fairly controversial. While Dilma had never held an elected office before, José Serra never stays for a full term in the positions he’s held.

But alas, Dilma Rousseff was the favorite with about 56% of the votes! Last night, she announced what her plans are for the next four years, which, to the public’s appplause, includes “knocking on Lula’s door for help,” and eradicating poverty from Brazil.

See a little bit of her speech and what she has to say about poverty, pre-salt, Lula, Brazilian women, social and sustainable development in the video below:

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How does she plan on eradicating poverty?

What are her plans for pre-salt exploration?

What does she think about working with Lula?

What are her plans for women in Brazil?

and most importantly…

What do you think of her being elected Brazil’s next president?

President Lula is making a big splash in the U.S. this week, where he’s attending several important events.

First, he accepted an award from the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he celebrated with other world leaders. Yesterday, he attended the UN General Assembly in New York, where he gave a long speech (watch and read the speech here). Now he is off to Pittsburgh for the G20 Summit.

Also, Lula was featured in Newsweek this week as “the most popular politician on earth” — read the article here. There’s also a special Q and A section with Lula available on the Newsweek website.

At this week’s G-8 summit in Italy, President Lula of Brazil gave President Obama an official Brazil soccer jersey signed by members of the national team.

The signatures included those of “Edmílson, Gomes, Lúcio, Vágner Love, Daniel Carvalho, Gilberto Silva, Ronaldinho Gaúcho, Elano, Robinho, Júlio Baptista, Alex and Dida.”

President Lula also teased President Obama about the US team’s 3-2 loss to Brazil last week, chanting “Yes, we can” several times. Obama joked about the game and took the teasing lightly, making a sad face while holding up the shirt to show his disappointment in the US loss. Lula also gave the same signed shirts to members of the G-5 earlier in the week.

Effective February 1st, the national minimum wage in Brazil was raised to R$465 per month (US$201) from R$415 by order of the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The salary increase is expected to affect twenty percent of the Brazilian population, about 42 million people. However, each state has its own legal minimum wage, and it is common for employers to pay below the minimum wage.

The president passed a provisional order, expected to be ratified by Congress this week. Some politicians hope the move will also include incentives to prevent companies from laying off workers, since higher wages and lower demand due to the crisis may lead to job losses.

The economic crisis recently hit Brazil with the loss of 655,000 jobs in December, as well as recent lay offs in multinational companies, like Deere’s factory lay offs in January.

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